When My Heart Joins the Thousand(70)

She opens the door. I step forward—then stop. There’s only one bed in the room, and there’s a sort of curtain tent around it.

I take a deep breath and enter the room. The nurse closes the door behind me.

“Stanley,” I say. There’s no response.

Slowly I approach and tug the curtains aside.

The sight hits me with a jolt, and my vision momentarily blurs. There’s barely a single part of him that’s not covered by casts or bandages. Tubes run from his wrist, more from his chest, as if he were part machine, sprouting wires. Thick plaster casts swath his body up to the waist; his legs are suspended in place with wires attached to the canopy of his bed. A cervical collar rings his neck, and there’s a bandage taped to his forehead, with a small rust-colored spot of dried blood soaking through.

His eyelids open a crack. Ragged breathing echoes through the silence. He moistens his chapped lips with the tip of his tongue. “Hey.” His voice is faint and hoarse. He stares at me for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then his eyes close again, as if he’s too tired to keep them open.

I can’t stop looking at him. It hurts to breathe. “How do you feel.” It’s a stupid question, but I have to say something.

“Sleepy. They’re keeping me pretty doped up.”

He doesn’t sound angry, or even particularly upset. Feeling unsure of myself, I pull up a chair and sit. “I saw the article.”

“They wrote an article about it?”

“Yes.”

His eyes roll toward me. There’s a little starburst of red in one sclera, where a blood vessel has ruptured, but the irises are still clear and brilliant blue. “Slow news day, I guess.”

“He’s lying to the police. He’s saying you started it. That you provoked him.”

“I did,” Stanley says.

My mouth falls open.

His eyes slip shut again. “We ran into each other in the park. Pure chance. It was just him, without his goons. He was going to walk away, but I started shouting at him, calling him an asshole. He kept telling me to shut up, but I wouldn’t. Not even when he knocked me down. And then, when it was over . . . he stopped and we just looked at each other and . . .” His breath hitches. “He was just a kid. Just some stupid kid with a few piercings and a leather jacket. And he looked so scared. Not of me. Of himself . . . of what he’d done.”

The light outside the window begins to deepen in color, turning honey amber, and his eyelids look thin and fragile. They’re almost translucent.

“How many breaks,” I ask.

“Seventeen. Mostly in my legs, but I fractured my collarbone and bruised some ribs, too.” His eyes remain closed. His breathing rasps softly. When he speaks, his voice is oddly calm: “You don’t have to be here, you know. Knowing you’re hanging around out of guilt just makes it hurt more.”

A sharp pain jabs through my chest. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Just go.” Still, there’s no anger in his voice; it would almost be easier if there were. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve been through this a million times. Go home.”

“I can’t go home.”

He blinks and looks at me as if seeing me for the first time—the disheveled hair, the dirty clothes. His forehead wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been living out of my car.”

His eyes widen. “When were you planning to tell me about this?”

I look down and self-consciously tug one braid. “I wasn’t.”

There’s a long pause. His breathing sounds strange; I can’t tell what he’s thinking or feeling. “You can sleep in my house. My keys are over there, next to my wallet, on the table by the window. Eat whatever you want in the kitchen, and if you need to buy more food or anything else, just use whatever cash is in there.”

There’s a lump in my throat. “It—it’s getting cold. So thank you,” I manage to whisper. But I don’t move. We look at each other.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did.”

He stares at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter now.” His voice is flat. Empty.

For a few minutes, I sit, hands balled into fists in my lap. Finally I stand, walk into the adjoining bathroom, and wet a cloth in the sink. I lean over him and wipe his sweat-damp brow.

“Don’t,” he whispers, voice cracking. “Don’t do this.”

“Is it too cold.”

A tear leaks out from the corner of his eye. “Don’t you understand? I’d already given up.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Just leave me alone.”

I lower my gaze. Of course he’s not happy to see me. I broke his heart. I don’t understand human emotions very well, but I know that once you’ve hurt someone, you can’t just come back and have everything be okay again.

But I can’t leave him. Not now, not like this.

After a moment, I resume wiping his forehead. He doesn’t protest; he doesn’t say anything. The pink glow of sunlight illuminates the plane of his left cheek. As the last bit of daylight fades, the light turns a soft blue, then purple, then disappears. His eyes stare through me, as if he’s lost somewhere inside himself.