I didn’t fall far, just to my knees, but still I fell and now I wonder if I can really trust him.
What choice do I have at this point?
He heaves me up into his arms and within thirty seconds he’s laying me down on a bed.
“You okay, Buddy?” He’s leaning over me, and my mom is leaning over him, both trying to get a good look at me.
I can’t answer his question. I just can’t, because I’m trying too hard not to cry.
“I’m so proud of you!” Dad grins. “You were awesome. No wonder you’ve made All-Star three years in a row. And hey, you never know, you might still have time to get the title this year as well.”
There’s something really wrong about that statement, but I don’t have what it takes to think about it right now. I just want him to leave. Both of them, actually, and when they finally do, I roll over onto my side and cry myself to sleep.
So, this is my room, huh? I stand at the foot of the bed and look around, hoping that maybe, just maybe, I’ll recognize the place. But the only two things in the entire room that are familiar to me are the same two things I brought with me – the hospital bag and my ID band.
To my right, next to the window, is a ceiling to floor, built-in book shelf. It doesn’t house a single book, though. Instead, trophies of all shapes and sizes decorate six of the eight shelves.
With a more pronounced limp than usual, due to the strain of my stair climbing adventure a few hours ago, I make my way over to the bookshelf to get a closer look.
Ninety-nine percent of these awards are for sports, and they date all the way back to little league. Most of them are for football, but there are some for hockey, lacrosse and baseball, as well. There’s even a cardboard and black marker made plaque that reads, Table Tennis King of the F–ing World. I have no idea if this is a self-awarded plaque, or if someone else made it for me. I don’t even know if it was given in seriousness or in mockery. I conclude that, either way you look at it, I’m hell behind a paddle.
The two shelves that don’t have trophies on them hold a grand display of autographed balls – footballs and baseballs. I lean in closer and read some pretty impressive names – names my memory has retained – and then I step back and wonder if I even like sports. I mean, this stuff says I do, but the games my dad watched on the TV in my hospital room were, most often, just irritating noise to me. Was it just because I was so ill that everything was irritating?
I don’t know the answer to this so I move out of the sports section of my room and on to the academics – a desk. There’s a pen cup with several pens and a pair of scissors that sits nicely in the upper right hand corner, but that’s the only thing that is in order on the desk. The rest is cluttered and messy – mostly with papers. There are at least a hundred of them and it appears they were crammed, with little to no care, into a file folder and flung upon the desk.
Before I flip open the folder, I glance toward the open bedroom door and out into the hall to make sure no one is watching. I don’t know why I do this. I guess because it feels like I’m snooping through a stranger’s belongings and I don’t want to get caught.
This is my stuff, I tell myself, but since I feel like I’ve never stepped foot in this place, or seen any of these things, it still feels weird.
The papers are school work – a year’s worth of it, it appears. My name is on all of them and the dates range from September of last year to May of this year. They are crumpled and crinkled and probably spent plenty of time in the bottom of my locker before being jammed into the folder for transport home.
I’m not an A student. The grades on the paper range from fifty to eighty percent. High enough to keep me on the sports teams I was obviously on, but low enough to show I didn’t give a damn. The doodles in some of the margins lead me to believe that school work bored me.
The doodles themselves aren’t half bad, though, and I begin to wonder if I have any interest in art. I sit down in the desk chair, flip over a piece of the paper and reach for a pen.
What should I draw?
I glance around and the first thing I see is the blue belongings bag my mom has sat on the dresser next to the desk. My “purse.” I kick the mockery of Lucas’s voice out of my head and sketch out the shape of the bag, along with its plastic handles that snap together.
The ink – my hand – they flow easy and naturally across the paper and it feels fantastic.
Three months! For three months it’s been drilled into my head that I like football. Wait, like is too weak of a word. I love football. I’ve been shown many photos and told countless stories to prove this, yet in all that time no one ever mentioned art.
I move on.
In the top drawer of the dresser, buried under the socks, which are more numerous than any human being could possibly need, I find a string of condoms. Wishful thinking? Or am I a participant? It’s not like I can run downstairs and ask Mom.
Damn, not even knowing were my dick has been is disturbing. Maybe I didn’t care, back then, where it was, but I sorta do now.
On my way to the closet, I pass a full length mirror and stop. Mom was absolutely right, I need a haircut. The shaved areas of my dark hair have grown back, but they are shorter than other parts and I look like I just woke up. Okay, I guess I did just wake up, but that’s not what I mean.
I’ll ask for some help with my hair tomorrow.
The bottom of the closet has football gear piled up. Pads, helmets, balls, etc., take up the left side while the right side has a collection of expensive shoes.
Stylish jeans and shirts hang on the rack and I’m left to assume that I’ve spent my whole life dressed like Lucas was today – to the nines. I’m a rich kid.
There’s a poster on the wall behind my bed and I have no idea how I missed seeing it until now. It’s offensive, and jolts my system when my eyes land on it. It’s an evil looking creature – half human, half beast – fangs and cat like slits for eyes. He holds a human heart in his hands and the blood that drips from it is the same blood that coats his chin and lips and dribbles down his bare chest. It’s a band poster and I have several of their CD’s by the stereo.
I have a brain injury. It’s not bad enough to put me in line for the short bus headed for the Special Olympics, but it’s changed me. My ability to come to conclusions based on reason has decreased. However, to make up for the loss, my feelings have intensified.
I guess what I’m saying is that I now make my snap decisions based on how I feel rather than what I think. I don’t like this poster! Not at all. It freaks me the hell out, and within seconds I’ve aggressively ripped it from my wall. I shred and crumple it and throw it out into the hall. The CD’s, all of them that have a dark aura about them, which is all but two, follow it out. I never want to hear them. I don’t even want to give them a try to see if I might like them. I don’t, and that’s that.
My heart is pounding, my blood is pumping, and my head is throbbing from this workout. I slam the bedroom door shut, lock it and move to my night stand as if I know what I’m doing. I don’t, but I pull open the drawer, anyway, and shuffle through the items until I find a bag of pot. I guess this is what I’m looking for, because I light some up and take a hit.
TWO
It’s seven the next morning and I’m sitting at the kitchen table. My dad, after straightening his tie, grabs a cup of coffee and leaves the room with it. My mom is moving between the fridge and stove, while Lucas is pulling open the pantry door to extract a box of Froot Loops. He sets it, and the milk, on the table and then goes back for a bowl. He’s actually nudged my mother aside to get a spoon from the drawer before she takes any notice of him.
“What are you doing?” she asks, blinking with genuine confusion.
My brother doesn’t answer. He moves back to the table.
“I’m making breakfast, Luc,” she informs him.
He pops open the top of the cereal box.
“Luc, I’m making breakfast,” she repeats.
&nb
sp; He pours a whopping bowl of colorful rings then loosens the lid of the milk jug.
“Lucas! I said I was cooking breakfast.” She has her hands on her hips and she’s staring at his back.
He dumps in the milk until the cereal is floating dangerously close to the rim.
“Seriously? Luc, I don’t want you eating that crap,” she continues.
“My body would lapse into some kind of deep, unforgiving coma if I ate anything different,” he says as he sits down and plunges in his spoon. “I’ve been eating cereal three times a day, every day, for three and a half months.” He’s looking directly at me, now, like this is somehow my fault, and suddenly I realize, it is.
My parents have been at the hospital with me for that amount of time, not here making sure his nutritional needs are being met.
Even though he’s a big boy and surely knows how to make a bologna sandwich to spice things up for himself, I feel guilty about the neglect he’s endured. I open my mouth to tell him I’m sorry, but find my mom speaking instead.
“I have a very nice omelet breakfast nearly ready.”
“I don’t even like eggs, Mom. Ryan’s the only one that likes eggs. So basically you made breakfast only for him, which is typical.”
“Has it ever occurred to you to turn that box around and find out just how much sugar each serving contains? It’s not good for you, Luc.”
“They’re made of fruit, Mom, that’s how they got their name.” He’s mocking, but she somehow thinks he’s serious.
“It’s spelled F R O O T, not F R U I T. I’ll bet they don’t have a drop of real fruit juice in them.”
“Yeah? Well, neither does your omelet,” he says and shovels a big spoon full into his mouth.
“From now on, you’re eating what I cook for Ryan in the mornings.” She tells him this then snatches up his box of cereal and dumps it in the trash can.
Lucas is well aware of what she’s said and done, but he doesn’t look back at her. His expression hardens, though, and his gaze narrows in on my wrist. “How long are you going to wear that stupid hospital bracelet? You’re home for F– sake, take it off. Or maybe you like the constant reminder that you suck at killing yourself, but you’re real good at pissing in a bag and breathing out of a tube.”
I try not to let him know how far into my flesh his words have actually stabbed. I try to conceal the blood that’s quickly rising to the surface. I try to understand that he has no real idea how severely I’ve suffered and that he’s only said these things because he’s angry at Mom.
There’s also a good chance that I’m being overly sensitive – emotions being difficult for me to control, lately. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t deny that he’s wounded me.
I watch my mom whack him upside the head, and oddly, I don’t feel any vindication from her action. I just wish she hadn’t done it.
“You don’t say that kind of stuff!” she scolds him.
“Not to him anyway, huh?” Luc shoves his bowl forward as he rises, and milk and sugar coated O’s dump across the table top. The mess rolls toward me and I struggle to get out of my chair before the liquid leaks into my lap. Speed and agility are no longer on my list of fortes, but I somehow make it.
“Oh, Lucas! Now, clean that up,” Mom demands.
“Can’t. I’m gonna be late for school.” He says this in an even and relaxed tone and then moseys on out of the kitchen.
I’m catching milk in my hands as it runs over the edge of the table, or at least I’m trying to. It’s seeping through the spaces between my fingers and splashing onto the floor, regardless.
Mom calls after Luc, telling him to come back, but it’s no use. Finally she gives up. She turns to the table and in nothing that resembles happiness, picks up the cereal bowl and tries to channel the milk back into it by using the side of her hand like a squeegee.
When she’s gotten as much of it out of the way as she can, she takes the bowl to the sink and returns with a dish cloth. I’m still holding half a cup of milk in my hands but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Why did you hit him?” It’s the first words I’ve spoken since before entering the kitchen.
“I didn’t hit him, hit him. I just cuffed him. It didn’t hurt him, and I did it because he deserved it.”
I can hear the raw irritation in her voice and so I nod as if her justification makes some type of sense to me, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.
“To be honest, I’m surprised it wasn’t you that hit him,” she says.
“Why would I hit him?”
She lets out a laugh. Not a funny laugh. It’s more like one of those, you’ve got to be kidding me laughs. I’m about to ask what she means by this, but then she sniffs the air and so do I. The omelet is burning. She throws down the dish cloth onto the table top and rushes for the stove.
In stress and hostility, she clicks off the element and shoves the pan away from the heat. Then she drops the F bomb. Not once, not twice, but three times in a row and it just seems to me that she’s too pretty to have such an ugly word coming out of her mouth.
I limp to the sink, release what is now only a teaspoon of milk from my hands, and rinse them. She’s leaned over the counter, face planted into her palms, and I whisper, “I’m sorry,” as I leave her alone in the room.
_____
I sleep a lot. Not as much as I did when my injuries were fresh, but I still wear out and can only rejuvenate by taking a nap.
Today, on my second full day at what I’m still trying to consider home, I’m pulled from my late afternoon slumber by loud voices. I’m groggy at first, so they don’t make any sense, but as my mind comes more properly to, I recognize the voices as belonging to Dad and Lucas.
I get out of my bed and work my way to the top of the stairs. I can’t go down them. Not alone. Not without it being considered another suicide attempt. One that, with my luck, I’d survive.
I lean against the railing that overlooks the great room and I take my weight off of my left leg. It hurts and it’s time for my meds.
“It’s my room.” I can’t see him, but Lucas’s voice rises to where I stand.
“I never said it wasn’t. All I’m saying is he can’t climb the stairs and he needs it.”
“Ryan is not taking my room. He’s taken every F–ing thing I’ve ever had and he’s not getting my room, too.”
“Stop with the language and go get your shit packed up.”
“He’s not taking my room, Dad!”
“Luc!” Dad says his name with I’ll kill you dead type fury, but then takes a five second breather and tries again – this time with less edge. “He can’t climb the stairs. It’s too painful for him, and quite frankly, it’s too dangerous. I don’t mind carrying him up and down, but I’m not always here to do it. That means it falls upon the shoulders of your mother and, you know as well as I do, she isn’t physically capable of that.”
“Install an elevator, or get him one of those chairs that climb the stairs.”
“He needs a room on the main level.”
“Then give him the office.”
“I can’t move those desks, they’re built in.”
“You can put a cot between them.”
“A cot? A cot? He’s not going to be sleeping on a cot.”
“Of course not. That’s not near good enough for the F–ing quarter back of the century.”
“You say that word one more time and I’m going to knock it right out of your vocabulary.”
“How come it only bothers you when I use it in reference to him? And how come if I’d been the one to try killing myself, I’d be living in the spider infested cellar? At a mental hospital, no less.”
“Go get your things out of the room, Luc. Leave the big stuff like bed and dresser, you can use his.”
“I’m not trading him rooms, Dad.”
“The hell you aren’t. He needs the lower level and he could really benefit from the bathroom that’s attached to that room.”
&nb
sp; “That room? You mean my room?”
“I mean the old guest room that’s soon to be his room. Get packing.”
“No.”
“Luc, you’re testing my patience. You can have the room back as soon as he can manage the stairs again.”
“Which will be never! He’s a damn gimp, Dad. His leg is held together with pins and rods – you think that’s just magically going to go away?”
“Fine, I’ll move for you,” Dad says this and seconds later things begin sailing out of the hall and landing on the floor of the great room. An arm load of clothing. A shoe. A pile of DVDs. Another shoe.
A football. I watch it bounce on one end, roll across the hardwood floor, and wobble to a stop against the back of the couch. He likes football?
“Knock it off, Dad.” Lucas screams these words and then his voice breaks and I detect the crackle of emotion. “Ryan doesn’t even like this room. If he did, he’d have taken it a long time ago.”
“He’s gonna have to learn to like it, same as you’re gonna have to learn to like his room. Are you moving this crap out, or am I?”
“I will.”
“You’ve got one hour.”
I’m sitting on the edge of my bed when Lucas brings up his first box of items. He stalls for a very brief moment outside my door and we lock gazes.
He’s emotionally hurt. I’m not meant to see this, but I can.
He’s afraid. Afraid of entering my room without my permission. But above all, he’s angry. And he hides everything else he’s feeling behind that one emotion.
He stiffens his jaw and takes a bold step across the threshold. “This is my room now,” he informs me. He tosses the cardboard box down on the bed next to me and I notice the CD’s I threw out into the hall yesterday on top. I glance up at him.
“They’re mine, now, too.”
“You can have them,” I say. I think this surprises him, but I’m not sure because he turns away too quickly.
“I’ll bet he thinks I’m going to pack up your shit, too. I’m not!”
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