“Dad, he and Benny attacked me. They should be paying
my
medical bills.”
“That’s not what the Gonzales kids say.” Dad’s about ten seconds from putting his fist through my face, and I’m strapped down, helpless. I’m already bracing myself.
“Speaking of,” Dad continues, “apparently I owe Mr. Gonzales almost two thousand dollars in damages for his daughter’s car. Know anything about that, Kyle?” He stops pacing, keeping his back to me with hands on his hips.
“I’m sorry. I…” Tumbleweed in my throat, and the cup of water beside my bed is impossible to reach. “I was going to pay it off from working at Black Paw.”
“Yeah, you’ll pay it off all right. You know how much this little stint in the hospital is costing your mother and me?”
“Costing Mom,” I say before I can stop myself. Dad turns then, eyes full of fury glaring at me.
“I just don’t understand it.” Dad rubs his hands over his face. He looks awful, haggard, like he hasn’t slept in days.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
“And were you trying to destroy this girl’s car?”
“That was an accident.”
“And falling out your window?” His expression softens, a little. The crow’s feet around his eyes cut deep grooves in his skin.
I take a shallow breath, wincing as it bubbles in my chest. “You’d been drinking.”
“Did I do this?” Dad takes a step closer as he gestures to my face.
“Not this time.”
“
Not this time
? Sweet Jesus.” He pulls the chair up to my bedside, sits leaning his arms over the railing they’ve got me fastened to. “You took off out the window because you thought I’d come after you?”
“I guess.” It’s hard to shrug with both wrists tied down. Dad studies my face a while, and I can’t meet his gaze. I keep eyeing the water cup, but I don’t want to ask for his help in case that sets him off. There’s whiskey smoke on his breath.
“Are you thirsty?”
I nod and he unstraps my wrist. I flinch at his touch. This gentle person sitting beside me is a complete stranger.
“Thanks,” I say between sips of water.
“I hear you punched a nurse.”
“An orderly.” I grin, and Dad smiles back before tousling my hair. He hasn’t done that in years.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle.” Dad’s never really apologized to me, not even when he broke my arm. He made sure I took care of the cast, got it off at the right time, but he never actually acknowledged the fact that he’d broken it.
“For what?”
“I haven’t been the best father.” His eyes glisten with tears. I’ve never seen my dad cry either, didn’t think it was physically possible. I’m battling not to tear up myself.
“You and your mother deserve a hell of a lot better than this.” He starts pacing again. “There’s something I need to tell you, son.”
Now I’m worried.
“I got a job.”
“That’s great, Dad.”
“Driving trucks up and down the trade route.”
“So you’ll be gone a lot.” Maybe life would be more peaceful without him at home for a while.
“I’ll be gone, son.” He stops at the window, rubbing the back of his neck as he shakes his head. “Your mom and I are getting a divorce.”
“What?” Ice shoots down my spine, crystallizes my veins. All I can think about is my mom at the motel with some other guy. Maybe Dad already knew. Maybe it’s what chased him down a whiskey bottle every night.
“It’s been a long time coming. This just put the lid on it.” He moves away, back to the window, arms folded across his chest. I wonder what Reverend Davis will have to say.
“This? You mean me being in the hospital?”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“You trying to kill yourself, Kyle. I’ve been a terrible father. I don’t deserve you or your mother. I don’t expect you to understand now, but this is for the best.”
“So I’m the reason you’re getting divorced?” I’m testing him, I want him to say no, that it’s all Mom’s fault and not mine.
“No, this isn’t your fault.”
“But if I hadn’t taken those pills, you’d still be sitting at home happily married and drunk?”
“Son—”
Why can’t he just admit that Mom cheated on him?
“No, I get it.” A pride thing, easier to blame it on me and my self-destructive tendencies. “While we’re sharing, Dad, I need to tell you something too.” Dad’s leaving so it’s not like it’ll matter. Being gay is the least of the sins in this family.
“More mashed-up vehicles?” He’s trying to be funny.
“I’m gay.” There’s a weight that lifts off my shoulders as soon as the words leave my lips. Dad’s face turns gray.
“What?” Now it’s his turn to look surprised.
“I’m gay. Homosexual. I like having sex with boys.”
His hands curl into fists and I wonder if he’d hit my already bruised face in hospital with nurses just a few paces away.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“This that Daniel’s influence?”
God, déjà vu. I’m sick of repeating myself. “He’s my boyfriend.”
My dad’s next words are a string of vile expletives. He shakes his head at me. “Boyfriend?”
“You’re leaving. Why do you even care?” I ask, as Dad starts pacing.
“I have a right to know who’s sleeping with my son.” There’s a vein throbbing at his temple.
“Yeah? And who’s Mom sleeping with?” I crossed the line. My dad doesn’t fly into a rage and throttle me. I wish he would. Rather that than the look of defeat on his face.
“Excuse me.” A polite voice at the door. “Sorry for interrupting, but I have a meeting scheduled with Kyle now.” A woman dressed like a schoolteacher with a clipboard. Her face seems familiar, but I can’t place it immediately. She reminds me of someone else, but the drugs have made things blurry.
“You my shrink?” The pain in my chest tightens and it has nothing to do with my ribs.
“Hello, Kyle. Remember me?”
The puzzle piece slots into place. Amy, the psychologist from the community center.
“I’m just here to ask you a few questions,” she says.
Dad runs his fingers through his hair. “See you later, son.” He leaves without looking back at me. That’s his good-bye.
I don’t think Dad’ll be coming back to see me anytime soon. The shrink settles on the chair beside my bed.
“So, Kyle, how are you doing today?” She smiles.
Why couldn’t I have been the one that died?
I curl on my nondisplaced side, knotting my fingers in the sheet as I press my face into the pillow. Tears turn the fabric soggy within seconds. My shoulders are shaking, every sob driving a spear through my ribs. I can’t remember the last time I really cried. Maybe the first time Dad hit me; I was only five and pissed myself.
I’m crying now, great hiccupping, snot-filled, gurgling sobs in front of this prissy know-it-all. I’m just a file and sheaf of notes to her. She’s probably put out that my emotional meltdown is affecting her schedule.
There’s a hand on my shoulder and soothing words whispered in my ear. I pull away from her, but she stays beside me.
“I’m not going anywhere, Kyle,” she says. Maybe this shrink does have a heart. She’s sitting on the bed beside me, slicking back my hair. At least she doesn’t lie and tell me it’s all going to be OK, because it’s not. I wish the world would end right this instant.
Of course, whoever’s up there listening doesn’t give a rat’s ass, so instead of the world ending, instead of shifting, I’m left in the damn hospital bed.
Amy doesn’t ask any questions. She waits for me to recover, leaves me unrestrained curled up around the pillow in a fetal position, and promises to come the next day when I’m feeling better. She closes the door behind her and leaves me alone.
I try to sleep, to shift, but nothing works. Gingerly, I get out of bed, wheel my IV crane over to the window, and stare out at a half-empty parking lot.
In the bathroom, cold water makes my face less puffy, my eyes less red from crying. I just get back into bed when the door opens and Danny rolls in accompanied by the young nurse.
“Hey,
cielo
.” He smiles.
The nurse raises her eyebrows at my free wrists.
“No trying to escape or beating up hospital staff, I promise.”
She smiles, a nervous tweaking of her lips before checking my drip. She makes a note in the chart before leaving us together.
“I brought you lunch.” Danny passes me a brown paper bag. His mom’s chili con carne packaged in Tupperware, complete with napkin and plastic cutlery. He also brought me a drawing book and some pencils.
“Thanks.” I lift the lid. It smells delicious. “And thanks for the supplies. Getting damn bored in here.”
“How you doing?” he asks as I start eating.
“My dad was here earlier. They’re getting a divorce.”
“I’m so sorry, Kyle.”
“I’m not,” I say before shoveling more chili into my mouth—green pepper, super spicy. “My mom’s fucking some other guy and my dad’s a drunk who beats the crap out of me. Just a pity it took me almost dying to get him out the house. If I’d known, I would’ve taken a bunch of pills years ago.”
“
Dios mio.
” Danny holds up his hands to slow me down. “Your mom?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You really mean that, about taking pills sooner to get your dad gone?”
“Why? You going to run and tell the nurses again?”
Danny squirms in his chair, rolls back and forth in the paraplegic equivalent of pacing.
“What was I supposed to do? That was some weird-ass shit you dropped on me, Kyle.”
“I told my dad about us.” I don’t have the energy to argue with him, easier to change the topic.
“Really?”
“Yup. Told him I was gay and that I’ve been sleeping with you.”
“Holy crap, how’d he take it?”
“He’s leaving, going to drive trucks. Don’t think he gives a crap who
I’m
banging, all things considered.”
“He’s still your dad, Kyle.”
“Unfortunately.”
Danny watches me eat the rest of my lunch in silence.
“So why does a squirrel swim on its back?” he starts, and I’m already grinning.
“Do squirrels even swim?” I ask.
“They do, on their backs.” A dramatic pause. “To keep their nuts dry.”
My chuckle turns into a painful cough.
“Pity you’re gonna miss the dance tomorrow. I really wanted to see you in that sombrero,” Danny says, catching his bottom lip with an upper incisor. Such a tease.
I think of Mya and Prof. Cruz, and Obscura. It takes a while for the cogs to get turning in my head. The meds are making complex thought a challenge.
“You’re thinking awful hard about something.”
I chew my bottom lip for a bit before lowering my voice. “I need you to do something for me.”
Danny leans toward the bed as we communicate in conspiratorial tones.
“Bust me out of here tomorrow night?” I ask.
“That’s mad.” Danny looks at me with that intense black stare of his that always stirs hurricanes inside me. I guess that’s love, being undone by a look.
“I want to go to the dance,” I say.
“You’ve got pneumonia.”
“That’s not why I’m here, and you know it.”
Danny’s tan complexion pales a little at the jibe. “Why you want to go so badly?”
“You know I hate hospitals.”
“I don’t know—”
“Please, Daniel.”
“How’m I gonna bust you out with me in this chair?” He raises his eyebrows at me.
“Just get Gabriela to drive you over. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“You’re loco
.
” He tries to swallow the word but it’s too late. “I didn’t mean—”
“Whatever.” I wave away the comment. “Just be here tomorrow night. Nine p.m. And bring the sombrero.”
Danny smiles and so do I. The fragile beginnings of a plan are starting to form, but for anything to work, I need out of this damn bed. First escape from hospital, then take on Obscura. Unless I can direct my next shift and end up back on April 6.
“I’m really tired, Dan.” I am tired, but more importantly, I need to shift.
“OK, I’ll stay till you’re asleep.” He takes my hand and starts humming a Spanish lullaby, the one his mom used to sing us whenever I slept over at his place to avoid my dad.
Danny squeezes my hand and keeps on humming.
* * *
The dream is different this time. There’s sunshine on my face and we’re sitting at a wooden picnic table. Guards with their guns hover on the periphery. Mya looks straight at me and lights my cigarette. I inhale, expecting tea leaves, but get a mouthful of menthol instead. The taste is foul, but worth it for the smoldering orange tip. I blow, a steady stream of breath encouraging a brighter glow. Watching things burn always has such a calming effect.
“Do you know where you are?” she asks. Not Mya’s voice. One I’ve heard before though. Itching familiarity.
“I’m dreaming?”
“Are you?”
“I’m not?”
“You tell me.” Sounds like a damn shrink. The embers flare in the breeze as ash flakes and drops to the table.
“It’s like my comic book story.” I scan the yard, half expecting to see others in orange, but we’re alone.
She folds her arms and leans toward me. “So tell me what happens next in your story.”
“You’re going to get me out of here.”
It’s not Mya who returns my smile, but Amy. “Only you can get yourself out of here, Kyle.”
The fences elongate, razor wire dangling above my head like a baby’s mobile from a nightmare realm.
“Not without your help.”
“I am helping you. But now you need to help yourself.” She reaches for my hand, but her grip slips as she gets sucked away in a vortex of dust and shadow.
Chapter Nineteen
Danny’s dead
The dream disintegrates and I trip over my feet, skinning my palms on rock. Blood trickles from my nose, out of my ears and down my neck, staining the white shirt I don’t remember putting on this morning.
Tuesday, July 3, 09:02. Danny’s memorial starts at 10:30.
The day’s sweltering, the hottest yet with a warm wind blowing dust in my face as I head down the path toward Shira’s, cursing at the cloudless sky. I’d wanted April 6.