I have no claim on the man they wheeled through those double doors forty minutes ago. They’re probably not going to tell me anything. HIPAA and all that bullshit.
If he’s even still alive.
I’m nothing but a stranger with a red bag at my feet that contains the evidence that a cop bled on me while I tried to hold him together. I’ve never held someone’s life in my hands.His blood is under my fingernails and it won’t come out. I don’t want it to. Not until I know he’s okay.
My phone has been buzzing non-stop in the bag. I’d transferred it from the jeans. The screen is still smeared with blood that I tried to wipe off with a paper towel.
I know it’s Dante because no one else would call me eleven times in thirty minutes. I haven’t picked up. I can’t. If I hear his voice I’m going to break apart and I can’t lose it in this room because if I start, I will not stop.
The ER doors slide open and two people walk through. The bartender, Sheila, and the blonde guy from the bar. They move through fast, Sheila going straight to the nurses’ station and peppering them with questions before she’s fully stopped walking. The blonde guy scans the room. His eyes land on me and stay there for a second, then he moves to a nearby chair and sits.
A minute later a door opens from the interior corridor, the one that leads back toward the operating rooms, and the giant man, Tex, comes through it.
He’s still in the barbecue apron covered in Mickey’s blood. He must’ve been back there this whole time, since he rode in the ambulance. His face is tight as if he’s barely holding it together.
Sheila sees him first. She leaves the nurses’ station and goes to him. He bends down and she grabs his face with both hands and holds it there. He says something to her, and he nods. Then she wraps her arms around him in a hug.
He straightens up, scans the room and his eyes find me.
I watch him take in the scrubs I’m wearing. The bag at my feet. He’s probably wondering why they made me change clothes. I don’t know what I expect from him. Anger, maybe.
This is all your fault, Benji. Look what you’ve done!
He walks over and stands by my chair. He looks down at me. “Have they looked at you yet?” he asks gruffly.
I glance up. “What?”
“Your face. Your ribs. Have they looked at you?”
“Yeah, they cleaned me up. Bandaged my lip. There’s probably bruised ribs. I wouldn’t let them do the X-ray. I don’t think anything is broken.”
He looks at me for another second. Then he nods, once, like the answer is enough for now. He turns to Sheila, who has moved to the nurses’ station again. “Any word?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No updates.”
She glances over at me and I wait again for the words, and again they don’t come.
Tex drops into the chair across from me. He’s too big for it. His knees are nearly at his chest and his elbows hang off the armrests. He sits there with his bloody apron and stares at the double doors the same way I’ve been staring at them, willing them to open and give us a good word.
Nobody speaks for a while. Tex is dead still. That’s the thing I notice. A man that size, you’d expect restlessness, shifting, the chair groaning under adjustments. But he’s rooted in place. His eyes haven’t left those doors. The onlything moving on him is a muscle in his neck that flexes every few seconds.
Then I notice his right hand lift off his thigh and curl into a fist. His knuckles go white and the fist holds for about five seconds, every tendon visible, and then relaxes open and goes flat again.
He does it only once. Five seconds of feeling, then he shuts it off.
I thought he’d walk over and say the thing Sheila’s face was saying to me in the parking lot. But he’s not going to say that. He’s going to sit in a chair that’s too small for him and hold the room together.
Sheila comes back from the nurses’ station. She stands in front of Tex and puts her hand on the top of his head, just for a second, and Tex closes his eyes. Two seconds. His face loosens and for those two seconds he’s not the man holding everything together, he’s just scared shitless for his best friend.
Then his eyes open and he draws in a deep breath. Sheila takes her hand away and sits down next to him and the room goes back to waiting. His best friend is in surgery because of me. And he’s sitting across from me and he hasn’t said what I know he’s thinking. I don’t know if that’s mercy or the simple fact that he doesn’t have the energy to hate me and hold himself together at the same time.
The younger blonde guy moves to sit beside Tex. He doesn’t say a word, just reaches for his hand and laces their fingers together.
They’re together. The giant man and the quiet blonde guy. It makes me feel better to know this.
An hour goes by. My phone buzzes again. I pull it out. Fourteen missed calls. Twenty-three texts. The last one I can’t ignore.
Dante:Benji if you don’t answer me in the next five minutes I’m getting in my car. I’m serious. You know I’m serious. I can be there by morning.
