CHAPTER 9 WEEP THEMSELVES TO SLEEP
WEEP THEMSELVES TO SLEEP
Phoenix
The morning was rough. Every nerve, physical and emotional, felt raw. His mom didn’t want to leave, refusing even the bathroom until Caleb arrived.
“Hey, how you doing?”
Caleb seemed careful to avoid the tubes and tender spots that had pained his brother the day before. Phoenix pressed the button releasing morphine into his veins. Relief snaked its way through his bloodstream, easing the sharpness in his body and letting him care a little less.
Phoenix stared at his brother from his propped position against a pile of pillows.
He could offer nothing. Everything he thought was too awful to say, and his mind was a jumble of drugs and pain.
He closed his eyes to the sight of Caleb’s worried expression.
A weird jealousy arose over what previously seemed to be givens—the ability to walk, to care for oneself.
Phoenix was always the more capable brother. This can’t be.
The sound of air compressing from the vinyl chair at his bedside accompanied the pinging of the machines keeping track of his broken body. Caleb must’ve eased his mass into the guest seat.
His mom’s heels tapped towards his bed.
“Is he okay?” Caleb asked their mom, knowing the answer.
“He had a bad dream,” she explained. “He’s going to be okay.”
What do they know about being okay? And dream? That was no dream.
No, that nightmare was Phoenix’s subconscious screaming in no uncertain terms that he was never going to be the same again. That he’d lost as much as he thought and more. That there was no point to his denial.
“What do you need, dear? Are you hungry?”
He wanted them to leave. He could only shake his head. Even that small motion triggered discomfort.
After a long period of quiet, Phoenix became aware of Caleb’s low, murmured voice. He had no way of determining how much time had passed and whether he’d slept.
“No, I’m not going,” said their mom, in answer to some question Phoenix hadn’t heard.
“You look like crap, Mom.”
“Excuse me?” she said this almost as an afterthought, as if she surely hadn’t heard Caleb properly.
“You need grub, too,” Caleb admonished.
“I don’t want to leave.”
Paying their mother no mind, Caleb stood. “Something hot. Follow me,” he insisted.
“But—”
“Come on, soldier, this is an order.” Chalk it up to the unspoken power of twins, but Caleb intuited that Phoenix needed time to himself.
Caleb put his arm around their mom. “C’mon, we won’t be long.”
Phoenix opened his eyes long enough to encourage his mom. “Go eat something,” he managed, his voice cracking.
She studied him a long time, without saying anything.
Phoenix nodded towards the door. “Go.”
She fussed over placing the nurse’s call button within Phoenix’s reach before reluctantly leaving his side.
“You need a haircut,” she told her tattooed son, looking up at his overgrown mane.
“Just for that, you’re buying breakfast.” Caleb said, throwing Phoenix a smirk.
Phoenix watched them move on able legs towards the exit.
The door, half a room away, may as well have been across the continent. The distance to the floor mocked. Yeah, right. Just try to get down. He could brace himself with one leg and then what?
Now that he was alone and conscious, Phoenix needed to take a hard look at himself.
He flung the sheets off with one hand. It was an alarming sight.
His leg ended too early. His arm was a swollen mess of bandages.
One fall had truncated his life in half.
Framed by nostalgia, his old life seemed full and happy. His new life, he couldn’t picture.
This can’t be real. Fuck. I can’t do this. I need help.
Orchid.
No. Never Orchid.
The one woman who could help, he couldn’t imagine in this abyss of horror.