Captain Quad (6 page)

"—and before you know it you'll be talking a blue streak."

Then the guy—and that was exactly how Peter viewed him in this woeful moment of mute communication, as an ordinary guy caught in a shitty situation—seemed to read the unspoken question that reeled behind Peter's eyes. . .

And he was gone, a jovial "See you tomorrow" all that was left to ring in Peter's ears.

The spasms began in earnest during his third week in the ICU. He'd suffered a few of them already, mild ones, quivery little starts that stole through his body or shimmied his legs. Spinal shock, they told him it was—although Leona kept insisting these movements were a sign of Peter's imminent recovery—the body's predictable reaction to spinal cord injury. From the shelves of his shoulders to the soles of his feet his muscles were totally flaccid—no tone, no reflexes. But when the spasms came, their force was Herculean, at times seeming vigorous enough to snap his spine all over again. On top of all this, he got frequent spontaneous erections (whose presence he couldn't feel, and this embarrassed him repeatedly), his blood pressure took regular nosedives, leaving him faint whenever they sat him up, and his heart knocked along at an all-time low of thirty-eight beats per minute. His bladder was distended almost constantly, necessitating the full-time placement of a catheter, and sometimes, it became downright difficult to breathe.

One early morning, with Sam's and Kelly's help—Leona, thank God, had been absent—two nurses and an intern hoisted him out of bed and propped him up in a chair. Much ceremony surrounded this process—apparently it represented a big step forward. To Peter, however, being hauled about bodily was one of the most humiliating experiences he'd ever endured, right up there with having a student nurse pad into his room to give him a sponge bath and find his pecker standing stupidly at attention, a yellow bladder catheter waggling obscenely from its tip. The feeling of helplessness, of utter dependency, was huge, and in its shadow Peter could barely contain his despair. Only his mother's promise kept the outbursts at bay.

(couple of months tops, honey)

He was going to get better.

Shortly after he was plunked in the chair, a spasm like a mortar blast almost slammed him onto the floor. His arms jerked up and his legs jackknifed violently, sending the food Kelly had been spooning into him all over the chair, the floor, and Kelly herself. A second spasm took him an instant later, and this time Peter gave voice to his pain. The tears came as they lifted him back into bed, scalding, humiliating tears, and in a tantrum totally out of character for Peter Gardner he ordered everyone out of his room—Sam, Kelly, the lot of them.

When they had gone, he wept in the miserable silence.

SIX

For Kelly Wheeler that first summer passed like a debilitating disease, moment by painful moment, sometimes threatening to kill but most times just laying her flat. In spite of her parents' protests, she canceled her position at Queen's University in Kingston, where she'd been among the first accepted into the honors phys ed program. And although she would later reapply and be reaccepted, on that drizzly morning in August when she called the registrar's office to relinquish her slot, the future she had grimly decided upon had a different face entirely.

The night before, sitting on the grass in Bell Park on Ramsey Lake, she'd discussed her plans with Marti Stone, who'd been her closest friend since the third grade. Though disappointed—both girls had dreamed of becoming teachers for as long as either could remember—Marti had encouraged her to go with her heart. And if that meant putting off her education for a while, even indefinitely, then so be it. If she didn't at least try to work things out with Peter, she might regret it for the rest of her life.

Marti left the park ahead of Kelly that night, and Kelly spent a long time just lying on the grass, gazing at the moon. There were tears, and a heartache so intense it had a physical quality, but it felt good to have talked it all out.

Later, before leaving, she stripped off her shoes and waded into the lake, relishing the cool caress of the water around her ankles. Moonlight tracked down from a clear sky and twinkled on the surface like a million silver pixies. Recalling a rhyme she'd heard as a child—a tale of a sorrowful princess who drank down the moon and its magic restored her lover from the dead—Kelly dipped her cupped hands into the shimmering water. . . but when she brought them up to her lips, there was nothing in the bowl of her hands but cold black liquid. Thirst unquenched, she let it drizzle untasted through her fingers.

She dried her hands on her jeans, picked up her shoes, and made her way back to the road.

Peter spent six full weeks in the ICU—all of July and the first two weeks of August—before his transfer to the rehab unit on the seventh floor. During this interval, when he wasn't sedated, he and Kelly discussed little of any consequence—like their future together and how it had changed, or Peter's injuries, and in particular his chances for recovery—opting instead for mundane exchanges of small talk or simply silence. Sam was there almost constantly, darting in and out, as if pulled by other, unknowable duties. And Leona, whose meddlesome nature Kelly became fast unable to tolerate, sat there around the clock, stinking of booze, her very presence disallowing anything meaningful to pass between Kelly and her crippled son. She lied to him still, promising a full recovery, and sometimes Kelly had to bite her lip to stop herself from slapping the woman silly. It was a cruel and malicious lie. . . but as time wore on, Kelly thought she saw the truth twisting slowly into focus behind Peter's eyes.

"I'm going to get a job," she told her mother, hot on the heels of her confession about Kingston. "I'm going to get a job and find an apartment, and when Peter is feeling well enough I'm going to move him in with me."

Irene Wheeler, whose only sister had wasted her life on a man with no future, spun on Kelly like a jackal. "You most certainly are not!
"
she roared, making Kelly's father, Charles, avert his eyes. "No way! It's over for Peter, Kelly, and the sooner you face up to that fact the better it'll be for all concerned."

"It's terrible what happened to Peter," Kelly's father put in, trying to soften his wife's well-meaning but rather harsh approach. "But your mother is right. It simply cannot work out, and with time you'll see that. He needs full-time nursing ca—"

"Then I'll hire a nurse," Kelly shot back. "I'll . . . I'll. . .”

The tears were very close now.

"You'll call the registrar's office back right this minute, that's what you'll do," Irene barked. She loved her daughter dearly, but there was no way she was going to sit by and watch her throw away a perfectly bright future over a dead man. And really, that was what Peter Gardner had become. Before the accident, she'd liked Peter very much, had even been secretly pleased with the idea that he might someday marry her baby girl. They were good together: smart, clean, honest kids. But now all that had changed.

Irene's expression softened, and she snugged an arm around Kelly's waist. "Listen, honey. You'll get over him." Kelly buried her face in her mother's neck and cried. "You'll get over him and then you'll go on. Just wait and see."

Moved, Chuck Wheeler stood up to join in the embrace—

And Kelly bolted into the stairwell. "No!" she balked like an angry child. "I'll never get over him, and I'll never leave him!" Her stamping footfalls rattled the plates in the cupboards. "I love him!"

Kelly swept her bedroom door shut with a crack!
and flung herself onto the bed, sending an arrow of pain through her healing arm. In spite of her violent denial, a deep part of her knew that her mother was right. Lying there sobbing, she felt the way she had as a third grader, when she'd climbed off the bus one day to find Snowball, her very first kitten, all bloodied and broken in the gutter, hit by a car and left there to die. Sick with fear, she had rushed him inside and begged her parents to drive him to the vet's. Her folks had complied, but the vet had only shaken his head. "We'll have to put him to sleep. I'm sorry, sweetie, but there's no other way." Kelly had objected vehemently, unable to comprehend why they didn't just patch him up. And when it was done, when Snowball was finally dead, she had cried and cried and felt exactly like this, a vanquished warrior in a lost battle of truth who stubbornly refused to give up.

But that had been only a kitten, not her lover, and she was by God going to do it! She and Peter would get along fine on their own. Things were bad, horrible even, but their love would see them through.

With that resolve Kelly picked herself up and returned to the hospital, each thud of her footfalls crushing her mother's cruel words. She told Peter of her intentions, and it took some coaxing before he agreed. He, too, was concerned for her future.

But, as so often happens, things did not work out the way Kelly had planned.

Peter still believed he was going to get better.

During the long months that followed, Peter allowed himself to acknowledge only the signs of his progress, scant as they were. The slightest breath of encouragement from the staff took on the deceptive dimensions of promise in his mind, and he learned to endure the humiliations of his treatment with the stoicism of a man who is yet unable to see the true shape of the beast he must face. Time became a sluggish smear, highlighted by visits from Sam, his mother, and Kelly. . . and increasingly fewer visits from anyone else. In the first few weeks there had been cards and flowers and a lot of well-wishing, but this had tapered off quickly, almost shamefully so. He began to feel forgotten, and this feeling sometimes made him question his very existence. The sedation heightened this sense of unreality—they told him he must rest through the healing process, which was ongoing in spite of his inability to perceive it—and he sometimes slept up to fifteen hours a day. When not sleeping or gawking at his visitors—for, with time, he came to realize that he had less and less of any consequence to say to them—Peter found himself floating in a chlorine-reeking pool or having his dead limbs cranked by some nameless physiotherapist. Without the continual encouragement of his mother, he might have despaired a lot sooner. But when they were alone in his room and the night outside was black and uncaring, she promised him a full and speedy recovery. And no one told him any different.

"We're going to have to tell him," Sam mumbled. It was November 4. Outside the house, the first hard flakes of a brutal winter whirled on the gray pavement.

Remembering the clout she'd given him the last time, Sam stood well back from his mother as he spoke. It was Friday night, and she was really flying. . . but flying low. She had the tape player on and the photo albums out. The bottle in her lap was empty, and Sam was afraid that if she kept this up she was going to drink herself into oblivion.

"Tell who what?" Leona said, her rheumy eyes rolling his way.

"Tell Peter." He cleared his throat. "Tell him the truth."

"And what might that be, Mr. Smarty Pants?"

Sam's Adam's apple bobbed apprehensively. "He's not going to get better, Mom," he blurted, flinching as he said it, expecting her to pitch an album at him or to lunge up swinging her fists.

Instead, Leona's eyes moistened with tears. As if in shame, she hid her face from her son. A shuddering intake of breath seemed to overinflate her, and suddenly she appeared on the verge of facing the truth.

But just as quickly that look became a leer, and she returned to leafing through the albums, making Sam feel as if he'd never existed.

He turned and slouched back to his room.

And later, when the flap of the tape joined the bovine snores of his mother, he crept into his brother's room and lay down on his empty bed.

SEVEN

Christmas had come and gone, and now January encased the world in its icy mantle. Sleet pecked noisily at the thermal panes, and an incessant wind hammered the high tower of the hospital, whining through hairline cracks. Inside, the wards slept fitfully, dreaming uneasy dreams.

Peter lay on his side in his private room, not asleep, his back to the sleet-streaked window. He was listening to the wind and something else, something deep in his unfelt guts. Two things, really: one a grotesque and unwanted truth, the other a burbling, gaseous storm, brewing toward breaking point. He'd already tried calling the nurse with his chin-operated call button, but tonight it was that haughty bitch Louise Larue, who spent more time preening herself than she did looking out for her charges.

Earlier that day Dr. Lowe had changed Peter's medication, substituting a stronger laxative to relieve his chronic constipation. But whatever that medication was, it was working too well, and Peter knew that any minute now he was going to shit in his bed.

Uttering an angry oath, he chinned his call button again. He remembered only too well the last time he'd dirtied his bed. It had been back in August, when the last of his "friends" had shown their faces for the last time. Mike Gore, Rhett Kiley, and Jerry Jeter. They'd slunk into his room like convicts, full of guilty knowledge. Gore had brought along a box of pistachios, Peter's favorite, and had made the mistake of holding the box out for Peter to take. Following that blunder, a silence as impenetrable as a steel vault had enclosed them.

Peter had never felt so unmanned as he did on that day, the three of them poking into his room, guys he'd hung out with for years, guys into whose waiting paws he'd so easily lobbed hundred-yard passes, guys he'd gobbled Harvey burgers with or taken punches for in the after-game brawls that sometimes broke out, the three of them gawking at him like total strangers—or worse, like reluctant acquaintances who'd come to a funeral to view the remains only to find that the deceased had the uncommonly bad taste to still be alive.

It had happened then. Seeing his buddies ambling in like that, so damned easily, and understanding that life was like simple economics—even if you had been a millionaire, the game was over once you lost all your wealth—had soured something in his guts. Suddenly he was out of the race, no longer in possession of the essential currency of camaraderie. . . and this same sick thunder had growled in his belly then.