When My Heart Joins the Thousand(40)

“Nah,” one says, leaning against the other, “this is funny.”

TJ is panting, eyes bugging out with rage. He lunges at Stanley again, and Stanley swings his cane. It whistles through the air, but this time TJ ducks, avoiding it. He catches the cane and yanks, and Stanley staggers. With a sweep of one arm, TJ knocks the cane from his grasp. Stanley swings a fist, and TJ’s head snaps to one side. For a second, they’re both a blur of movement, then TJ kicks him in the stomach, hard.

Stanley goes down, lands on his arm, and cries out. His forehead bounces off the pavement. In the next instant, TJ kicks Stanley’s ribs and stomps on his arm. I hear a crack, and Stanley cries out.

I go cold inside.

The twins aren’t laughing anymore. “Hey, c’mon, TJ. You don’t have to—”

“Fuck you!” TJ brays. “You want to stand there and watch? Watch this.” He raises his boot again, about to bring it down on Stanley’s face, and Stanley curls up, covering his head with both arms.

I lunge. White noise fills my head. Beneath the roar of static, someone is screaming.

When the red curtain lifts, TJ is on the pavement, on his back, gasping and choking. I’m on top of him, my hands locked around his throat, thumbs pressing into his trachea. Crimson stains his pale neck, and I taste blood on my tongue, bright and coppery. His ear is bleeding.

Hands grab me from above, and I snap at them. The twins seize my arms and drag me away.

TJ lurches to his feet and runs away, making sobbing, panting sounds, one hand pressed to his ear. The twins throw me to the ground, then stand there a minute, as if they’re not sure what to do next. One of them looks at me, with my blood-smeared mouth and bloodstained fingertips, and mutters, “Christ. Let’s just get out of here.”

They turn and run after TJ. Their pounding footsteps fade as their forms melt into the shadows.

I climb to my feet, breathing hard. My hoodie is torn. Blood stains my shirt and my chin and my lips, but I don’t know how much of it is mine and how much is TJ’s. I wipe one sleeve across my face.

The road is dark and quiet, painted in moonlight and shadows. Stanley is curled on the pavement, cradling his arm.

Slowly I approach and crouch beside him. He looks up at me. His breathing is labored, his face ashen. “My arm is broken.” His voice sounds oddly calm. Blood soaks through the sleeve of his coat. There’s a rip in the fabric, and something is sticking out through the blood-drenched shirt beneath. Something white and sharp.

Dizziness rolls over me. I close my eyes for a moment, regaining control. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”

He shakes his head. “Just drive me to the hospital.” His voice is very soft, his eyes drowsy and heavy lidded. Everything about this seems wrong. There’s a bone sticking out through his skin. He should be screaming, but instead he looks like he’s about to drift off to sleep.

“Stanley . . .”

“Ambulances are expensive.” He smiles—an eerie, distant smile. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

He’s not losing consciousness. He’s not bleeding to death; he hasn’t lost that much. It’s just endorphins, flooding his system, numbing him to the pain and putting him into a drug-like trance. But it’s still terrifying. It feels like he’s floating away to a place where I can’t reach him.

“I’ll get the car,” I say.

I sit in the waiting room, shoulders hunched, arms crossed tightly over my chest. Hours have gone by. As soon as we arrived, the nurses rushed Stanley to the surgical unit to reset the bone. As far as I know, he’s still there.

Someone touches my shoulder, and I jerk upright. A young, bespectacled Asian man, probably a nurse, hovers over me. “It’ll be a while,” he says. “Even after he gets out of surgery, they won’t release him for another day or two.”

“I want to see him.”

The nurse hesitates. “What’s your relationship to him?”

What do I say? How can I sum it up in a few words? My mind is a mass of fog; I try to think, but it’s like trying to hold water in my fingers. “I’m his friend.” As the word leaves my mouth, I feel that I’ve failed Stanley.

“You can come back tomorrow during visiting hours,” the man says. “He won’t be up to receiving visitors until then, anyway.”

I shake my head. “I’ll stay.”

“There’s nothing you can do right now, and he’s in good hands. Go home. Get some sleep.”

I glance down at the red smear on my shirt. If anyone noticed, they probably assumed it was from Stanley’s injury, but the taste of TJ’s blood still lingers faintly in my mouth, despite the countless times I rinsed it out in the sink of the hospital bathroom.

A feeling like that hasn’t come over me since . . .

Will Stanley even want to see me, after what he witnessed?

I leave the hospital, but I don’t go home. I curl up in the backseat of Stanley’s car and fall into a numb, empty sleep. I wake a few hours later, shivering, and turn the heat on.

The hospital windows glow, tiny yellow squares in the darkness. I imagine Stanley helpless and unconscious on a surgical table. White-masked faces. Gloves, fingers stained with his blood.

I stay in the car, drifting in and out of darkness, until morning.