Critical Injuries (2 page)

She sees Lyle bending over her, she sees whiskers and pores. She hears the younger man on the other side of her talking. “The damaged vertebrae,” he is saying, the end of an incomprehensible sentence.

Lyle says, “What does that mean? What will it mean?” Bless him, he speaks for her, takes the words right out of her mouth and in addition, more than she can do at the moment, apparently, makes sense of them, makes them come out right, not mangled, like her.

“There's a lot of variables. It may work itself free, so we'll give it a little time, I think. Either way, probably surgery a bit down the road. To get it out, one way or another. In any case there are many possibilities, a lot of levels of outcome, plenty of room for hope, you know. It's tricky, with the damage that's already been done and the bullet fragment lodged where it is, but we should know soon what direction we're heading.”

From too little information, suddenly too much. Vertebrae. Surgery. Bullet. Not an ending to something strange and confusing, but the beginning of something too awful to contemplate.

One of those moments when life turns completely ass-over-teakettle, in no good way, no good way at all.

Nobody with Any Sense

Roddy is so cold, so cold. Even though it's a stinking hot night, and everybody's windows are open, and people have been going around all day with hardly any clothes on, Roddy cannot stop shivering. He's not dressed for this, is just wearing jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers, not even socks. He would give anything for a fireplace, a fleece-lined jacket, heavy boots. He can hardly remember how warmth feels, although he was sweating when he woke up this morning, and maybe that was partly from knowing what he planned for the day to contain, but it was also just stifling. His grandmother doesn't have air conditioning. It would have been nice to do something about that. People are going to think he's a bad person, and will feel sorry for her and for his dad, too, but some of Roddy's ideas weren't selfish or greedy at all.

Buster, Roddy's grandmother's old part-collie, part-shepherd, was just lying on his side this morning on the kitchen floor tiles, unwilling to move although Roddy tried to coax him. “It's all right,” his grandmother said, “he's been out. He won't feel much like a walk today. Nobody with any sense would.” Then, all that heavy fur looked kind of horrifying and cruel. Now Roddy would give just about anything to have his arms around Buster, his face shoved into Buster's coat, smelling that slightly rank, warm, friendly, familiar, old dog smell.

Roddy misses a whole lot of things. For one thing, he misses this morning. Time shouldn't be like this. A person should be able to go back and start over if they find out something that looked okay is a huge mistake. There should be a few hours' leeway.

If he was home, his grandmother would set out with blankets and hot chocolate to get him warmed up, but he's seen enough shocked, horrified eyes for one day. He couldn't stand shocked, horrified, disappointed, betrayed eyes.

Maybe he should just kill himself: try to sneak off to the river and walk straight out into the water. Or there must be something sharp lying around someplace close that he could slice himself open with. Then he wouldn't have to see anyone's face. Also then, if he was cold, he wouldn't have to feel being cold. He wouldn't feel anything if he was dead.

Except what if he changed his mind? Waded in one footstep too far, or lost one drop of blood too many, no way back, floundering or seeping his regretful way out of life? Which would completely figure, on a day when he hasn't made a single good choice. So maybe till he can work out a few things, he'd better keep lying low out here in the tall grass, shivering and watching the early glow of town lights and stars. Darkness takes forever to fall this time of year. Usually it can't stay light long enough to suit him, but tonight he is a mole, a bat. An owl, except that he's hiding, not hunting.

In full darkness he could probably navigate out of here pretty easily. He knows this turf well, has spent hours of his life following fence lines and ditches, tramping through fields, not doing anything much, really, except seeing what's there. Which keeps changing: frogs, daisies, dead dried-up snakes; then all of a sudden a strip mall. Fox tracks, sometimes, in winter. Groundhogs and different kinds and textures of grasses and grains; then a new clump of houses. On the other side of this field is a bare and brittle dead elm, its limbs an eerie sort of landmark even in full light. Now it's both eerie and comforting. He knows where he is. If it were dark he could maybe get somewhere else.

How did he even get this far?

He never pictured having to hide, any more than he pictured being so cold. He's so stupid! All the stuff he didn't expect, when he thought it was all simple and his cleverness was just figuring out its simplicity.

By now everybody must know. His grandmother will probably be telling everybody how wrong they must be, but underneath he bets she knows. Underneath he bets her heart is in pieces. He wouldn't hurt her for anything, but he has. Why didn't he see that this morning? How could he not have understood?

His dad'll probably be sitting in his chair in the living room, downwind from the TV, shaking his head, looking mournful. Nothing new there, he looks mournful a lot of the time. This time he'll have something to look mournful about. Roddy can just hear his father's limp voice saying over and over, “I don't know,” and sighing. “I really don't know.”

Once, a few years ago, in Roddy's last year of public school, his dad didn't show up for the play Roddy had a pretty big part in, even though he'd promised. Roddy's grandmother tried to smooth it over. “Your dad's had a lot of disappointments in his life. Sometimes he just doesn't manage everything very well.”

“Why should I care?” What Roddy meant was, it wasn't fair, if his father'd had so many disappointments, for him to go around spreading disappointment to other people. If he'd had so many himself, he ought to know better.

Roddy's grandmother is totally different. “You'll be a fine man,” she tells Roddy, and “Set your sights high, you can be whatever you want in this world.” Only, she wouldn't have dreamed this could possibly have been, even briefly, even for the few thrilling weeks since the idea cropped up, what he could want.

Now he most fervently doesn't want it. He cannot believe this has happened to him. He doesn't want to think about that woman, either. Oh God.

Just a little bit darker and he can try making a run for it. For what? But he can't just lie here freezing and waiting for somebody else to make the next move.

It might be nice if somebody did, though. It might be nice not to have to make any more decisions and choices. He's awfully tired.

He curls onto his side. He wants to make himself small and, if possible, cozy. He has no spare flesh. That's maybe partly why he's so cold. His grandmother's big, there's lots of extra to her, and in the winter she laughs and says the bulk helps keep her warm. This time of year, though, she really suffers, sometimes looks as if she can't breathe deep enough, isn't getting air through all that flesh. Last summer for the first time she didn't do any baking, and not much cooking either, during the real hot spells. “I'm getting too old for all that,” she said, although actually she's only sixty-two, which, while fairly ancient, isn't exactly the end of the road.

This could kill her. Now and then, just for a few seconds, Roddy forgets why he's lying here. What has he done? Why didn't he think? He pounds a fist into his forehead. Pain is what he deserves. In a matter of one day, or one night, he has stupidly, carelessly, thoughtlessly changed his whole, entire life.

That's too strange: that everything that happens from now on has to spin off from this single day.

He wonders how Mike is doing, how Mike has done. He wonders what happens to buddies in very bad times. Mike has been Roddy's best friend forever, right from when he and his mother knocked on Roddy's grandmother's door the first day Roddy and his dad came there to live. Roddy was seven, upset and skinny, Mike was eight and stocky and had a weird short spiky haircut and bold eyes. The grown-ups sent them out to ride their bikes around the neighbourhood together. “Be careful,” Mike's mother warned. “Show Roddy the stop signs and lights. Show him the school, too, why don't you?” That was ten years ago, more than half their lives. Now their interests have suddenly, after all this time, gone in different directions. Mike, although not innocent, isn't quite guilty, either, at least not of how things turned out. When it comes to that one huge, grave moment, Roddy was, is, on his own.

It made sense at the time, their idea. How could it have?

They nurtured it, admired it, went over and over together how sleekly it would work, how smoothly events would follow one after another. It was like in other summers when they'd figure out some trip out of town on their bikes, or last year in Mike's parents' car when he got his licence, and even if they were only going to be gone a little while, they went over routes, good stopping places, what food they might feel like. Planning was part of the whole thing, talking about it beforehand wasn't separate from the excursion itself. It didn't mean they ruled out surprises. They took surprises for granted. Surprises were why they went.

Maybe they didn't think so much about surprises this time because they weren't planning something that would be fun, exactly. They did practise, though, more than usual, because this project had a real thrilling edginess to it, a new sort of adventure. They grew attached to rehearsing their moves. They refined the words over and over although the plan looked so simple, just another walk in the country. Roddy's pretty sure Mike started it, and it was just a laugh, a bit of a joke between them at first. Who made it start to be serious? How did that happen, and when?

Maybe Roddy did that part. Sometimes Mike, who's eighteen, which makes a difference, slugs Roddy's shoulder when Roddy's been actually trying to think something through and says, “Lighten up, don't be so serious.”

He keeps seeing what happened. The little quick unwanted pictures flashing on his eyelids are bad enough, without putting words to them.

There were sirens, lots of them. By the time he arrived in this field breathless after walking fast and straight through a few streets where there might be people, then starting to run, and running doubled down for quite a while, and dodging behind trees, into ditches, over fences, scrambling and panting and very near tears, even the echo of sirens had stopped. In the distance, though, when he peered back, he could see red whirling lights going slowly up and down streets. They must have called in cops from outside the town, too, the ones that patrol in the country. The lights are still out there.

As soon as it's pitch dark he'll start moving again.

He only has a couple of bucks on him, and no food, nothing to drink, no wheels. He and Mike never went off so unprepared, not even when they were little kids. Once it's dark he can start moving again, but where'll he go, and what'll he do when he gets there?

It's just, he can't think of anything else.

Unless he could sneak home, creep upstairs, get hold of a whole pile of blankets and burrow in till he was warm again. Except he's never going to be safe. The house'll be crawling with cops; or they'll be watching it, anyway.

He's kind of mad at Mike now. He shouldn't have to be out here alone.

Well, he is. And it's almost dark enough to get moving. Past the shadowy elm there's a fence, then another wide field, a pasture with short, exposing grass, and then another fence, a ditch and a big wooded area, not quite a forest. Once he gets there, there's a creek, even though the water's probably full of shit, and some walnut trees and probably berries.

Right, like he'd know how to live off the land. But it's something, anyway. It's the start of some kind of possibility, maybe.

Two fields back the way he came, from out by the first concession road out of town, he hears barking. Has that been going on long? It's like sometimes he tunes out, gets tuned into just his own head. The barking sounds deep and focused. Two dogs, maybe. Not small ones. Eager ones. Kind of excited, sort of happy-sounding, like Buster when he was younger and got a squirrel up a tree.

Oh shit, oh Jesus. Roddy's up on his feet and running. His arms pump like a whole track team put together, he flies through the thigh-high grain with his eyes on the elm, and past it vaults one-handed over the fence. The pasture is stony and rough. Are there cattle, is there a bull? The barking doesn't diminish, it gets closer and louder and acquires a thrilled sort of tone. Then it stops, which is worse. Nothing else stops, though. Roddy keeps flying, so agile and young and light, so desperate and exhausted and grief-stricken, tears and sweat mingling and blurring until finally, mercifully, there's a whoosh through the air behind him, a large form leaping, careful jaws closing around one of his arms, tilting him off balance, bringing him thumping, bruisingly, down, and he's on his back looking up into stars and a solemn, pointed, alert face on one side, a matching one on the other, and he hears the shouts and thuddings of men and closes his eyes for a moment because everything's over and whatever happens now will be happening to somebody completely different, with a completely new life, all of it that quick, that sharp, that unbelievable.