Kung Fu High School (7 page)

That Karl was a real complainer. He made the most awful wheezing sound when he rolled himself over and pointed to the shifted bone lump in his chest. He was an automatic human bellows with a hole in the accordion part. The Blades carried him off quick and leaped in the back of some kid's truck and raced to the hospital. At least he was alive. With that kind of force, he was lucky that busted breastbone didn't shank his heart. Not that I really cared about him at that point.

My flannel was off and I was wrapping Jimmy's neck with it while Cue threw kid after kid away from us and back into the crowd being formed by the breaking of the circle. Even the Hunters had to get in on it. It was chaos. I was getting kicked while I tried to hold the wound on Jimmy's neck closed. It pumped out blood in the rhythm of his heart. Pressure, it needed more pressure! I couldn't see his eyes. They were completely swollen shut.

"It's gonna be okay, Jimmy, we're getting you out of here." I didn't know what else to say.

"Vas it, Jen!" On a scale of Cue angriness, this was about a nine out of ten. He meant the big neck cut, the one that was soaking my khaks all by itself.

"It's too big, Cue! We need Remo at the FC!" Did I just shout that at him? I guess I did. I mean, I did.

"I said fuckin' vas it right now!" Cue slammed a kid Blade in the face. Dropped him in one. Overeagerness is a rarely rewarded trait here. Essentially, that was the end of the crowd. People backed off, went their separate ways in a hurry, when they saw the kid roll up and blow away.

In Cuespeak, vas means Vaseline. That's another thing that you need at Rung Fu: your own personal first-aid kit. I was digging for mine in my pack but it was underneath my civics homework and I was getting the fill-in-the-blank take-home U.S. presidents test all bloody as I pulled for the dark blue satchel at the bottom. Got it.

Jimmy was breathing funny but I put my ear to his chest and I was pretty sure his ribs weren't broken. ABC: airways, breathing, circulation. Check, check, check. I tore open both five-by-nine sterile abdominal pads and I used the first one for the cut above the collarbone, skewing it at an angle before wrapping around his whole neck with all my red-striped gauze. Didn't stay red-striped for long though, that stuff is like a mini-sponge the way it soaks up blood. The second pad was just wide enough to wrap his forehead, over his eyes and part of his cheek. I vassed all the other cuts on his face. One, two, three, four, five, six, and left the top off the Vaseline and flung it back in the satch.

I looked up to see the quad empty, except for a few wounded stragglers, and Cue was next to me, tearing at Jimmy's shirt and putting pressure on his cousin's chest and he was talking. "No broken ribs, just some cuts, we're gonna have some serious fuckin' bruising on those abs but—" Cue's mind must've skipped a few steps because then he was yelling at me, "Lift, Jen, lift! Let's go!"

Once we had Jimmy up, Cue did the rest. He powered the three blocks to the free clinic and I had to run to keep up. Some drivers on the street must've seen us from their cars, but wounded people getting carried aren't that unusual a sight in this neighborhood. At the free clinic, we did our knock on the side door and Sally, the receptionist, let us in. She took us to the usual room next to the broom closet and closed the door behind her as she left.

"Put him on the table," I said.

Cue just glared at me. What could I do? I was feeling useless as it was and when that happens I just say whatever comes to mind.

"
Oye,
what do we got here?" Remo was next to the table before the door closed. I didn't even hear it open. That Sally sure was good to get him here so fast. By now, Remo's greeting was rhetorical, a joke between the three of us. Remo sized Jimmy up and decided to remove the abdominal pad on his forehead first.

"Hand me that squeeze bottle, Bruce," Remo asked, not looking away from Jimmy. He always played on my name. Bruce was short for Bruce Jenner, the gold medalist runner. I handed Remo the checkered water bottle.

It probably wasn't necessary but Remo soaked the whole pad down with water anyway. I'd seen him do it before. Just in case there was coagulation, he didn't want to rip a pad off even if it still appeared wet with blood. Gentle guy.

"Damn." Remo saw that Jimmy's eyes were both swollen shut. "What's his name?"

"Jimmy," Jimmy said.

"Ayight, Jimmy, you can obviously hear me, you're in a free clinic and I'm Dr. Rodriguez. I got some questions to ask you."

"Okay."

"Did you black out at all, is there anything you can't remember about being hit?" Remo was putting pressure on Jimmy's brow wound and rinsing the rest of his face.

"No, I remember everything."

"Okay, no stars, bars, or purple horseshoes at any time then? Are you dizzy or nauseated?" Remo peeled the other pad off Jimmy's neck. It wasn't bleeding anywhere near as bad as it had been.

"Nope, nope."

"The guy sounds together." Remo was cleaning the neck, chest, and stomach wounds. "Lucky for you guys most of this is cosmetic."

"What're you talking about? I've never seen anyone bleed that much." Cue was flexing.

"Calm down, Cue. Now, yeah, I know it's a lot of blood, and yeah, I do need to check for internal bleeding and wait for the eye swelling to go down before I can check those eyes but other than that, your boy looks like he can take a beating, and unless he's a hemophiliac, which I don't think he is, we'll get him fixed up good," Remo said, and I swear Jimmy smiled a little at the taking a beating part.

Overreaction. Remo was careful not to say the word but he thought it. I knew it.

"You did a great job, Jenner."

Jenner was the bad rat with the goatee in
The Secret of NIMH.
Remo loved his movies. Actually, his name isn't even Remo. That's just what Cue and I call him because he's a damn movie buff that looks like a young Fred Ward with blond hair. Remo's that light-skinned-Spanish kind of Latino. Same as my dad, but everyone thinks he's white because he doesn't really speak Spanish, just the odd word. Same as me. Like father like daughter.

"Thanks, Remo." I didn't feel like I had done a great job. Maybe he just meant I vassed the right wounds and put pressure on the right ones too.

"You're welcome. Chill here, keep that pressure on. I'll get my tools."

His tools. Remo was the best at wound stitching. Best I've ever seen anyway, and I've seen a few, most of it up close and personal. Anyway, he was so much better than anyone we had in the family, which was why we brought everything serious to him.

Back with his box, Remo set it on the rolling instrument stand near the table. Tweezers, specialist twine, clamps, scissors, he had everything in that box, even his initials on the inside of the lid.

"See? The ear wound is superficial. So the bleeding isn't coming from the canal. Good news, and"—Remo leaned in with his scope, first on the right, then the left—"both eardrums are
intacto.
"

Superficial didn't mean all good. Jimmy's left ear had a hole torn in it big enough to stick your fingertip through. The outer ridge had pulled away from the ear just above the lobe. Kind of like the lid of a Tupperware container that won't close all the way on the lip. That'll stay as is. Remo told us never to stitch cartilage. Just let it heal, he always said. So I watched as the doc cleaned the drying blood off it and then wrapped and taped a bacitracin zinc—smeared gauze to Jimmy's ear.

He did have to stitch Jimmy's brow and neck though. No anesthetic and a total of twenty-three really tight stitches, all lined up, soldiers in a row. That was probably more than any other doctor would ever put in, but Remo was an artist and both wounds were going to heal well. Jimmy was going to have two real cute scars, one thin, one thick. That's when I knew I was starting to calm down. Thoughts like that one.

Mr. Unhittable's score for the day? Seventeen cuts, eight so deep that they required some stitching, resulting in forty total stitches, a torn ear, various bone bruises, assorted subdermal hematomas, and a wicked trachelematoma. Remo really was right, he got off light for the beating he took. It sure looked a hell of a lot worse. When Jimmy was all cleaned, stitched, and medicated, Remo handed a prescription paper to Cue.

"Take this to Fibber, and don't let him charge you more than ten bucks this time," he said. Fibber is the old pharmacist on Bleak Street. He's a big liar but he's also a good man. He's our connection for any meds. Shit, we owed Fibber; if it wasn't for him, Dad would've been out of stuff a real long time ago.

"Okay, ready? Blah, blah, blah, you know the speech so keep those wounds clean and bring him to my ma's house on Sunday night so I can check up on those
ojos
to make sure there aren't any detached retinas hiding behind those chunky blood oranges, ayight?"

"Thanks, Remo." Cue was still all intense and he took Remo's hand in both of his mitts when he said it.

"Yeah, yeah, just bring that video you promised me last time." He was already turning away. "Got other patients, ya know. Check y'all later."

We didn't talk on the way home and we didn't stop by the Drugs & More on Bleak because Cue and I had plenty of painkillers for Jimmy to choose from. By now, Cue probably knew as much about them as anybody. So he just pocketed the prescription for a later date. That was standard procedure.

I would've carried Jimmy home but Cue didn't even ask me for my opinion, nearly picked Jimmy up like a sack of cat litter and put him on his back. Of course, Jimmy told us he could walk, just as long as Cue led. So I got stuck carrying all our book bags: mine and Jimmy's on one shoulder, Cue's on the other. I must've looked like the lady who wears four jackets and pushes that shopping cart everywhere.

If this had to happen, it's probably best that it happened on a Friday. At least that way Jimmy had two days to recover before he was doing it all over again. Cue and me both knew that he couldn't kick sternums in all semester, much less for the year. I mean, Cue was a senior, and with some luck, he was going to graduate and do his vet thing if a state school took a chance on him. He had good science grades and test scores. My life would've been so much easier if Jimmy would've fought, if he would've just knocked Karl out with one punch, or better yet, disappeared and reappeared on the top of the school just to freak everyone out. Something other than getting torn up, because if Jimmy Chang could get torched, then no one was safe. I knew it. Cue knew it. Ridley knew it. And everyone at Kung Fu knew it.

Crossing Common Street to Norman-Wide Avenue, I noticed that the trees didn't have leaves anymore. It was officially fuckin' winter. I was tired. Dad was late on his meds. Cue was pissed off Between the fight and our time at the FC, white stuff was playing on the streets but hadn't started falling from the sky yet. Before, the last week even, everything had been brown. Extra sand strewn all over the asphalt, for wheel traction, so no cars slid off the roads. Of course, when the snow and ice melted, everything was just dirty.

But then, loaded down with packs, following the path the boys cut, I couldn't see any dirt anywhere, just the moving white stuff See, I had this sensation that the flecks of dirt hadn't disappeared at all, hadn't been cleaned up, but, instead, had somehow got real old in two hours and had a change of hair color. Like miniature human heads with no bodies, too many to ever count: little
abuelos, abuelitas,
getting swept around in the wake winds of passing cars and floating on the air for a few seconds before settling again, then starting over. Forty-one whole years in a day.

Dad always sleeps late on Saturdays so Jimmy was Nurse Jen's first patient.

"Jimmy? You awake?" I pushed the door open to my room and nearly tripped over a damn box of schoolbooks that I forgot I put next to the closet.

"Sort of," Jimmy said with no trace of whine in his voice. Had to give the kid credit.

"Well, move your ass to the couch then. Time to clean those wounds up. You probably leaked all night."

"Can I sleep more first?" Jimmy asked as he was pushing himself up on his elbows. Facing away from me, he threw the sheet off. He had slept on his back all night. I could tell by the wrinkled sheet marks across his shoulders. He was only wearing his boxers. I had to turn around and face the hallway through the open door.

"Hell no, you'll sleep better if you don't get an infection." I said it like a joke but really, if he wasn't my cousin and hurt, he would've gotten kicked. I slept on the lumpy couch because of him. I got up at 8
A.M.
to clean his wounds because he was swollen-eyed and incapable.

"Sorry. I'm coming."

I don't know how he does it, but that kid has got some kind of a sixth sense for my moods. Like he knows what I'm feeling. Then again, I've always worn my heart on my sleeve. If I don't like you, you know it.

After Jimmy got sweatpants tugged over his legs and one of Cue's button-up shirts on but not buttoned up, I helped him down the hall and into the living room. I kicked the tissue box out of the way and had him sit on a towel and lean back on the arm of the couch so that he was half reclining, like those Manet paintings I got shown in art class.

I can't help the tissue box thing. I always have to have it next to me when I sleep. I mean, ever since my nose was broken I've had sinus problems. I keep telling Remo that but he kids me, tells me I'm a liar and that a broken
nariz
has nothing to do with getting sinus infections. I'm no doctor but I do know that I never used to get the damn things before, but ever since my nose got smacked I get them five or six times a year. When that happens, my mucus goes all gloppy and neon yellow. I still swear there's a connection between the two.

It being a Saturday morning, I put the cartoons on. We luck out. It's an old episode of G.I.
Joe.
Shipwreck is mouthing off about something to Duke and Lady Jaye. It looked like they were right about to go into battle against Destro and those Cobra android super robots. It was one of the later episodes.