Page 85 of The Jock
Wes went into and out of radiology, into and out of the CT scanner and the X-ray machines. It became clear, quickly, that Wes wasn’t hit by a car. That his injuries came fromsomeone. Or several someones. That he’d been attacked.
The university police were called. Justin knew the procedure. Wes was photographed and stripped, his clothes bagged, and swabs were collated from his knuckles and under his nails. He pictured Wes motionless on the hospital bed, eyes swollen shut, hands limp, his broken body dressed in a hospital gown that was too small for him.
“You’re done for the night,” Tammy told him. “You’re in no state to be dealing with patients.” He hadn’t even tried to argue. “Do you have someone to drive you home?”
“I’m not leaving,” he’d growled. “I’m staying here. I’m staying with Wes.”
Tammy had eventually gone back to work. Once Justin was alone, his thoughts tumbled, turned, grew thorns. Questions he didn’t have answers to rose in waves. What-ifs circled like sharks smelling blood. What if Wes was permanently injured? What if something irreplaceable had been taken from him?
What if he didn’t wake up?
After two hours without answers, Justin pulled out his cell phone and called his dad.
“Justin.” His dad picked up before the first ring ended. He sighed, a great woosh of air rushing over the line. “Jesus, Justin, why didn’t you pick up earlier? I’ve been so worried about you. That article—”
“Dad—” He couldn’t speak, couldn’t get any words out of his clenched throat. “Dad,” he tried again. His fingers dug into the wall as he struggled to stand. “Dad, it’s Wes.”
“What about him?”
Justin crumpled to the floor as his dad tried to talk him through his gulping sobs.
“Justin, breathe. Breathe. Talk to me. What happened to Wes? Where is he? Where are you?”
“I’m at the hospital,” he forced out. “He was brought in by Life Flight—”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know! I think someone attacked him!” He screamed, covering his mouth with his hand. His eyes squeezed closed. He pitched forward, his face against his knees. “Dad, he hasn’t woken up…”
“I’m on my way. I’m driving down. Right now.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Steady beeping wasthe foundation of Justin’s world.
He breathed in rhythm with the beeps. His dreams played out in time with their cadence. His thoughts took shape alongside the beeps, formed into checklists and to-dos that he scratched off as the machines kept time. Hold Wes’s hand. Smooth his hair from his forehead. Kiss his temple.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
No one had any answers for him.
All the doctors could tell him was what they didn’t know: they didn’t know if Wes had long-term brain damage. They didn’t know if he would remember what happened, or where he was, or even who he was, when he woke up. They didn’t know whether he’d have full use of his arms or his legs. “We don’t really know what happened,” Dr. Williams said. “We don’t know how long he was lying in that road. We don’t know what kind of trauma or brain swelling might have occurred before we got to him.”
Someone had wrapped a belt around his neck and tried to strangle him. There was a two-inch-wide black-and-blue band around his throat, riding up on both sides and under his jawbone, like someone had stood behind him and yanked. The doctors said Wes’s size and strength had protected him. His throat was more than half swollen shut when he’d been brought in, but he’d never stopped breathing.
Wes was lucky, they said. No major organ damage. Bruised ribs. Bruised kidneys. He was black and blue and putrid green from the roots of his hair to his toes, more bruises than healthy skin. But he was alive.
No one could tell Justin when he would open his eyes, though.
Justin’s dad slept on the couch behind him, in Wes’s private ICU room. He’d made the five-hour drive from Dallas in just over three hours in his Porsche, had flown into the hospital and wrapped Justin in his arms like he was four years old and he’d fallen off his bike. Justin had cried in his dad’s arms, his face buried in his chest, and his dad had held on to him until every tear was out and until he could stand on his own wobbly feet again.
They talked over Wes’s bed, after the doctors and nurses finally checked Wes’s medical release information at the university and saw Justin was listed as his local emergency contact. Wes had made an offhand comment about putting Justin on his paperwork, swapping Justin in instead of Coach Young. “I’d rather have you there if I break my leg than him,” he’d said. They’d laughed about it, imagining Coach Young trying to comfort Wes with his leg in a cast and a sling.
There wasn’t any laughter now.
“I saw the game,” his dad had said.
“He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.” There was too much to say, too many factors that had gone into Wes’s calculus. Too many variables in his decisions and in the vectors of his life. Every path had spiraled like a football, a pass thrown with no receiver in range. How was he to know how everything would play out? How wrong everything would go? Life wasn’t lived with the benefit of hindsight.
