Richard was hurt bad. He knew it with the awful certainty one feels in that second when he steps back off a cliff and realizes it will be the last mistake he makes on this earth; that eternity of horror before his body smashes on the rocks.
Freakish light filtered through the snowstorm, the bright orange of sodium arc lamps picked up and tossed back by ten billion ice facets: sky, ground, tree limbs, air. Rooms in the house were orange, the whole world the inside of a Halloween pumpkin.
In light the color of fire, Richard couldn’t tell how much blood he was losing. A lot. Too much. He could feel it pumping, little squirts against the palm of his hand. For a giddy second he believed the blood flowed into him from the night and out of him from his veins, a pool, a lake, rising.
His little brother lay across the bed where he had fallen. On Dylan’s pajamas cowboys and Indians were drenched in red, a war on flannel. Blood ran in a sheet down the right side of Dylan’s face.
Dylan looked dead.
“Dyl?” Richard tried to call out but he hadn’t strength for more than a whisper. “Dylan, don’t you die on me.” Richard started to cry, then stopped himself. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. “Dylan, if you’re awake, call the operator, the police.”
His brother didn’t move.
From boy scouts and television, Richard knew if he took his hand away from the gaping wound on his inner thigh, he would bleed out. For a heartbeat or two he considered letting go, lifting his hand, and watching his life pump out of his body. It seemed so eager to leave him, and there’d been so much carnage, why not give in? Drift into the abyss?
Dylan moaned softly. Despite the muffling effect of death dreams, in the absolute stillness of a snowy midnight it grated loud in Richard’s ears. He hadn’t killed him-his brother was alive.
Dream evaporated; abyss ceased to beckon. Suddenly Rich wanted to live. “Brother,” he whispered. Dylan’s eyelids twitched. Richard saw a flash of white eyeball, startling in the drying red mask. “Wake up, buddy. Please.”
Using one hand and his uninjured leg for propulsion, the other hand clamped tightly over his wound, Richard tried to move across the bedroom floor. Fabric and blood stuck him to the hardwood. By inches-one, three, five-he moved toward Dylan. The effort was so great there wasn’t room left for thought. Each tiny movement brought a calamity of pain. The pain had ceased to be localized; his entire being was on fire.
Don’t. Pass. Out. He forced the words through the clamor of nerve-death in his mind.
Dylan’s head lolled off the edge of the mattress at an unnatural angle.
His neck was broken. Dylan would be in a wheelchair, peeing through a tube. A ragged end of strength rippled through Richard. Dylan would be helpless; he would need his brother. More than anything Richard wanted to be there.
Push your chair, brother. Take you for walks in the park. An inch. Two. Behind him on the hardwood was a smeared trail of red. The room was so damn big.
Richard’s arm was failing; his uninjured leg cramped. Blinking to stay conscious, he tried to remember why he was bleeding across this wasteland.
The phone. Dial 0, the operator, and ask for the police. The phone on the nightstand looked impossibly far away, as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
“Dylan!” Richard screamed. Dylan didn’t move and Richard was out of air.
Rest. He would rest a moment. Leaning against the bureau, he watched the orange light pulsate deeper, then paler. It made him sleepy.
Don’t sleep; stay awake, he warned himself. Never sleep; your hand will come loose. Sleep is death. He would just rest a second or two; then, when he was stronger, he would continue his journey to the telephone, to 0 and rescue.
“Water,” he croaked, seeing in his mind the parched desert crawlers of late-night TV Westerns. He was so thirsty he could have cried. He licked his lips and tasted Vondra. After he’d left her, he’d showered and brushed his teeth, but the taste was still there.
Vondra. He had been with her when he should have been with Dylan. He had not been a good brother. Now Dylan was going to die.
The thought was intolerable, more so than bleeding to death.
Anger gave him strength. By inches and screams, he reached his brother’s side. He smoothed back Dylan’s hair and kissed him.
Before he passed out he managed to dial the operator.
2
Richard woke to white lights and the low constant noise of controlled urgency. The first face he saw was that of a beefy policeman, his skin red and fissured from too many late nights in subzero weather.
The ruddy mask cracked, and from between lips thinner than a snake’s came the words, “Hey kid.” The tone was fatherly, warm and strong. It brought tears to Richard’s eyes. He didn’t fight them. If ever there was a time when being seen crying was okay, this was it. Hot and tickling, they trickled from the corners of his eyes and down his temples.
A pair of flat callused thumbs smeared them into his hair. The cop was comforting him, wiping away his tears like he was a small and precious child. This unexpected kindness lent Richard a sense of control. He smiled shakily.
“Hey,” he managed.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” the cop said.
Alive. In a rush, Richard remembered everything that had happened. “Where am I?” he asked stupidly. Halfway through the question he realized he was in a hospital, the emergency room. Embarrassed to sound so predictable, he waved a hand at the white privacy curtains surrounding the bed and asked, “Am I in a sheet factory?”
Rather than being annoyed, as his dad used to be when Richard played the fool, Beef Cop gave the appearance of being charmed. His eyes, a glacial shade of blue, warmed. The thick shoulders rounded in to create a less threatening silhouette. Lowering an oversized haunch, he sat on the edge of the hospital bed.
Richard winced.
“Oh, sorry, did I hurt you?” the cop asked anxiously and, to Richard’s relief, removed his rear end from the vicinity.
“It’s only a flesh wound,” Richard said because his brain was foggy and he couldn’t think of anything anywhere near witty to say.
The cop seemed to think this was high comedy. A hearty laugh was followed by a clumsy hair-ruffling.
“No, son, you’re not in a sheet factory. You’re at the Mayo Clinic. The best there is.”
Son. He called him son.
With that, he remembered his leg, the wound on his thigh. “My leg.” The words came out high-pitched and scared. That bothered him but he didn’t try to cover.