“OW,” I said. This angered him. He kicked me harder.
“Shut the hell up,” he said, but the second kick actually hurt a lot, so I began screaming. This made Brandon slap my face repeatedly. Fortunately, Felix had just arrived on the scene, and according to his own mysterious logic, his reaction to what he saw was to grab Brandon by the head and throw him across the yard.
He turned to me. We stared at each other. His eyes were cold with disgust.
Eventually, he said: “Fuck outta here,” and walked back into the house.
So, that was how I came to be in the same hospital as Rachel. Although it was a completely different wing of the hospital—hers was the chemotherapy area, and mine was the broken-arm-that-had-somehow-become-infected area. No one seemed to know how my broken arm got infected. Pretty quickly I stopped asking about it. I was worried I would find out that there were other basic medical facts that the nurses didn’t know, like where skin comes from, or how surgery works.
But yeah, my broken arm got infected, and I ran a fever, and all of that meant a lengthy stay in the hospital. And that meant visitors. Each of these visitors had various points to make.
Mom
• Poor, poor sweetie.
• We’re gonna get you out of here soon.
• Oh, my poor brave boy.
• You must be so bored.
• Here are some books that I collected at random from your room or the library.
• I’ll just put these books on top of those other books from last time.
• You have to make sure to do your schoolwork.
• You have to make sure to tell the nurses if anything feels funny.
• If you have even the slightest headache, you need to get on the phone and call the nurses right away because it might be meningitis.
• I said it might be meningitis.
• Meningitis is a fatal brain disease, and in hospitals you’re sometimes more vulnerable to—
• You know what, I don’t want to scare you with this.
• Just if you have even the tiniest headache, call the nurses.
• I’m just being crazy, but seriously, call them.
• Does your phone work?
• Let me just see if it works.
Mom accompanied by Gretchen
• We thought we’d come here and cheer you up.
• Gretchen, do you want to say anything to your brother?
• Gretchen, can you just cooperate for fifteen minutes.
• Gretchen. This is not a game.
• I can’t believe you refuse to cooperate even with this.
• Just go wait outside then. You are really being awful. You are being just awful and I wish I knew why. I’ll be outside in five minutes.
• Jesus.
Mom accompanied by Grace
• Grace drew you a picture!
• It’s a picture of Cat Stevens!
• It’s a what? Oh.
• It’s a bear.
• Grace drew you a very handsome bear.
Earl
• sup, ike
• i talked to some a your teachers
• you gotta write an essay or some shit
• you gotta do a list of problems outta some book
• ms. harrad says don’t worry about the test friday, you and her gonna talk about it when you get back, also she hope you get better
• mr. cubaly want you to do some test while you in here but i got no idea how that suppose to happen so my advice is don’t worry about it
• you got mulholland drive in the mail from netflix so i watched it
• that shit is fucked the fuck up, no joke
• we gotta watch it once you get out of here
• that shit is crazy as hell
• lesbians and shit
• look at you
• you gonna be a weak little bitch when you get outta here
• you just lying in bed all damn day
• what else, what else
• oh i went to see your girl again
• she got a bald-ass head right now
• she look like darth vader without the helmet
• chemo is no joke, son
• she axed me for some of our films last time so i lent em to her
• i dunno which ones, i gave her like ten of em
• whoa
• what the hell are you yelling about?
• are you being serious right now? are you being serious with me right now?
• you need to calm your ass down
• you need to be toning this shit down right about now
• man, that girl has a damn bag full of chemicals in her body right now, she need something to cheer her the hell up, she happy as hell about these films
• i mean no she is not happy as hell but she was smiling and shit and that’s a major improvement so don’t be trying to bitch me out about this
• yeah, that’s right, tone it down
• the fuck you think i’m gonna say no to this girl be dying out of cancer and shit.
• damn
• this is what papa gaines would call an “extenuating circumstance,” am i right
• goddamn
• look
• you’re being dumb as hell but i do feel you
• you know i don’t like to show this shit to no one
• but you can’t say no to this girl
• i do feel you, but it’s like, i dunno, you do not understand how much she like our dumbass films, but she like the hell out of em
• so don’t give me shit
• aight, i’m done
• feel better, son
Dad
• Well, well, well.
• You seem rather jolly today!
• No, I know. I’m just making a little joke.
• No, it can’t be much fun to be in here.
• Although you do get to lead a fairly decadent lifestyle, don’t you.
• With the constant television, and the food brought to you, and the mountains of books.
• Not all who stay in hospitals enjoy such luxury.
• When I was hospitalized in the Amazon, the patients were all quartered together in a single room, and instead of television, all we had to watch for entertainment were the giant hairy spiders lying in wait for prey on the thatched ceiling, maybe eight feet above our faces.
• Spiders the size of your fist.
• Fangs glistening with venom.
• They each had hundreds of little black eyes that would twinkle dimly at night.
• And how they used to battle the wasps!
• Sometimes in the darkness a wasp would strike one of them, and in their struggle they would come tumbling down onto the bed, biting and stinging and thrashing and—
• OK. OK.
• It’s just something to think about.
Earl accompanied by Derrick
• sup
• ’Sup, Greg.
• derrick was like, yo, earl, do they got candy at the hospital
• Yeah I was like, if I don’t get to eat candy, I go bah-serk.
• so we brought you some skittles and a couple airheads
• There was three but I ate one.
• yeah
• Yo, lemme sign your cast one time.
• if you don’t like these flavors obviously you can just give em back to us
• There ...we...go. HA-HA!
• goddamn derrick what the fuck
• TITTIES.
• you did not just draw a pair of bare-ass-naked titties on greg’s fucking cast
• no it ain’t awright, don’t be saying it’s awright
• YA BURNT.
• goddammit
• we gotta go
Madison
• Hello!
• I and my boobs are in your room with you!!
Yeah. Madison Hartner visited me in the hospital. Actually, I’m gonna stop doing this stupid bullet-point thing and just describe what happened with Madison. For a while I got tired of writing the normal way, but now I’m also tired of writing the bullet-point way. We really are caught between a rock and a hard place here.