She hangs up. I’m glad that’s over with.
Everybody stays in the room with me. I ask Sheila Renfro to track down my watch, which is set to the precise second, because the analog clock on the wall is the very definition of unreliable, and it begins to irritate me. We watch an episode of a show called Everybody Loves Raymond, which turns out to be funny even with the wildly overblown title. I highly doubt that there is anyone in the world whom everybody loves. I think even the unassailably wonderful people in the world probably have someone who doesn’t like them. My father, for instance, often made jokes about Mother Teresa. (One I remember him telling: “Why did Mother Teresa stop eating buffalo wings? Because she kept dipping the chicken into the lepers’ backs instead of the blue cheese dressing.” To be honest, I’m not even sure what that means.) I am far from a perfect person—I am rude and self-absorbed, and Dr. Buckley would be happy to say so—but one thing I try not to do is make fun of people. When I was a boy, and even now, I was often made fun of, and it’s hurtful. I’ve learned to forgive my father for many of the things he did, and it’s not my place to stick up for Mother Teresa. Still, I think he was wrong to say those things. I don’t know if I believe in God. Believing in God requires faith, and faith is difficult for me. But just the same, I would be inclined to not make fun of Mother Teresa, because if there is a God—especially the Judeo-Christian God—Mother Teresa has a lot more standing than my father does.
Leaving God out of it, I think that if someone who dedicates her life to caring for the poor and the sick can be an object of derision (I love the word “derision”), what chance do the rest of us have?
At 6:31 p.m., after the program ends, Donna and Victor say they’re leaving, that they will be flying home to Boise with Kyle the next morning. Donna gives me another kiss, and this time Sheila Renfro looks angry, which flummoxes me. Victor again shakes my hand, gently, which I appreciate in my painful state.
The three of them are heading for the door when I say, “Can everybody else wait in the hall while I talk to Kyle?”
Kyle knows where I stand. I want him to tell his mother and father what he told me.
“But what if she hates me?” he says.
I’m pulled between the competing thoughts of how silly it is that Kyle would fear such a thing and a gentler realization that Dr. Buckley would be apt to make. She told me once that some people hold great shame for things that aren’t their fault, awful things that were done to them by people who were stronger or more powerful than they were. Shame isn’t something I’ve known in my life. Frustration, anger, wanting to be dead—I have known all of those things. But shame is difficult for me to understand. Dr. Buckley said it’s a horribly destructive force, perhaps the most destructive force she has ever encountered.
I do not want Kyle to know what that’s like.
“Donna will not hate you,” I tell him. “She will know exactly what to do. Your mother is wise, and she loves you, and she can help you.”
He doesn’t want to cry, but one tear does spill down his cheek. He wipes it away.
“I just don’t want to go back to that school. I hate it. I just want to forget it.”
In ways that I don’t think I could explain to Kyle—and even if I could, I don’t have the time, because Donna and Victor are waiting outside the door—he and I are more alike than I ever noticed before. The kids who picked on me when I was in school made it miserable for me a lot of the time. I never tracked how often I disliked school, but it would be fair to say that the truly surprising days were the ones that I enjoyed. I liked the work; if I could have been alone at school, just me and my teachers, I might have had a fun time. I don’t want that for Kyle. I don’t want him to have to feel that way about school.
“Tell your mother,” I say.
“Edward, can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
Kyle isn’t looking at me. “Did we have fun?”
“Kyle, you’re my first and best friend. We always have fun.”
“After you’re better, will you come see me again?”
“I promise I will.”
He covers the distance between us and hugs me, and it hurts terribly, so much that, at first, I think I’m going to pass out. But I don’t pass out, and I hug him back, and it hurts again, and I don’t care.
Finally he lets me go.
“Good-bye, Edward,” he says, opening the door.
“Good-bye, Kyle,” I say. “Tell your mother.”
He’s gone now, but I can hear Donna say, “Tell me what?”
I’m sneakily clever sometimes.
Sheila Renfro comes into my hospital room and closes the door behind her.
“Don’t get comfortable, silly,” she says. “You have to get up and walk. Doctor’s orders.”
It’s amazing to me that it’s nearly 2012 and the only cure for broken ribs is to let time heal them.
I don’t find that approach altogether appealing when I’m made to get out of bed and walk. There is no other way to say it: it hurts like a motherfucker. That’s not a precise statement. Of course there are other ways to say it, but why would I say it any differently? My way is direct and emphatic (I love the word “emphatic”).
I swing my legs off the left side of the bed, a maneuver that hurts no matter how delicately I try to perform it. As my torso torques (that rhymes, sort of), I try to scoot my back along the bed so I don’t have to aggravate my ribs. I manage this somewhat successfully, but then my feet are on the floor, I’m on my back, and my butt is sliding toward the edge of the bed. This isn’t good.
Sheila Renfro and a nurse, whose name is Sally, reach for me.
“Give us your hands,” Sally says.
I lift my arms, and my ribs scream. Not literally, of course. Ribs don’t have mouths or voices.
They grip my hands and drop their rear ends like anchors.
“On three,” Sally says. She counts it off: “One…two…three.”
Sheila Renfro and Sally pull hard on my arms, and I try to shove myself up with my feet. The pain is the worst it has been, and I scream.
Sally, I guess, has seen a lot of people scream. She seems unconcerned. Sheila Renfro cups her palm on my face and tells me, “You did good, Edward.”
Sheila and I make two laps around the hospital hallway. I tell her that I have to pee, and she says, “Go ahead. They put a catheter in you. What do you think this is?” She taps a bag that hangs from the monitor I’m pushing. It has yellow liquid in it.
“My pee?”
“Well,” she says. “It’s not mine.” And then she laughs.
Sheila Renfro is pretty funny sometimes.
“What are you going to do when you get out of here?” she asks me.
“I don’t know. Drive back to Billings, I guess.”
“It’s a long way when you’re feeling bad. It’s a long way under any circumstance.”
“Yes. The distance is unchanged by my physical condition.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Dr. Banning told me he didn’t want me to fly.”
“You could come stay at my motel for a while.”
“You’d let me?”
“Of course. You’re going to pay, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Sheila Renfro laughs. “I was just kidding. You don’t have to pay. You can be my guest.”
Sheila Renfro is pretty funny sometimes.
“I could pay, you know,” I say. “I’m fucking loaded.”
She puts a hand on the small of my back. It feels warm, and for just a moment, I forget the pain.
“I know you are, Edward,” she says. “Don’t cuss around me.”