Chapter 4 Benji #2
The younger blonde guy moves to sit beside Tex. He doesn’t say a word, just reaches for his hand and laces their fingers together.
They’re together. The giant man and the quiet blonde guy. It makes me feel better to know this.
An hour goes by. My phone buzzes again. I pull it out. Fourteen missed calls. Twenty-three texts. The last one I can’t ignore.
Dante: Benji if you don’t answer me in the next five minutes I’m getting in my car. I’m serious. You know I’m serious. I can be there by morning.
I get up and walk to the corridor outside the waiting room. I lean against the wall next to a hand sanitizer dispenser and press call. He picks up before the first ring finishes.
“Benji. Are you hurt? Tell me right now. I know something is wrong.”
“I’m...”
That’s as far as I get. One word. The sound catches in my throat and then it breaks open and I’m sobbing against the wall.
“Benji,” Dante says. “Talk to me. What happened.”
“I went to the bar.”
“The biker bar,” he says. “Okay. I remember. What happened at the bar?”
“There were these guys. Car show guys. Rednecks. Four of them. They followed me into the hallway by the bathrooms.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Yeah. They attacked me. My ribs are bruised. My lip is split. They beat me up. They called me... they called me a faggot. And they kicked me.”
Dante blows out a long breath. “I’m going to kill them. I swear to God, Benji. I will find them and I will kill them. Give me fifteen minutes and I’m on my way. I can be there by morning. I knew something was wrong.”
“No, Dante, listen to me. That’s not all that happened. The owner came. He’s this enormous man. He stopped it. And then a cop came. A cop who... Dante, he was...”
“The cop did something to you?”
“No. No. The cop saved me. He came into the hallway and he was handling it. It was over. But one of them, the younger one, he had a gun. In his jacket pocket. He was drunk. And the cop saw him reaching for it and he...”
I press my forehead against the wall. The tile is cold and it’s the first thing I’ve felt in hours that isn’t pain or guilt.
“Benji! What? What happened with the gun?”
“The cop stepped in front of me. He saw the gun and he moved in front of me and it went off. The gun went off inside the guy’s pocket and the cop, his name is Mickey, he fell on top of me.
He got shot. It’s bad, Dante. He’s in surgery right now.
I’m at the hospital. They made me put on hospital scrubs because the blood was everywhere.
Dante, there was so much blood. He’s in surgery and nobody will tell me anything.
I’m a nobody to him. I’m just the guy he stepped in front of.
I’m fucking nobody and they won’t tell me anything. ”
I start sobbing again and Dante just listens.
He’s silent. His breathing comes through the phone. The TV in his apartment, the baseball game still playing, the sound of a normal night in Miami while mine burns to the ground in the fucking Redneck Riviera.
“Benji,” he says. “Is the cop still alive?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think so. He was alive when they put him in the ambulance. He was alive when they wheeled him through the doors and took him into surgery. I don’t know anything else.”
“Okay. Listen to me, Benji. Come home. You need to come home or go back to your place. Right now. I’m coming up to get you. Don’t stay there.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Yes, you can. Get in an Uber. Go to your rental. Pack your bag. Take an Uber to the airport. Leave your car and come home. I’ll be at arrivals. We’ll go back to get your car later.”
“Dante, I can’t leave now. He’s in surgery. What if he doesn’t make it? Before they put him into the ambulance, he said he couldn’t feel his legs.”
“Benji, you don’t know this man. You’re not responsible for...”
“He took the bullet for me.” My voice cracks. “He realized there might be a gun and he didn’t duck. He intentionally moved in front of me. Nobody has ever...” I can’t finish. “I can’t leave until I know he’s okay. I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that. I won’t.”
“Okay,” he says gently. “I understand. You need to stay. But you text me every hour. Every hour, Benji. And when you know something, I’m the first call you make. I’m right here and I can do anything you need me to.”
“Okay. I’ll do that.”
“And Benji?”
“What?”
“This is not your fault.”
It is my fault.
“I love you for saying that,” I say.
“I love you, too. Text me. Every hour. I’m not sleeping until you do.”
I hang up and press the back of my head against the wall. I close my eyes and breathe. Somewhere down the corridor a machine beeps in a steady rhythm. I try to match my breathing to the beeping to calm me down.
When I open my eyes, the blonde guy is standing nearby. He’s about ten feet away. Holding a cup of coffee from the machine. He’s looking at me with that same expression from the bar, serious, focused, as if he’s working through a problem step by step. He walks over to me and holds out the cup.
“It’s bad,” he says. “The coffee. It’s really bad. But it’s hot.”
I take it. Our fingers brush and he pulls his hand back so fast the coffee almost spills.
“I’m Stormy,” he says. “I’m with Tex. The big guy.”
“Benji.”
He stands there awkwardly. He’s clearly trying to figure out what he should do to comfort me. After a moment, he reaches out and pats my shoulder. Two stiff careful pats.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I start sobbing again and don’t answer. He frowns. Pats me again. One more pat. Then, with a determined look as if jumping off a high dive, he leans forward and puts his arms around my shoulders. It lasts about two seconds. His body is rigid. His arms barely touch my back.
It’s the most awkward hug in the history of physical contact. This guy, who clearly finds hugging unnatural, just put his stiff, uncomfortable arms around a crying stranger.
He pulls back quickly, his face flushed. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stands there next to me against the wall like that’s where he’s decided he needs to be.
I cry harder. Not because of the hug, although the hug is part of it. Because he tried. Oh God, did he try his best. He didn’t have to try to comfort me. He could’ve stayed in the waiting room with his people and let me stand here alone. But this guy chose to stand next to me. And that means a lot.
We stand there, side by side against the wall. Not talking. He doesn’t try to fill the silence. He doesn’t ask me what happened or whose fault it was. He just stands there with his shoulder four inches from mine and he lets the silence be what it is.
After a while he says, “Mickey’s tough. He’ll be okay. He will be.”
I turn to him. My face is a mess. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry this happened.”
He looks at me and holds my gaze longer than I suspect he holds most people’s. “It’s not your fault,” he says.
That’s twice now. Two people in twenty minutes telling me the same thing. Dante on the phone and this guy, Stormy, both saying the same words.
I want to believe them, but I don’t. They don’t know the whole story.
Eventually, we walk back to the waiting room together. Tex is on the phone. He’s standing by the window with his back to the room and I catch fragments of his voice, low and calm.
“He’s stable enough for surgery. They took him in about an hour ago.
No, I don’t know yet. They haven’t come out.
” He pauses. “Mama Weaver, please don’t cry.
Listen to me. He was talking when they put him in the ambulance.
He was giving orders to the paramedics. That’s Mickey being same old Mickey.
That’s your boy. He was bossing people around with a bullet in him.
” Another longer pause. “I know you can’t leave him,” Tex says.
“Mickey knows too. You stay there with Walter. We’ve got him.
We’re all here. Me and Sheila and Stormy.
I’m right here and I’m not leaving until he’s out of surgery and I’ve talked to him myself.
I’ll be here as long as it takes. Don’t worry. ”
He listens for a minute. His free hand is pressed flat against the window glass and his head drops forward an inch, and stays there.
“He’d want you to stay with Walter,” Tex says. “You know that. He’d say, Mama, stay with Dad. That’s what he’d say and you know I’m right. There’s nothing you can do here right now. I’ll call you the second I know anything. Yes, I promise, Mama Weaver. The second I hear, I’m calling you.”
He hangs up and stands at the window for a moment with the phone in his hand and his forehead touching the glass.
Then he turns back to the room and his face is the one that carries the burden for everyone.
He walks back to his chair and sits down.
The chair groans under his weight and nobody mentions the phone call.
I’m sitting in an ugly beige chair and Stormy is sitting next to me. Tex looks over and sees where Stormy is sitting now and a look crosses his face. As if he recognizes that Stormy is making a statement simply by where he’s choosing to sit.
We wait in silence. It’s almost midnight now. The bar fight was around eight.
The double doors open and a doctor finally comes through. She’s small, dark-haired, wearing blue scrubs. She scans the room.
“Family of Officer Weaver?”
Tex is across the room before she finishes the sentence. Sheila is right behind him. Stormy stands up next to me. I stand, but don’t move forward.
The doctor talks to them. They’re too far away to hear the words and I’m reading faces, fast and desperate, searching for information. Tex’s shoulders drop half an inch. Sheila puts her hand over her mouth.
Tex turns and walks back across to me and Stormy.
His stride is the same steady stride he’s had all night but there’s a hitch in it now, a half-second stutter between steps.
He stands over me. His eyes are red and wet and the controlled composure he’s been wearing all night has a crack in it now that wasn’t there before the doctor spoke.
“He’s alive,” he says. “He’s out of surgery. The bullet hit his lower back. It missed the major organs but there’s damage to the spinal cord. There’s swelling. They don’t know the extent of it yet. They’re saying until the swelling goes down, they can’t tell...”
His voice stops. Whatever they told him is bad.
His mouth is open and the next word is right there and it won’t come out.
His hand goes to his face, thumb and forefinger pressing the bridge of his nose, and he holds that position for three seconds while we watch the biggest man in the building try to finish a sentence.
He drops his hand and clears his throat. “They can’t tell what’s temporary and what’s not until the swelling goes down.” He says the last part fast, all in one breath. The word he choked on is the one that means Mickey might not walk again.
Paralysis.
My brain fills in the rest. Spinal cord damage means nerves. Nerves mean function. Function means walking, feeling.
Officer Mickey Weaver is paralyzed because of me and my stupid mouth.
“They’re going to transfer him soon,” he says. “To a hospital in Tallahassee. They’ve got a spinal injury unit there. He’ll be moved once he’s stable enough for transport. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.”
Tallahassee is at least two hours away. I drove through it on my way here from Miami. On my way to plan a luxury wedding at a beach house.
“Does he have family?” I ask.
“His mom’s here in Panama City,” Tex says. “I called her. His dad’s not well. He has dementia. She can’t leave him alone at night. She’ll try to come first thing in the morning if she can find a sitter for him.”
His eyes are red but dry now. He’s not going to cry in this room. He’s going to hold every piece of this together. Tex and Sheila and Stormy are a family. And Mickey is part of it.
“Can I...” I start. “Do you think they will let me see him? Before the transfer?”
Tex studies me closely. “I’ll ask,” he says. “I doubt it, but I’ll ask.”
He goes back to Sheila. They stand together by the window, talking low. Stormy is still next to me. He hasn’t moved. He’s watching Tex, taking everything in.
Tallahassee is two hours from here. I have a massive wedding to put on that I’m mentally not capable of doing. There’s a suitcase at my rental condo I could pack in twenty minutes. I have a best friend in Miami who begged me to come home.
I have every reason to leave and no reason to stay that makes any sense to anyone, including me.
All I know is that there’s no way in hell I’m leaving.