When My Heart Joins the Thousand(41)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


When I see Stanley the next day, he’s sitting up in his hospital bed, propped on a stack of pillows, his arm in a fiberglass cast and a sling. He’s pale, the flesh beneath his eyes dark and bruised.

“Hey.” His voice sounds different. It’s like hearing a song slightly off-key. He won’t meet my gaze.

I hang in the doorway, uncertain. “How is your arm.”

“Hurts, but I’ll live. They’re releasing me today. They wanted me to stay longer, but I said no. This is nothing I haven’t been through before. I just want to go home.” He gives me a hazy smile. “Think you could drive me?”

During the drive, he remains silent and withdrawn. Maybe he’s still groggy from the pain medication.

I wonder if he’s going to report the attack to the police. I don’t deal with the authorities if I can help it, but as far as I know, he has no such inhibitions. “What did you tell the people at the hospital. About what happened.”

“I told them I slipped on a patch of ice.”

I clutch my bloodied shirt with one hand, wondering—was it for my sake that he lied? So I wouldn’t have to deal with the repercussions?

“I owe you one,” he remarks. “If you hadn’t done what you did, I’d probably be in a full body cast instead of a sling.” But still, he doesn’t look at me. He’s disturbed. Of course he is. He just saw me go full primate. He watched me almost bite off a man’s ear.

When we arrive at his house, I help him into his bed and prop up a stack of pillows. I notice him shivering and pull the covers up to his chest.

“Thanks.” The lamp is on, but the room is full of shadows. The model planes stand in rows on his shelf, their colors muted in the dim glow.

I sit on the edge of the bed.

His eyes slip shut, the lids thin and bruised-looking. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

I blink. “For what.”

“He said those awful things to you. I was so . . . so angry. But I couldn’t do anything. It wasn’t even a fight, it was a beating.”

That’s what’s bothering him? “It’s over now. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.” His hand curls into a fist. “The world is full of those people. What good am I if I can’t even protect you from them?”

My shoulders stiffen. “I never said I needed to be protected.”

“I know. But I want to. Just for once, I want to make someone’s life easier instead of more difficult. I want to not be a burden. Is that wrong?”

“You aren’t a burden. Stop saying ridiculous things.” The words come out harsher than I intend.

His unsteady breathing fills the room. “Sorry.” He smiles without teeth, gaze averted. “Just groggy, I guess.”

I push myself to my feet. “You should take your pain meds.”

I give him his pills we got from the pharmacy earlier, along with a glass of water, and he swallows them down. “You can go, if you want,” he murmurs. “I’m just going to sleep for a while.”

I don’t move. Something is wrong, something that goes beyond what happened with those thugs. “Talk to me.”

His lips press into a thin line. He looks away.

“Stanley.”

He closes his eyes. Several minutes pass, and I start to think he’s fallen asleep. Then he begins to speak, his voice quiet and strangely calm. “You’ve noticed, right? I mean . . . my eyes.”

“What about them.”

“I thought for sure you’d have figured it out by now,” he says. “You know so much about so many things. But then, it’s a pretty rare condition.”

“What is.”

“Osteogenesis imperfecta. Which is a fancy way of saying my bones break easily. I can do most things without trouble, but . . . let’s just say I didn’t play a whole lot of sports as a kid.”

I remember him talking about breaking his fibula, about how much he hated hospitals. I’m a klutz, he had said. “How many did you break.”

“Over my whole life? I don’t know. I lost count around fifty.”

“Fifty breaks.” My voice sounds odd. Distant.

“Most of those happened when I was a kid. Bones are more fragile when they’re growing. I missed a lot of school. Lots of surgeries. Sometimes I feel like Frankenstein’s monster, I’ve been cut apart and sewn back together so many times.” He chuckles. Like it’s a joke. “I set off metal detectors now, because I’ve got surgically implanted rods in both my femurs. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to walk without crutches. But I get around pretty well, all things considered. And I haven’t lost my hearing, which happens to a lot of people with OI. I’m lucky.” A brief pause. “Anyway, that’s my long-winded explanation for why I have these weird-looking eyeballs. Something to do with the collagen not forming correctly.”

There’s a pressure and tightness in my chest. It takes me a moment to identify it as guilt—though guilt about what, I’m not entirely sure. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m okay with how I am. Sort of. But I know what it’s like, walking around with a diagnostic label hung around your neck, being told by the world that you have limitations, that there are certain things you’ll never be able to do.”