“I’ll go with you.” Rowen followed her, but not before firing a potent glare at me.
I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
About two seconds after the girls had gone, Jesse’s boot-steps echoed through the room. He got so close to me he bumped into the bedrails. “What are you doing, Black?” His voice hinted at exhaustion. “I thought you kicked your self-destruction habit months ago.”
A sigh escaped past my lips before I knew it was coming. Oh well. If I could sigh in front of anyone without them judging me or reading some deeper meaning into it, it was Jess. “You can never kick a habit like that,” I said, staring at the place Josie had just been standing. “You can only wrestle it into submission. After this though, I’m afraid it’s wrestled me into submission.”
Jesse’s hand wound around the bedrail. “Then fight back.”
Another sigh—this one a bit more final sounding. “You need both a literal and theoretical backbone to fight back. And I’ve got neither.”
YOU WANT TO know what the longest, most uncomfortable ambulance ride in the world feels like? After what I’d just gone through, I could have explained it in precise detail, recapping every last awkward moment.
After she’d argued against me discharging myself from the hospital, I would have guessed Josie would want nothing to do with my escape plan, but she hopped up beside me after the paramedics had loaded and locked my stretcher into place in the ambulance. She gave the two paramedics a seriously impressive look when they suggested she ride with Jesse and Rowen, who were heading back in their truck. I knew they’d been planning on heading back to Seattle after the rodeo, but after their friend had gone and broken his back, they probably felt obligated to come get me settled in. Or maybe the obligation rested more with supporting Josie while, as Rowen had made a point of noting, I was behaving like a selfish, defeated asshole.
I was thankful they were coming back for a few days, for Joze’s sake. She’d need someone to lean on as she navigated this new chapter in life, and that person couldn’t and shouldn’t have been me. I wanted to make my removal from her life slow and gradual . . . but that was only for my benefit. The best thing for her would have been a sharp and sudden break because even though it would hurt like hell, that wound would eventually leave no trace of a scar. If I drew it out, I’d only cause a deeper scar to form. I’d already left Josie with enough of those.
When we’d crossed the Montana state line, the driver asked for more specific directions about where we were heading. After I gave him some, I got another earful and a half from Josie, and thanks to the confined space and volume she employed, so did the paramedics. One of them rolled earplugs into his ears at about the five-minute mark of her outburst.
I’d given them directions to Joze’s and my old farmhouse instead of directions to her family’s ranch, and you’d have thought I’d signed the execution order for a litter of puppies. She reminded me that the only bathroom that worked (well) in the farmhouse we were remodeling was the one on the second floor, and since we didn’t have an elevator, I’d have no way to get up there without the aid of fairy dust. I’d been too choked up to reply because she obviously hadn’t wrapped her mind around how a quadriplegic’s “call of nature” routine was drastically different from hers.
After that, she went on to argue that the floors were in such bad shape that I could tumble right through them in my wheelchair, not to mention there wasn’t a ramp to get me inside in the first place. I tried to remind her that her parents’ place didn’t have a ramp either, but she wouldn’t let me get a word in. She went on and on about the farmhouse being too far away from everyone and how I couldn’t be all alone when she had to go do something, and she warned me if I didn’t stop acting like a lunatic, she would start the paperwork to have me declared incompetent so she could take the wheel at the helm of my healthcare needs.
That was more than enough of a threat to get me to shut up and not say a word of protest when she gave the driver different directions. I knew she didn’t understand it, but I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want a stream of people filtering through the Gibsons’ kitchen, dropping off casseroles and sympathy cards while taking a quick peek at the immobile freak show. I didn’t want people’s sympathy or their morbid curiosity or their compassion. I wanted to be left alone, and the farmhouse was the perfect place to do just that. I wasn’t sure how I’d take care of myself or what direction my life would take, but I did know I’d have plenty of time to think about that during my isolation.
By the time the ambulance crunched up the Gibsons’ driveway, I’d had way too much time to ponder my future and contrast it to what I thought I’d have. So I was feeling particularly pissed at the world when the ambulance doors swung open and the paramedics unloaded me.
Josie jumped out behind me, looking almost worse than I knew I did, and she shot a wave toward the house. I didn’t look, mainly because I felt like me showing up at their front door in a stretcher while their daughter followed with red-rimmed eyes was like fulfilling every last premonition and hang-up Mr. Gibson had had when Josie and I had gotten together. He’d seen me for the piece of shit I was and been willing to overlook it when he saw how much I cared for his daughter and she for me. But months later, there I was—a piece of shit being carried into their house on a stretcher, sentencing their twenty-two-year-old daughter to a life as a caretaker.
It wasn’t just Mr. and Mrs. Gibson waiting on the front porch though. Jesse and Rowen were there too, looking not quite but almost as tired as I knew Josie and I did.
“Nice trip?” Rowen asked Josie when she crawled up the porch stairs.
“Don’t ask,” she replied, sounding exhausted.
As the paramedics carried me up the stairs, everyone went into action, though no one seemed quite sure where to go or what to do. Mr. Gibson and Jess opened the screen door. Mrs. Gibson reached out for my stretcher as though she wanted to help the paramedics carry me in. Joze and Rowen swept through the door at the same time, managing to bottleneck in the doorway before Josie wiggled free and led the way into the kitchen.
Rowen hung back, slowing her pace to match the paramedics’. As they guided me through the kitchen, she glanced down at me. An all-too-familiar expression was plastered on her face. It said she was debating whether to rip off my balls and shove them down my throat or kick them so hard they wound up in the same place. Unlike most people, I didn’t doubt Rowen would follow through on whatever choice she arrived at.
“You and I are going to talk,” she said, just barely lifting a brow. “And by talk, I mean I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen, and when we’re done with our little ‘talk,’ you’re going to pull your head out of your ass.”
“You know how much I look forward to our talks, Mrs. Sterling-Walker,” I replied, putting on an overdone smile. “I’ll pencil you into my calendar.”
I could just make out Josie flagging the paramedics down the hall as she opened the door to the guest room I’d camped out in for a few months last year. I had some great memories from that room—more of my good memories had originated from that room than from any other facet of my life—and I wanted to keep it that way. I didn’t want to be swept into it as a cripple to spend my waking and sleeping hours trapped in the same bed I’d made love to the woman I cared about. Putting me in there the way I was now, doomed to watch the world and weather pass me by day after day, felt like desecrating a sacred place.
But before I could request I be put up in the barn instead of this room with all of its memories, the stretcher was maneuvered through the door and guided toward the bed. I closed my eyes and swallowed. When I hadn’t been floating from motel to motel working the rodeo circuit, I’d been camped out at Willow Springs in the hand house, occasionally spending a night or two at Josie’s and my farmhouse. I almost felt like a lifetime had passed since I’d last laid my head on this bed.
Once they had the stretcher out from beneath me, the paramedics glanced toward the door. They wante
d out of there as badly as I did. After the long trip they’d just had, and having had to play third party to Josie’s and my arguing, I couldn’t blame them.
“Thanks for the lift, guys. Just put the bill in the mail, and I’ll sell a kidney or something to pay it off.” I tried to wave, but my hand stayed limp on the bed. Sure, Life, why don’t you just keep taking swings at me while I’m down?
They muttered a couple of good-byes before escaping, their footsteps hurrying down the hallway and out the front door. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to do the same.
“Is there anything we can get you, Garth?” Mrs. Gibson bustled about the room, pulling open curtains and switching on lamps. She hadn’t been able to look at me yet.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a new spine in that apron of yours, would you?” I asked, trying to sound like my usual self . . . my old self . . . the self that never could be again.
She paused in the middle of refolding the blanket hanging over the back of the rocking chair. Patting the pockets of the apron she was rarely seen without when she was in the house, she worked up a smile before finally looking at me. “I’ve found a little of everything hiding out in these pockets, but no spines yet. You’ll be the first I inform if that changes though.”
Since she’d worked so hard to form hers, I returned the smiling favor. “Thanks for letting me crash here for a few days, Mrs. Gibson. I don’t want to be an inconvenience . . .” Though how could I not be when I couldn’t move and had to depend on people for everything besides blinking?
“You’re no inconvenience,” she said, almost sounding like her daughter did when I’d said something that ticked her off. “And you can stay as long as you like. No need to rush out before you’re on your feet again . . .” Her whole face fell as she realized what she’d just said.
I wasn’t sure exactly what Josie had told her parents about what had happened to me, but even if she’d told them nothing, it didn’t take a genius to see me and figure out what was wrong.
“I’m going to get dinner started, I think.” Mrs. Gibson powered toward the doorway, pausing to rest her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’m just a shout away.”
From the look of it, she’d been talking more to Josie than to me, but I answered when it looked like Josie was too choked up to. “Thanks again. I appreciate it.”
Mr. Gibson was hovering in the doorway, his head bowed and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his denim coveralls. From what I knew of him, he was probably warring with feelings of wanting to do the right thing for his daughter and the right thing for me, knowing those two agendas could never align now. I didn’t envy Mr. Gibson, not even though he still had the use of his body.
“Sorry I won’t be able to help you replace the cattle gate this week, Mr. Gibson. I had to go and bust my back,” I said, lifting my chin at Jesse. “But this guy here’s a strapping young lad and always eager to prove he’s a saint.”
Jesse didn’t scowl down at me as I would have done if he’d just volunteered me for a few hours of gate removal and installation. Instead, he looked at Mr. Gibson and nodded. “Rowen and I will be in town this next week, so I can swing by and help you with it. No problem. Just let me know when.”
A rush of air filtered from my mouth. “I thought you guys had a busy week coming up? You said you could only spare a few days before Rowen had to get back to finish a piece for her art show next month.”
Rowen stepped up to the plate next, crossing one arm over the other as she approached the bed. When everyone else was looking at me with varying degrees of uncertainty or pity, at least she still looked at me as she had pre-broken back—with pure and utter disdain when I pissed her off. “Yeah, and something more important came up, like being there for a good friend when he needs it. So if you could stop acting like an asshole sooner rather than later, that would be spectacular.”
I didn’t make my eye-roll subtle. “Listen, this homecoming reunion has been a blast, but I just travelled across a couple state lines in a confined space with a guy who was under the impression flatulence is something that should be shared with others, along with his opinions on the whole wolf control issue. That boils down to me getting a whole two and a half minutes of sleep in the past twenty-four hours. I’m bushed. So if there isn’t anything else that requires my immediate attention, think you all could move this powwow into another room? I need my beauty rest.”
I shut my eyes, as if what I’d said was less of a question and more of an order, and one by one, I heard them filter out of the bedroom. A minute later, only one still remained in the room. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know who that one was.
“Joze, you look in as rough of shape as I do. Get some rest, okay? There’s nothing you can do by hovering beside my bedside day in and day out that’s going to help me get better or make me more comfortable, so get some rest. Go out and live your life for a few hours. Only one of us broke our backs, so there’s no need to act like we both did.”
For a moment, she was silent, so silent I almost cracked open my eyes to see if I’d been wrong about her lingering behind. She finally spoke. “It’s comments like those that make me wonder if you even know the person you’re in love with.”
My brows pulled together, but I kept my eyes closed. “What does that mean?”
I heard her take a step closer. “It means you rise, I rise; you fall, I fall. You hurt, I hurt; you succeed, I succeed. You break your back—” Her voice caught in her throat for the shortest second. “I break my back. Please stop acting like you’re the only person in the world who’s affected by this. Because you’re not. You’re not alone, so stop acting like you are.”
Her words, along with the tone she’d said them in, were enough to make a ball the size of my fist form in my throat. At exactly the right time, she’d said exactly the right words. In a few short sentences, she’d comforted me more than a person in my condition should have been able to be comforted. The problem wasn’t her—it was me. She knew the right words, did the right things, believed in the right ideals . . . but she was hovering beside the wrong man. I wanted to let her camp out at my side and never leave, but I also knew of no surer or quicker way to crush her spirit than to allow her to stay at my side.
“I am alone, Joze. So why don’t you stop acting like I’m not?”
She replied in the way I’d both hoped and dreaded she would: by walking out of the room and closing the door.
MY DOOR STAY closed for I didn’t know how long. Might have been half an hour, might have been a decade. I couldn’t tell. When I finally fell asleep, I slept hard and long. I slept the sleep of the dead, but when I woke up to the sound of my door opening, I wished I would have stayed with the dead. What was left for me with the living wasn’t worth living for.
Jesse strode in and shifted a few things in the corner to make room for what was coming through the door. What was wheeling through the door. A middle-aged guy sat in one of those huge electric wheelchairs and puttered into the room, heading for the spot Jesse had just cleared. The rooms in the Gibsons’ old farmhouse were small to start with, but having that giant machine inside it made the guest room seem like a coat closet. It became tough to breathe, as if either the oxygen had been stripped from the room by that wheelchair or it had brought in too much. I couldn’t tell, but I knew I needed it out of there.
“Who are you?” I asked the man in the wheelchair. I guessed Jess knew better than to invite some other crippled person to come over and commiserate with me like some kind of mini support group, but I couldn’t figure out another reason why the hell a guy in his wheelchair would be rolling into my room right after I’d been deemed paralyzed.
The guy didn’t glance up as he finished maneuvering the chair into the corner. From the look of it, he needed to take a few more driving courses with that thing before he ran it through a wall or ran over a person. “I’m Steve.”
I waited for something else, but nothing else was off
ered. I was just about to ask Steve why “Steve” was in my room when he shoved himself out of the wheelchair onto two strong legs and approached me with an outstretched hand.
“I’m the manager of the medical supply company in town,” he said, letting his hand hang in the air for another moment before he realized that unless he picked my hand up and put it there, I couldn’t shake his hand. His arm dropped back at his side as he cleared his throat. “I don’t usually do the home deliveries, but when I heard who this chair was going to, I had to see to it personally.” A smile spread across his face as he looked at me. “I used to follow you in the local circuit when you were just starting out, so I was a fan before you hit it big. You’re a talented rider, Mr. Black.” Steve nodded at me in what I guessed was approval.
While I’d been complimented and praised by hundreds this past year, instead of the flattery making me feel awkward yet grateful, Steve’s made me feel like each word was a knife slashing at my throat.
“I think what you mean is that I used to be a talented rider,” I replied, my tone so bitter I could actually taste it on the back of my tongue. “Kind of hard to be any kind of a rider, good or bad, when I can’t even wipe away the drool rolling down my chin.”
I noticed Jesse shift on the other side of the room. He wasn’t used to not knowing what to say or how to fix something. I’d never seen him at such an utter and total loss in all of the years I’d known him.
Steve shifted a couple times too. “I’m having one of my best employees—he’s the most familiar with this type of chair—come over later this afternoon to go over how it works with you and get you all set up. This baby’s got too many bells and whistles for me, and with my luck, I’d wind up running you over.”
My throat did that running dry thing it had been doing a lot of lately. I wasn’t sure if that was due to the paralysis or due to the rough topics being discussed, but it seemed like shit luck that one of the few pieces of my anatomy I could still feel would be uncomfortable. “Well, the nice thing about running me over, Steve, is that you wouldn’t have to worry about injuring me any more than I already am.” I winked at him, but it had the opposite effect of what I’d intended.