Riders (Riders, #1)(6)

From the second I woke up, I was so disoriented that I didn’t recognize my own room. I remember thinking the desk and the surfboard hanging over the window looked familiar before I realized they were actually mine. And my body felt strange. Not how I expected for being so busted up. I had air casts on my left leg and arm—I’d fallen on that side—but I didn’t feel any pain. My muscles only felt swollen, like they’d been stuffed with cotton balls. I chalked that up to all the pain meds I’d been taking.

Another strange thing about that morning was being alone. For days I’d been under the constant care of doctors and nurses at Walter Reed, then during my transfer home. Before that I’d been surrounded by guys all the time, in a nonstop flow of activity. You could call RASP a very dynamic environment. But that day in my room all I heard was the far-off hum of Highway 1. I was hyperaware of not having anywhere to be for the first time in months, so I just stayed there for a while, staring at the stripes of sunshine on my window blinds, absorbing my new situation.

Mom hadn’t moved anything in my room since I’d left home. My desk was still crowded with baseball trophies. My camping gear and backpacks were still piled in the corner. My graduation cap and gown were still thrown over the back of my chair. Everything looked too flimsy and bright. Like toys compared to the gear I’d been using in the Army.

After a minute or two, I rallied the courage to take a look at myself. My injuries could have definitely been worse but they were no cakewalk, either. Beneath the air casts and my clothes, I knew I was black-and-blue. Stitched up like a quilt. A real mess. Once the swelling went down, it was possible I’d need surgeries in my arm, wrist, and leg, followed by months of rehab before I could even think about getting back to Fort Benning. I’d been told at Walter Reed that could all take up to a year, but I’d refused to consider what that really meant in front of my mom and the doctors. Now I did, and it just about killed me.

I don’t expect you to understand this but enlisting in the Army, it was … um. It was a really good thing for me. I’d been in hell since my dad died. But RASP had turned things around for me. It was something positive when I’d needed it, and lying on my bed that morning, I couldn’t accept the setback I’d just been dealt. That I was going to miss a year while I healed. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go back to how I’d been before.

As that sank in, anger moved through me like nothing I’d ever felt before. A feeling way bigger than frustration or disappointment. It was rage. Rage that felt like heat inside me, a fever to the millionth degree. So much it seemed measurable, like if you had the right lens, the right equipment, you’d see thermal waves in the air around me.

I was on strict orders not to move unless absolutely necessary. Parts of my femur had shattered and had only just been set. Right then, I couldn’t have cared less. With that anger sizzling inside me, I couldn’t lay there any longer.

I shifted to the edge of the bed, slid my legs off the mattress, and sat up. A head rush hit me hard, my pulse a shrill cry in my ears, and the room carouseled around me, but I knew there’d be more. I braced myself for the pain I knew was coming.

It never did. Aside from dizziness and anger that felt like burning cordite inside me, I felt okay. My left arm and leg felt puffy and a little numb, but that was all.

My mom had left a note on my bedside table beneath a glass of water and my bottles of pain meds—a pharmacy’s worth. She was on a quick run to the grocery store. I was supposed to take my next doses as soon as I woke up because I was already two hours late. She’d also left my crutches leaning against the wall. I passed on the drugs, grabbed a crutch for my healthy arm, and stood.

Still fine.

I kept going.

To walk with only one side of my body, I had to drag my crutch in a half circle ahead of me, then step, then drag, then step, sort of like a human compass. I figured that out as I left my room and made my way into our short hallway, past the pictures of me and my twin sister, Anna, playing naked on the beach as babies, then me with braces and zits in Little League uniforms, then me with braces and zits before junior prom. I attribute most of my mental toughness to growing up walking that hallway day after day.

I gave myself a goal to get to the front door because setting goals is how I do things and I needed to keep moving. I needed to feel like I could still get around on my own. If I could just get past the front door, it’d be a sign that I was back in control, and already recovering.

As I hobbled into our small living room, I noticed some moving boxes stacked under the window and stopped. Anna’s painting of the ocean had been taken down from its spot above the couch and leaned against the wall. Our bookshelf was empty except for two framed photos. One of my dad kneeling by a swordfish on his best friend’s fishing boat, the other of me as a scrawny-ass kid riding a two-foot wave like I was the king of everything.

The signs were all there. We were selling the house.

I hadn’t expected that, though I should’ve. My mom managed a seafood restaurant by the harbor. She made an okay living but she was paying for Anna’s college. I tried to help. I gave her as much as I could from my Army paychecks, but it wasn’t much. Without my dad’s income, I knew we couldn’t stay in our house—the house my dad had built—and give my sister a college education. Still. I hadn’t realized we were that close to selling. I hated that my mom had to handle this—the sale, a move, her life—alone. But I didn’t know how to help. How could I take some pressure off? Especially now that I was busted up?