A reality of small sensations was all Shane felt by the time he was ready to check out of the hospital. An attendant wheeled him to the curb while his mother retrieved the car then the man helped him into the passenger side seat where he looked to the clock and was disappointed to see that it was after eleven and he felt hungry. He wanted to stop at a drive-thru but felt the tension in his jaw and remembered he wouldn’t be eating solid food for weeks so he let out a grunt of anger.
“What is it?” his mother asked.
Frustrated, he shook his head and held up his hand because there was little she could do for him and there was little they could communicate as she drove. He closed his eyes and was thankful that for once she was not persistent, too protective. Let it go, he thought, just let it go and then he was partially asleep in a dark place where he could barely hear the world and the passage of time was unmeasurable. He felt the vibration of the car and remembered the times he had fallen asleep in the back seat when he was young and how his father used to carry him inside to his bed then lay him out and cover him with a sheet. His father would not be doing that tonight because he had gotten too big. Then he was completely asleep, lost in a pleasant darkness, but somehow he still felt when the car came to a complete stop and the engine was turned off. He shifted his shoulders and felt the reality again of his predicament.
“Shane honey, we’re here,” his mother said.
She placed a hand on his knee that made him open his eyes and sit up. He looked to his mother who was partially lit by the white porch light. Her face was calm.
“Come on, you’re too big for me to carry inside,” she said before turning away and opening her own door.
Shane opened his own door but he was tired and moved slowly, somehow the rest had weakened him, made him aware of all the sore parts of his body. His mother, Anne, was quick to move to the area of the open door and hold out her hands.
“Here let me help you,” she said.
He mumbled a thank you then stepped out and leaned against her. She moved with him away from the car, closed the car door and they began to stagger to the front door of the house when it opened and they both looked up to see his father who pushed opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch.
“Are you guys going to be able to make it?” he asked.
“Can you come down and help us?” his mother replied.
His father stepped from the porch and walked to them then stopped and tried to assess his son’s face in the dim light. He could make out a few marks, a swollen eye.
“Hey buddy,” he said.
Shane grunted a hello.
“Let me pick him up,” his father said. “I can carry him up the stairs.”
His father stepped and extended his arm down behind Shane’s knees and one around his back then lifted him from the ground and carried him up the stairs and into the house, down the hallway to Shane’s bedroom where he sat him on the bed. Shane leaned into his knees and looked to his mother who stepped into the room.
“You should sleep now,” his mother said. “Do you want me to get you a pain pill?”
Shane nodded and she stepped from the room.
“You’re lighter than I thought,” his father said trying to being positive.
Shane nodded.
“We’ll talk tomorrow but don’t worry you don’t have to go back to school.”
Shane looked down to the floor at his father’s bare feet. He listened as his mother struggled to crush the pill with the butt end of a knife and his father’s breathing. There was nothing else to be said. There was no great thought. Nothing that he could articulate. Shane could have fallen asleep as he sat there but he wanted the pill.
“Here it is,” his mother said entering the room. She held out a glass of milk to him, a straw turned in the liquid. “It’s the best I can do until I pick up your prescription tomorrow.”
He took the glass and stuck the straw in his lips then sucked down the milk letting it fill his mouth and worked it down his throat until the glass was empty.
“Do you want one of us to help you with your clothes?”
Shane shook his head.
“Okay dear,” she said, “we are going to go now. Do you want us to leave the door open in case you need anything?”
He shook his head again then waited for them to leave and close the door behind them. Once they had gone he struggled to pull off his clothes and get into bed with the covers partially covering him then turned off the light by his bed. He wasn’t quite asleep when he heard the muffled voices of his parents talking loudly as they had done several times before and just like then he wanted to slip out of bed, sneak down the hallway to their bedroom and listen to them. But he knew what they were talking about. They were talking about him and part of him was afraid of what his father had to say so he decided to let it go.
Hours later he awoke to a pain in his face, strangely the sinus cavities just behind his nose and it was enough to make him sit up, toss of his covers, and stagger from his room to the bathroom where he turned on the light and blinded himself in the process. He closed his eyes and turned off the light. Think, he said to himself, there has to be another way, and he remembered the bulbs above the mirror so he made his way to the sink then felt up along the wall to the switch where he turned on the light which was a softer, orange light. He opened his eyes slowly, looked at the sink first then worked his way up to the mirror where he saw his face much as it had been in the hospital.
Strangely as he stood before the mirror the pain subsided and for the first time he could see his body as well, black and blue marks where he had been kicked and punched, areas that had turned more than black and blue. His skin had turned yellow, brown, and purple.
This is all real, he told himself. Here he was in his house, in his home, with a swollen face, marks on his body. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t. He wanted to grab at something, hold something, break something, but it felt foolish because it would get his parents’ attention, attention he didn’t need. He turned off the light then headed back to his room. He stopped in the hallway when he saw his mother’s form in her bedroom doorway then continued on his way.
“Is he okay?” his father asked.
“I think he’s fine,” his mother said. “I think he just had to use the bathroom.”
He stepped into his room, closed the door and crossed back to his bed where he resumed his best sleeping position, flat on his back. That was how he felt the least pain. He closed his eyes.
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