Fragile Beasts (48 page)

I turn onto the road and I floor it. At least I feel like I’m flooring it. I watch the speedometer needle creep up to 40.

“Oh, God,” Kyle groans. “Please let me drive. Please. Please.”

I’ve never seen anyone so desperately upset in all my life. It goes entirely against my better judgment, but we are in a hurry.

“All right,” I tell him.

I pull over to the side of the road and get out of the car. It isn’t until I’m walking around to the passenger side that I realize I’m wearing nothing but a long white nightgown and a pair of old muddy hiking boots. My hair is down, not even caught up in a ponytail. I must look frightful.

Kyle pulls out at an alarming speed.

“Kyle, slow down. Watch where you’re going.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t think you do. There’s a curve up here.”

“I see it.”

“You better slow down.”

“Miss Jack! Shut up! Please!”

I’m about to scold him, then I see the tears streaming down his cheeks and the determination in his eyes, and I don’t say anything. I try to keep my comments to a minimum for the rest of the drive. I’m not sure how successful I am at this, but Kyle doesn’t feel the need to shout again, only to occasionally remind me that he knows what he’s doing.

I’ve never been to their house so I have no idea where we’re going. We drive through town, then head into empty countryside. We pass a few homes, a few farms, then turn off down a broken asphalt road.

I can barely make out anything in the distance but Kyle suddenly shouts, “There’s his truck. I can see it. It’s parked in front of our house.”

I fully expect him to speed up but instead he begins to slow down.

“What the hell? What’s going on?” he wonders then groans, “No way. I can’t believe it. We’re out of gas.”

“We can’t be,” I say automatically but without any proof to back me up.

The car rolls to a complete stop.

“This is Luis’s fault,” I say, but Kyle doesn’t hear me.

He’s already out of the car.

The door slams and I’m left sitting alone in the dark.

I
run.

I glance behind me once and see this apparition following me. I think it’s a ghost at first: a white billowing thing with white hair streaming out behind it. Then I realize it’s Miss Jack. She’s running, too.

I tear into our backyard, not thinking at all where I’m going or why, just letting my instincts carry me.

“Klint!” I call out. “Where are you?”

My eyes dart from the back porch to the sandbox to the swing set to Bill’s porch.

Suddenly, I see him and relief rushes through me until I realize what I’m seeing.

He’s sitting in the fork of the tree where our hideout used to be, holding a rope in his hands. One end is tied to a thick branch about ten feet off the ground and the other end is tied around his neck.

I run toward him, looking at him, trying to get him to look at me. I tell myself if he’ll only make eye contact with me, everything will be fine.

I’m wrong. He does look at me, but there’s no recognition in his gaze. There’s no life in his eyes at all.

He calmly swings down off the branch the way I’ve seen him do it so many times in the past. Effortlessly, fearlessly, with a born athlete’s grace. Only this time his feet don’t hit the ground. His body jerks at the end of the rope.

I know I scream. I know I make some inhuman howl, but I don’t hear it.

My knees give out on me and I collapse to the ground but I’m up again instantly, pulling my knife from my pocket.

He’s not dead. He’s flopping around like a hooked fish. His legs are pedaling.
His hands are clawing at the rope around his neck. But he can be saved. For now.

I grab him around the legs and try to hold him up.

He continues to convulse. A hideous hollow choking noise is coming from his throat. His eyes are wide open but not seeing. I can’t do anything for him. I try to get beneath him and shift his weight onto my shoulder so he can sit on me, but he keeps kicking me in the head. He’s jerking too much, and he weighs too much, more than he usually does. Dead weight, I think to myself and I start to scream.

Miss Jack is suddenly by my side, the expression of terror on her ashen face and the moans as she tries to catch her breath making her seem even more like a ghost than before.

“Hold him,” I beg her.

She tries to take my place. It’s not easy. She’s an old woman trying to do something a young man couldn’t do. She reaches up and grabs him around his hips and gets under him while he continues to kick and flail.

I scramble up the boards nailed into the trunk that used to be the stairs to our tree house, crawl out onto the branch, and start cutting through the rope.

I don’t know how long it takes. It seems like forever. It seems like I will never know a time where I won’t be sawing through a rope pulled taut from the sickening weight of my dying brother, listening to the sounds of him gagging for breath and Miss Jack whimpering in pain.

But even forever doesn’t really last forever.

The rope breaks, and Klint falls to the ground on top of Miss Jack.

I jump down and try to loosen the noose around his neck.

He’s seizing and choking. I don’t know how to help him. I take his hand, but he doesn’t squeeze back. I say his name over and over again. His eyes stay open and stare straight ahead. I don’t want to know what he’s seeing.

Miss Jack is lying on the ground, and she isn’t moving at all.

T
he first thing I see is two dozen yellow roses.

The second is a large smiling woman with short, bouncy brown curls in a neon pink smock covered in tiny blue cats.

I’d heard that modern-day nurses had dispensed with traditional white and now wore bright colors and busy patterns. I couldn’t understand why this would be true, but now I see that it must be part of a plan to make patients even more eager to recover and leave.

She walks over to me, beaming. Her name pin reads:
SANDI
.

“Well, look who’s decided to wake up. How are you feeling?”

“I’m not sure,” I answer her and try shifting in my bed, only to be stabbed by pain in seemingly every part of my body.

“You better take it easy,” she tells me. “We’re going to need to get you some pain medication. You’re pretty beat up.

“You’ve got a broken arm, a broken collarbone, and two bruised ribs,” she tells me cheerfully as she busies herself around my bed. “And look at this.”

She takes a hand mirror out of a drawer and holds it up to my face.

I gasp.

“Two beautiful shiners,” she gushes. “You look like you’ve been in a bar fight. My teenage sons would love to look like that.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t know why I’m here. I can’t remember anything, then suddenly I do.

It must show in my face because her own expression changes from perky to concerned, and she quickly takes my hand that isn’t in a cast.

“Don’t you worry. He’s fine.”

“Who?”

“Your grandson.”

“My grandson?”

“The boy you came in with. Is that why you looked so upset?”

“Yes,” I tell her and feel tears spring to my eyes. “He’s alive?”

“Very much so, honey.”

She pats my hand.

“He’s in his own room downstairs. Oh, here.”

She hands me a box of tissues.

“I know,” she says sympathetically. “It was a close call.”

“Can I see him?”

“I don’t see why not, but let’s check with your doctor first. I don’t know if he wants you up so soon.”

“I don’t care what my doctor says. I want to see him.”

“And you’ll find it pointless to argue with her,” Bert says as he comes walking into the room with more flowers. “She always gets her way.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Sandi says on her way out. “You’ll need a wheelchair.”

“Candace,” he sighs.

He lays the flowers on a table and pulls up a chair next to me.

“Words fail me. Of all the problems I envisioned you might encounter by taking in these boys, ending up battered in a hospital bed certainly wasn’t one of them.”

“Does the entire world know?”

“No one knows. Kyle called me last night, and I haven’t told anyone else yet. I assumed you’d want it that way.”

“My family?”

“No. I was going to call Cam today if you weren’t up to it.”

“Luis?”

“He’s been here by your side all night. I called him in New York, and he drove here straight from the airport. I finally convinced him this morning to go home and take a shower and change.”

“What are you smiling at?”

“The fact that he wasn’t here when you woke up, but I was,” he laughs. “He’s going to think I sent him away on purpose.”

I smile at the thought.

“Yes, I suppose he will. And what about Kyle? Where is he?”

“He spent the night with Klint.”

“Oh my God, Bert.”

The horror of last night descends upon me in a rush. Poor Kyle. Does a boy ever recover from witnessing something like that? And Klint? What is to become of him?

Bert pats my arm.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he tells me.

“Did Kyle tell you any of the details?” I ask him.

“No. Just that Klint tried to …,” he finds it hard to say the words, “to hang himself and you found him in time.”

“It’s too soon to talk about it now, but I’m going to need your professional help.” I feel some of my old energy returning and I try to sit up, but the pain is too much.

“I want to become their legal guardian while they’re still minors,” I continue, “and I want to make sure their mother isn’t allowed to have any contact with them.”

“That won’t be easy.”

“Believe me. We can make it happen.”

Sandi returns with a wheelchair and a syringe.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to put this in your IV, not your arm.”

She gives me the shot, then stands back with her hands on her ample hips and eyes me skeptically.

“Are you sure you want to try this already?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay, but you’re going to hurt.”

“I know.”

I say the words cavalierly but only because I’m not prepared for exactly how much I’m going to hurt.

Trying to get out of bed and into the wheelchair is by far the most physically painful thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I try not to let it show.

Once I’m securely in my seat, Sandi steps back from me, grinning.

“I hope you won’t take offense at this, Miss Jack, but I just gotta say it. You’re one tough old bird.”

I laugh.

“I’m not offended at all,” I say.

Bert stays behind, and Sandi wheels me to the elevator and then to the wing where Klint is staying.

I’m surprised at first when we push through the doors into the corridor and the walls are painted with rainbows and papered with posters of puppies and dinosaurs. The waiting room is filled with toys, and the TV is playing an animated Disney film.

It slipped my mind entirely that he’d be in the pediatric ward.

Sandi leaves me outside the door while she taps and sticks her head in his room.

“Hello, hon,” she chirps. “Do you feel up to a visitor?” I hear her ask him.

She comes back out smiling, props open the door, and wheels me in.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” she whispers to me as she departs.

Klint is sitting up in bed wearing blue pajamas. He’s drinking from a cup with a straw and looks heart-wrenchingly young.

His neck is an angry, raw mass of dark red and purple bruising, and the circles under his eyes make him look like he hasn’t slept in months, but otherwise, he appears to be a normal, living boy and that’s all I dared to hope for.

Kyle is fast asleep in a chair.

Klint’s eyes dart in my direction. They’re very blue against the pale skin of his careworn face.

“Hello, Klint.”

He stares back at me and then something so odd happens to his face, I almost can’t identify it at first.

The boy smiles.

“Hey, Miss Jack,” he says in a soft, cracked voice.

The smile grows bigger.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not funny, but you’re really beat up.”

I smile back at him.

“I hear I look like I’ve been in a bar fight.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding.

“I also hear it suits me.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

I glance at Kyle.

“How long has he been like that?”

“A while. Since I woke up.”

Kyle is slumped down in a hard plastic chair. His head has fallen forward on his chest. He reminds me of a wilting daisy when the flower becomes too heavy for the stem.

“It looks uncomfortable.”

“Yeah.”

“Did the two of you get to talk?”

“Yeah. I was conscious in the ambulance. You’re the one everybody thought was dead.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes. The only sound in the room is the sound of Kyle snoring. I’m not sure what the proper etiquette is for visiting with someone who less than twelve hours earlier had been trying to take his own life. What are the appropriate topics of conversation? Every idea I come up with I quickly discard. Everything seems either too frivolous or too serious.

I finally settle on asking him if he needs anything from home. Would he like Bert to bring him a favorite T-shirt or some of his
Sports Illustrated
magazines or a bologna sandwich?

I’m about to open my mouth to speak when I notice tears are silently rolling down his cheeks.

He notices me watching him.

“I made a mistake,” he says. “I don’t want to die.”

“I’m very glad to hear you say that, Klint.”

I reach out my hand to him, and he takes it.

“You’re a strong person,” I tell him, “and one of the problems with being a strong person is that other people think because you can handle most things, you can handle everything. And after a while, you start to believe it, too.”

He rubs his tears away by screwing his fists against his eyes, a gesture that makes him look younger still.

“Do you think you can handle everything?” he asks me.