Authors: Jaye Murray

Bottled Up (20 page)

BOOK: Bottled Up

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I walked over to the hole and looked down. I could see the broken glass.

I could see the labels from my father's scotch bottles.

I remember the first time Mikey drank from a cup.

Big boy cup, he called it.

“No more ba-ba's,” he said. So he and Mom and I took his baby bottles and threw them in the garbage. He laughed and started throwing everything in there.

A plate, a mug, a toy truck, my sneaker.

I wasn't going to stand around and talk to these guys all day. I had to get to Mikey.

I started to run off, but one of the cops caught up with me and pulled on my arm.

“Let go,” I snapped, pulling it back.

“It's okay, man,” the mustache cop said. “I'll give you a ride over there.”

“No!” I yelled. I ran my hands through my hair for a second while I tried to think straight.

“Let us help you out,” he said.

“I don't need your help,” I shouted, and then took off. I ran all the way to the hospital. I
didn't
need their help. I didn't need a ride and I didn't need anybody to tell me how okay it was all going to be.

It
wasn't
okayâit was as messed up as anything could be, and it was all my fault.

I want a big brother.

One that's better at being one than I am.

While I was running to the hospital, pictures flashed in my headâMikey throwing a rock into that hole, Mikey tossing a bottle in the air, Mikey bleeding. The ambulance taking him to the hospital, the cops looking at me, my little brother in a casket.

I found the emergency room. A nurse pointed out where Mikey was and told me I couldn't see him yet. There was a curtain around him, and all I could see were feet moving under it. Strangers were poking at my brother, and all I could do was stand on the other side of it all. All I could see were their shoes. All I could do was stand there looking stupid.

I guess I
was
stupid. I was too stupid to pick my brother up on time. I was too stupid to wear a watch.

I was biting on my thumbnail, wishing I could at least light a Marlboro.

A nurse walked by and told me to tie my shoes. “You're going to hurt yourself,” she said.

Too late for that. I kept biting my nail and watching the shoes behind the curtain.

Then I heard Mikey's voice. Words weren't coming out of him, but he was trying to say something.

“Welcome back, sir,” I heard a guy say.

I pushed the curtain to the side and went over to him.

“You need to wait out there,” a nurse said.

“No. It's okay,” the doctor guy said, smiling. I don't know what the hell he had to smile about.

“Are you a relative?” he asked. My mother wasn't there yet. Maybe that's why the doc let me in.

“I'm his brother.”

I couldn't stop looking at Mikey, but he wasn't looking back. He was moving his head from side to side a little. I could tell he was really hurting. The doctor flashed a light in his eyes and felt behind his neck.

“Looks like Michael here played a little too hard today. He needs to learn to throw baseballs and footballs, not bottles. Maybe you could work on that with him. We'll keep him here a bit for observation. He seems to have suffered a concussion and has some pretty nasty lacerations to the left side of his head.”

I looked at him real quick, nodded, then looked back at Mikey.

“Your parents are on their way?”

“My mother is coming.”

“I'll look for her in a few then.” He gave my arm a hit with the flat of his hand. “Don't look so scared. He's okay this time. We just have to make sure there isn't a
next
time. Maybe that terrific throwing arm of his could be put to better use.”

He smiled again, then took off down the hall, leaving me alone with Mikey.

The kid looked so little. His feet hardly reached the middle of the gurney. His hair was all smashed down and I could see dried-up blood on his forehead and by his ear.

“Hey,” I said. It was the best I could come up with. I wasn't sure what to do and I sure as hell didn't know what to say.

“You okay?” I asked.

He still had his eyes closed, but he stopped moving his head back and forth.

He said something real low. I couldn't hear him, so I put my head next to his and asked him to repeat it.

“You didn't come,” he said. “I fell. You didn't come.”

I should have said I was sorry.

I should have said something. Maybe I would have if my mother hadn't run in crying her eyes out.

I want to be as far away from me as I can get.

She ran right past me. Hell, she almost knocked me down getting to him. Over and over again she put her hands on his cheeks, rubbed his head, kissed him. She kept saying
poor baby, my poor baby.

I got out of their way.

I went down the hall to the pay phone. I put a quarter in the slot and started dialing Johnny's number. Then I remembered he wasn't around.

I thought about who else I could call. Slayer was gone too. I didn't know Jenna's number, but I really didn't want to tell her about all this anyway.

The only other number I knew was Claire's from dialing it so much in Giraldi's office. It was one of those real easy numbers to remember. Still, I wasn't calling the shrink.

I hit the coin return and took my quarter back.

I checked my pocket for what I was looking for.

More change.

I remember when my mother looked at me as if she loved me.

Now she can't even look at me.

Mom was still in with Mikey. She was pushing the hair off his forehead and wiping tears off her face. I felt like crap. I was the one who should have been lying in that hospital bed, not Mikey. I did this. I was the one who wasn't there to pick him up. I was the reason why Mom couldn't stop crying. I was the loser.

“They're thinking they might bring him to a room,” Mom said. She didn't look at me. I wouldn't want to look at me either. “Stay with him a minute while I go find a nurse.”

She went to the other side of the curtain and I watched her feet walk away.

“Mikey?” I said.

He didn't answer. He didn't move. Maybe he was asleep.

I heard my mother talking to some nurse.

I went over to Mikey and took his hand for a second. I had something to give him. I put it in his palm and closed his fingers around it.

“I left a message on the answering machine for your father,” Mom said, coming back in. “But he never checks that thing, so you should go home and tell him about Mikey.”

What was I going to tell him? That his son stuffed his scotch bottles in his backpack that morning? That he tossed them up as high as he could over a big hole but one of them smashed into his head? I should tell him that?

No. That wasn't what she meant. That wasn't the family way. I was supposed to just tell him there was an accident and that Mikey was in the hospital. That was what I was supposed to say.

Why couldn't she call him back and tell him herself? Maybe she just wanted me out of thereâcouldn't stand my face anymore.

I nodded, and waited for a half a second to see if she was going to give me cab fare.

She didn't.

“See you later, Bugs,” I said, and pushed his hand under the sheet.

It looked as if he was having a hard time keeping his fingers around that bag of M&M's I gave him.

I want my life to melt in my mouthânot in my hands.

Officer Ross was in the hospital parking lot, writing something in his notepad. “What are
you
doing here?” he asked me.

“Hey,” I said, and kept walking.

“That's it? Hey? After I covered for you twice, all I get is
hey
?”

I stopped walking and shoved my hands in the front pockets of my jeans. I had no idea what the guy wanted, but whatever it was, I didn't have it to give.

“How about, Hello, Officer Ross. How are you today?”

How about, Go to hell, Officer Ross. I'm in a hurry.

“How's it going?” I asked.

“Busy dayâjust finished following up a call on a hit and run accident. I don't think the old guy's going to make it.”

“That's hard,” I said. “Listen, I got to get going. Catch ya later.”

“Hold on. I told you why
I
was here. Why are
you
?”

He wasn't going to let up on me until I told him. I blew some hair off my forehead and stopped myself from rolling my eyes.

“My brother got hurt. He's in the emergency room.”

He took a step over to me so we were almost toe-to-toe.

“Is he all right? What happened?”

“He was just screwing around, that's all. Hurt his head.”

He squinted his eyes, then put his notepad in his pocket. “Your brother the one they picked up at the elementary school tossing bottles?”

I nodded.

“Why do you think he was doing that?”

“I don't know. Pretty stupid, huh?”

“Must have made sense to him.” Ross started chewing some gum from a pack in his pocket. “Want a piece?”

My mouth was dry. That stick of gum was the first thing anybody had offered me all day. I took it.

“Where you headed? Home?”

I nodded.

“I know the way. Get in.”

He walked over to his patrol car and didn't wait for me to answer him. I was too out of it to put up a fight and way too tired to walk home.

This time I got to sit in the front seat and I didn't have to wear the steel bracelets. I was just hoping he wasn't going to try and talk the whole way there.

He didn't. I was surprised. Voices blasted from his police radio and static kept crackling through the speakers. He chewed his gum and kept his eyes on the road.

He didn't say anything until we got in front of my house. He put the car in park and turned the radio down.

I looked at my house. My father's car was in the driveway.

“Maybe this thing your brother did was his way of saying something.”

“I don't know,” I said.

“He could have been seriously hurt. He could have killed himself if that bottle had hit him right.”

I'd already thought of that.

“You don't think he wanted to hurt himself, do you?”

I shook my head.

“You've been getting into your own set of trouble lately, and I got to tell you: If you don't pull things together you're not going to be able to keep a very good eye on your brother.”

“Why is that my job?”

“I bet it feels like a pretty
big
job sometimesâespecially when you're doing it by yourself.”

“I don't have a big brother to watch
my
back.”

“Think it would make a difference for you if you did? Think maybe you wouldn't be getting as many black eyes, bad grades, scrapes with the law? Think you wouldn't be drinking or getting high?”

I stared out the window.

“All I'm saying, Pip, is that if you don't want your brother feeling like you do when
he's
sixteen, you'd better figure out a way to watch your own back and get yourself cleaned up.”

I opened the car door and got out. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Pip. Maybe you should put something on those handsâsome antibacterial stuff or something.”

I shut the car door just when he was asking me how I'd cut them.

BOOK: Bottled Up

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