This is the Part Where You Laugh (23 page)

At the last blue
H
sign, I let off and slow up, brake a little and turn left, whipping the car through the S-turn, around the outer lots, then gun it to the emergency room, not the parking lot for the emergency room, but the entrance doors up front.

I jump out of the car. See the state trooper pull in sideways behind me. He jumps out of his driver's door and yells something at me as I run around to the other side, but I ignore him. I pop the passenger door open, get my arms in, and start trying to work Creature out of the car. But Creature's body is even heavier than before. He's passed out and so difficult to move. I'm struggling with him, and he's leaning in toward the driver's side, away from me. Then the state trooper's next to me, and he says, “Here, let me help you. Let me get in there too,” and I let him wedge into the space at the front of the open door, and he gets his arms under Creature's legs and I reach under Creature's armpit and get ahold of him around his body. Creature is slumped sideways still, but we've got him now and the trooper says, “One, two, three,” and we lift, and together we pull him out of the car, turn, and carry him into the hospital.

As soon as we're through the entrance doors, I yell, “Help us! We need help right now!”

The state trooper yells, “We need a doctor!”

A nurse runs up and says, “Let's get him on this gurney right here. What happened to him?”

I say, “He had surgery not too long ago, and I think something tore open.”

The nurse waves her arms at the desk for someone to come quick. “Now!” she says.

We lay Creature on the gurney. I say, “You're gonna be okay, Creat. It's gonna be okay, man. We're at the hospital now.”

A nurse and an orderly are pushing the gurney down the hall, and the state trooper and I are jogging alongside it. Creature's unconscious and his head looks too loose, his mouth open, his teeth showing. We get to a set of double doors and it opens. A man in a security uniform steps out and stops us, puts a hand on each of us, my chest and the state trooper's. He says, “I'm sorry, but you two will have to wait out here.”

I stand there at the double doors and it feels like right after I punched that kid in the basketball game. All three refs were walking toward me, and the kid was on the ground, and the crowd was silent, and I knew that things might never be the same.

I sit with the state trooper. He doesn't say anything for a long time, then an orderly comes up and takes him over to the front desk. They talk for a minute. The trooper comes back and says, “Can I have your keys? I need to move both of our cars.”

I give them to him.

When he returns, he hands me the keys again, and sits back down next to me. He doesn't say anything.

We wait.

I bite my fingernails and worry about Creature. I bite all of my nails too short and when I'm finished with the last one, I bite the skin on my index finger, next to the nail. Work the skin on the next finger. And the next. My stomach isn't good. I feel like I've chugged a bottle of hot sauce. I stand up and walk around, then sit back down.

A nurse walks up to me. “Can I look at your lip?”

I'd forgotten about it. I look down at the blood on the front of my shirt. I look back at the nurse. Say, “No thanks.”

“That might need a couple of stitches.”

“I think it'll be okay.” I go back to my seat and sit down.

The trooper says, “What did your friend need surgery for?”

I shake my head.

We sit and, after a while, the trooper leans forward, pats my knee, and stands up. He walks over to the nurse's station and talks to them for a minute. Then he comes back and sits down next to me. He says, “I'm really sorry about Malik.”

I nod.

“What's your name?” he says.

“Travis.”

“I'm Ben.” He sits back down and leans his head against the wall. We wait some more.

After 30 minutes or so, a tall man in blue scrubs comes through the double doors and walks up to us. He has a paper mask that's pulled down and hanging around his neck. He wears glasses. He looks at us and says, “I'm Dr. Tiller. I'm a surgeon at this hospital, and I was in the room with Malik.” He looks at the floor. He says, “I'm sorry. We did all we could.”

“What?” I feel like when I have a really high fever and I can't figure out something easy. “Wait, what?”

The doctor is nodding like I asked him a yes-or-no question. He says, “We did all we could, but we couldn't save him. Malik was already gone.”

“No.” I stand up. I look the doctor in the eye and point at him. “That's a lie and you know it. He was alive in the car, and he's alive now.”

The state trooper stands up next to me. “Travis,” he says, “I'm so sorry.”

“We're all sorry,” the doctor says. “There was too much internal bleeding. He was gone before we had him in the operating room. And unfortunately—”

Before he can finish, I hit him. I want to shut him up, and I do. I punch him in the face, in the left eye, and he goes down, and I step up over him and yell, “You fucking liar!” and that's when someone tackles me and I hit the floor, and I'm facedown and my arms are pulled behind my back and two people kneel on me while someone zip-ties my wrists.

I'm in a bed, in a room with the lights off. I don't know where I am. My brain is wet steel wool. I blink and try to clear my mind. Try to open my eyes all the way, but my eyelids are weighted down and I think of fishhooks pulling the lids closed. I can't keep them open, and I start dreaming, then force my eyes open once again. Take a deep breath. Blink. The corners of the room go gray. The window. The light fixture turned off.

Drugs like syrup drizzling over my brain.

I remember one needle, one needle going into my leg at the hospital, on the floor of the emergency room's waiting area. My hands behind my back, zip-tied. My yelling and yelling. That one needle and that's it. Nothing after.

My eyes close. I'm so tired. I go back to sleep.

It takes me a minute to realize where I am. The light's on now. There's light coming in the window too. I lie there. Stare at the ceiling. Sit up. Swing my legs off the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. I think about standing up, but I don't feel coordinated enough to do it.

My wrists are bruised. Small cuts wrap around each one. My left elbow is sore. My ribs are sore.

A corrections officer opens my door and says, “Lunchtime.”

I shuffle down the hallway, still hazy from the drugs. A kid in front of me makes a birdcall and the corrections officer to our right says, “That's enough of that.”

We go to the cafeteria, everything shiny, everything stainless steel.

We stay in line. Move forward every five seconds. The kid in front of me turns around and stares at me. A corrections officer says, “Eyes forward, feet forward,” and the kid turns back around.

I get my soup and sandwich, orange juice, and walk to a seat on the far side. I don't sit near anyone. I'm not hungry, but I try to eat. Take a bite and chew. Think about Creature. He and I have both been in here. Him for beating the shit out of two white kids who called him “a nigger rapper bitch.”

I keep looking for Creature in the lunchroom even as I remember the hospital. I imagine Creature as the tall kid to my right, the one with the long arms, but when he turns toward me his face is all wrong and I look back at my own food.

I look for Creature in the next line, when the second detention pod comes to get its lunch. They're told to wait, and we're finishing up even though I haven't eaten much, and I look along that line for Creature, but he isn't there.

After lunch, they take us back to our rooms and close the doors so they can select who goes out to the common area in the afternoon. I remember this from before. And like before, I'm not let out into the common area.

Later, it gets dark outside. A corrections officer brings me a small paper cup with two white pills in it. Then he hands me a Dixie cup of water.

I put the pills on my tongue and swallow them with the water.

“Open your mouth,” he says.

I open it.

“Now lift your tongue,” he says. “Left. Okay. And right. Okay.”

Fuzziness. Dreaming and awake. My mom sits on the bed next to me. Pulls up her sleeve. Shows me the track marks. I picture leeches sleeping on her arm, her brushing them off, and this is what they left behind.

Sunday, after lunch, we're back in our rooms until 3:00 p.m. visiting hours. A corrections officer comes to my door and says, “You have visitors.”

My grandma and grandpa are waiting for me at the table. I look for a third visitor and wonder if Creature will come. Then I blink and try to clear my head. I feel like a grasshopper caught by a fence lizard, feel its teeth against the sides of my skull.

Grandma hugs me and I kiss her head. She's thin. Feels brittle.

Grandpa hugs me too, and I don't think he's ever hugged me before. He says, “I'm so sorry, Travis.”

“It's okay.”

“No.” He taps his chest with his finger. “I'm sorry.”

I start to cry then and I sit down, and I can't look at either of them.

“Oh, sweetie.” Grandma leans across the table and takes my hands. Then I'm crying harder, and I put my hands over my face and duck my head, and I'm shaking and crying, and I can't stop.

Grandma says, “I love you, Travis. I really love you.”

It takes a long time for me to stop crying.

Grandpa says, “We've talked to your lawyer, and you're lucky. Things look good for you. You have it pretty easy, considering that you've been in here before.”

Grandma reaches into her purse and pulls out a manila file folder. Sets it on the table in front of me.

I open it. It's half an inch thick, full of typed forms and letters. I flip through the pages and stop on my mug shot from my first arrest.

Grandpa says, “You're going to have a pretrial hearing. And it looks like the charges will be dropped in exchange for what they call ‘concessions.' ”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you're going to have a suspended driver's license until you're 18. That's for the hit-and-run without a driver's license. But that's not the good news. The good news is that the doctor at the hospital, the man you punched, doesn't want to press charges. He said he understands your grief.”

“Oh.”

Grandma leans across the table and pats my hand.

I feel like I'm going to start crying again.

Grandpa says, “You're really lucky. Everything could be a lot worse…legally speaking.”

“So is that everything?”

“No,” he says, “but the resisting-arrest portion will be paid for by your time in here. The lawyer said that adults at the Lane County Jail get out after two days on that charge, so we're confident that your time this week will amount to enough time for that.”

“Okay.”

Grandma says, “You'll have counseling too, once a week for 12 weeks. The meeting with the judge is tomorrow morning, and if you accept the terms, everything will be put in place. You'll get out in two or three days.”

I say, “All right.”

It's hard to explain, but this all feels like it's happening to someone else. I don't know if it's the drugs they give me, or how tired I am, or everything that's happened, but I don't feel like myself right now.

The corrections officer comes over and says, “That's time.”

Grandma pats my hand once more and takes the file folder. She puts it back in her purse and stands up. Then Grandpa and I stand as well.

The corrections officer is standing behind my grandparents, and they both look at him. He points to the door.

My grandma steps around the table and hugs me, her arms feeling so thin, then my grandpa hugs me again too. Grandpa says, “We'll be back to see you soon, okay? If you're not released tomorrow, we'll be back again.” He smiles and puts his hands on my shoulders, and I keep myself from crying.

The corrections officer says, “It really is time now.”

I watch them leave through the double doors, and I wave to my grandma when she turns and looks back.

I have a phone call later, and they come and get me from my room.

I say, “Hello?”

The person on the other end of the line clears his throat. “Travis?”

“Coach?”

“Yeah, it's me. How are you holding up?”

“I'm okay.”

“I just heard about you last night, and I was worried about you.”

“You don't have to worry about me, Coach. That's not your job.”

“Well,” he says, “anyway, I was worried.”

I flick my fingertip against the wall a couple of times. Say, “I know this is pretty messed up. Will I even be able to play after all of this?”

“I hope so,” Coach says. “To be honest, I don't know, though. You might be able to play this year, and I'll do everything I can to make that happen. I'll be behind you the whole way.”

My throat feels thick and scratchy. I don't say anything. Coach waits for me to get my voice back. Finally, he says, “Travis?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry about before, about how hard I was on you. And I'm really sorry about Creature.”

I put my hand over my eyes. Take a deep breath. Try not to cry again. I tap my forehead against the wall.

Coach says, “That should never happen. You guys are good kids with rough lives. Or…he was a good kid, I guess. And you still are. You've got a lot going for you.”

“Yeah, well…”

“And I'm going to help you as much as I can, you hear me?”

“Thanks, Coach.”

I nod and close my eyes. Feel the cool of the wall against my forehead.

The corrections officer taps me on the shoulder, then points to the sign on the wall next to the phone. It says:
THREE-MINUTE CALL LIMIT.

I say, “Sorry, Coach, but I've gotta go. There's a time limit.”

“I understand,” he says. “We'll talk soon, all right?”

“All right, Coach.”