"Peter. . . sustained another fracture," Lund began tentatively, the breath sighing out of him. "In his neck. A very serious fracture. His spinal cord was injured. Torn, actually. I'm afraid the damage will be permanent. We—"
"What does that mean?" Leona bleated. "What does that mean?"
"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Gardner," Lund said. "But Peter is paralyzed. From the neck down."
FOUR
Down the hall from the waiting room stood a single orange door. A sign identified the area beyond as the intensive care unit. As Sam approached that door, it swung hermetically inward, startling him. His mother, shambling along next to him like a Haitian zombie, did not seem to notice. Following Dr. Lund's tragic news, she had wandered off in search of a bathroom. Now she reeked of hard liquor.
In the corridor beyond the door, a barrage of alien stimuli assaulted Sam's senses: the pungent odors of disinfectant and disease, the jumbled beeps of unseen monitors, the cycle and hiss of life-support systems, and as the nurse led them deeper inside, the frightful sight of the cubicles. In which of them, Sam wondered, barely coherent, had they installed his brother? None of them, he suddenly felt certain. It was a clear cut case of mistaken identity. Peter was up over the city right now, flying Uncle Jim's Twin Otter. God, how he managed it Sam didn't know. Sam had gone up with him once and had almost tossed his cookies. Peter had really razzed him over that—
The nurse had stopped walking. Unheeding, Sam bumped into her. She glanced at him, regretful, before stepping into an eight-by-ten cubicle and drawing the curtain aside.
Several seconds passed before Sam was able to focus his eyes, before the room agreed to stand still. It was impossible to take it all in at once, and for a giddy instant Sam believed there really had been a case of mistaken identity. It wasn't Peter in that bed. No way. He didn't know who the poor bugger was, with his legs in casts and tubes snaking out all over him and his eyes swollen shut and his head swathed like a Sikh's and a machine inflating his lungs—but it wasn't his brother.
Then his mother was falling to her knees at the bedside, wailing like a holocaust victim, clutching the unmoving hand of the body on the bed.
Peter's hand.
Sam dropped to his knees, too. Then forward, onto his elbows, swooning in a near faint.
Time ceased to have meaning in that windowless cell, the only sign of its passing the repetitive hiss of the ventilator. Twelve cycles a minute—Sam had absently counted it out.
And twelve times each minute his mind refused to credit what his senses told him was true.
That's Peter in that bed. That's really your brother.
But how could it be? Peter was like the sun, always there, above harm, a vigorous force bringing life and warmth wherever he turned his face. Sam could be blackly depressed—and these moods came often enough in the stormy crucible of his adolescence—and Peter needed only to grin at him or pull one of his Jack Nicholson impersonations and Sam immediately felt like a prince, unable even to recall the bulking concerns that had plagued him only moments before. Though no match for Peter academically, Sam never felt as if he lived in his brother's shadow, but rather in his light. Peter always had time for his goofy kid brother. . .
Sam looked up and saw his mother glowering at him, her gray eyes baleful and measuring. Stricken, he turned away. The first seeds of guilt sprouted then.
It should've been you—that's what she's thinking. See how she looks at you? You've got no right to be walking, no right to be breathing, no right. . .
Sam made a decision then. A choice. Killing himself would be pointless, although in that room and in that moment he felt no fear of death. But if he died, he couldn't help Peter. And for the first time in their lives together, Peter needed him instead of the other way around, the way it had always been.
His brother needed him.
Sam decided to become a doctor. He would devote his life to spinal cord research, and he would find a cure.
Sam's back straightened a little with this resolve. Some of the pain leaked out of his heart.
Yeah. A cure.
Several hundred breaths later, a nurse rolled Kelly Wheeler into the ICU in a wheelchair. Her arm, encased in plaster, lay cradled in a sling across her chest. There was a small friction burn on her chin and another on her cheek. To Sam, it looked as if her entire body was humming, so bright and alert were
her eyes. She too failed to recognize the body on the bed, and for an instant that same fugitive hope tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Then the truth struck home, stark and immutable, and Kelly's face collapsed in anguish. Her head rolled back and a tortured moan built inside her; it twisted up through her chest and out through her mouth and suddenly Sam wanted to hold her. His little boy's crush on his big brother's girl congealed sickly inside him in shades of green and shamefaced red—but he wanted her in his arms. He took a halting step toward her, then a brisk one back as his mother clutched Kelly in a tortured embrace.
"Oh, dear God," Leona cried. "Give back my boy. Give back my perfect, beautiful boy."
Head hung, Sam slunk out of the room.
Later that long, shattered day, Kelly had a nurse wheel her back to her room, a semiprivate on the second floor. She climbed into bed, curled up in a ball, and cried. It hurt to cry, but she couldn't help it. Huge sobs convulsed her, hot tears soaking her pillow. Every inch of her hurt. She was fractured and bruised, abraded in places she hadn't known existed, bound up in so many yards of gauze she looked like the Mummy's Bride.
But all she could think of was Peter. So strong, so vital. As near perfect as nature allowed. Her lover. Her man. Smashed like a priceless Ming vase.
When his mother clutched her, Kelly had come close to pushing her away. The stink of liquor had come off her in waves, and suddenly Kelly had felt rage twisting savagely inside her. Look at you! she'd wanted to cry. And look at your boy! Do you realize how much he's suffered over you? The worry you've caused him? And now just look at him!
But compassion had won out, and Kelly had returned Leona's grieving embrace. She'd noticed Sam starting toward her and wished she could have held him instead of his mother. But Sam had stalked silently away. Hours later, when Kelly left the unit for her room, Sam had still not returned. She feared the shock might kill him. Like their mother, Sam had lived for his older brother.
Like Kelly herself.
Sometime during the brown haze of that afternoon, her parents came in and tried to console her. Not meaning to, Kelly drew herself shut and wished them away. Finally they left, babbling nervous good cheer and unwanted promises as they shuffled back out of the room. They didn't understand.
In the ICU, Kelly had tried to drag some information out of Peter's mom, but the woman had only blubbered nonsensically. With Sam gone from the unit, she had turned next to the attending nurse. "How is he?" she'd pleaded. "What are his injuries?" But in the fashion of all health professionals the nurse had been deliberately vague. Refusing to be put off, Kelly had stirred up a fuss until finally the nurse paged Dr. Lund, who came by to explain things to Kelly. He, at least, had been honest. Brutally so.
Quadriplegic.
A cold, anthropological sound. Hearing it, Kelly recalled the grisly illusion she'd experienced in the stage-left wing the day before, that freak trick of the light in which Peter had appeared to be headless. She recalled, too, the force of that illusion, how it had seemed almost. . . premonitory.
But he hadn't become a body without a head, which might have been more merciful; he'd become a head without a body. Permanent nerve damage, the doctor had said. If he recovered from his coma, which was still uncertain, he'd be thoroughly dependent. He'd never walk again, never move his arms again, never do anything but blink his eyes, breathe, and just. . . lie there.
Permanent.
But what about Kingston?
What about flying?
What about us? Permanent.
Kelly wept. She wept and wished for death.
The first of their school friends began wandering in later that afternoon. Though they came of their own free will, they appeared trapped to Kelly, nervously shifting, unable to meet her gaze. And it occurred to her then that she didn't really know them. . . and they didn't know her. They'd come only to ogle. And once they'd seen what they'd come to see, they were sorry. In a few of their faces Kelly witnessed a disquieting awareness being born. Christ, that look said, we really can be hurt. Even killed. For these vibrant kids Kelly was an exhibit, unwelcome proof of their own vulnerability. Even Kelly's closest girlfriend, Marti Stone, was in and out like a church mouse.
Of them all, though, Peter's football cronies were the worst. Huge flexing hulks, so unlike Peter in both intellect and physique, and yet Peter had mixed with them easily, earning their trust and respect. They skulked into Kelly's room, gawked at their feet, stammered out clumsy condolences, and then ran, literally ran, the instant they were outside the door. Only Rhett Kiley overstayed his welcome. He hung around after the others had left, grinning stupidly, making Kelly feel uneasy with his quick, canny eyes.
"Bummer," he said from the foot of the bed.
Kelly looked out the window, the covers drawn up to her chin.
"He was a good shit—"
"He's not dead, Rhett," Kelly snapped, sitting up. "He's hurt, but he's not. . .” Tears glazed her eyes.
"Hey," Rhett said, "I'm sorry. That's not what I meant." He sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on Kelly's thigh. Kelly tensed beneath the covers, but Rhett did not withdraw his hand. He released a long, woeful sigh—but his gaze touched the tanned dome of Kelly's shoulder like a dead fish.
In a single motion Kelly covered her shoulder and snugged her knees up to her chest, displacing Kiley's hand. Unperturbed, he let it rest on her foot. She could feel it tighten around her ankle.
"What I meant was, if you need a friend, Kelly—"
"Oh, that's really sweet," Kelly said acidly. Tears boiled out of her eyes in alarming streams, bringing Kiley smartly to his feet. "I bet Peter'll be real pleased to hear that his friends are looking out for his best interests."
Kiley's eyes darkened menacingly. "Aw, forget it," he said. Then he turned and stormed out of the room.
"You better hope that I do," Kelly said to the empty room. "You bastard."
There were no other visitors that day, and Kelly was glad. She didn't want their company, didn't want their gawky condolences.
She only wanted Peter.
After leaving the ICU, Sam had gone for a long walk, back along Paris Street toward home, then west on York Street to Regent. Once downtown, he completed a rambling loop through the business district and found himself back on Paris Street.
Now he stood on the Paris Street bridge, overlooking the train station and the bedlam of the rail yard below. The air was muggy, stubbornly static. In the west, the last light of day tossed up enormous fans of peach and violet, crimson and shimmering gold. The pigments, though breathtaking, were mostly artificial, the result of sunlight filtered through tons of industrial effluent, sulfur dioxide, and untold other pollutants spewed daily into the atmosphere by the numerous Nickel Ridge smokestacks. Peter had worked in the mines over the past three summers, earning money for college and to help make ends meet at home. Once Sam was old enough, he'd probably wind up there, too. It was tough, backbreaking work, but the money was good. And he'd be needing that money soon enough. It must cost a bundle to get a medical degree. He'd have to save-save-save. If he really tried he could probably find a night job, too, in a restaurant, maybe, or one of those all-night gas bars. Earn a few extra bucks during the school year. And there were government grants to be had if you were eligible. Sam remembered seeing Peter hunched over the application forms this past spring, wanting to obtain the maximum but ashamed to admit on paper that his family lived near the poverty line. He'd told Sam then that they might lose the house if their mother couldn't hold down a job. The employment agency she'd been attached to for the past five years hadn't called her in months, and Sam knew why.
She'd become. . . unreliable.
No, there was no way he could expect any support from her. She was always complaining that they didn't have a pot to piss in. Sam knew she got a monthly allowance from the provincial Family Benefits Program—"Welfare by any other name," he recalled Peter saying ashamedly—another from Canada Pension, which their father had paid into for years, and a third small chunk from the life insurance policy the old man had taken out when he signed on at the mines back in '49.
But if the government wasn't picking up the tab for Peter's medical expenses, Sam knew, they'd be out in the street tomorrow.
Oh, Jesus, Peter. I'm so sorry.
Overhead, flying low, a two-seater Cessna swooped past in preparation for landing on Ramsey Lake, the big in-city lake upon whose east bank the hospital stood. Sam craned his neck to watch it buzz by. That strange nebula-glow in the west flashed off a pontoon and struck Sam's eyes, bringing tears. . .
Sam's primal shout was lost in the roar of the Cessna's engine. Once tapped, the grief came in an unstoppable flood. A few folk tooling by in their cars glanced briefly his way, but no one paid him much heed. He stood there raging at the sky, clutching the guardrail, until his head ached miserably and his legs no longer betrayed him. Then he trudged back to the hospital.
Where the waiting began.
For Kelly and Sam that first week snailed interminably. Kelly was discharged on the second day following the accident, a circumstance that proved to be more of an inconvenience than anything else. It meant she had to go home to sleep rather than just down the hall to her gloomy semiprivate. More than once during that week she beat the inconvenience by grabbing a few fretful winks on the too-short couch in the waiting room.
Sam, too, kept restless vigil, slouched in a chair by the wall or standing at the foot of Peter's bed, watching for some sign of life, some small hint of responsiveness. His brother's quadriplegia had by sympathy induced a kind of emotional paralysis in Sam, an inner numbness from which he seemed unable to shake himself free. The truth was impossible to grasp, so Sam's mind simply shoved it away, like snow before a rumbling plow blade. He kept brushing closer to that cold curl of truth, but could never quite bring himself to touch it. He spoke to no one, made eye contact with no one, trusted no one. Peter had been his only friend, the one he'd turned to when the going got tough.