Chapter Forty- Three
Chapter
Forty-Three
Lucas hated taking time off from the farm.
He’d left the halfway house at the crack of dawn to get to the city
before the traffic and he was hoping to go back out to work in the
afternoon if he made it home in time. It wasn’t that he thought
they couldn’t get by without him. He knew they could. Elise had
managed just fine on her own for years, and Alex was good for the
grunt work. But Lucas missed the place. It was important to him,
even if he wasn’t that important to it.
But Sean was important too, and Mrs. Gage had
said that he was ready for a visit whenever Lucas could make it
down. She’d started to cry when he’d asked about Sean’s condition
and he hadn’t pressed. So he wasn’t really sure what he was going
to find when he made it to the city, although he had a feeling it
probably wasn’t going to be too good. Mrs. Gage wasn’t the “tears
of joy” type.
He parked the truck and wished Mark was with
him. Mark was good at this sort of thing. He’d know what to say,
how to act. And even if he’d just sat in the truck and made Lucas
go in on his own, Lucas would still have known he was nearby,
waiting.
But Mark wasn’t there, and Sean was waiting.
So Lucas made his way into the hospital, negotiated the complicated
path to Sean’s room, and took a deep breath before leaning his head
through the open door. There were four beds in the room, all of
them occupied. Stacey Gage was sitting beside the bed by the
window, and she looked relieved when she saw Lucas.
“Sean!” she said. Her voice was too bright,
too loud. “Look who’s here!”
Sean didn’t move his head. He just kept
staring straight ahead. Lucas moved a little closer and saw the
tubes and wires and bandages. It took him a little longer to
translate the bundles and bulges on Sean’s lower half, but after a
blink and a bit of time Lucas realized that Sean’s legs ended
somewhere in the middle of his thighs.
It was hard to understand, somehow. Those
legs that had carried Sean on so many adventures with Lucas. The
legs that had wrapped around him in wrestling matches, nudged
against his under so many beer-covered tables. The legs had been
part of Sean, and Sean had been part of Lucas. And now they were
gone.
“Shit,” Lucas said softly. Sean turned when
he heard the familiar voice. His face was thin and strained, and
part of his head was shaved, showing a row of dark stitches
stretching from his ear to somewhere out of sight. “Sean. Shit. I’m
so sorry.” Lucas blinked hard and willed the tears to stay in his
eyes where they belonged. This wasn’t about him, it was about Sean,
and Lucas had no right to turn into a blubbering mess.
Sean turned away again. He took a quavering
breath. “You came,” he finally said.
“I came by before too. Before they moved you.
Your mom said she told you about that. And this is the first day
you’re supposed to be having non-family visitors, she said.”
“When did you turn into non-family?”
Lucas didn’t know how to respond. It was a
question that didn’t have a simple answer. It seemed cheap to say
that it had happened when Sean had kicked him out of the house and
then beaten him up. Lucas had been the one who’d pushed Sean to do
all of that. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. “I guess I should have
come sooner. I didn’t know you’d want to see me.”
“Maybe I don’t,” Sean said. He was silent for
a while, then turned his head toward his sister. “Can you take a
break, Stacey? Let me talk to Lucas for a bit?”
“Sure,” she said. She seemed relieved to be
getting out of the room.
Lucas took her place in the chair by the
window. He was suddenly aware of his own legs, strong and solid as
he stretched them out in front of him. He shifted around and bent
them under the chair, then said, “This sucks, man. I don’t know
what to say besides that. I’m really sorry.”
“There’s nothing else to say.” Sean lifted
his hand, trailing the IV tube behind it, and rubbed his temple as
if his head ached. Lucas was sure the man had to be on some serious
painkillers, but maybe they weren’t quite enough.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“There’s nothing to do.”
“Yeah. I guess not.” Lucas gripped the arms
of the chair and resisted the urge to just bolt out of the door,
out of the hospital, and as far away as his intact legs would carry
him.
They sat in silence for a while. When Sean
finally started talking it was as if he were speaking to someone
far away. “They want to give me counseling. Want me to see a
shrink.”
“Well, yeah. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
Like, someone who could help you adjust to all this?”
“No. Not for that.” Sean sighed. “Well, yeah,
probably for that too. But for…the accident. I guess I…I don’t
remember. I guess I was talking pretty crazy beforehand. That’s
what the guys are saying. They kept quiet for a few days but then
somebody talked to my mom and once she got at them they all
spilled.”
Lucas had the feeling he was walking into
something even bigger, even worse than he’d expected. “Crazy how?”
he asked carefully.
“I guess I was talking about killing myself.”
Sean still seemed detached from the conversation and Lucas couldn’t
tell whether it was because of the drugs or because of something
else.
“What? Killing yourself? Why?”
Sean didn’t answer right away, and when he
did his voice was tight and aggressive. “I told you I don’t
remember.”
“Yeah, but what are the guys saying?”
“Maybe you should ask them. Oh, that’s right.
You can’t. You ditched all your old friends. You have a shiny new
life now.”
Lucas was pretty sure the bitterness was just
misplaced anger, but he responded anyway. “Shiny? Give me a fucking
break, Sean. I’m an ex-con working a minimum wage job and living in
a fucking halfway house. What’s so shiny about that?”
“You’ve got your new friends now. Your new
lifestyle.”
It wasn’t clear exactly what Sean knew or
what he thought he knew, and Lucas couldn’t see the point in
finding out. “Fine. You’re right, I can’t ask the guys what they’re
saying. So I’m asking you. Why would you have been talking about
killing yourself? What the fuck, Sean?”
The pause was so long Lucas thought Sean
wasn’t going to answer. It felt like Sean had been looking for some
sort of password and Lucas hadn’t given him the right one. But
finally, in a small, almost childish voice Sean said, “Do you ever
feel like everything’s gone wrong? Like…like your whole life is you
stuck in traffic on the highway and there’s no off-ramps and it
sucks where you are and you aren’t even fucking moving…”
Now it was Lucas’s turn to take a long time
before answering. “Yeah,” he eventually managed. “I’ve felt like
that. And I’ve thought about giving up. Stepping in front of a
truck or something. But there’s a big fucking difference between
thinking about it and doing it. A big difference between
talking about it and doing it.” He leaned forward and waited
until Sean turned his head to look at him. “What did you actually
do? Your mom said you were drunk. I figured you just lost control
of the truck. Is that wrong?”
“I. Don’t. Remember.” Sean raised his
eyebrows as if challenging Lucas to believe otherwise, but it made
sense that Sean wouldn’t. Between alcohol and head trauma, there
were probably parts of Sean’s brain that weren’t working
properly.
Lucas leaned back in his chair. “I don’t
remember either,” he said softly. “That night in the bar. I got a
few flashes back, after months of wondering. But that’s all.” He
sighed. “At least you didn’t kill anybody. You had the guts to do
your big, stupid thing on your own.”
“You really trying to make drunk driving
myself off the road into me being a hero or something?”
Lucas paused. No, he wasn’t going to try to
do that. “We’re both assholes,” he finally said. “Both dumb fucks
who can’t keep our shit to ourselves and have to drag other people
down with us.”
“But not you, not anymore.” Sean didn’t sound
bitter this time. “Your new life…you’re not an asshole anymore,
right? Jail actually worked on you. You’re all rehabilitated and
responsible now. Right?”
“I’m trying to be.”
“You’re doing good, Lukey.” For the first
time since Lucas had arrived, Sean tried to smile. “I’m proud of
you. Jealous too. But I’m glad one of us made it.”
“Stop talking like it’s over!” It felt cruel
to stand and move around when Sean couldn’t, but Lucas couldn’t sit
still. He paced the few steps to the end of the bed and turned to
look up at his friend. “It’s not over for either of us—I’m still
working my ass off, and I know that just because things are good
right now it doesn’t mean they’re going to stay that way. And just
because things are bad right now for you, it doesn’t mean you can’t
make them better.”
Sean gave Lucas a sardonic look and gave a
half-wave down to where his legs used to be. “I think this is
pretty fucking permanent, Lucas. They’re not going to grow
back.”
“No. Not the legs. They’re gone. But there’s
good shit going on these days, good ways to help people.”
“I probably can’t walk,” Sean said flatly.
“No fake legs for me. They were trying to tell me different but I
got Corey to look it up on the internet. Little fucker’s so in love
with his phone he’ll use it for anything, no questions asked.” Sean
smiled fondly, thinking of his brother’s weakness, but his face
quickly fell back into the worn frown it had obviously been wearing
for too long. “With both off from above the knee, fake legs won’t
work. I’m going to be stuck in a wheelchair.”
Lucas had no idea how to respond. “Better
parking,” he finally said.
Sean was quiet for quite a while, then turned
to look at Lucas. “Better parking?” There was something in his
eyes, just a trace of the old Sean, enough to make Lucas decide to
push a little further.
“We should start hanging out again. I’ve
always wanted to use those handicapped spots. Some of them are
prime.”
Sean’s snort wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was