Chapter Thirty-One #2
Heather nods, her brows furrowed. “What you’ve been through, what you’ve both been through, is traumatic. You need to take your time with this. If you need a few more days off to—”
“No! I want to be here with the kids. At least if I’m here, I’ll be able to forget. I’ll have to smile, and dance, and be happy for them. I’ll be able to fake it until I make it, at least a little. Plus, we need the money. And I miss them.”
“They miss you too, obviously.” She motions at the stack of cards and papers. “Sorry about Jeanie’s art. I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted you’d like it.”
“It’s certainly very Jeanie.”
“Yes.” Heather rises and goes back around to her seat.
“So, what I hear you saying, Sejin, is that you don’t hate the idea of a fundraising performance with the kids, but things are too intense right now for you to plan it.
Why don’t we table that for a month or so?
Until you’ve got your head above water. Those bills won’t be going anywhere.
Believe me, they’ll be hanging around for a long, long time to come. ”
“Thanks, Heather,” I say.
“Take deep breaths. Be good to yourself. You’re healing too.”
“I will.”
Heather smiles and I stand up, gathering all my belongings and the cards.
“I’ll be here tomorrow, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” I try to sound chipper, but it comes out so fake. So, so fake.
“You can be dull-eyed and flat-tailed, and I won’t care,” Heather says. “I mean it, Sejin. Take your time coming back.”
“I’ll be here,” I insist.
I tell Heather goodbye and duck my head into the main room for a moment to see all the kids in downward dog. None of them seem to be enjoying it.
I’ll fix them up tomorrow.
It’s good to know I can solve one problem at least.
*
Dan
These cats are demons , I text to Peggy Jo after she sends me another photo of her bald grandchild. I refrain from telling her the baby looks like a demon too. I’ve already said that once, so it’s not like I really need to say it again. She knows.
Are they bothering you?
Yes. They’re gathered around the bed watching me.
I snap a few shots so she can see Julio on the dresser staring at me, Muggs on the end of the bed, and Romeo sitting in an empty shoebox, all eyes on me. How Romeo fits in the box, I don’t even know. And where the shoebox came from is equally mysterious.
They’re protecting you , she texts back.
I’m bored. Sejin’s gone to Tater Tots and Papa Bear. Won’t be home for a few hours. I’m alone.
Have you tried watching TV?
I don’t bother telling her I’m trapped in the bedroom for the moment. Instead, I send a snoozy emoji.
Have you played any video games on your phone?
Waste of time.
That’s all you’ve got for the next few months, Dan. Time to waste.
I roll my eyes and send her the corresponding emoji.
Sorry, but I have to go. Bella needs me to help her give Amelia Rose a bath. Go read a book.
I do like reading, but all my climbing books and journals are out in the van. They may as well be in Timbuktu since I can’t get to them without risking further damage to my leg.
So, I open my Kindle app on my phone and scroll through the various climbing-related ebooks I’ve downloaded, and they’re all a bust. I’ve read them before or decided they were bunk. Besides, I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate on reading with my leg throbbing like it is.
I open up the YouTube app and search for rock climbing videos.
Adam Ondra has posted some new stuff, but I’m all caught up in twenty minutes. Magnus Mitbo has a treasure trove of material, but too much of it is ridiculous sports challenges that aren’t about climbing at all.
I search out other climbers I’m familiar with.
There are new videos posted by many of them, and I watch a couple, making note of the more difficult climbs that I might want to try myself one day.
Stumbling over a few new names in the videos, I head over to Instagram next.
Most climbers spray by social media these days, and there are plenty of new posts showing all kinds of wall climbs and bouldering.
The attempts, failures, and triumphs all remind me of one thing—I’m stuck here in bed.
For a long-ass time.
I put the phone aside and close my eyes, hoping I can drop into sleep again. They say you heal better when sleeping, and I’d really like to rush through this whole process so I can get back to the wall. Back to what makes me me .
But sleep doesn’t come.
Instead, I’m treated to a reel of memories from various long-ago foster homes.
The bunkbed in the trailer of the foster mother who scolded me for chewing rocks.
The dinner table where, after we’d eaten our meager meals, a stern foster father had read the Bible to us foster kids.
The kind, gray eyes of the only foster parent I’d really liked, Edith.
She’d tried to teach me to enjoy opera, God bless her.
The red hair of the foster brother who stole half the food from my lunchbox every day during the bus ride to school.
And then another memory comes up, crisp as a movie.
It’s almost as if I can smell the autumn air and the woodsmoke drifting in the open window. It’s night, and the moon casts a pale glow over the small bed where I sleep. I feel the smooth sheets beneath my back. I hear the shouting from the other room. The sound of the slap. The cry of pain.
I startle, and a bolt of agony races up my leg.
I blink my eyes open and glance quickly around the room.
That’s a memory of my mother. One of my only ones.
The man who hit her was the grandfather who’d eventually include me in his will and leave me with a small, and now depleted, trust fund.
But I can’t recall what either of them looked like. Just the room I was in. My room.
These childhood memories crowd my mind, reminding me of being helpless and at the mercy of adults who don’t care about me. I feel them like ghosts, trying to smother me, lock me down, lock me in.
I yearn to go to the window, lift the sash, get a good breath of fresh air, but I’m trapped here. I can’t move from this bed.
My heart pounds.
I’m as dependent on Sejin now as I was on those foster parents then. I feel like there’s an anchor around my feet taking me down, down, down into a sea of panic.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. “Fuck,” I whisper, as my leg screams at the movement. I feel dizzy and swimming blue dots threaten my consciousness. “Holy fuck.”
I can barely handle the pain of repositioning myself back on the mattress, but I grit my teeth through it.
The cats are still watching me, judging my every breath. “Well?” I ask them.
They don’t move for a very long time.
Neither do I.
*
Sejin
I find Dan in bed staring at the ceiling, looking like his soul has left his body.
“Hey,” I say, brushing the hair away from his wide-set eyes, and trailing my fingers down his stubbly, bruised, and stitched-up cheek. “What’s wrong?”
Dan’s eyes shift to me, and they look so panicked that I immediately kneel next to the bed. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t just lie in this bed all day. I’ll go insane.”
“Danny, it’s been a week. It’s going to take some getting used to before—”
“How can I get used to this? There’s the pain, and then there’s the boredom, and worse, the—” He takes a sharp breath and shakes his head. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“It’s not like you have another option,” I say, a little irritated.
This hasn’t been an easy week for either of us, and while I’ve been careful not to say this out loud, a mean little voice in my head likes to remind me that this is all completely Dan’s fault. Which doesn’t always make it easy for me to have the kind of patience with him that I’d like.
Dan groans, wiping a hand over his face.
“What you need is a change of scenery,” I say after a few moments.
“Let’s move you out to the living room. You can look at the mountains from there at least. I’ll open the doors, and you’ll get some fresh air.
We can explore what’s on Netflix, see if we can find a show with a lot of seasons for you to get invested in. ”
“I don’t really watch TV.” He frowns.
“Well, it’s time to start,” I say briskly, moving to get the wheelchair I’d scored from a secondhand store in town.
That and the toilet chair. It’s amazing what people dump at those places.
I also found a waffle iron there, and I bought it too, hoping that some sweet breakfast treats would cheer Dan up when the dark times come.
I’d known there would be dark times. I just hadn’t expected them to hit so soon.
I suppose that’s what happens when a patient runs out of opioids and is left to deal with the pain on their own, except for a little help from Tylenol.
“This is going to hurt,” I say, as I help him scoot to the side of the bed. “But you’ll feel better with a new view. Something besides the ceiling.”
“Mmfhm,” is his reply as he holds back his groans.
I know he tries to be strong for me, mainly because he feels guilty for all the extra effort I have to put in to take care of him, but also, I think, because he doesn’t know yet how to let me care for him. Dan’s always been so alone. He’s done everything for himself for years.
“You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt,” I say.
“I’m not,” he grits out.
“Right.”
“I hate this,” he says, once he’s seated in the wheelchair, chest heaving from the exertion and sweat standing out at his temples. “I hate this so much.”
“I’ll take this over you being dead,” I say. “But, yeah, it really sucks. No lie there.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I have to get better faster. I need to be able to take care of myself.”