Page 138 of Tiny Fractures

“Steve!” I hiss at him. “This isn’t Shane’s fault, okay? It’s nobody’s fault. I know you’re angry and sad and all that, but this isn’t helping. We all feel helpless; we all want Ran to wake up and be okay. Shane did nothing wrong; nobody did, except for your mom. Do you think Ran would want you guys fighting? I can guarantee you that the answer is no, so please stop it!” I plead with them, my voice cracking.

“Man, you don’t think I’m beating myself up over this?” Shane says, defeated. “I wish I had done things differently, trust me. I feel like total shit. Ran is my best friend. Fuck, he’s like my little brother, too, and I didn’t…” Shane trails off, his face anguished.

I can feel the pain emanating from him, and I finally stand to hug him. “Don’t do this to each other,” I beg them. “We can’t fall apart now. Please!”

“Sorry, man,” Steve chokes after several long moments of silence. He runs his hands roughly across his face. “I just don’t know what to do. I can’t believe I didn’t know…. How could I miss this?” Steve asks us, his voice tight. The look on his face resembles a lost child calling out for help, but we don’t have the answers either. I let go of Shane and walk over to Steve, giving him a hug now, trying to provide as much comfort as possible in the midst of my own pain. “I just don’t understand,” Steve says, his face buried in his hands.

Shane joins us on the loveseat, patting Steve’s back while I hug him. There’s nothing any of us can say or do to make sense of the situation, to change the past, to make Ronan wake up. So the three of us just sit in silence, drowning in our own and each other’s pain.

***

Frank returns to the hospital only a few hours later. Though he obviously took a shower and changed his clothes, he doesn’t look like he slept or got any rest at all. The dark circles under his eyes are pronounced. With him is one of the police officers who came to the hospital to take Steve’s and Zack’s statements the day before.

“I want to make sure to document your son’s injuries. One of the nurses took photographs for us yesterday, but days two, three, and four are always best because injuries tend to show more clearly then. Bruising takes a while to set in,” the officer explains, and we watch in silence as he carefully takes pictures of Ronan’s injuries, meticulously capturing each bruise, each cut, each laceration.

“I’ll probably be back to take more pictures in a couple of days,” the officer explains when he’s finished photographing Ronan’s broken body. “That reminds me,” he says. “The nurse handed me a bag with your son’s clothes. They’re stained and pretty destroyed since they had to cut them off his body, but in the bag was also this.” He pulls Ronan’s necklace with the two gold pendants out of his pocket, holding it up. “I thought you might want this back.”

He hands the necklace to Frank.

“Thanks.” Frank carefully holds Ronan’s necklace in his right hand, studying it while his left hand traces the pendants. He seems lost in thought for a moment, his eyes soft, reflecting a variety of emotions—sadness, pain, love—before he looks up at me as though he just had an idea. “Cat,” Frank starts, “why don’t you hold on to this for Ran until he wakes up?” He moves toward me.

I take the necklace from him and, like Frank, study it for a moment before I put it around my neck and fasten the clasp in the back. I run my index finger carefully over the cool metal now resting lightly against my skin and think of that night in my tent almost two months ago, when I had asked Ronan about the meaning of the pendants, and he had explained to me that his grandmother gave them to him to protect him.

I wish it had worked; I wish all it took for Ronan to be safe and healthy was this necklace.

I spend the majority of the day sitting by Ronan’s side, sometimes dozing off with my head on the mattress, feeling his skin against my cheek. I only get up to trade spots with Frank, or Steve, or Shane here and there. Sometime in the afternoon, Vada, Tori, Zack, and Summer stop by with Chinese takeout, of which I’m only able to eat a couple of bites.

That afternoon my mom returns from North Carolina, and when I get home from the hospital in the evening, I cry on her shoulder for what seems like an eternity. She sits there, running her hand up and down my back like she used to when I was a little girl, comforting me. She asks me if I feel strong enough to start school the next day and, after some deliberation, we agree that the distraction might be good for me. Steve promises to send me updates throughout the day until I can get to the hospital in the afternoon, and I fall asleep holding on to Ronan’s necklace around my neck.

Monday, August 30th

Cat

When Monday morning rolls around it becomes immediately clear that maybe my choice to go to school wasn’t the wisest. Despite the size of my high school and the huge number of students, news that something terrible happened to Ronan spreads like wildfire, and whoever broke that news apparently also made our relationship public knowledge. People come up to me all day long, providing pats on the back and sympathetic looks and words. Some girls seem pissed, jealous that I apparently managed to land the notoriously unavailable and sinfully hot— god, so damn hot—varsity hockey center forward. They give me dismissive side-glances and whisper as I pass by, though I’m too preoccupied to care. I end up leaving at lunch, unable to concentrate on anything at all.

I call Steve on my way home, and he’s waiting for me in his car when I turn the corner to my house.

“Have you seen him yet? How is he?” I blurt out as soon as I get into the passenger seat of his Challenger, leaning over the center console to hug Steve tightly. I can feel the tension in his shoulders as he hugs me back. He looks exhausted.

“No change,” he says, his voice strained. “How was school?” Steve finally asks, his eyes on the road, both hands gripping the steering wheel as he drives us to the hospital.

“Awful,” I say, and am shocked by the defeat in my voice. I feel like I’ve aged ten years over the past forty-eight hours. Steve turns his head toward me briefly, raising his eyebrows, beckoning me to explain. “Everyone already knew that Ran got hurt; I don’t know how.”

Steve huffs out a chuckle. “Figures. People love drama; I bet everyone’s eating this shit up.” There’s anger in his tone.

“Everyone but those involved, I guess,” I say, and it becomes quiet again. I turn and look out the window, watching as we fly by other cars on the freeway, pass buildings, and the scene changes. Finally, we pull up to the hospital, walk into the now-familiar building, and take the elevator up to the seventh floor, where we walk down the hallway and through the doors secured by an intercom.

“Two for Soult,” Steve says unemotionally as the voice on the other end of the intercom inquires as to our visit. The door buzzes and Steve pushes it open, holding it for me to enter first. I walk past the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that create the barriers to the different rooms. Some of the curtains are drawn, others are open. Nurses bustle about, checking on patients, chatting, others poring over charts and notes. When we reach Ronan’s room, the curtain is half drawn.

I spot Frank through the glass, his back to us while he looks out the hospital window, his phone to his ear.

Steve quietly slides the door open. Frank doesn’t notice us.

“God, I wish I had done things differently, baby. I wish I had waited to tell Rica about us until I was home, then maybe none of this would have happened,” Frank tells whoever is on the other end of his phone call, his voice strained with pain. Steve stops dead in his tracks, his brow creasing as we eavesdrop on his dad’s conversation. “This is all my fault, baby,” he sighs, and it dawns on me that he must be talking to another woman. A woman he calls “baby,” just like Ronan calls me. Oh no. Is Ronan’s dad having an affair? Did Ronan’s mom know? Is that why she was so angry? Did she take it all out on her son?

“Dad?” Steve finally says.

Frank turns to us, startled. “Babe, I have to call you back,” he says into the phone. He ends the call, his eyes on Steve, who hasn’t moved so much as an inch from his spot.

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