Six
WHEN I WAKE up, I don’t yet know that I’m supposed to be coming back from the dead at the same time.
My grandmother is sitting next to my bed when I open my eyes.
“Good that I never did believe everything I read,” she says, and then in the next breath quotes Mark Twain, one of her favorites, about reports of my death having been greatly exaggerated.
Her voice sounds as faint as if she’s in the next room, the pain meds running through me also making me feel as if I’m looking at her through a heavy fog.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I say.
I’m not fully awake, but am alert enough to ask her this:
“How’s Gideon?”
Immediately I want to close my eyes all over again because I can see the answer in her eyes and all over her face before the words even come out of her.
“Gideon didn’t make it,” she says softly.
Reaches over and gently takes my hand.
“I’m so sorry, Silas,” she adds. “He never had a chance.”
I do manage to squeeze my eyes shut then, but only as a way of holding back tears. I have never liked crying in front of her or anybody, not even when my father died, out of a silly feeling that crying makes me look weak.
“I never should have let him drive.”
In an even softer voice than before, EJ says, “When did you ever say no to him, hon?”
“Still.”
“You be still, hear?” she says. “The last thing Gideon would want is for you to blame yourself for what happened. Or to put any of that survivor guilt on yourself while you’re still lying in that bed, with all those damn tubes attached to you, after people thought you died along with him.”
She squeezes my hand. “Got it, big boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I’m about to ask her how long I’ve been out and how badly I’m hurt when there’s a rap on the door and a slim, white-haired man in a white medical lab coat comes walking into the room.
“I’m Dr. Gregory,” he says. Smiles when he’s next to my bed. “Can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to formally introduce myself to you.”
I start to reach up with my hand to shake his until the pain stops me before the tubes do, so much of it I think it must be coming from everywhere.
“How bad?” I manage.
“Good that you’re alive,” he says. “Put it that way.” He smiles again. “You’ve always been a winner, Silas,” he says. “Take the win.”
“With all due respect, sir, that’s not an answer.”
“I know it’s not.”
I close my eyes again and open them and figure I might as well get to it.
“Will I still be able to throw?”
He doesn’t answer that one, either.
Finally, he says, “Let’s us work on getting out of that bed and walking first.”
EJ reaches over and once again puts one of her small hands on mine. I look down, and it’s like looking at a child’s hand.
“You got broke as bad as the car,” she says.