Page 11 of The Rest of the Story
I slumped into the chair next to Shea’s bed. Amelia had left a pillow and a blanket and a bottle of water for me, and I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, laid the pillow on the mattress next to Shea’s hand, and put my face cheek-down in the cotton, looking up at Shea’s sleeping face. I blinked, once, twice, and then I was out, as solidly as Shea.
* * *
I woke blearily and groggy, with fingers moving through the ends of my hair. One eye opened before the other, and I squinted into fluorescent tube lights and acoustic paneling before I focused lower.
There was Shea, eyes open, a drugged and loopy smile spilling across his gorgeous face. He was twirling my hair between two of his fingers, and he looked like he was floating on the real good stuff. “How-dy,” he said. He added about two extra syllables to the word.
“Hey, Darlin’.” I kissed his fingers and reached for his face, cupped his cheek and his chin. “How are you?”
“Great.” His eyes went wide, and so did his smile. “What is in this?” Those same eyes rolled up to his IV bag, and he watched each drip fall into his lines with the wonder of a little boy mesmerized by a train.
“I’m not sure, but we should stock it in the fridge.” I grinned.
“Wedefinitelyshould.”
“How’s your leg?”
Shea looked blankly at his leg, finally seeming to notice the external fixator and the nails and the stitches. “Oh, wow.” Back to me. “Leg feels great.”
We definitely needed whatever was in that IV made into Popsicles and handed out after a game.
Shea was fighting through the loopiness, trying hard to focus on his thoughts and follow them from a bright starburst to the end of the neuron. “Brody,” he started. “Brody, he’s—” He frowned, dragged his brain into gear. “Is he okay?”
I kissed his fingertips and held Shea’s stare. Shea blinked, fought for solid ground. “What happened?” he asked.
“Brody isgoingto be okay,” I said slowly. That was our mantra, apparently. We were allgoingto be okay, if we could get through this day, this week, this playoff series. “He’s not okay right now. Seeing Coates… It brought up a lot. A lot of bad shit from the past came out that no one knew about. Brody had been keeping it secret, but it was too much to hold inside any longer. His parents are here, and he’s talking to someone, and he’s going to be okay. But it’s gonna take some time.”
I spoke slowly, and as I did, I saw Shea crater back to earth, like my words were pulling him out of that happy place and yanking him to reality. I wished I hadn’t spoken, that he could go back to staring at his IV drip like it was the best thing since Christmas. But he needed to know. Brody was his best friend, and Shea was a big reason why Brody was still with us.
Shea looked like I’d crushed his heart when I finished speaking. “What can we do?” He made a move like he was trying to sit up, went completely still, turned ashen, and then went limp. He squeezed my hand, said again, “What can we do, Morgan?”
“You are so wonderful,” I told him. I ran my hand across his forehead, smoothed out the pain, and let a couple drops of the IV soothe out the rest. Shea leaned into my touch. “Right now, you need to recover. Brody needs his best friend back. He’s got some things he wants to share with you, and he’ll be coming by to talk later.”
Shea was strong enough to hear what Brody had to say. He was strong enough to hold the world together in his bare hands. He’d done so before—he’d held our team together, and he’d held me together, and when he was pinned by Coates’ car and didn’t even know if he was living or dying, his questions had been about a little boy posing for a photo and for Brody, not for himself. To me, Shea was the strongest person on the planet, bar none.
“We’re going to get through this,” I told him. “Day by day. Moment by moment. We’re all going to get through this together.”
Shea locked his fingers through mine and nodded. “Together.”
* * *
Brody showed up at the hospital that evening, his parents with him, and I gathered Amelia and John and Owen and Hazel and told them I’d spring for a fancy dinner at the fast food restaurant across the street. We left Brody sitting on the edge of my chair, his eyes nuclear-wide and his fingers wrapped around the backs of his thighs. He had a worn and folded piece of paper tucked in the palm of one hand. He’d been playing with it on the way into Shea’s room.
Amelia had never met a person who wasn’t her future best friend, and before we’d crossed the road and walked into the fried chicken joint, she had Owen and Hazel laughing. They bonded quickly, sharing stories that hockey parents share, tales of practice woes and freezing through a million games while you cheered your little boy accidentally shooting the puck into the wrong net.
We gave Brody and Shea an hour. Enough time to talk things through, not enough time to do damage, we thought. None of us were subtle about it. We were all checking our phones and our watches like we were timing a space shuttle launch. Five minutes before the hour was up, Hazel and Amelia chucked the trash and started marching for the door.
Owen hung back a few paces, and I matched his stride. He had something he wanted to say.
“Morgan,” he began. His mustache twitched, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket. “You know, when you’re a younger man, and bad things happen to someone you love, you think you need to go out and slay the monster that’s crashed into their life. You think you need to drag the carcass back home and show it off, prove you’ve vanquished that evil. As you get older, you realize… Most times, that’s not really what someone needs from you. Most people don’t want the action hero. What they need, more than anything, is for you tobethere.”
Hazel, John, and Amelia had reached the hospital doors. Hazel turned back to Owen, but he waved to her, and she nodded, then followed Amelia inside.
“Now,” Owen said, “that monster put my son through hell. He sent him so far to the edge of himself that he nearly leaped into that forever darkness. I’ve got two people to thank for anchoring my son to this world. One is that damn strong man upstairs, Shea, and the other is you. Brody walked back from that edge because of you. He’s alive because of you. You showed up, Morgan. You weretherefor him then, and here you are, doing it again. That’s the finest thing a man can do in this life: be there for someone.”
On the scale of things I’m the absolute worst at, accepting compliments is right at the top. Acceptingthis, a ‘thanks for keeping my son alive’ and a ‘you’re a damn fine man, doing the best thing a man can do?’ No can do. No, sir.
I wanted to drop to Owen’s feet and beg his forgiveness, tell him I was sorry I didn’t see this sooner, that I should have done more, that I hadn’t slayed the monster and Coates had come back to hurt his son again, and that it was all my fault. I couldn’t accept what Owen was saying because there was no part of me that felt worthy of his words. I should have done more.
