Rounding Third (18 page)

Rob fell on his bed burying his head in his
pillow to muffle his sobs.

He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but he
was still clothed and his body wet with sweat and the pillow damp when he
awoke. The sun was up and shining through the window. There were sounds
downstairs. 

He lay in bed a moment and tried to clear his
head of the raging nightmares that failed to vanish when he awoke. His best
friend was in the hospital and his parents now knew he liked Josh. Really liked
Josh. They probably thought he was ___. Even now Rob could not bring himself to
say the word.

Those two pillars of horror brought him fully
awake. He sucked in a deep breath that exhaled as a cough. He felt awful and
was sure he had cried more than slept all night.  He stood and almost
immediately teetered over. He yanked off his shoes and socks and ripped off the
shirt that was stuck to his body. He hoped a warm shower would rinse away some
of the terrifying haze that engulfed him. Maybe when he was fully awake he’d
realize it had all been a bad dream. It had to be. There was no way Josh could
be hurt and their secret could be out.

There was a very soft knock at his door.
Someone had been listening for him to stir. His father’s voice said quietly,
“Bobby?”

He glanced at the clock. It was past time for
his parents and him to be at work. He crossed the room and opened the door. He
was still shirtless and shoeless. 

“Hi, Dad,” he said with a forced calm,
although his voice crashed and caught in his throat.

His father stepped into the room. His tone
was as slow and low as it had been the previous evening. “Your mother and I
didn’t get much sleep last night.” Rob nodded silently. “It’s going to take us
a while to...” he searched the wall as though he would find the right word
there. Not finding the right one, he threw out a few “...come to
terms...accept...comprehend...”

Rob again nodded. He waited for a minute for his father to go
on, but there was nothing further, so Rob said, “I need to see Josh.”

“We understand.
We’re very concerned also. We called the hospital. Josh was in surgery.”

“Surgery? For
what?”

“One of his eyes was badly damaged.” Mr.
Wardell winced. “He could lose the sight in it.” Queasy, Rob staggered to the
bed to sit down. “There was also internal bleeding. They had to go in to stop
it. In his...” Mr. Wardell paused. No words that he could find seemed to be
finding their way out. “They apparently kicked him, uh, down there.”

“Jesus,” Rob said as the room began to spin.

His father went on, still studying baseball
posters instead of looking at his son, “Josh made his way home and took an
overdose of Tylenol. They said he took everything in the medicine cabinet, but what
did the most damage was the Tylenol. Apparently a large dose does terrible
things to your liver. They had to stabilize him over night before they could
operate.”

Rob looked down and covered his mouth. He was
afraid he was going to vomit.

“Bobby, are you okay?” It was his mother’s
voice, but it took him a moment for him to look up and recognize her in his
doorway. “Did you tell him?” she asked her husband.

“Tell me what?” Rob asked.

His mother sat on the bed next to him and put
her arm around him. “Bobby,” she took another breath before she could go on.
“Bobby...”

“What?” he asked, still staring at his hands
in his lap.

“He has several broken ribs and his left
wrist is broken. It might be a few days until he can walk--his legs are very
badly bruised from where they kicked him.” Rob winced and his mother went on as
gently as possible. “Josh is in pretty bad shape. He has a broken nose, and a
broken orbital socket, you know, eye socket...” Rob looked up as his mother
drew a line with her finger around her eye. “...Broken cheek bone, concussion,
fifty-some stitches for various cuts, multiple bruises, particularly in the
groin area. There was internal bleeding, they did surgery to drain some
blood...”

    
“Enough. Is he going to be okay?”

    
“The good news is if the eye surgery goes okay, everything else should heal. He
should be okay in a few months.”

    
Rob thought, but did not say,
not quite
, knowing the internal scars may
take even longer to heal. Instead he asked, “Can I go to the hospital?”

    
“I’m not sure there’s much point,” his mother said. “I imagine he’ll be under
sedation most of the day.”

    
“I still want to be with him. See him.”

    
His mother nodded. “Get showered and your dad and I’ll be downstairs.”

    
The shower did nothing to wash away the pain. When Rob came downstairs, his
parents were at the kitchen table. His father had grip on a coffee cup so tight
that it looked like he might shatter the ceramic.

    
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Rob asked.

    
“I took the day off,” his father answered.

    
His mother added, “I called Mr. Trent and told him you were sick and I was
staying home to look after you. I’ll make it up next Monday. Sit down and I’ll
make you some breakfast.”

    
“Monday is Memorial Day,” Rob said. “They’re closed. And I’m not hungry, I just
want to go.”

“It’s Labor Day, but you’re right they’ll be
closed. And you have to eat something. I’ll call him later and tell him I’ll
make it up sometime.”

“If I eat
anything, I’ll throw up. I just want to go.”

His father barely
moved his head in the slightest of nods. His eyes met his son’s. “Several guys
beat up Josh because...he’s...I don’t want you going alone. I’ll drive you.”
Rob didn’t like the idea of the long drive to the hospital with his father, but
also knew it wasn’t a matter open to discussion. “If you go to see him, you
know what people will say about you. This is a small town. Someone will know,
and everyone will know.”

Rob hadn’t thought about that, and what it
would mean, but he also knew no matter what the consequences, he was in earnest
when he said, “I have to go.”

Like his father’s statement, this was not
something to be debated. “I’ll take him,” he said to his wife. “Why don’t you
wait for Meg to wake up? After last night she’ll be wondering where we are and
what’s going on.” 

Once they were in the SUV, his father cleared
his throat several times and then quietly asked, “Is it true?”

Rob hesitated too long before saying anything
and the silence answered the question.

His father drove a mile or two and then
cleared his throat several more times before he asked, “Are you sure?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I mean, I know you like Josh, he is a good
guy, but...”

Rob just stared out the window, first at farmland,
then at suburbs and strip malls, and couldn’t even begin to form an answer when
so many larger thoughts rocketed through his mind. He was still trying to grasp
the truth. Josh had tried to kill himself. If someone with as much going for
him as Josh couldn’t hold his own in this world, what chance did Rob have? Rob
glanced over at his father; his father’s clear discomfiture wasn’t helping. But
how could his father be surprised? His father wasn’t stupid. His whole life,
from deer hunting on, there had certainly been enough signs.

                       
23

“Do you want me to come up with you?” his
father asked at the hospital. Rob shook his head. “I’ll wait here,” his father
said pointing to a seat in the lobby.

Rob inquired at the reception desk, stepped
away, hesitated, then stepped back and hesitated again. The gray-haired woman
with a tiny face asked, “Was there something else?”

“Is he alone? Does he have visitors?” 

She replied, “No, he hasn’t had any
visitors.” 

Rob didn’t want to
see the Schlagels but found it odd that they weren’t in Josh’s room. He said
nothing and followed her directions to the room.

Rob pushed open the door and, in the first bed,
saw a young man who looked like he might be suffering from a tattoo overdose.
Except for his face, every part of his body not covered by the hospital gown
and sheets was covered with swirls of ink. Rob smiled and in return got a head
nod and a “Wassup!” that sounded much too cheerful for someone in a hospital.
As the man went back to watching a game show on the TV, Rob slowly inched
forward anxiously moving around the curtain toward the bed nearer the window.

This patient had half of his head bandaged,
including his left eye. His nose wore a large wad of bandages as well. His
mouth looked like a whole, peeled tomato, red and raw. The rest of his face was
disfigured and discolored.

Rob looked down at the number on the card the
woman had given him, sure that he had been given the wrong room. At the sound
of Rob’s step, the poor kid turned so his good eye could see who had entered.

The damage to the guy’s face was so grotesque
Rob wanted to run from the room, but standing this close to the bed he felt he
had to say something so he stammered, “Hi. I’m really sorry to disturb you.
They said my friend was in this room. I’m sorry.”

Rob took a step back to turn to leave and he
heard a small voice croak, “Rob.”

Suddenly Rob recognized the green glint in
the eye. His knees buckled and he grabbed the foot of the bed to steady
himself. His horrified reaction caused Josh to flinch and Rob instantly
regretted losing his composure.

He took a breath and tried to smile. “Hey,”
Rob said with the little cheer he could force into his voice.

Josh opened his mouth, but said nothing. Rob
could tell that the slightest movement of his face muscles pained him. 

“How ya doin’?” Rob asked as his voice broke
as it competed with the sob that tried to escape at the same time. He contorted
his face into his best goofy smile, the one that had never failed to get a
reaction. It failed this time. “Yeah, I know, stupid question, but I gotta say
somethin’.”

Josh just stared and blinked the one swollen
eye.

“Can you talk?” Rob asked quietly so the boy
in the next bed couldn’t hear. Josh nodded. Rob said, “It must have been
awful.”

“I survived,” Josh mumbled through his
swollen lips.

“Don’t talk if it hurts.”

Josh shrugged and the shrug seemed to hurt
worse than the talking. “The worst was when I realized my parents would find
out. After the guys finished with me, they just dumped me along 303 and I
stumbled home and took every pill in the medicine cabinet. You know my parents.
They’d kill me as soon as they found out, so I tried to do it myself.” Rob
struggled to think of what he could possibly say and Josh filled the silence.
Rob had to bend close to hear the whisper. “And couldn’t even do that right.
Mat found me and called 9-1-1. My parents would’ve liked it better if I’d
died.” He said it so dispassionately it was as though he were reciting sports
scores to someone who was not a fan.

Rob was shocked. For a few more minutes he
stared at Josh’s chest as it rose and fell under the faded blue hospital gown.
Josh’s green eye, so dazzling to Rob across a baseball diamond now blinked
dully.

Rob checked to make sure the curtain hid any
sight of them. Reaching out, Rob took Josh’s hand and held it gently for fear
of disturbing the IV tubes that fed his arm. He leaned in close so his head was
almost on the pillow, and he could smell Josh’s hair. 

“Joshua, do you love me?”

The wounded boy turned so his eye locked on
Rob’s. He seemed too startled to respond. “I love you, Josh. More than anything
in my life. More than I ever have anyone. I never understood why people much
cared about much of anything until you came along. If anything happened to you
I’d have no reason to go on living, either. I don’t want to kill myself. But if
you died, I would. So if you love me, please promise me you won’t ever try to
hurt yourself again.”

Josh reached up with non-tubed arm, pulled
Rob’s head to his, and kissed his hair.  The door to the room flew open
and Rob recoiled from the bed. A posse of teenagers descended on the next bed.
Rob turned his head to the window when one of the shaved heads stuck around the
curtain and said, “Wassup, homies?”

When the boy was gone, Rob went back to
Josh’s ear. “I love you. Get well. I want you back. I’ll come again as soon as
I can.”

He quickly kissed the moist, swollen cheek.
Josh grabbed and squeezed Rob’s hand in reply. Rob took a moment to compose
himself then quickly strode out of the room. “’Sup,” Rob said to the guys on
the way out of the room in his best imitation of street-wise hipness.