My Name Is River Blue (37 page)

I doubted that
she was okay with friendship. Still, Carlee really
had
changed, and her
personality was becoming as beautiful as the rest of her. "Carlee, I'm not
the boy you fell in love with. He doesn't live here anymore. Being a good
athlete was all I had going for me. I was a 'nobody' when we first met. Now I'm
less than that."

She stared
intently, and I was sure she saw my eyes glisten. She stood, moved closer to my
bed, and gently stroked her fingers through my hair.

"I once
heard that people are the sum total of their experiences,'" whispered Carlee.
"So after what you've been through, you aren't the same boy, and I'm not
the same girl, but people are always growing and changing in some way or
another. It's not important to me that you won't be a super star football
player anymore. Do you remember when I faked falling so that you would catch
me?"

"Yeah. Seventh
grade." How could I forget a scene that my mind had replayed a thousand
times?

"Mr. Miller
would tell me anything if I smiled the right way and leaned in close when I
asked him. I knew you were a foster kid from Tolley House, and I knew about
Stockwell. None of it mattered to me. You weren't even playing football then,
and I had no idea that you would become the best high school football player in
the country. I don't care that you're not as physically gifted as you were, or
that you won't be rich from playing pro football. When you held me in your arms
in that hall, I fell in love with you. I still love you, River, and I always
will."

I refused to
cry. I fought it. I fought it harder.

And then I
cried.

Carlee had never
seen me cry until that moment, and I cried for a long time while she held me with
her soft cheek pressed to my stubble. I cried because Ant died on me in his
Chevy and the world would forever be a darker place without him. I cried
because my dreams died the same night, and because I didn't want to be the
broken guy who
used
to be River Blue. I cried for all the time it took
for Carlee and me to grow into each other, and finally, I cried because I knew
that she truly loved me just as I was.

I don't know how
she managed to lean over me in such an awkward manner for as long as she did,
but she would not let me go until I was better. After drying my face with
tissues, she lightly kissed my lips, and soon our kisses were anything but
light, and far from platonic, as our tongues furiously explored with a passion
that was impossible to satisfy.

We were still
kissing twenty minutes later when Nurse Broome, a tall stick of a woman with no
chin and the flat nose of a boxer, came in to check my vitals. I had only seen
her twice. The nurses rotated and changed so much that I never knew any of them
well except for Jean Simmons, who was the youngest and prettiest of them all. I
really liked the way Jean did her job, and I never gave her a hard time as I
did the other nurses. What I didn't realize until much later was that my nurses
changed more often because I was occasionally uncooperative and even hostile. I
was probably one of those short straw patients.

Nurse Broome's tone
and body language warned me that she didn't like me. I got the message that she
intended to do her job and would not tolerate the same crap from me that I gave
the other nurses. She stood tall, her back straight as a board, while she
checked my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. When she noted the
information on my chart, I wondered exactly how high those numbers were right
after she interrupted Carlee and me.

After that
night, there was a good chance that anyone walking into my room at the hospital
or the rehab center would find Carlee and me kissing. After all, she was my girlfriend,
and it was a great way to pass the time. It even helped with my pain.

Nurse Marcia
Medlock, my friend from pediatrics, often stopped by to see me at the end of
her shift. She got along well with Carlee and was very happy for us. She agreed
with me that Carlee was good medicine.

***

In Tolley House,
I looked around my room and decided that I was finished packing for my move to
Deer Lake Farm the following morning. With my back and leg aching, I stretched
out on my bed to rest.

Since the
accident, almost everything required more effort, and I tired easily. Sitting
or standing in one place for more than fifteen minutes was not routine anymore.
Riding in a car was difficult for me since it applied more pressure to my lumbar
spine, which sent pain similar to an electrical shock shooting from my hip down
my left leg. Even the relatively short drive to Papa's farm was uncomfortable.

Tyler Thomas, my
thirteen-year-old roommate, brought two glasses of sweet iced tea into the room
and offered me one. I used the tea to help swallow two pain pills from my fob,
and at the same time, I knew that I was accepting his apology for invading my privacy
earlier in the day.

Tyler was always
considerate and did anything he could to help me. He had a severe case of hero
worship for me when I was QB1 for the Hawks, and my accident did little to
change his feelings. From the moment we became roommates on the day rehab
released me, he acted as if I were still important, and since I needed all of
the help I could get, I did nothing to discourage him.

"We're okay
now?" Tyler's shaggy blond hair almost covered his eyes. Jenny was going
to trim it for him that evening.

"Yeah,
Tyler. I'm just tired. This heat sucks and the packing wore me down."

"Is there
anything I can help you with? I mean I know I can carry your stuff down to your
car in the morning when you're ready, but is there anything I can do now?"

"I'm good. Are
you sure that you're finished with
your
packing? Isn't your uncle
supposed to pick you up by lunch tomorrow?" Tyler and I were the only set
of roommates that I could ever remember leaving the house on the same day.

His expression
soured. "Yeah, I'm done. I'll be ready, if I don't run away first."

It was ironic
that Tyler became my roommate because he was the same boy Papa asked me to help
during our discussion at the barn
party the night
of the accident. Tyler's story was similar to other foster kids I had known in
that he lost both parents before going to live with a grandparent in poor
health. In Tyler's case, he was eleven years old when his father died in
Afghanistan, and six months older when his mother died from an overdose of
depression medication. The boy lived with his paternal grandfather, a close
friend of Papa's, until the old man died of a heart attack while I was still in
the rehab center. His grandfather's farm was the same one that nestled up close
to the bottom of Henry's Hill.

It was unusual
for a kid who hadn't been in legal trouble to live at Tolley House, but Miss
Martin made an exception for two reasons. Tyler would only be there a short
time, and Miss Martin and Papa knew how much the boy liked me and thought it
might help both of us for him to room with me.

After his
grandfather died, social services took weeks to locate his uncle. The man lived
out of state, but he was moving back to Harper Springs, and Tyler was not happy
about the idea of living with him. The uncle, his mother's brother, was the
black sheep of the family and Tyler's only living adult relative. Tyler's
mother had told him that her brother was a deadbeat who couldn't keep a job. He
was often in trouble with the law and treated his wife and kids poorly. Tyler
thought that his uncle was only interested in being his guardian so that he
could control the money the boy's parents and grandfather left him. His
grandfather intended to appoint Papa as Tyler's guardian, but he died before he
made it legal.

"Tyler, why
don't you see how it goes, and if he mistreats you or does any funny stuff with
your grandpa's money, call Miss Martin and Papa," I advised. "Miss
Martin is a good caseworker, and since Papa was friends with your grandpa, I'm sure
he would do what he could for you."

"Yeah, maybe
Papa could help. I'll try living with my uncle, but if he's like my parents
said, I'm running."

"Well, at
least your uncle is coming back here to live instead of making you move."

"He's not
doing that for me," said Tyler. "He was moving here anyway. Probably
running from bill collectors or the cops."

The kid sounded
pitiful and I changed the subject. "Hey, I'm sorry for yelling at you
earlier, but you shouldn't nose around in other people's stuff."

"I'm sorry,
River. I wouldn't ever tell anyone your personal stuff, and I already knew
about everything but the nametag. There were some kind of reports, but I didn't
read them."

With the
exception of Ant, Tyler was the only one who had seen the "nametag"
since I was a little boy. Some people may have seen the blue baby blanket in a plastic
bag along with the photo album, but not the nametag, which I protected in a
plastic sleeve in the back of the album. The forms that Tyler saw were copies
of police and hospital reports concerning me when I was a baby. They were
recent additions that I obtained with Hal and Jenny's help after my eighteenth
birthday in December. There was also a bag of "get well" cards and
the floral cards from the flower arrangements people sent to my hospital room
after the accident. Jenny advised me that I should use the floral cards to
write "thank you" notes but so far, I had not.

I offered Tyler
a seat next to me on the side of my bed, which the younger boy gratefully
accepted as a sign that I had forgiven him. It was unusual for me to share
anything private, and I was almost as surprised as Tyler was, when I began to
explain what he had found while snooping through my things.

"Tyler, I
believe that my mother wrote the nametag you found. That and the little blue
blanket is all that I have of her. I'm what they call a 'foundling' and that
means that my mother abandoned me."

"I'm sorry,
River. That has to suck."

"It gets to
me sometimes," I admitted. "All my life, I have wondered why she
didn't want me. Sometimes I try to believe that she had a good reason to think
I would be better off with someone else. I look at her handwriting on the note
and try to figure out what kind of person she was. Once, I found an article on
handwriting analysis and studied the note for days trying to understand more
about her."

"She didn't
write much to go on," offered Tyler. "All it said was, 'My name is River
Blue.'"

"Yeah,
that's what it said, but if I ever had a birth certificate before she left me,
I doubt the name on it was River Blue. It wouldn't make sense for her to use my
real name since it would help the police find her. I'm not sure why she even
put the tag on me."

"Where did
she leave you?"

"In the
hospital here in town. In the pediatrics waiting room of all places. Someone
used a pay phone to call the pediatrics nurses' station and told them that
there was an abandoned baby boy in the waiting area. When a nurse went out to
check, she found me wrapped in that blue blanket with the tag on it. The nurse
still works there, and I met her for the first time when I had my appendix
operation a few years ago."

My little roommate
shook his head as if it were hard to believe. "And the cops couldn't find
out who left you there? Were you born in that hospital? If you were, they
should have figured out who was missing a baby."

"I may have
been born in a hospital but not that one and not one in our area. I was three
days old when my mother left me, and the authorities accounted for every boy
born in that hospital in the right timeframe. The police checked every hospital
in the surrounding counties and sent out inquiries over the state. They came up
with nothing that would help."

"It must
drive you nuts wondering who your parents are and why they gave you up,"
said Tyler.

"I would
like to know. I feel incomplete not knowing who my parents are. It's like I can
never truly know who I am without knowing who they are."

"I'm not
sure I understand, River."

"For
example, maybe my dad was a great athlete, and I inherited his genes, so I was
good at football. Maybe my mother has a health problem that I might inherit. I
always feel strange that I can't answer a doctor's questions about my family
history."

"Okay, I
see. Are you mad at your parents?"

"I have
experienced every emotion there is, Tyler."

"I have an
idea why your mother put a name on your blanket."

"Okay.
What's your idea?"

"I bet your
mother wanted a way to keep up with you, and counted on people using the name
she left. She might have just wanted to know if you were okay, or she could
have wanted a way to find you in case things changed, and she could claim
you."

At first, I
couldn't speak. Why had I never thought of the importance of my mother giving
the hospital a name for me? It was surely not my real name, so why would she
bother giving it unless it was a way to keep an eye on me. She gave me a name
because she
did
care about me. I shocked Tyler by hugging him around his
shoulders, and I instantly winced at the pain the sudden move caused my back.