Forgive Me (19 page)

“Whoa, you can’t go out there.”

“The hell I can’t,” I say, pushing him off me. He grabs my wrist and I think Jason would kill him for grabbing me this way. I look back at Jason and several people are now kneeling down to him. From what I can see, he’s still not moving.

“Look. Do you remember me? From the Penny?” I follow his arm to his face and recognize the guy I’d been sitting next to at the bar. Someone from home, or Oklahoma.

“You have to help me. I have to get out there.”

“They’ll take good care of him. You wait right here with me. Come, stand on the fence so you can see better,” he says, and with only a helpless mind to pull from, I follow his directions. From the opposite side of the arena more men come, one carrying a bright yellow stretcher, but Jason doesn’t move. I hold my hand to my mouth as a dark and ugly tremor originates in the back of my throat and climbs down to my stomach. My head’s in a vice, my eyes fixed on Jason and if he doesn’t move soon…

They roll him onto the stretcher and secure the belts around him. Harlan gets back on his horse and rides to me standing here on the fence, with some guy from the Penny.

“Stay right here. I’ll be back to get you with the truck.” I just look at him.

“Charlotte, you hear me? Stay right here.” I nod. Why didn’t he say he’s fine? Why didn’t he say he’s going to be all right?

The men carry Jason’s body off the dirt and into a waiting ambulance and as the door closes, my head collapses in my hands and I plead out loud, “No God, take me, too.”

I’m vaguely aware of an arm around me, a few steps to the side, and some guys recounting the five seconds of Jason’s run, trying to determine what happened. Harlan drives his truck right up on the lawn and stops it in front of me. The guy opens the door and helps me in, and Harlan takes off without a word.

Harlan’s GPS is the only one talking. It guides us through the streets of Hays and delivers us to the Hays Medical Center just as an ambulance pulls in the driveway. The hospital stands three or four stories high, with a lighthouse made out of stone at the entrance. Everywhere around us is flat, like the rest of tornado alley.

“Charlotte,” Harlan starts out slow and I look at him out of obligation rather than caring what he has to say. “That steer’s got nothing on him. He’s going to be all right.”

“I know he is,” I say for the benefit of Harlan, for the only thing I really know is what it’s like to sit across from Kevin at the funeral home and pick out a casket. We get out of the truck and Harlan moves to walk by my side. A helicopter is landing on the roof and I consider it a good sign. People are airlifted here; it must be a good hospital, or the only hospital.

Once inside Harlan is told to sit and wait and we do. The last time I was in a hospital I waited. Waited to be told my mother was dead like my father. Harlan’s phone keeps ringing. People want to know what’s going on. I hear him tell each of them what he saw in the arena and that we know nothing new.

“Send it to me,” he says, and I can’t imagine what’s coming. When Harlan gets off the phone he walks to the window, reading his phone, or watching his phone, and I know it’s a video of the run.

“I want to see it,” I say, and Harlan turns to me red-faced. We’re not used to taking care of each other. Jason is always firmly between us and now it’s just Harlan and me.

“No you don’t.”

“You think I’m going to forget what I saw? That video’s not going to scar me. Send it to me,” I say without an ounce of emotion left in me. My phone dings with a text message from Harlan, including a link to the YouTube video of Jason’s run.

As time passes, more people arrive. Jason’s rodeo coach and the rest of the team file in. We all stand together in the hospital waiting room. Every footstep approaching the room, every conversation on every phone in the hall, every dinging of a bell I decipher for information of Jason Leer. Finally the doctor emerges and finds Jason’s coach. We all huddle around.

He’s alive.

It’s all I hear, but it’s enough. I lean on Harlan, who’s not at all pacified.

“Awake…blindness…temporary…edema of occipital lobe…head trauma…torn bicep tendon…surgery,” I take this in, and that we’ll have to wait.

Several cowboys offer me their seat, but I stand by the window. I watch the darkness take over, and look for the moon. I should call Butch, I suppose. I look around the waiting room for Stephanie Harding; she’s the only link to Salem County, the only stream to feed him the information and she’s sitting silently with her roommates. I’ll wait until Jason is awake to call him. We still don’t have much information. Hours pass and some of the students head back to the hotel, opening more space in the waiting room for the rest of us. Harlan is never far from me. He looks tortured, as if he blames himself in some way.

The doctor comes back into the waiting room and approaches the coach, who is half asleep.

“If you want to go see him, we have him stabilized.” The coach turns to Harlan and me.

“I’m sure you’ll do him more good than the rest of us,” he says, and I immediately walk toward the doctor, Harlan following close behind me. As we turn the corners of the stark hallway that I’ll never recognize on the way out, the doctor provides more information.

“He’s sedated. We’ll keep him comfortable until the swelling subsides.” Harlan nudges me forward and I linger at the end of his bed, letting the light on the wall above Jason’s head tell me the unabridged story of his injuries.

Jason’s arm is in a cast. His head is bandaged, and purple bruises are already forming across the right side of his face. It looks as if the steer stepped right on his face.
What did that feel like?
My bottom lip quivers and I clench my jaw to stave off the tears. I take a deep breath through my nose and close my eyes as I exhale.
He’s alive.

There are things beeping and tubes wired from him to a metal stand with bags hanging on it. A nurse is arranging his blanket around his waist, being careful of his arm. My fingers cover my still-shaking lips as my head shakes, denying the sight of him. His bed is sitting up, but his eyes are closed. A faded hospital gown is draped across the front of him. It hangs low on his shoulders, showing cuts and bruises across his chest. There’s a large tube taped to his mouth with an accordion style bag at the other end of it. I close my eyes and hang my head. This isn’t him. It can’t be him.
God, no. Not him.

With every image burning into my brain, sadness sets in. I’m unable to exhale. He’s alive. That should be all that matters, but the knowledge is absent of relief. The thing he loves most in the world will kill him. It’s only a matter of time before he dies at the hand of it, and I may be a witness.

I walk to the side of his bed, and lean over to kiss his swollen face.

“You scared me. You can’t leave me here without you.” I close my eyes to keep from crying. I take his hand between my own and massage it and then I remember we’re not alone.

“We’ll take the breathing tube out tomorrow. It helps regulate his carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, both of which we anticipate self-regulating as the swelling goes down.” I run my fingers up and down his arm.

“Can he hear me?”

“We’ve had no indication his hearing was affected, only his sight. He’ll be asleep for a while, though. His body has a lot of work to do, both now and as he rehabilitates his arm.

“How long?” Harlan asks, still at least three feet from Jason’s bed.

“He’s looking at a full six months before he returns to normal activity,” the doctor says, and nods his head to Harlan, “especially your version of normal.”

I stop listening and stare at Jason’s good hand, too sickened by his beautiful face marred and bandaged. Harlan pulls a chair over for me and I lean on the metal rail separating Jason from the healthy as I continue caressing him.

At some point Harlan asks if I need anything. I’m vaguely aware of nurses checking and recording vitals and a shift change as the sun takes over for the night, but my eyes never leave Jason. I stare at his chest as every breath causes it to rise and I check off my own vital. He is alive.

The sight of his hand limp in my own brings the tears, and I squeeze my eyes together to fight them back. I rub his hand on my face, willing it to move itself.
Touch me, Jason.
Defeated, I return it to his side and hold it there. I drop my head onto the railing and let my eyes close.

“Charlotte. Charlotte, you’ve got to eat something. Why don’t you come with me to the hotel and lie down for a while?” Harlan asks.

“I’m not leaving to get some rest or something to eat. I’m not leaving until he’s able to come with me,” I say, angry with myself for falling asleep. I look up and Harlan looks like he might cry. “I’m sorry, Harlan.”

“I know you love him. I love him, too,” he says. “He’d want me to take care of you. He’s going to need you strong.”

I stand and my back screams its reproach at the chair I made into a bed.
Nice bed
, I think and smile at Jason. For the first time I realize the breathing tube is gone.

“How long was I asleep?” I ask Harlan, my voice barely functioning. I look out the window as the sun sinks low in the sky for my second night in Kansas.

“Annie.” The name weakly floats into the room, hooks on my ribcage, and pulls me to him. I look at Jason and back at Harlan to confirm he heard it, too. Harlan nods.

“Jason.” I pull his good hand to my lips and kiss it.

“Annie, I can’t see you.”

“It’s temporary. It’s going to come back,” I say, and the sound of my name on his lips makes me start to cry. “You just have to rest and it’ll come back.” Jason closes his eyes and ends our conversation and the sorrow returns.

Harlan retreats to the hotel for the night and I give him my room key to bring my backpack to me. I also order food, leaving the type completely up to Harlan. I stand and walk around the room every hour, trying to fight off sleep, too afraid I’ll miss him waking again. But when I pull the blanket the nurse gave me up to my chin I fall asleep in my chair, in this horrible chair, that I am thankful for.

“Annie.” I shake my head free of the unwanted dream and realize it was Jason who called my name. I raise my head and see Jason’s eyes staring at the ceiling.

“I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

“I still can’t see you.”

“That might be a good thing,” I say, and laugh a tiny laugh.

“How long have we been here?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “I think it’s Saturday. We came Thursday. Do you remember what happened?”

“The last thing I remember is having you in the hotel.”
Lucky you
. His words make me cry for the memory.

“It won’t be long and we’ll be back there again, but now you have to rest. Repair. Doctor’s orders.” A silence settles between us, but I have to tell him one more thing. I want him to know that he is the only thing that matters in this world to me. That nothing, in any other state, means a thing.

“Jason,” I say.

“Annie?”

“I love you,” I say instead.

“I know what you mean,” Jason says, and closes his eyes. He always knows what I mean.

Harlan returns with a take-out bag from Gella’s diner and I completely house a Sandwich Cubano with homemade chips. I look up into the eyes of Harlan. He seems disturbed by the inhalation of my meal.

“Hard to watch?” I ask, half apologizing. “I guess I was hungry.”

“Goddamned New Jersey rock head. You need to eat, girl!” he says, and I close my eyes and nod in surrender.

“Thank you,” is all I offer in return. “Can you sit here while I shower?” I ask, getting up from my “bed.” Harlan hesitates. “Do you not like hospitals?”

“This is the first time I’ve ever been in one, and I hope I never come back.” When I think about it, it’s only my second time.

“All the years you’ve been involved in the rodeo, you’ve never been to the hospital?” I ask in disbelief. No stitches? No broken bones?

“I’ve seen lots of injuries, but never been to the hospital. One guy last year got caught up in a horse and drug around the whole arena. It tore all his clothes off, but by the time we got him out he was able to limp away. I saw a guy lose his eye when I was little, but I didn’t go to the hospital. I gave up bull riding after watching it.”

“That’ll do it, I suppose,” I say, and watch Harlan carefully sit next to Jason’s bed. This sport is insane.

I turn the shower to as hot as I can tolerate it. I turn my back to the spigot and let the scorching water beat on me. God, I wish Jason was in here with me. I finish and hop out. I’m sure this shower is not intended for my use, but I’m not leaving this room without him and I’ll soon start to smell. The nurses have been so good to me. I need to remember to send them something if we ever get out of here. I watch Harlan stare at Jason and wonder what he’s thinking, what both of them are thinking, as I brush my hair in the corner of the room. Jason opens his eyes slowly and looks at Harlan.

“Where’s Annie?” I walk into view and he smiles.

“You can see,” I say, half-breathless.

“I can and you’re beautiful.”

“I feel beautiful now that you’re looking at me,” I say, and lean over to kiss his still swollen lips. Harlan stands and walks out of the room.

A long ride back to Oklahoma, followed by a shower with some assistance from me, and a dose of painkillers has Jason drifting off to sleep in his own bed for the first time in six days. I lie with him, holding his hand, and wonder at the last week. I want to fall asleep next to him, but first I have to make some calls. I’ve already e-mailed all my professors. They’ve all been very supportive, except for my favorite one who is not a fan of excuses, no matter how good. Noble’s in that class, too, so I can get the notes, but it’s close to exams and I’m not there to plead my case. I call Julia first.