What No One Else Can Hear (27 page)

That day I was having an unusually hard time guessing what he was drawing. What seemed to be windows were at the top of the paper, but they were at odd angles. Next Stevie drew what looked like a ladder.

I asked him if he was drawing a ladder, and he said, “Sort of.”

I continued to watch. A blurry shape appeared in the uppermost window. He wasn’t including enough detail to be sure it even
was
a person, and I certainly couldn’t tell who it was, but I was starting to guess.

“Is that Gary?” I asked, and Stevie just nodded.

He continued to draw the ladder at the correct angle to the building, but at weird angles to the paper. I wasn’t sure why that was. He usually centered things so nicely. Actually, Stevie was pretty obsessive about centering them and lining them up with the paper. I had seen him throw away pictures that were almost finished because they turned out to be a half inch off center. So this had me stumped, until Stevie started filling in the bottom right corner of the paper. Interlocking arms covered by what was probably a firefighter’s jacket. The knuckles were white as they grasped at bunches of jacket fabric, desperately trying to keep from losing their grip. What broke my heart was the final detail of the drawing.

Smaller hands grabbed at the fabric on the front of the arms. Stevie had been aware during the fall and had been trying to hold onto the firefighter just as desperately as the man was trying to hold on to him.

As always, as soon as Stevie finished drawing, he seemed to become disinterested in the picture.

“Steve, can I give this to Fireman Mike?”

“Sure, Bear,” he replied, but was on to another picture of that horrible night.

By the time Stevie finished drawing, I had ten pictures to distribute as I pleased. The fire truck from the point of view of the second-story window. Tops of heads and blurry figures standing on the ground, again from the same point of view. The stairwell at the moment the fire flashed into it—colored pencils had been used for that one. The inside of the ambulance, the ceiling of the hospital corridor, the inside of his hospital room. A coloring book with oversized crayons—done in black crayon and then scribbled out. And a picture of a child’s hand clasped in an adult’s, both hands lying on a hospital bed.

I decided to keep that last one, had half a mind to send the black-crayon one to Mr. Liston, and was still debating on what to do with the rest when Drew came in. He had slept late—for him that meant 7:00 a.m.—and then had worked at the center for a little while, even though it was his turn to be off. At the same time the nurse came in and told us our Fireman Mike was awake and when the nurse on that floor had asked if he’d like to see Stevie, he jumped at the chance.

So, in just a few minutes, we had managed to stuff Stevie into the hospital wheelchair without banging his broken leg into anything of consequence—Drew assured me that my stomach was really of no consequence. I stuck my tongue out at him, and Stevie laughed, allowing us just enough time to finish the transfer with no further mishap.

As we rolled into the firefighter’s room, we saw he had fallen asleep again, and I started moving Stevie backward to let the man rest. His wife was seated at his bedside and assured me her husband wouldn’t mind being awakened for this particular visitor. She said he had been asking about the boy from almost the first minute he had regained consciousness.

As she began to nudge the man awake, she introduced herself as Linda Patterson and her husband as Mike. He seemed a little disoriented at first, but when Linda told him Stevie was visiting, he looked around, locked eyes with Steve, and said sleepily, “Hey, there’s my flying squirrel.”

Mike’s jaws were wired shut because of a fracture in the lower one, but he still managed to speak intelligibly.

Stevie seemed to like the idea of being a flying squirrel, but after a moment’s thought, said, “I think I need more flying lessons.”

Mike laughed. “Naw, squirrel, you fly just fine. We both could use some work on our landings, though.”

W
E
SPENT
almost an hour in the firefighter’s room. Stevie handed Mike the picture he’d drawn for him, and they talked about that drawing and art in general.

It turned out Mike painted in his spare time. Landscapes mostly, but he had attempted the occasional portrait. Stevie told him about drawing lots of pictures of me, and Mike asked if Stevie ever drew himself. Steve said no, and they commiserated on how difficult a self-portrait was to draw, because the artist didn’t see himself very often. But since neither of them had ever attempted it, they decided they wouldn’t know for sure until they tried.

Mike told Stevie if he ever drew a picture of himself, he would love to have a copy. Stevie promised he would give him one—
if
he ever drew a self-portrait. He obviously doubted he ever would. And then, to my surprise, Stevie asked Mike to return the favor if the man ever drew a picture of himself
.

We all talked about nearly everything. Like everyone else in or around the city, both Linda and Mike knew something, if not everything, about the whole mess with the trial. We filled them in on the rest of it when they asked. The more time they spent with Stevie, the harder they were finding it to see the “damaged,” “fragile” child Mr. Liston kept speaking of, but aside from one quick mention of that fact, they must have decided to ignore the subject altogether.

I figured that was the best way for me to handle it too—for now, at least.

The nurse came by a couple of times, and I could tell she was thinking about running us out, but she must have reconsidered, because she never actually said anything.

Stevie and Fireman Mike had become fast friends. Mike gave me his address and phone number and asked me if they could keep in touch. After seeing Stevie’s beaming smile, I decided that would be good idea and vowed to make sure it happened.

At some point it became obvious, even to Stevie, that Mike needed to rest again. His speech was becoming a little slurred, and his eyes looked pained. Linda left us a moment to go ask the nurse if it was time for Mike’s meds. Stevie tried to push her chair to one side and seemed to want to move closer. I pulled it out of the way for him, and he rolled his wheelchair as close to the bed as possible. He obviously had something important to say to Mike.

“I’m really sorry I got you hurt.” His voice broke, as if he was suddenly fighting back tears.

Mike reached out and took one of Stevie’s hands. “Squirrel, it was not
your fault.” Stevie wasn’t buying it, so Mike continued. “You have trouble in crowded places, right? Especially emotional crowds? Did I understand that correctly?” That last part was directed at me, and I nodded. “Were you trying your hardest to keep everything together that night?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing, squirrel. Your best is all anyone can ask for.”

“My best needs to get better.”

Stevie still seemed unconvinced that this wasn’t his fault.

“Your best
is
getting better from what you both have told me. You didn’t used to be able to control things anywhere near this well, right?” Stevie nodded. “Now you’ve got your walls, and you’ve got this guy to help you.” He tilted his head in my direction. “All you need is practice. Your best will keep getting better and better. You’ll see.”

Stevie just continued to look at the mattress, still skeptical and too ashamed of himself to look his new friend in the eye. Mike attempted a different tactic. “Anyway, I’m the one who should be apologizing to you.”

That captured Stevie’s attention. “Why?”

“Hey, it’s my job to get you out of that building safely, and look at you. I let you break your leg.”

“You couldn’t help that. You tried to hold onto the ladder, but you just couldn’t, and you
did
hold me all the way down. You did your best to—”

I think Stevie realized he’d been had. He looked at Mike, still not quite persuaded to the firefighter’s point of view but able to look him in the eye for the first time since he rolled the chair over to the bed. Mike gave him a sly little smile and nodded, and Stevie smiled back ever so slightly.

It didn’t seem like he was ready to totally let himself off the hook, but he at least believed
Mike
didn’t blame him. That seemed to be enough for now.

Linda came back, followed by the nurse who finally told us to leave. Stevie gave Mike a gentle, awkward hug and a quiet thank-you, and we started back down to Stevie’s room. He seemed a little more at ease about the whole thing, but also more determined than I’d ever seen him.

I knew I could look forward to helping Stevie with some heavy-duty work on getting those emotional spikes under control.

D
REW
WAS
waiting back in Stevie’s room and asked how the visit went. Stevie launched into a long dissertation of exactly what was discussed in Mike’s room—almost word for word. One thing we had noticed, now that Stevie was talking to everyone, was that often he wouldn’t shut up. Drew just grinned and settled in to listen to the long—make that epic-length—retelling of the visit. I was glad Drew was a patient person.

Shortly after Stevie finished his story, his doctor stopped by with the results of the MRI. As I knew it would, it had come back clean—no indication of brain damage or anything that would warrant another night’s stay, so by 7:00 p.m. on Friday, two days after the fire, Stevie was finally getting out of the hospital and going home. He was so excited that even the thought of having to ride in the dreaded wheelchair didn’t dampen his spirits.

E
ARLIER
IN
the day, Drew and Dottie had made sure that Stevie’s room was as ready as it could be for his return that evening.

All the pictures had come down from the wall. Dottie had them all at home, but she said that the combined smoke smell was really pretty bad. Stevie didn’t seem to care. The pictures had been up because the staff had put them there, not because Stevie necessarily needed them to be, so that made the situation a little better.

Dottie told Stevie he would have to start drawing more pictures the next day so they could put more up on the walls. The staff had removed all the artwork from the entire hall. They gave some of it to the parents of the various artists, but they put others in the kids’ files or just took them home. Dottie saved the first picture Ryan had drawn and offered to give it to his parents but he had wanted Stevie to have it, so Dottie was keeping it at her house for him since it smelled like smoke too. Stevie said that was okay.

After having spent most of the day and all of the previous day in bed, Stevie didn’t want to go to bed so soon after arriving at the center. The staff said their schedule was shot anyway, so they allowed Stevie to stay up and watch TV for a little while. A few of the other kids wanted to do that also, so we ended up making popcorn and having a late-evening movie marathon.

The next day was Saturday, so the children wouldn’t have classes—not that they could have had them anyway, as that part of the center was still unusable. The staff resigned themselves to agonizing weeks of trying to get the kids back on schedule after things could return to normal. For now we just let them watch movies and eat popcorn.

“More?” Drew tilted the bag of popcorn toward me.

“No, I think I’ve had enough for now.” I meant popcorn, but Drew looked at me as if he thought I meant everything.

“Yeah.” He put his hand on my knee. “I think we’ve all had enough for a while.”

I covered his hand with mine, accepting the support he offered, but then I noticed Hank looking at us and quickly pushed at Drew’s hand, trying to get him to remove it. Instead, Drew looked at Hank with a “you have a problem with this?” look on his face. Hank just smiled and shook his head in answer to the unspoken question. Drew left his hand where it was.

He leaned over and whispered, “Do we need to talk about that later?”

I whispered back, “Nope, I’m good.”

We did talk about it later anyway, just to confirm that neither of us wanted to hide what we were to each other. We weren’t planning on making out in public, and we would remain professional at work—nothing beyond casual touches—but we weren’t going to worry about who found out. That was all I had needed, to make sure Drew was okay with it too. It had caught me by surprise, and we hadn’t talked about what to do if coworkers found out. Now I knew.

T
WO
MONTHS
came and went. Liston was on the campaign trail, and his lawyer made excuses for him about why he couldn’t return to town right now to sign the papers finalizing my adoption of Stevie. Kyle wasn’t thrilled, but he still had Liston’s written agreement that he would sign the papers at some point, so he felt we could wait a little longer, again, in the interest of letting Liston think he had the upper hand. I had a bad feeling about it and wouldn’t rest until I had the official adoption papers in my hot little hands, but, as Drew kept telling me, I couldn’t do anything about it right then anyway, so I might as well endeavor to put it out of my mind.

There had been plenty going on to help me do that.

Drew and I hung out with each other as much as we could, and he stayed the night more often than not. He had officially decided not to renew the contract on his apartment since he was hardly ever there anyway, and he moved permanently into Dottie’s guest room, at least on paper. That’s where he kept most of his belongings, and he had that space to himself if he should need it, but he was usually in my apartment.

We were still striving to put the center back together. It involved lots of work, but we were finally making progress. All the kids were back in their respective halls by then, and normalcy, if such a thing ever existed at the center, was starting to return.