Say the Word(42)

“I’m breaking you out of here,” I said, smiling widely as I wheeled the chair around a bend and the beat up old pickup came into view. Sebastian saw us in the rearview and hopped out, leaving the truck idling by the curb as he jogged around to meet us.

“Are you serious?” Jamie asked, his voice excited. He’d been complaining for weeks about his incarceration — his word, not mine — and begging for more time outside the hospital walls. Initially he’d been satisfied with our afternoon walks, when Bash and I would push him around the grounds for an hour or so, but he’d quickly grown bored with them. He wanted to feel alive again — and that’s exactly what we hoped to achieve with today’s plan.

“Just for the afternoon,” I told him, wishing I were taking him away from this place permanently. He’d been moved from the hospital about a month ago to the adjacent rehabilitation building, where he could recuperate from his surgery and do daily strength building exercises with a physical therapist. He wasn’t walking yet — that wouldn’t come for months — but the hospital staff were optimistic he’d get there eventually. For now, he was confined to a wheelchair if he wanted to get around, which he liked about as much as the hospital food he was forced to consume every day.

“You’ll get in trouble,” Jamie warned. “Loretta will be pissed.”

“Loretta loves me,” I told him. “I baked her a cake for her birthday last week and I agreed to babysit her kids next weekend so she and her husband can have a romantic night out.”

Jamie winced in sympathy. Loretta’s twin boys were well-known terrors — two miniature, six-year-old Tasmanian devils in human-suits. Last week on bring-your-kid-to-work day, apparently they’d ripped apart the nurse’s station and had wheelchair races down the hallways of the ICU. Needless to say, volunteering to babysit them put Loretta in my debt for far more than a stolen afternoon off hospital property.

“Jamie, my man!” Sebastian yelled, a happy smile on his face as he leaned down to initiate some kind of bizarre man-hug, backslapping ritual with Jamie. Boys were so weird. “You ready to bust out of here?” Bash asked.

“Depends,” Jamie said. “Are we going to Vegas for some action on the strip?”

“Ew,” I replied.

“Not today,” Sebastian told him, grinning. “Don’t think we’d get there and back before the night shift starts.”

“Can we go to the track and bet on some ponies?” Jamie asked. “Oh! Or can we cover all the trees on Amber’s property in toilet paper? I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“I’d be surprisingly okay with that,” I muttered darkly.

Sebastian cast an amused glance my way, before steering Jamie’s chair closer to the truck bed. He pulled down the gate and turned to my twin, suddenly all business.

“As fun as that might be,” Sebastian said, a wry grin twitching the corners of his lips up. “I’ve got something else in mind that I think you’ll enjoy — even if it doesn’t involve illegal gambling or vandalism.”

Jamie made a regretful tsk sound but otherwise refrained from commenting.

“But first, we have to get you up here,” Sebastian told him, nodding his head back toward the truck bed. “If I lift you onto the edge, think you can scoot yourself backwards?”

“Do you see these guns?” Jamie asked, flexing a pathetically underdeveloped bicep. “I’m a champion. I can do it.”

I rolled my eyes, but my amusement faded and my heart flipped in my chest as I watched Sebastian with Jamie. He was so patient with my brother — his hands were gentle but not coddling, his smile was one of understanding rather than pity, and his tone was caring without being condescending. Bash had a unique ability to put Jamie at ease, and it allowed my twin to keep his pride even while accepting help.

I was trying really, really hard not to fall head over heels in love with the boy, but damned if he didn’t make it the toughest thing I’d ever done in my life.

Ten minutes later, Jamie’s wheelchair had been strapped down to the truck bed. Its wheels were locked in place with two separate ropes, and another strap looped around Jamie’s waist to hold him securely when the truck began to move. I hopped up to stand beside his chair, and turned to watch as Sebastian slammed the gate closed behind me.

“You feeling up for some speed?” Sebastian asked, leaning against the cab and grinning at us.

“Bring it,” Jamie challenged, an answering grin crossing his face.

Bash winked at me playfully before running around to the front seat and hopping in. He’d opened the cab’s back window so we could talk, and he looked over his shoulder at me as he started the engine. “You ready to fly, Freckles?” he asked, leaning close to the window.

I held my arms aloft by my sides and flapped them up and down in a caricature of a bird. “Make me forget the ground exists,” I whispered, tilting my head forward through the small opening and kissing him lightly on the cheek.

“Will you two get ahold of yourselves so we can get this show on the road?” Jamie yelled over his shoulder at us. “I’d like to actually leave the hospital parking lot at some point.”

I grinned and moved away from the window, landing a light punch on Jamie’s arm in retaliation. Sebastian laughed as he maneuvered the truck out of the parking lot and onto the main road. I settled in facing Jamie with my back pressed against the cool metal carriage, and we chatted as we rode through town. We got a few strange looks from people out walking — it wasn’t every day that Jacksonians saw a boy in a wheelchair strapped down to the back of a truck bed like a bizarre, macabre parade float — but most passerby recognized us and smiled or waved.