Don’t Let Me Go(97)

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

But he definitely said it in that way that people say they’re fine when they’re not fine in any way. And by then the family had run out to help them. A nice older man, short and thick, a grandpa type of guy, who brought a handful of tissues, and a woman who might have been his daughter even though she was definitely grown to maybe middle age, and a girl who was a teenager.

Everybody was talking at once, but mostly in Spanish. It was too much Spanish for Grace, but she did get the part where they kept asking if he was OK.

Billy took the tissues, and held them gently to his nose to try to stop the bleeding, but it was too much bleeding, and those tissues got swamped right away. He kept saying he was OK, but they kept asking in Spanish, and Billy kept answering in English, and Grace could see that nobody was getting anywhere with that system.

So she said, “Esta bueno. Billy esta bueno.”

But then she wondered why she even said it when she knew it was just a big lie.

The lady, who Grace didn’t even see leave, came back with a clean dishtowel, and Billy held that to his nose.

“I have to get home,” he said to Grace.

“I know,” she said.

“You can’t go on alone. You have to come back with me.”

“I know.”

“You can wake up Felipe. He’ll walk you.”

“Maybe I should stay home with you today.”

“It’s fine. It’ll stop bleeding. Ask if they want their towel back.”

“I don’t know how to say ‘Do you want your towel back?’ in Spanish.”

“OK. Whatever. Help me up, OK?”

He was still using both hands to hold the towel to his nose, which left no hand to grab him by, so Grace took him by the elbow and pulled. But he didn’t budge. But then the nice grandfather guy took the other elbow and they got him on his feet, even though he swayed hard partway up, and Grace thought he might pass out or something. She couldn’t figure out if he was really hurt that badly, or if looking at tons of his own blood made him feel a little faint, but she figured it was something she could sort out later on.

Billy stood swaying on the sidewalk for a minute, all by himself. Then he held the towel out to the woman, questioningly. As if she might want to take it from him. As soon as he did, a bunch more blood ran down his lip, and he had to wipe it away.

“No, no,” the woman said, waving off the idea. “Is your.”

“Thank you,” Billy said.

“Gracias,” Grace said. “Muchas gracias.”

And they headed off in the direction of home. But then Billy swayed again, so the old grandfather took him by the elbow and walked with them.

Grace could tell Billy was embarrassed and wishing the old man wouldn’t be so helpful. But he was, and there was no way Billy was going to fix that.

The old guy walked them all the way to their front door.

“Gracias,” Billy said.

? ? ?

“Go wake up Felipe,” he said to her.

He was lying propped up on his couch, still holding the towel to his face. The cat was sniffing all around him, like she was worried and wanting to know what was wrong.

“Why? Do you need him?”

“No. You do. To get to school.”

“I’m late anyway.”

“So? Be late. But you have to go.”

“I’m not leaving you, Billy. You need me. Here. Let me get you some ice.”

“Don’t you have a big rehearsal today?”

“Nope,” she shouted from the kitchen. “Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yesterday was our last rehearsal.”

She scooped two double handfuls of ice cubes into a paper napkin and ran them back to Billy. He pulled the towel away, slowly. Like he was scared what would happen when he did. Nothing happened. It didn’t bleed any more. It had finally, finally stopped.

“Oh, my God. Billy. You look terrible!”

Somehow it had seemed like a reasonable thing to say. At the time. She couldn’t have imagined he would take it too personally. Wouldn’t most anybody look bad after falling flat on their nose?

“What does it look like?” he asked quietly.

Grace hated to tell him. The bridge of his nose was swelling up, but that wasn’t the worst of it. His eyes were both going black all the way around. And he had veiny red blood showing inside the corner of one of his eyes. It was horrible. It was hard even to look at him.

“I’ll bring you a mirror. Where’s a mirror?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one? Who doesn’t have a mirror?”

“Me,” he said.

He touched the ice to his nose and yelped.

“Have you got any aspirins to take?”

“I doubt it. If I do, they’re probably years old.”

“I bet Rayleen has aspirins. I’ll go look.”

She ran across the hall and opened the door with her key. She took two aspirin from the bottle in Rayleen’s medicine cabinet. Then she thought better of that, and took another two. On the way out of the bathroom, she grabbed Rayleen’s hand mirror as an afterthought. Then she locked up fast and ran them back over to Billy.

“Here, I brought you four aspirins,” she said.