“I thought he wasn’t allowed to write to anyone.”
“He was allowed to send one letter home each month. It had to pass a screening though which meant he couldn’t really talk about you or anything really important,” she explained. “I thought about sharing them with you, but...I don’t think he’d want you to worry any more than you already do.”
“Allie...”
“It’s bad, Bry. This place he’s in. He never outright says anything against it in his letters, but he talks about the schedule they’ve got and the things they have to do. It’s like a military school, if a military school made you recite Bible verses about how damned you were,” she grimaced and looked away. “But I didn’t get his letter this month. Mom says it never came and I actually believe her. She even called the school to check on his progress. I guess they let him talk to her for a few minutes. She said he was just fine, he just didn’t feel like writing.”
“Allie...”
“But there’s nothing we can do to get him out of there...nothing that doesn’t break a few laws anyway.” She groaned and sank back into her seat. “I don’t want to give up, not with what he’s going through, but I don’t know what else to do.”
With every word out of her mouth, I felt myself losing a little bit of hope. I couldn’t save Adam. No one could. My Sunday school upbringing suggested I should probably have started praying a long time ago. Was it too late to ask God for a favor? If He was even up there, listening that is.
As my thoughts clicked along. I watched Allie reach out for her father’s hand.
She gave him a little squeeze…
And he squeezed back.
49
Mr. Fischer opened his eyes that day. It was brief, just a few seconds. Just long enough for him to look at his daughter and recognize that she was there.
The doctor seemed skeptical, but the brain activity had definitely spiked.
Mr. Fischer was waking up.
Over the next several days, Allie and I skipped out on a lot of school. I got my parents to write me a note, but Allie didn’t want her mother to know that her rain of terror was coming to an end.
Every day, Mr. Fischer would open his eyes for a little longer. A few days more and he started to try and speak. His speech was impaired, the synapses weren’t all firing or something like that. The doctor said it could take a few days, or it could take years of speech therapy, or he might never get it all the way back. In fact, that was the way it was for most of Mr. Fischer’s physical abilities.
Thankfully, his brain function didn’t seem to be impaired. He recognized Allie, and me. He recognized my parents when they stopped in to see him. He could understand what was being said to him and could read and comprehend what he was reading.
His motor skills were slow in returning. Fine motor skill especially, things like writing with a pencil, were especially hard. Allie finally started having him find the word he wanted in a book and point to it. Through that they were able to establish some basic communication.
Just in time too.
The school called Mrs. Fischer about Allie’s absences.
Allie and I were sitting in Mr. Fischer’s room telling when she arrived. We’d been telling him some story that Austin had told us a few weeks before. Mr. Fischer was laughing when Allie got to the punchline though I probably would’ve called it more of a chortle. Either way, he was enjoying himself.
When the door opened, Mrs. Fischer looked angrier than I’d ever seen her.
“Look who finally decided to wake up,” she snipped. “Your daughter’s been missing school and failing classes. I’m paying through the nose for this fancy private school and she snubs it so she can come sit by your bed. Where’s the gratitude? After everything I’ve done, taking care of our kids, they both treat me like I’m some sort of monster. Suddenly, after months of being absent, you open your eyes and you’re the favorite again.”
“Mom...”
“Enough out of you,” Mrs. Fischer said, narrowing her eyes at Allie. “You’ve got homework to catch up on if you want any hope of staying in that school. And you...” she finally turned on me. “Of course you’re the one that’s been getting my daughter to act out. Next thing she’s probably going to be tell me that she’s gay too.”
“Get. Out.” The words were a little garbled, but unmistakable. Mr. Fischer had spoken. He was glaring at his wife and pointing toward the door.
“You’re going to throw me out? Really?” Mrs. Fischer was incensed. “I’ll be sure to sue you for the child support I’m owed after all these months of caring for them on my own.”
“Get. Out.” Mr. Fischer repeated, this time louder, as he hit the call button to summon a nurse to his room.
“You can barely speak, barely move, any judge in their right mind would side with me if I decided to sue for sole custody,” Mrs. Fischer continued. A thin smile spread across her lips. “I’m leaving, but this isn’t over.” With a dramatic flourish, she made her exit.
Mr. Fischer’s voice hadn’t made a full return. Apparently the anger of seeing his ex wife had prompted to find at least a few words though.
The doctors were satisfied with his recovery and were willing to send him home, just as soon as the current tenants were cleared out and everything was retrieved from storage. It took a few days, but we gathered up a big group of people get it all done as quickly as possible.
With his recovery, Mr. Fischer was able to take care of some things that his children and his sister had dropped the ball on. Mainly, filing an insurance claim and suing the assholes that nearly killed him and his children. Thanks to my illicit text exchange with Adam, I had plenty of pictures of both his and Allie’s injuries at various stages.
He got his lawyer on the job of getting a court date ASAP. He also immediately filed a restraining order against his ex wife and began the process of suing for sole custody. She wasn’t the only one capable of playing dirty and, according to his lawyer at least, Mr. Fischer had bigger guns.
Before the accident, he’d been a single man living a fugal life on a senior engineer’s salary with his son. He’d successfully socked away a nicely sized fund in case of emergency, and he used that to hire an in home nurse and twice a week physical therapist so that he wouldn’t have to rely on Allie so much.
But the best part of Mr. Fischer’s return was that he immediately sent word for Adam to come home.
Standing in the airport, waiting for his flight, was one of the most nerve wracking moments of my life. As much as I wanted to believe that he’d been able to hold up under all that pressure, part of me was afraid the mental abuse had gotten to him. That he’d been broken.
I’d forced Allie to let me read the letters Adam had written. It wasn’t so much was in the letters, as it was about the picture they painted together. In one letter he wrote about waking up at the crack of dawn. In another he said they stayed up well after midnight. One letter talked about how each meal was a nutritionally balanced so that they were consuming exactly what the calories they needed to maintain their admittance weight. In another letter, he talked about five mile runs every morning and contests of physical strength.
And so it went from month to month.
They kept the students too tired and hungry to talk back or act out. They pushed them to the limits of physical and mental exhaustion and then berated them with verses that were meant to scare them back onto the right path. It was nothing short of child abuse, and it was going on unobstructed because the parents that sent there kids there wanted exactly the sort of treatment that was being handed out.
So I stood in the airport lobby, wringing my hands and anxiously peering through airport security for any sign of Adam.
I almost missed him. He was wearing a hoodie and sunglasses as he approached the security gate. I couldn’t see clearly, but I know they made him take them off before he went through the metal detector. The people around the gate were crowded together so thickly that I couldn’t see him very well.
>
“There he is!” Allie shouted, shaking me excitedly when she caught sight of him moving toward us.
He was wearing his hoodie and sunglasses again. Even with the baggy clothes, I could tell he’d lost weight. He stopped short when he saw us and even with the sunglasses it was clear that he was nervous.
I decided to let Allie take the lead, just in case he’d developed some internalized self-loathing about his life as a gay man.
She trotted ahead and greeted him with a warm hug. “It hasn’t been the same without you around,” she said when she finally released him. “I missed you, so much. It’s...” she choked back her tears and went in for another hug.
“It’s okay, I’m back,” Adam said as he gave a little squeeze. “You’re okay, Dad’s okay...we all managed to survive.”
“Thanks to this guy,” Allie said, looking back at me as she released Adam once more. “I probably would’ve fallen apart if it wasn’t for him. Hell, he was the one who got me to start talking to Dad so he might not be awake right now either if Bry hadn’t stepped up.”
“Bryant...”
Hearing him speak my name after all this time was like waking up after being asleep for a year. I felt like an idiot, staring at my reflection in his sunglasses. I didn’t know what to say, or do. I was paralyzed with uncertainty and indecision.
“Six months away and that’s all I get?” he joked as he stepped toward me until there were only a few inches between us. “I thought about you every single day when I woke up, and every time I went to sleep. It was the thought of you, of my promise, that kept me from completely falling apart.”
“Adam, it’s really you,” I breathed, as I looped my arms around his neck. Our lips collided like waves on a shore and I opened myself to the warmth of his mouth. My tongue slipped along his, as I began to lose myself to my hunger for him. Six months felt like a lifetime and I didn’t want to waste another minute.
“I don’t want to interrupt, but I’m afraid if I don’t you two are gonna bone in the middle of the airport...” Allie spoke up after a minute. “The sexual tension is so high right now you’re making other people horny just watching you.”
“Dammit Allie,” Adam laughed as he broke our kiss. He pulled off his sunglasses an shook his hea. “Can you not?”
I looked up at Adam and felt my excitement ebb as it was replaced by pain. His hoodie had been knocked aside, revealing what he’d been trying to hide.
“They shaved your head...” I whispered, unable to stop myself reaching up to touch his scalp.
He flinched a little beneath my touch, but didn’t pull away. Instead, he looked back and let me inspect his face. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and made them look like they were receding into their sockets. He’d lost so much fat and muscle from his face that his high cheekbones made him appear almost skeletal.
“This can’t go on...they can’t get away with this.” I felt righteous fury building in my chest.
“We’re already working on it,” he said as he kissed my forehead. “Now that I’ve got a cell phone,” he held up one of those cheap pay-as-you-go phones, “I had a long chat with Dad’s lawyer. Sounds like we’ve got a lot of court appearances in our future.”
My anger dissipated as he spoke.
“We can talk about this stuff in the car,” Allie reminded us. “I think the priority right now is getting my big bro a couple hamburgers.” She grinned from ear to ear.
Adam kissed my forehead and took my hand in his. “That’s pretty much all I’ve been thinking about since I got on the plane,” he said as a sly smile spread across his lips. He looked sidelong at me and raked his eyes across my body. “Well...maybe a few other things too.”
I shivered beneath his gaze. I could feel him undressing me with his eyes and, after that kiss, I really didn’t want him to stop.
“Ew. Gross.” Allie teased. “You two can continue this once you’re safely contained. Seriously, this is becoming a public safety hazard. That guy near walked up the down escalator and that lady is looking at her husband like ‘why was there more passion in that glance than there’s ever been in our bed?’”
“Okay, we get it,” Adam relented as he lead the way toward the baggage claim. “You don’t have to draw so much attention.” He pulled his hood up over his head as we walked and slid his glasses on once more.
I’d never seen Adam look so self-conscious before. He’d always presented himself as confident and carefree, even when he wasn’t at his best. Seeing him hide like that made my heart ache for him even more. They hadn’t just hurt him physically. Even if though he tried to deny it, the people at that school had managed to get under his skin.
“You know, the bald thing isn’t so bad,” I said as we stood at the baggage claim waiting for his bag. Allie was patrolling around, trying to make sure we didn’t miss it already. She seemed to think that our kiss had put us way behind schedule.
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Adam said, looking sidelong at me. “I appreciate the effort, but don’t.”
I let my eyes drop to the ground. That was pretty much the only card I had to play right now and he’d seen right through it. I wanted to cheer him up, but I didn’t even know where to start. How do you cheer someone up whose lived through a hell you can only begin to imagine?
“Bry...” I felt Adam’s hand on my back. “I’m not trying to push you away or anything. I just...I can’t talk about it right now...or maybe ever. I want to leave what happened there in the past where it belongs. I’m home now, with you, where I belong. I’m gonna grow my hair out, get my health back, and we’re going to leave this chapter of our lives behind.”
I nodded slowly in agreement. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to talk, so I wasn’t going to push his boundaries. But if years of therapy had taught me anything, it’s that you couldn’t keep shit like this buried. It would eat you alive and spit out the pieces.
50
Despite the brave face he was putting on, Adam’s condition was a lot worse than it appeared. He passed out almost as soon as we got him home and didn’t wake up again until the next evening. He ate some food, drank a bunch of water, took a shower, and then passed out again.
Mr. Fischer had a doctor come and examine him thoroughly. The conclusion was malnourishment and overwork. For which the treatments were pretty much what Adam was already doing. Though the doctor did stress that a balanced diet and plenty of fluids were the key to making a full recovery.
It was a couple of weeks before Adam felt strong enough to leave the house. By then his hair had started to grow back and his face had started to fill out a little. He was beginning to look like himself again. That was right around the time that the insurance suit was finally settled. The judge found in favor of Adam and his family, which granted them a nice windfall. It obviously didn’t make up for everything that they’d gone through as a result of the accident, but it would help keep them going while Mr. Fischer was out of work.
When she found out that Mr. Fischer was pressing for full custody and seeking child support, Mrs. Fischer backed down. Her lawyer likely advised her against pursuing a case they couldn’t win. She offered to willing cede custody and in exchange he would not seek child support. Mr. Fischer agreed. They would both be eighteen before long and free of their mother’s control anyway, which made this a more symbolic gesture. A complete break. Mrs. Fischer had completely given up her role in her children’s lives.
After a little bit of digging, Mr. Fischer’s lawyer uncovered a lot more people—mostly former students—that were willing to testify about the inhumane treatment they had received that school. The school offered to settle out of court but, Mr. Fischer wanted to go for the jugular. It wasn’t money he was after. It was the complete dismantling of that entire institution. This wasn’t going to be some open and shut case. The school had surprisingly deep pockets and a team of lawyers that were gearing up for war. There was every indication that this case might drag on for years.
/> Adam didn’t want me there when the lawyer recorded his testimony. He never told me everything that happened to him during the six months we were apart, but after that sharing everything with the lawyer, he came back home looking haunted. A few days later, he told me he was starting therapy.
Every now and then I’d ask him how his sessions were going and open an invitation for him to share what he’d gone through. I knew he might not ever before ready to have to talk, but I was there for him in case he ever was.
Adam finally came back to school in February. He was behind in all his classes and had a ton of make up work if he wanted to graduate. His classwork was a little more advanced than mine, but I did what I could to help him study. Between my efforts, and a little help from Logan and Austin, he was almost caught up by the time Spring Break rolled around.
In celebration, we hit the road and made a beeline for the coast. This time with our parents’ blessings, of course.
The hotel was just as I remembered it, but our room was not. As I stepped over the threshold I was immediately struck by the sheer size of the bed that dominated the middle of the room.
“Bold choice, Mr. Fischer,” I said as I looked back at Adam. He was already putting the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside the door.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions about how this is going to play out,” I teased.
Adam locked the door and turned to face me. “I’m not assuming anything, love,” he growled to me. “I already know how this is going to go.”
He wrapped me in his arms and kissed me. It was an all consuming sort of kiss, the kind that left me breathless and begging for more. My skin was already starting to flush and I felt a tingling in my groin that could only mean one thing.
In between our feverish kisses, we undressed one another. Our shirts lay tangled on the floor by the door. Shoes not far away. Shorts and underwear came off together and were kicked aside. All the time we were moving steadily closer to the bed.
The Outside Series - Complete Trilogy: Books 1-3 Page 38
