Finally, we were notified by Stephen’s parents that we could see him because the doctors were bringing him out of unconsciousness and he was being moved out of ICU. Now that Stephen was finally awake, it was a good time to go and see him. So, about two weeks after the accident, on a Saturday, it seemed like a good time to finally visit and talk with him.
But even before we arrived at the hospital, I knew it would be difficult because hanging over us was Runaway, and her not agreeing with the decision to stop racing. The tension between her and the rest of us was horrible and it had been going on for days, but it felt like weeks. I knew she didn’t even want to be around us half the time because of the decision we had made, and because we had told her to stay away from Brandon.
We had tried to tell her that it was stupid to try to extract revenge, and that she shouldn’t be a fool, chasing him around. We were sure the cops would get him soon enough, because Brandon would do something stupid again, and next time, a “sorry” wouldn’t clear it.
The bottom line was that we meant well enough, but I could tell, as could Grant and Brian, that Runaway resented us wholeheartedly. And so everything we said fell on deaf ears.
Arriving at the hospital about the same time, Runaway wouldn’t talk to or look at any us. I tried to smile at her as I pulled up but she didn’t even park near us, and she purposely lagged behind when we went into his room. I walked slow in order to allow her to catch up, but the slower I walked, she more she lagged. In fact, as we entered the elevator to go up to Stephen’s room, she kept walking and found the stairs. We waited for her at his room, and even then she was the last one in, and would only stand next to the door.
When we first saw Stephen it was a complete shock. His left leg was suspended from some strange bar-like contraption that ran the length of his bed. His leg was completely wrapped and bandaged. It looked almost surreal in that it seemed to not belong to him. But because he had broken all three bones in his leg—the femur, tibia, and the fibula, he couldn’t put any kind of pressure on it, not even while lying down. Although his leg looked like it didn’t belong to his body, his face was worse. The whole left side of his head was swollen. His left eye was still swollen shut and from his forehead down to past his nose was purple. The lacerations on his face were multiple, but they seemed small compared to the enormous stitched cut on the top of the right side of his forehead near his hair line.
At first it was frightening to see him, but then we just overlooked the injuries and saw him just as he was—injured, but still himself. He saw us gasp at his appearance, and he tried to smile, but he could only move the right side of his mouth properly.
“I understand” he said. “I resemble Frankenstein’s creature.” Even the way he spoke was different, as it was difficult for him to form words with half of his mouth swollen.
“You believe I look battered now? You should have seen me two weeks prior.”
None of us said anything—what could we? At this moment I was sure everyone was thinking the same thing—we were just glad he was alive.
“So,” he said, decidedly changing the subject. “How does the club fare? Honing your skills for the Tri-City?”
This was the one question we didn’t want to answer. We hadn’t had the opportunity to tell him that we weren’t racing anymore, nor did any of us give any indication that we wanted to tell him, and we knew his parents hadn’t told him how he crashed. We felt it was our responsibility to tell him.
Stephen didn’t ask about Brandon’s whereabouts due to the fact that he obviously was not there with us. We also didn’t offer up any information, either—how do you tell a guy that one of his longtime companions had purposely sabotaged his car? Whether Stephen loathed Brandon or not, they had known each other for so long, no one would have thought Brandon could have gone so far as to hurt one of us, if not almost kill one of us.
“We don’t race anymore,” Grant said flatly.
Stephen looked around the room with what looked like shock on his face. “And why the hell not?” he asked.
His reaction was what we had expected—he wouldn’t understand, because he thought his accident was just that… an accident.
“After your accident, we all just stopped.” Brian looked at all of us as he said it. I think he wanted us to chime in and spill all that we knew, but none us said anything. Each of us was hoping that someone else would say it. We didn’t want to admit we had given up.
“The other clubs are still going,” Brian finally continued, “but… but not us.” He looked down at the ground before admitting the worst part, “We walked away,” he whispered.
“You have got to be joking, right?” Stephen asked. His eyes went to each of us, searching for answers, but when he didn’t find any, his gaze turned lethal. He looked at us as if he intended to burn our souls. “Why?” was all he said, directing his gaze toward her. For all Stephen knew it was simple—wheel came off, he hit Kurt’s car, and the rest was history. How could we not race just because of that?
Runaway wouldn’t look at him—she tried, but her eyes would flit away the moment she made any sort of contact with him.
I knew I had to try and protect her—protect her from him… protect her from us… protect her from herself.
“It’s just not worth it,” I said, refusing to look at him, hoping that in some way this would appease him.
I now knew what we had done was wrong—we had started this whole club thing, and now we were the first to back out. Everything we had ever dreamed about, wanted, or fought for ceased when we quit. I also knew that by giving up, we let Bret, Brandon, and the rest of them win.
“Not worth it?” Stephen said, slowly and methodically. “You cannot think me so obtuse as to not, perhaps, judge your actions? Do you think I haven’t figured out who’s missing from our little group? I am aware that you have been present during my convalescence daily. However, now you all enter with your tails tucked between your legs, and the one person who
is missing, I am going to guess, has something to do with your pathetic faces.
“I don’t know how this all happened, but I’m sure at one point you will fill me in on the finer details, as I am in the one lying in this pathetic, uncomfortable bed, with my leg strung up in this decidedly uncomfortable apparatus!”
As he said this, his breathing was rapidly increasing, but his speech was slow and slurring.
“However, what I would like to know, and probably what I am most irritated with at this point, is how all of you are giving up.” He looked at each of us square in the eye, finally resting with me. “Just what exactly does ‘not worth it’ mean?” And to whom? I’ll probably have a permanent deformity for the rest of my life, yet I will tell you one thing I refuse to do—give up. Just because you get thrown off a bloody horse, you don’t shoot it. For God’s sake, you get back on it and try it again!
“I don’t know exactly what happened in that race with Kurt because I cannot for the life of me recall the moment, but one can assume it was something conniving. Perhaps it was an error on my part, a misjudgment of correcting my trajectory after my front wheel dislodged. But due to the fact that a notable person is missing from our little group here, I will find that little S.O.B. Brandon, and I will settle this once and for all, for I feel he is the reason you all are wallowing in self-pity.”
We felt pierced with humiliation. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to race—it was just that, after the accident, Runaway was hell-bent on revenge, and we thought we were protecting her. I believed I was protecting her. She needed to back off, and this was the only way we saw to help her, but now I knew that it was killing her. She needed the competition—she needed the confrontation, and we had taken it from her. I felt so guilty that I couldn’t swallow, so I decided to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.
“It wasn’t your driving that caused the accident,” I said.
Immediately I felt a hot glare that burned a hole in my head. I looked up and met Runaway’s blazing eyes.
“Explain yourself.” Stephen said with as much annunciation as he could muster under the circumstances. I knew he could sense something, Stephen wasn’t stupid but it is one thing to assume something catastrophic and quite another to hear it confirmed.
We were all silent, staring at each other, waiting for someone to speak, yet I knew that Grant and Brian were both mad that I had said something, and they were not going to help me out.
“Well, is someone going to tell me what the hell Topher is so inefficiently babbling about?”
None of us said a word.
Damn. They were not going to help me.
“Come on,” he coaxed. He was now to the point of exasperation. “I know he isn’t here, and he hasn’t been here… so tell me what transpired?” Stephen demanded.
All eyes fell on Runaway—she spoke quietly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.
Stephen stared at her. “Not my fault… obviously. I gleaned that part from Topher. May I suggest you keep going?”
In the silent moments that followed Stephen’s last words, I could tell that he was beginning to wrap his brain around what she said. He obviously knew Brandon hadn’t been here, but I could tell he was figuring out that he had been sabotaged by him.
“Then whose fault was it exactly?” he asked slowly.
Without an ounce of emotion she said, “Brandon’s.”
“Brandon’s,” Stephen repeated. It wasn’t a question—it was a complete and total understanding.
“Yes, Brandon’s,” Runaway repeated. She took a deep breath, and with as much control as she could find,
said, “Bret paid him to loosen the lug nuts on your tire.”
When I looked at Stephen’s face, it was exactly the same color as it had been when they pulled him from his car… cadaverous white. Again, I didn’t think his shock came from knowing what happened… it was obvious that he already was putting two and two together—he is in a hospital and Brandon has never been to visit. I think what finally shocked were hearing the words spoken, for now there was no modicum of doubt.
“So what are we planning to do about this new revelation? Besides giving up, obviously?” Stephen asked sarcastically, looking directly at her. He moved right past the Brandon issue and hit the real problem head on—us not racing.
“There’s nothing we can do—it’s over,” she said flatly. Her voice was as wooden as her stare right back at him.
“What the hell? So we just let this insignificant piss ant get away with sabotage?” His vocabulary was being replaced by rage and anger.
“The police have been involved, and are trying to piece it together,” she told him, completely missing his point altogether.
“I’m not talking about the asinine police, and you know it!” He stared her down. His anger was rising to the point that he began to yell. “I have never seen you
give up on anything in your life—you have fought for everything you have, and now, when this happens” he motioned to both his hospital bed and all of us, “you just walk away?”
Stephen sat up in bed as much as he could. “I’ve known you just about my whole life, and this crap doesn’t cut it with me. You have never walked away from a challenge, so what I want to know now is, why are you giving up when the challenge is the greatest?” He was almost screaming, and his fury was lost on no one. He was angry at being in that bed, angry that he couldn’t speak clearly, angry at us, but most of all he was angry at her—and she knew it.