The First Stone (17 page)

“I was skydiving. My parachute didn't open.”

“You're shittin' me.” It was out of his mouth before he realized he'd said it. “I mean—”

Brett laughed. “No, I'm not shitting you. Actually, it was my first time skydiving. Sam, that's my guy, he warned me not to but I'd always wanted to try it, so I paid to take a course. On the last day everybody got one jump. Some luck, eh? My only jump and the chute doesn't open.”

Reef remembered something he'd seen in a movie. “Ain't there another parachute?” he asked.

“The reserve, yeah. It got tangled in my lines.”

Reef shook his head slowly, stopped pushing the wheelchair and moved around in front of the girl. “Christ,” he breathed. “What was it like?”

“The falling or the landing?”

Jesus!
“Well, uh, both.”

“At first I thought, ‘This isn't happening to me.' You know, like those nightmares you have and you wake up drenched in sweat?”

Reef nodded. He'd had lots of nightmares like that when he was younger. And a few since the hearing. Since seeing those pictures.

“Then I panicked. Forgot
everything
I learned in the course.”

“No shit.”

“I almost did that, too. Which, when you think of it, might actually have made for a softer landing.”

Reef grinned. The chick had balls. Big ones. “Then what?” he asked.

“Then I got myself under control and started trying all the things we'd been taught. Which didn't work.” She shrugged. “I found out later that what happened to me was just fluky. The main chute almost always works. And on the off chance it doesn't, the reserve takes over with no problem. It was just a weird combination of events. But hey, I guess when you jump out of an airplane you should be
ready
for weird, right?”

“Fuckin' right!” he exclaimed, then remembered where he was.

It was nearly noon when Reef returned Brett to the sixth floor. They found Carly, who thanked him for “keeping the Turner Terror occupied and making the hallways safe for the rest of us.” She gave him a lunch voucher and told him to grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria. “You know where that is?” she asked.

“First floor, right?”

Carly smiled. “You learn fast. You're gonna work out just fine here, Reef.”

Reef flushed. That was the third time that morning he'd turned red for some reason or other. Wouldn't Scar have loved to see that, he thought, then realized that was the second time she had come to mind that day. For a moment he wondered where Scar was, what she was doing.

“Well, Reef,” said Brett. “I was looking forward to seeing more of you, but there's little chance of that now.”

He looked at her. “Why not?”

She nodded at the lunch voucher. “Carly's sending you to the cafeteria. Clearly the woman is trying to kill you.”

The nurse raised her clipboard threateningly and Brett wheeled around and sped down the hall. “Nice meetin' you, Reef,” she called over her shoulder before disappearing into her room.

“So, how was your first day?” Colville asked when Reef opened the door and slid into the truck.

Reef didn't answer right away. Finally, “Okay.”

Colville pulled the truck out onto Winter Street, came to the lights on Spring Garden Road and turnedright, heading down toward the harbor. “What you expected?” he asked.

“You want a play-by-play?” asked Reef. “You think maybe I should take a video camera next time and tape it for the sharin' sessions?”

Colville didn't say anything for a bit. Satisfied, Reef watched the city slide by. Warm air rushed through the open windows, and mingled with the traffic fumes were the undeniable smells of midsummer. Reef thought about Bigger and Jink, wondered what they were doing on such a nice day. Not wheelin' gimps around, that was for damned sure. Or reading to vegetables, which was how he'd spent the afternoon.

“You have some visitors coming later,” Colville said.

Reef turned. “Whaddya mean, visitors?”

“Friends of yours. Jim, Scar and … Bigger?”

“Jink.”

“What?”

Reef breathed a loud, derisive sigh. “Not Jim.
Jink.”

“Oh.”

They drove in silence, and before long Colville's truck pulled onto the span of the Murray MacKay Bridge. He could have taken the MacDonald Bridge, but once on the Dartmouth side of the Murray MacKay, it was only a couple minutes to the 118 and then a straight haul to Waverley. In a moment they were high above the water, and Reef could see dozens of sailboats dotting the Bedford Basin to the west and, beyond that, outbound vehicles lined up on Magazine Hill. People playing, working, living their lives.

“Thought I wasn't allowed to have visitors,” he said finally.

Traffic on the span was heavy and a blue Grand Am cut in ahead of them, forcing Colville to brake hard to keep from rear-ending it. To Reef's surprise, Colville showed no impatience, didn't even honk his horn.

“Not at the beginning,” Colville agreed. “And no unsupervised visits for the first six months. But I thought it might be good for you to see them. I talked to your social worker about it and he agreed.”

Reef mulled that over, knew somehow that his continued refusal to join in the nightly whine-and-whimper was part of this. As if bringing his friends in would get him to open up, make him—how did Colville put it?—more likely to “disclose.” Such bullshit.

“Anyway, Greg offered to bring them over this evening for a bit. I told him I thought you'd earned it.” When Reef snorted disdainfully, Colville continued, “Look, if you don't want to see them, just say the word.”

Reef turned away, looked east down the harbor past the shipyards, the MacDonald Bridge, MacNab's and George's Islands, the Atlantic Ocean beyond them all. Even now, he could see the bank of offshore fog moving in. “S'okay,” he said.

The truth was, though, it didn't
feel
okay, though he wouldn't let Colville know that. For some reason, theidea of seeing his friends again suddenly made him uneasy. Maybe it was because he hadn't returned Scar's calls. Yeah. That was probably it.

He drummed his fingers on the door frame, watched as the water beneath them fell away and became land.

Leeza could hear Brett drumming her fingers on the arm of her wheelchair. Then again, louder this time.

Her eyes closed, Leeza ignored her, concentrated on riding out a spasm without grinding her teeth. Val had told her that sometimes patients respond to pain by clenching their jaws together, which just creates more problems later on. Leeza hadn't realized she'd been doing it until Val pointed it out. Now she had to break herself of the habit.

Brett began to hum. Something between a nursery rhyme and the national anthem. Badly.

“If you're doing that to get on my nerves, it's working,” Leeza said.

“Sorry.” Brett rolled her chair over beside Leeza's bed. “You asleep?”

“Certainly not
now,”
Leeza said dryly. “Exactly what is it about the concept of resting that you don't understand?”

“Meeeowwww,” said Brett. “Aren't we in a great mood.”

Leeza sighed and opened her eyes. “We can't all be as bubbly as you, now can we?”

It was Brett's turn to sigh. “Cripes, Leeza. After three weeks, you'd think you'd get tired of the ‘poor me' routine.”

Leeza closed her eyes again, but not to shut out her roommate, as Brett probably thought. Squeezing her eyelids tight was the only way she could keep the tears from slipping out. Tears that had become more and more frequent in the last few days. Brett had been at the rehab several weeks before Leeza arrived, so she'd had more time to get used to it all. Waking up to the pain every day, enduring the agony of physio, coping with the loss of freedom to move around the way she once had, even putting up with the humiliation of the damn catheter—all these were bad enough. But for Leeza, these weren't even the worst of it. It was seeing every day the wreckage that had once been her body.

Of course, that part was difficult for anyone, but as Dr. Dan had pointed out to her earlier that week, it was even harder for young people. “Body image is many times more important to a teenager than to someone my age,” he'd told her during an examination. Leeza had been crying when he'd arrived, and he'd explained that everything she was feeling was perfectly normal. “Teenagers who've had debilitating injuries worry about how strangers will react to them. They worry about not being accepted by their peers, about not being attractive to the opposite sex.”

He'd waited a moment, allowing his acknowledgement of her fears to register before continuing. “Andthis psychological trauma is compounded even more by the fact that young people don't have the same life experiences they can draw on to put their injuries into perspective.” At this, Leeza had sobbed even louder. “I know you've had a rough time this past year, Leeza. The loss of your sister was a terrible thing, and I'm not trying to diminish that.” He'd given her a moment to realize this was true. Then, “Do you remember that first day when I said your youth was an advantage, that you would heal faster than an older person?” Not waiting for an answer, he'd continued, “Youth can be a double-edged sword. Yes, you'll heal faster. But for young people, injuries like yours seem more traumatic and long-lasting than they would for an older person. The advantage of age is that older people have been through so much more in their lives. They realize that, although this is terrible, it's not as devastating as this thing that happened ten years ago or that thing that happened twenty years ago.”

All of this made sense to Leeza, but it was, nonetheless, difficult not seeing the improvement she saw in those around her. The doctor had told her there would be periods during her rehabilitation when she would plateau, but these periods would eventually pass. She just had to be patient. Understanding that and accepting it, however, were two different things. As the days turned into weeks, she'd found herself becoming more withdrawn, less willing to involve herself with life on the sixth floor. Every free moment she seemed to spendnapping. Even visits with Jen and Robin weren't enough to pull her out of her funk. They had come by a few times after her mother had called them, but they hadn't stayed long. And Leeza could understand why—it was painful trying to make conversation when they had nothing in common. Leeza's days were one therapy after another and trying to cope with pain. Theirs were filled with summer jobs, shopping, afternoons at the beach, new boyfriends.

Of course, her parents still came every day. That is, her mother did, sometimes even twice, despite the fact that it took time away from the decorating work she contracted. Being self-employed made it easier for her to get away, unlike Jack, whose work, she said, was the reason he hadn't visited much. It seemed important to her that Leeza believe the lie, so she pretended for a while that she did. Now, even pretending seemed like too much effort. What was the point?

“So, you wanna know my news?”

Leeza opened her eyes again to see Brett still parked by her bed. “You finally killed someone with that wheelchair of yours.” she said humorlessly.

“No, even better.”

“You're sick.”

“And you're a pissant, but I'm not holding that against you. C'mon. Guess.”

Leeza automatically clenched her teeth, then forced them apart as she rode another spasm to its end. “I don't feel like guessing.”

Brett sighed, then moved even closer to the bed. “Okay, you dragged it out of me. Fresh meat.” she said.

Leeza stared at her blankly. “You want to talk to me about
food?”

“No, stupid. We had a
male
on the floor today.”

“How old? Eighty? Ninety?”

“I said
fresh
meat, didn't I? He's about your age, I think.”

“Another patient?”

“No, that's the best part. He's a volunteer. Nongimp. Has the use of all his extremities. And,” she narrowed her eyes, “mighty fine-looking extremities they are, too.”

Now it was Leeza's eyes that widened. “Aren't you almost a married woman? How'd you like Sam to find out you've been checkin' out other guys?” She'd met Brett's boyfriend the weekend before, and Brett had shown nearly everyone in the hospital the engagement ring Sam had given her. “He proposed in the cafeteria,” she'd gushed to Carly and Leeza later. “Got down on his knee and everything.” Sam had wanted to set the date right then, but Brett wasn't making any plans until she got back on her feet. “I'm
walkin'
down that aisle,” she'd told them. Carly, of course, had said she was relieved to hear it: “I wouldn't want to read in the wedding announcements about a bunch of bridesmaids being mowed down by a wheelchair.”

Brett made a face now at Leeza. “It's not me I was checkin' him out for. stupid. It's
you!”