Page 20 of The Beachgoers
“Stop it!” his father insists through clenched teeth.
He doesn’t have to worry. When some shooting pain gets Jason wincing, he falls back onto the mattress and lies still.
But his eyes stay open. From the desperate way they search his father’s face, anyone can tell that there’s no way in hell he’s closing them.
“You can’t get out of bed,” his father says. His voice is even; his words, careful and caring. “You were in an accident, Jason. A serious crash on Neil’s bike. You’re badly hurt.”
Jason watches his father, which seems to unnerve the older man. He gets up and walks to the window. Standing there, he looks out to the midday view. So he doesn’t see what happens next. Doesn’t see Jason manage to turn his head, to shift it and glimpse the cotton johnny gown he wears. Doesn’t see Jason notice his dressings; the wires attached to his skin here, and there. His left leg wrapped in layers of bandages from his thigh, to partially down his shin—where the leg suddenly ends.
“Where’s my brother?” he barely whispers.
It’s the hoarseness of his weakened words that makes them audible. That gets his father to turn at the window. In the afternoon light, he looks older than his fifty-plus years. His face shows wear. His clothes do, too. You can tell from the man’s tired khakis and wrinkled button-down turned back at the cuffs that he’s been in this outfit for hours—if not days. That he’s talked to doctors and nurses and specialists in them. That he’s made sad phone calls in these clothes. That he’s paced in them; cried in them.
Now he looks long at Jason before returning to his bedside chair. “Neil?” he begins, his voice so low. Sitting there, the man rests his elbows on his knees, clasps his hands and drops his head. Machinery hums around him; a monitor intermittently beeps. Hushed voices pass in the hospital hallway.
A change comes, then. Something about the older man’s posture gives away that this moment might be the worst yet. That the motorcycle accident all came down to this, right now. This defeat.
The devil won.
Because when the father raises his head and looks at his son, he says nothing more. Not a word. Instead, his lips are pressed as he gives a slight shake of the head.
And it’s clear that the two men know each other well. That years of talk, and storytelling, and listening have gone down between them. Because no words are necessary for the father to read the question on his son’s face. To read the distraught understanding that falls over Jason’s expression. The one asking, without words,Neil didn’t make it?
“No,” his father says, and nothing more.
Jason looks at him for a second, then looks away—toward that window. The midafternoon sky outside is blue, as blue as blue can be.
