Page 34 of Free Heart
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I have to get better faster. I need to be able to take care of myself.”
I roll him out to the living room, glad that Peggy Jo’s house is just one level, and park him beside the sofa. I figure I’ll let him rest in the chair and get his breath back before helping him move onto the part of the sectional with the ottoman. I go back to the bedroom to grab the pillow roll to elevate his leg.
“I can take care of you,” I say when I return. “You don’t have to be strong all the time. You can be weak with me.”
Dan frowns, keeping his lips sealed for a long time, and then he finally says, “I can’t trust it.”
I stop rearranging the pillows and throw blankets. “You don’t trust me?”
“No…I trustyou,” Dan says, but he sounds doubtful. “I just don’tlikehaving to trust you.”
My laugh comes as a surprise to me, and to him apparently, given the expression on his face.
“Okay, well, welcome to life, Dan. You have to trust people sometimes. Even if you don’t like it, even if you don’t want to. You trust belay partners, right?”
He shrugs. “I trust myself on the wall more.”
“Well, look where that got you,” I can’t resist the jab.
He huffs.
“But seriously, I know everyone except Peggy Jo has let you down your whole life, but I’m not going anywhere. Besides, you have no choice but to let me help. Otherwise, you’ll just fuck yourself up even more.”
His lips tense, but he says nothing, and we start the transfer to the couch. He cries out once, which feels like a victory. At least he’s not hiding it from me. At least he’s being honest in his pain.
“I didn’t expect this to be so hard,” he says once I’ve gotten him set up with pillows, a blanket, and the remote control.
“You expected healing from a compound fracture would be easy?”
“No, I thought falling would be easy.”
I freeze for a second, taking in his distant expression. “In what way?”
“That high up on those walls, I always figured falling would mean death, and as much as I don’twantto die, actually dying always seemed easy enough. Thirteen seconds or so of fear and then the end. Forever.”
“That’s a little cheap, don’t you think?” I ask. “Expecting to pay such a low price for the risks you take.”
“Death’s a pretty high price.”
“For those who live to deal with its aftermath, yeah,” I say. “You? You’d just be dead. It’s cheap. It’s lazy. It’s like you said—easy.This? What you’re doing now? This is the real stuff of life. This is the meat of it. This is where you’ve fucked up, and you have to suffer through the consequences of your actions along with the rest of us. Sorry if you didn’t get to opt out of that, Dan.”
He gapes at me, and I kind of want to gape at myself. I didn’t mean to come across so harsh, and yet…
It turns out I have more to say. “My mom fought hard to live, and it was painful, horrible, and fruitless. You at least will heal, and hopefully heal well. You’ll live to climb another day.”
“In ayear!”
“What’s a year? Tell me that? What’s a year, Dan?”
“Are you angry with me?”
I find that I am. And I take a step back, away from the sofa, the conversation, the moment. I breathe in slow and deep. “Yes,” I say, after I’ve got a hold of myself. “I think I have a right to be, and I probably will be from time to time. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to boot you out of Peggy Jo’s house or leave you here on your own. I’m not your foster families. I’m not your mom.” I step closer, touching his chin gently and then his lower lip, which is chapped and broken open still. “I’m your seahorse, and I love you, even when I want to strangle you for being a selfish asshole.”
He pulls his chin away from my fingers. “What do you mean you’re a fucking seahorse?”
“You have your phone. Look it up.” I blow loose strands of hair from my face. “I’m going to shower and when I’m done, I’ll make dinner, and then we’ll find a TV show you don’t hate. We’ll watch a few episodes. After that I’ll go out to your van and grab your books and journals, and whatever else you want in the house, and then I’ll shower you and get you ready for bed.”
“Bossy,” Dan says. His eyes go a little shiny, and his mouth falls open. “If I weren’t incapacitated with pain, I’d be hard right now. That’s how hot you are.”
