The Year We Fell Down (7 page)

The question made my chest feel tight. The accident wasn’t something I liked to talk about. “Six weeks.”

His eyes widened. “That is a long time to eat really bad food.”

I nodded, even though the bad food wasn’t even in my top ten things to hate about the hospital.

“How much school did you miss?”

“Three months. I went back for the last few weeks. Luckily, I’d applied early action to Harkness. So my acceptance letter came before the accident.”

“But you graduated on time?”

“The school district sent me a tutor once I got into rehab.”

“That’s aggressive.”

“Is it?” I sighed. “There was nothing else to do with my free time. Better to learn a bunch of calculus equations than to just sit and think all day long.” I pointed at his knee. “Tell me you wouldn’t rather be at an economics lecture right now.”

He thought about it. “Sure, but only if I could keep the sandwich.” He opened the bag of chips and offered them to me. I took one and we crunched in silence for a minute. “What was it like going back to school in a wheelchair?”

I sighed. “Really? You’re going to make me talk about this?”

He spread his arms wide. “You don’t have to. But when in Rome…”

“It was just as dreadful as you’d think. People were very, very nice to me, of course. But that didn’t make it any less awful. I was a conversation stopper. When I’d roll by, nobody could stand to talk about the theme for prom, or whatever. They felt like they couldn’t.”

Hartley was quiet for a moment. “Well that sounds craptastic. Did you have to go back?”

“I didn’t
have
to — but being at home was even less fun. My parents were stressed out all the time. I thought if I went back off to school, they could, you know, back away from the ledge a little. I was sick of being under their microscope.” And now I was really sick of this topic. “Dana is out on her own ledge right now. Tomorrow is tap night.”

Hartley gave me another pale smile. “Yeah? If they spring me from this joint tomorrow, I’ll sit and wait up with you guys. We’ll have to play a few games of hockey, of course.”

“Naturally,” I agreed.

When I came in from the library just before nine the next night, Hartley’s room door stood open. I put my head in, finding him seated on his bed, his desk chair propped under his leg. “Hey, Callahan,” he said, tearing a piece of paper out of his notebook and balling it up.

“Hey yourself.” I studied him, taking in the pale face and the weary look in his eyes. “You don’t look so good.”

“Thanks for the compliment.” He shot the wadded paper toward the distant trashcan. It went in, of course. Because Hartley was Hartley.

I crutched further into the room. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“I will be. The second day is always the worst, right? I just need a good night’s sleep. You know how hospitals are.” He squinted up at me.

“Yeah, I do.” I maneuvered over to sit down next to him, careful not to bump him at all. “How many times did they wake you up to check your vitals?”

“Lost count.” He leaned down for his water bottle on the floor, and then drained it. “Callahan, would you mind refilling this for me?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.” I jumped up. Hooking the bottle’s strap over my finger, I crutched into Hartley’s bathroom and refilled it. “Can you take another dose of ibuprofen yet?” I asked, spotting the bottle on the sink.

“Hell, yes,” he said.

I took two tablets out of the bottle and tipped them into my pocket. Then I brought the water back over to him. It scared me to see Hartley in pain and vulnerable. He looked all wrong. Before I could stop myself, I reached up, pressing my palm against his face. Big brown eyes rose up to study me. “You don’t feel feverish,” I said quickly. “Post surgical infections can be scary.”

He closed his eyes, and let the weight of his head tip into my hand. For a long moment, I didn’t move. I knew I needed to pull away, even though I wanted to do just the opposite — to wrap my arms around him and hold on tight. If I thought he’d let me, I would have done it.

With a sigh, I slid my hand down to his shoulder and put the water bottle in his hand. When he straightened up, I fished the pills out of my pocket.

“Only two?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“But that’s the dose! How many would you usually take?”

“Three or four, of course.”

“The bottle says two, Hartley.”

“Tell you what, Callahan. I’ll sit on you, and then you can tell me why it makes sense for your dose to be the same as mine.” His mouth smiled, but his eyes were too tired to join in.

“You’re a pain in the ass, Hartley,” I said to cover my concern for him. I made the trip back to his bathroom for one more pill.

“Thank you,” he whispered when I came back. And after he’d swallowed all the tablets down, he leaned back on his hands, a grimace on his face. “What time is it?”

I checked my watch. “Just about nine.”

“We have to go sit with Dana,” he said.

I blinked. For a moment, I’d completely forgotten that it was supposed to be Dana’s big night. Very shortly, all the singing groups would begin running across the Freshman Yard, tapping their favorite First Years in a mad dash for the best singers. “Right. Are you sure you want to move?”

He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. “Good thing it’s just across the hall.”

“Hang on,” I said. “Let me set up first.”

I crutched back into my room, moved a bunch of books off the sofa, and lined up the coffee table for Hartley’s knee. Then, struck by inspiration, I nudged my wheelchair out my door, across the hall, and into Hartley’s room. This was perfect, because I’d gone to the Beaumont library (which had only three stairs) on my braces, and didn’t need it myself.

He was standing when I found him. “Check this out,” I said. “You don’t even have to walk.”

“Well, thanks,” he sighed. I kicked the chair around behind him, and he sat. Quickly, I adjusted the footrest out in front of him, raising his bad leg into the air. He put his hands on the wheels and pushed. “So this is how the world looks to Callahan,” he said, heading out the door.

“Dana, we’re here!” I said as we entered my common room. “And it’s nine. What do we do?”

She came skidding out of her bedroom. “We just wait.”

“Can I turn on the football game?” Hartley asked.

My roommate frowned. “On mute. I need to be able to hear them knock.”

Hartley was kind enough not to point out that since Dana had cranked our windows all the way open, and the door to the building was right outside, we’d never miss them. He picked up the remote in silence. When he found the football game, he backed my chair up near the couch and began fumbling for a way to transfer.

“Hey guys!” Bridger said, walking in with a bag of ice. “Special delivery. I’m gonna put it in your mini fridge, okay, bro?”

“Thanks, man. I could use some now, actually.”

Bridger disappeared, and Hartley turned his attention to the task of getting out of my wheelchair.

“You could just stay there,” I offered. “Keeps you from jostling it.”

Hartley considered this idea, and then shook his head. He stood up on his good leg and tipped his body onto the couch. “I’m better off here,” he said under his breath.

And he didn’t look me in the eye.

Without comment, I moved the wheelchair away from the sofa. But the truth was, it bothered me. Hartley obviously couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in a wheelchair when a passel of singing group girls entered the room. I’d always felt like the chair made me either pitiful or invisible, and Hartley had basically just agreed with me.

I was distracted from these distressing thoughts by the sound of pounding feet outside the window. Dana’s face froze with excitement.

Quickly, I crutched into the hallway and opened the outside door. Twelve girls in red T-shirts ran past me and into our room. They had linked arms and begun to sing Aretha Franklin’s
Respect
before I even made it back inside.

The second the song was over, the girls asked Dana if she wanted to become a member of the Merry Mellowtones. I held my breath, because I didn’t know what Dana was going to say. I knew this group wasn’t her first choice. On the other hand, they’d come for her early on, which meant they really cared.

“Maybe,” she said quickly. The allowable answers were “yes,” “no” and “maybe.” But if a group wanted to, they could give away your spot after ten p.m., which was just forty-five minutes away.

“We hope you’ll change that to a yes!” The pitch handed Dana a card with her phone number on it. Then they ran off to tap the next person on their list.

“Crumbs,” Dana grumbled when they’d gone. “Should I just have said yes?” She took up her position at the window again. “I really want Something Special,” she whispered. “But it’s kind of a stretch.”

“I want something special too, baby,” Hartley grinned, his hands behind his head.

“Hartley!” Dana yelled.

“I guess the pain relievers are kicking in,” I muttered.

Bridger came back into the room with a plastic bag full of ice, which Hartley eased onto his knee. But then his phone began to ring. Even the minimal shifting required to ease his phone out of his back pocket made Harley wince in pain. He checked the phone’s display and then silenced it.

“Awful late for Stacia to call, isn’t it?” Bridger asked.

Hartley gave a one-shouldered shrug. “She’s probably drunk dialing me from some club. I can’t deal with her and pain at the same time.”

Bridger snorted. “Remind me why you stay loyal to someone who doesn’t even know how to comfort a man in pain?”

“Leave it alone, Bridge.” Hartley’s voice was exhausted.

“Okay. But then don’t ride me for being a man-whore, when you make commitment look so appealing.” He sat down on the sofa.

“I don’t want to ride you, Bridge. You’re not my type.”

“But thanks for the visual,” Bridger returned, and I laughed.

Across the room, Dana seemed oblivious to the entire conversation. She worried the card in her hand and paced back and forth. Her own hope fairies were obviously working overtime, whispering words of encouragement, fighting off the dread.

“Hang in there, Dana,” Bridger said, pointing at the T.V. screen. “Dude, the volume?”

Hartley just shook his head.

For a long time, nothing happened, except the Patriots scored a touchdown. So at least we had that going for us. While the minutes crawled by, Dana tried alternately to wear a hole in our new rug and tatter the edges of the card the Merry Mellowtones had given her. Meanwhile, Hartley’s color improved, and he stopped making weird pain faces every time he moved.

And I was on some kind of emotional overload. It was hard to keep from hugging the both of them. Dana looked stressed out and forsaken. Clearly I’d made the right decision about rushing a singing group. Tap night was a kind of medieval self-torture, whereby the world notified you, within the span of an hour, just how desirable you were.

Who needed that? It was better to receive rejection in bite-sized slivers. I got regular doses every day — in the look on Hartley’s face at the idea of sitting in a wheelchair, or the Big Smiles I got from people who didn’t know what to say. I watched Dana’s crumbling bravado and asked myself, why buy problems when they’re giving them away for free?

Just as I began to wonder whether Dana could take any more, there was another pounding of feet outside, and every muscle in my roommate’s body tensed. There was a knock on the outside door. And then Bridger leapt up, running out of our room to let them in.

A gaggle of girls in purple T-shirts ran into our room, linked arms and began to sing the school fight song in four-part harmony. Dana’s face lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

“Dana, would you like to be the newest member of Something Special?” the pitch asked when the song ended.

“YES!” Dana shrieked.

The guys clapped, and I put my arms around Dana. She was actually shaking with joy.

Suddenly, the evening’s lessons tilted in a way that hurt my heart. Dana’s big risk had paid off. She’d found her tribe. The big bunch of purple-shirted girls hugging her now was not insubstantial. I smiled a face-cracking smile, and was so happy for her.

At the same time, it cost me.

Chapter Seven:
Your Poster Boy

—
Corey

By the time the leaves finished turning yellow and red, midterms were almost over. I’d aced my Spanish test, and limped through calculus. Economics was my favorite class now, since Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays always found me seated in the gimp section with Hartley. And after class it was off to our lunch in Commons.

The only dark spot in every week was Physical Therapy.

“How are we doing on the stairs these days?” Pat asked, as she always did.

“Fine. Slow.” For some reason, P.T. turned me into someone who spoke only in monosyllables.

“Let’s practice,” she said.