T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (46 page)

“I
am
in control,” I told them, even though they looked like they didn’t believe me. “I’m strong. I’m the strong one.”

Isaiah hunkered down at my side while Creed stared down at his brother. “Bear, I’ll stay here with him. Let Creed and Anna take you out for a bit. Keep your phone on you, and if anything changes, I’ll call you right away, okay?”

Something struck me as wrong. “Where’s the Kid?” I snapped at them. “The Kid was supposed to be with one of you. And who’s with Mrs. Paquinn? Did you just fucking leave her alone? You know she doesn’t like to be alone at night. Why isn’t anyone with her?” My chest started to heave.

“The Kid is with my parents and Dominic at the Green Monstrosity,” Anna said, trying to soothe me by brushing her hands through my hair. “And Alice and Jerry are with Mrs. Paquinn.”

“You know,” Creed said, still watching his brother, “you’re not the only one hurting here, Bear. You’re not the only one who’s breaking.” His words were quiet, his voice harsh. “You’re not the only one who stands to lose. Otter is
my
brother. Mrs. Paquinn is
my
friend. We all care about them, we all love them, so this isn’t just you. It’s never just you. You need to stop taking everything on. It’s what you
always
do. You can’t always be the strong one. You need to learn that this is about
all
of us.”

His words. His words were so like his brother’s the day he’d brought me to our new house for the first time. His words, while not exactly like Otter’s, carried the same cadence, the same lilt to the syllables. I looked up at him and saw the faded gold in green as he glanced at me. I couldn’t say no to that. Not when he looked so much like his brother that I felt torn apart.

“Five minutes,” I agreed against my better judgment.
They all looked relieved.

It was cold outside, a light mist falling, illuminated by the light posts in the parking lot. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up and over my head, the ring on my left hand scraping the shell of my ear. Anna was on my left, Creed on my right. Anna put her arm through mine, and after a moment, Creed did the same. We walked up and down the parking lot aisles, first one, then another, and then a third.

Finally: “I told Creed,” Anna said.

 

Fuck. I’d forgotten. With everything else, I’d forgotten. I was such an asshole. “Yeah?” was all I could think of to say.

 

“Yeah,” Creed sighed. “Kind of a clusterfuck, isn’t it?”

 

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Everything at once. We don’t do anything halfway, do we?”

 

Anna surprised me with a short bark of laughter. “No, we sure don’t.” We walked on. Then, “What are you guys going to do?”

Creed tensed next to me, but then so did Anna, so I stayed quiet. “Whatever we can,” Creed said. “It’s our responsibility. They’re my responsibility. I’m going to make sure that they’ll never want for anything.”

We stopped in the furthest corner of the parking lot, away from the hospital and people, away from the cars and lights. The rain started beating steadily on my hoodie. I stepped out of their grasps and took two steps forward, raising my face toward the sky, the cold rain trickling down my cheek, my mouth. I stuck out my tongue and caught a drop and sucked it in. It tasted like the ocean, salty and bitter. “Is that what you want?” I asked them, still watching the night.

“Yes,” Anna said. “It’s what we want.”

“I’m going to take the rest of the semester off,” Creed said, from somewhere to my right. “I’ll transfer to the U of O in Eugene. It’ll be closer, and I can commute, if necessary.”

“Have you told your parents?”

 

Hesitation. Then, “No,” Anna said. “We were going to wait to see… to see what happened here. It matters more. They matter more right now.”

Did they? I wanted to believe they did, that selfish part of me screaming of
course
they did, of
course
Otter and Mrs. Paquinn meant more. That dark voice went even deeper, whispering only Otter mattered. That if I had to choose, I would always pick him.
He
was the one that needed to wake up.
He
was the one I wanted.

She’s old
, it told me.
She’s lived a good life. But what about Otter? He’s so young. He’s got so much more to give. You lose her, it’ll crush you and chafe like mad, but if you lose him? If you lose him, you’ll lose everything
.

I pushed it away before I could study it further. I pushed it away because I knew it was right and that I was damned.

 

“No,” I said, feeling my gorge rise like liquid heat. “No. It all matters. Every piece of it. Every part of it.”

 

Liar,
it whispered.

I felt Creed’s hand drop on my shoulder. “You know we’ll get through this, right? You know that no matter what happens, we’ll still be here? This changes nothing.”

I couldn’t find it in my heart to correct him. “Sure,” I said. “And that kid of yours is going to have the best fucking family. We’ll make sure he knows every day for the rest of his life that he matters. He’ll never want for anything because we’ll give him everything. You’ll see. Otter will love him like he belongs to him, and Mrs. Paquinn will tell him things about UFOs and will teach him how to drive. Your parents will be the happiest fucking grandparents that ever lived. The Kid and Dominic will be his big brothers, and they’ll teach him everything you taught me. And you two….” I sighed. “You two will love him like he was the most awesome thing in the world. Because he will be.”

Anna cried quietly. “And what about you?” she asked. “What will you do?”

“Me?” That was easy. “I’ll make sure he knows that it doesn’t always matter where you come from. That even though we’re not blood, it doesn’t matter. He’ll belong to all of us, and we’ll belong to him.”

Anna launched herself at me and crashed into my arms. It was so familiar, her smell so much like home that I felt the ground roll gently beneath my feet. I put my forehead against hers and felt Creed press his head against ours, and we breathed each other in. “Him, huh?” Anna wept. “Already know it’s a boy?”

I laughed, for the first time in days. “You’ll see.”

T
HAT
night, the sixth night, I held Otter’s hand as the hospital grew quiet around us. I rubbed my thumb over his hand. I told him quietly how he was going to be an uncle, how I was surprised how quickly Creed had seemed to accept his place, how strong our Anna was. I told him that Mrs. Paquinn wasn’t doing so well, that I didn’t know how much longer she would last. I told him about his friends that’d come to see him, how Beer Me had stroked his face just once and had turned and walked out of the room. I told him how his parents looked so much older than they should. I told him how the Kid was putting on a brave face for me. I told him about my plans for our lives, how one day, we would look back on this moment with passing wonder, remembering how sad it all seemed to be, our memories unable to hold onto the sheer horror of it all.

I told him that we would grow old together, that I’d be there to make fun of him when he started to get fat and bald, when he’d get spots on his hands. I told him we’d build a little house by the beach, and we’d sit on the porch wrapped up in a blanket and that the world would pass us by and that it was okay. It was okay because we’d have lived it all already. We’d have seen everything there was to see and that we’d be content to just sit and watch. I’d feel his hand in mine just like it was now, and our rings would scrape together, faded and scratched from the toil of years. I’d look up into his eyes and while the rest might fade, the gold and green would be as bright as it’d always been, and it would be mine. It would be for me.

I laid my head down on his arm and watched him sleep.
Eventually, I was gone too.
That’s why I’m down, down on my knee!

O
N THE
seventh day, when he would normally rest, God finally made his decision.

 

It may not yet be legal, but it’s better than eating a beagle, so won’t you please marry me?
11. Where Bear Says Hello, Where Bear Says Good-bye
A
HAND
. A hand in my hair.

It’s kind and sweet, the touch gentle and loving. For a moment, I forget where I am, the scratch of the blanket against my cheek unfamiliar and rough. But that hand, that strong hand, is making me want to never move, to never have to lift my head again. It would be so easy, I know, to let my strength slide from me, to let my control go and just let the hand run through my hair. I moan quietly into the blanket, loath to open my eyes, to let this dream end and have the cold splash of reality thrust back at me. I don’t want that. I want to dream.

Reality encroaches. Where am I?
The hospital. Seven days. The hospital. Otter. Mrs. Paquinn. Otter. Otter.
I open my eyes and raise my head.

And he’s watching me with that gold and green. It’s so bright. It’s so bright, and he’s watching me like I’m the greatest thing he’s ever seen. He tries to smile but there’s a tube down his throat. But he tries. Oh, God, how he tries. He grimaces and brings his hand up and rubs it down over the tape on the sides of his mouth, the tube on his tongue. His eyes widen slightly and then come back to mine. There’s questions there, a knowledge that something has happened, but he doesn’t know what. He reaches out for me again and takes my left hand and rubs it urgently, like he’s trying to tell me something, something important. His thumb brushes over a piece of metal on my finger, and he freezes. He touches it again before lifting my hand up to hold it in front of his face. He focuses on the ring and squeezes his eyes shut. A single tear slips out and slides down his cheek.

And I realize I’m awake.
Oh, God. I’m awake.
And so is he.

He’s watching me again, like he can’t take his eyes off of me. There seems to be recognition there, certainly if he touched the ring, but I have to know. I have to be sure before I start screaming for help. I can feel it starting to bubble up my throat, and I know I only have a few seconds before I break, so I have to know.

I grip his hand tightly as I croak out, “Do you know me? Do you know who I am?”
He looks quizzical for a moment, and my heart starts to sink, and the words “brain damage” flash through my head like lightning, and I ache. My body aches, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because this is my man, and I will wear his ring because I will love him forever. I will—

He struggles to raise his hand from my grasp, and I let him go. He reaches up and cups my face, his eyes narrowed, almost like he’s angry. He rubs his finger clumsily across my nose and then pulls it away. One finger rises up and shakes as it points at me.
You.
The hand pulls up and points down at his chest.

“You and me?” I ask. “Yes, it’s you and me. You know that, right?”

He shakes his head, but it seems to be in frustration. He frowns around the tube in his throat and then points at me again and points back down at his chest. His finger stays there for a moment, drawing a shape. I watch, not understanding. I’m almost ready to start shouting for someone, anyone, and I know this is going to be the last moment that I can figure out what he is trying to say.

He knows this, somehow he can see this. His hand flashes out and grips mine and presses it against his chest, and I can feel it then, the heartbeat, the strong beat in his chest that vibrates up through my arm and becomes a roar in my ears. He lifts his hand up again and points at me and then drops his hand and presses mine against his chest.

And then it clicks. He knows me. He remembers me.
You are my heart
.

“Otter,” I say. “Otter.” I lay my head down against his chest, and his heart beats in my ear, and he cranes his neck to watch me, and it’s gold and it’s green and it’s him, and as my chest begins to hitch and as I begin to shatter into a million tiny pieces, I have a moment where I thank God, where I tell him that I knew he’d understood that I couldn’t make it without Otter, where I tell him that I don’t know how much longer I could have lasted. Otter watches me, a look of wonder in his eyes as he touches my face, brushing the tears from my cheeks, reaching down to scrape the ring with his hand.

I need to tell people. I need to tell everyone. I raise my head. “You don’t move,” I growl at him. “You don’t do a damn thing. You stay right here, just as you are. I need to get help.”

Otter rolls his eyes. Whatever. I raise his hand to my lips and kiss his knuckles before I’m running out of the room. I collide with a nurse and start babbling at her, and her eyes go wide so I think she gets the gist of what I’m trying to say, and she sits me down in a seat and turns and shouts something at the nurse’s station down the hall, and more people come and go into Otter’s room, and there’s movement and excited chatter, and I close my eyes and lean my head against the wall, suddenly exhausted. Suddenly so very, very tired. I don’t know how long I’m there, but then I hear my name.

I open my eyes and find Alice and Jerry standing in front of me, a look of terror on their faces. I want to tell them no, no, that it’s okay, that everything will be okay. I don’t know why they’re scared, but then I realize I’ve broken, and I’m weeping openly in the hallway.

“Happy,” I manage to say. “This is happy.” I point at my face. “Happy tears. He’s awake. He knows. He knows.”

Alice falls to her knees and lays her head in my lap as her body shakes while Jerry stares down at me in shock and disbelief. I put my hands in her hair, and I pet her soothingly, my mind already back to Otter, wondering when they’ll let me back in, when they’ll take that damn tube out of his throat because I need to hear him speak, need to hear him say my name just once. I want to take him home to the Green Monstrosity now and shut our bedroom door and climb in bed in the Cave of Otter and Bear and never leave again.

We are provided updates over the next hour, but I’m not allowed to return to the room, much to my annoyance. I stand up and pace back and forth, trying to get a peek over the shoulders of everyone in the room. Apparently only tall people work at Mercy Hospital, because I can’t see a damn thing. They tell us they’re removing his breathing tube and that it can be uncomfortable, and that they need to run some tests, that they would like to get him down to radiology as soon as possible. I’m sick of tests. I’m sick of tubes and machines. He knows who I am. That’s the only test I need.