Pins: A Novel (36 page)

“I’m not saying I’m better than any other person. You just get to the stage where your pain threshold must be higher than the average person’s. You learn to live with pain that would generally disable someone else.”

– Ian Roberts, rugby player

1

Neither hell nor heaven had ever been described to him as pine-scented. That was the first sign that he’d missed the other-worldly bus.

The beeping sounds and annoyed announcements confirmed it.

His insides had been scraped out and shoved back down his throat. He tried to move, but with a tube in his nose and another one sticking out of his arm, and about four feet of steel cables suspending his head in a sort of geodome of wires and supports, even blinking hurt.

Everything ached.
 

Something beeped behind his head.

Something beeped inside his head.

A rumpled dress made of paper choked his neck and bunched up under the sheets.

He couldn’t move, but half-saw, by moving his eyes sideways until even that exhausted him, his mother curled up in a chair.

A curtain skirted the other side of his bed. He banged his hand on a metal bar at his side. In the drug haze of immobility, laughing inside, thinking that if he was paralyzed and he had to piss, there was only one way. He did, without moving.

Before falling back to sleep for another day, he muttered, to no one in particular, “You fag.”

1.5

“Ma, he woke up.”

She hovered close from the other side.

“Feelin’ better?”

“Awg.”

“You’re alive.”

“Mnhn.”

“You died for a whole minute!” Mike barked.

The experiment was a success! He wanted to shout. But the river of silk in his veins heavied his lips. “Jhyugh.”

His mother took his other hand. “Michael. Go sit outside a minute. Let me talk to your brother.”

Mike scowled. “You gonna feed him?”

He had to watch the perimeter of his brother’s actions, as the metal work surrounding him prevented him from looking up. He feared for his toes in Mike’s presence, felt his legs move, was thankful, relieved.

“No, my love, but I will smack you if you don’t behave. Don’t go peekin’ in other people’s rooms.”

He heard Mike leave, and watched his mother park herself beside his face. He kept darting his eyes sideways, until it hurt.
 
He held up a hand, and she took it, but started crying, then stopped crying enough to hold him.

“Where’s Da?”

“Downstairs.”

“Smokin’?”

“Well, you made us very scared, Joseph. They hadda…the things they did. Then you, you were gonna die…” Her face scrunched up with tears, her hands covered her eyes.

“Sorry…Sorry.”

“I …know.”

“He said,” and she stumbled over it, “…that it would take a while, maybe a few months, but you’re gonna be okay. I know you will.”

“…know…”

“Yes, you will!”

“I said…I know…not ‘no.’”

“Oh. Okay. You want I should get you a pen and pad?”

“Can we …later?”

“Of course.”

“Can… you get…”

“Yes, dear, what can I get you? You want some water?”

“The Mylar…balloons. They hurt my eyes.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Dad.”

 
“You want I should go find him?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be awright?”

“Promise…won’t jump out a window.”

He imagined a plane with huge beds. The drugs they gave him rocked so much he didn’t care if he’d ever be fine.

He crept a hand up to feel the metal whatever-it-was around his head. He must have broken his neck. Finally. That was why he died. Almost. He even smiled imagining the scene he’d caused.

His proud smile dropped as his fingers felt the parts of the brace pressed against his skull.

No, not against.

In.

Drilled into his head in a circle were six metal pins.

2

Three hours or days later, in the dark, his father sat beside his bed without saying a word, holding the boy’s hand.

“Wha’ time...?”

“It’s late. Your mother went home.”

“Bu’ I just…”

“Easy.”

“Get ‘em out. Get these things outta my head, Dad. Please.”

He then had a bit of a panic attack, bumped things, until his dad pressed down, shushing him.

His dad’s beard stubble scraped his cheek. He smelled sweat, coffee. Dino’s flannel shirt warmed him. He held on, but couldn’t keep the awkward position.

“Here,” he patted his own stomach.

His father nestled on his belly like a dog.

Dr. Behn, his surgeon, visited him. She answered questions, had others. She seemed amazed by his rapid healing, despite her excellent work. They talked about the equipment, vertebrae, nerves, fusion. They’d even made a video of his operation. That viewing would have to wait, not that he didn’t want to see it. His hospital room didn’t have a VCR.

Although nurses, visitors, drug people, clean-up people, flower people came and went, the one that Joe liked best, aside from the cute guys who came and went, was Irene DeStefano.
 

It was only then that he really got to know her. He couldn’t always see his visitors, but Joe could smell her cigarettes and perfume. Her voice was raspy, but she cheered him up when she told him how worse things were in her day. She told stories, brought food, reassured, read to him. “You should be happy you’re alive.”

“I am,” he said, still frequently touching the two-and-a-half-inch titanium pins connected to a two-pound head brace, called a halo. “I dunno why, but even though I am in so much pain, I’ve never been happier.”

He’d have been happier if a few of the cuter male orderlies paid more attention, but Irene’s voice had a quality that healed the time, passed the afternoons, giving his parents some time off, since the drive was almost an hour.

They’d moved him to a hospital that specialized in neck injuries. It also helped them avoid the cameras, which had hounded them to the emergency ward after the accident. But then an opening at the best Children’s Hospital in the state suddenly turned up.

Rico Nicci wasn’t in hospital management for nothing. They’d even flown in for a visit he still barely recalled. He just remembered his uncle and aunt standing over him.

Maybe he had died and this was the waiting room.

Whatever it was, Irene was there, and knitting up a storm as she talked. “I mean, you would not believe the things that people go through, and survive and manage to live wonderful lives. One gentleman on this floor, seventy-five, just in for a slight heart problem, found the girl of his dreams, get this, at a high school reunion. At sixty, finally got her. So, I say, if you’re gonna dream, you should dream, you know what I’m saying?”

A full minute, Dr. Xing, his other doctor, had said, confirming Mike’s point of fascination.
 
After the accident, he had flatlined.
 
Dr. Xing told him some guy had given him mouth to mouth.

“Which guy?” Joe asked.

“A medic.”

Dr. Xing made a note to lower his dosage when the patient couldn’t stop laughing at his own joke, “Is he married?”

Plants, red roses, crayon anenomes from Sophia, cards from school, from Newark, several coaches, other teams, and of course his own team, or its remaining members, filled his room, even though with the position of his neck brace, he couldn’t see it all very well. He asked them to tape some to the ceiling, but the orderlies said no. They adjusted his bed to tilt, when he was ready. A mirror was brought in, but he asked them to take it away. He did not want to see himself. Looking at the puncture permanent made him nauseous.

Grandmama visited, all the aunts, two by two. They held his hand, hovered over his face like moons. They brought flowers, plants, candles. They cried, prayed. He loved it.

His parents traded off shifts of staying with him, refusing to leave him alone until he assured them he was okay. Teachers, administrators, came in suited pairs. A lawyer visited. He seemed very enthusiastic.

Even Miss Pooley visited. Somehow the flower idea had been squelched in favor of drawing pens, paper, his textbooks.

He requested tunes, comics, music mixes. The guys on the team ruled that department. They came in posses.

The view outside his new window faced east, he discovered on his first day upright. On days when they sat him up, he could almost see the tips of Manhattan skyscrapers over the green hills.

In what was called a “miraculous recovery,” crediting the marvelous microsurgery of Dr. Behn, he became mobile, with the brace carefully limiting his movements. On the ward, he was referred to as Iron Man, Robowrestler, Spike.

He still had visits and massive entertainments of painkillers. On a Sunday afternoon, while returning from the rest room, he knocked over a tray, which woke his father, who lay slouched in a chair under a slat of morning sun.

“What?” Dino Nicci squinted, sleepy-eyed. “You okay?” his father blurted. He was tired. He’d been getting up early to go to mass, visiting or calling every day, back to church on Sunday, Saturday and Wednesday, lighting candles, devotionals, the whole nine yards.

“You want anything?”

Yeah, Dad, could you please call my boyfriend and find out why he has yet to get his lazy ass here to see me?
 
“Mmmn, food? There anything?”

“I don’t know, um, wait.”

Dino foraged in the cooler, usually packed with sandwiches, cold pasta, now running low. “Hold on.” He left, returning with a bottled juice, two candy bars, three peanut butter cheese cracker packs from a vending machine somewhere down the hall.

Dino helped his son eat the snacks, washed down with tepid water from a plastic pitcher with a straw.

“Um, I’m tired. Can you help?”

Dino jumped up, eased his son down to the mattress as they talked.

“The lawyer called. They’re going to pay.”

“You can’t. Dad. It’s my fault.”

“Don’t, don’t start. Don’t get upset. You move when you get upset. We discuss, slowly, awright.”

“But I wanted to die.”

“Okay. Okay. You think we won’t love you because you … ’cause maybe you never gonna get married, or because you think that it’s your fault Anthony died, that your friends are in jail?”

“Well, that …wraps it up.”

“You didn’t. You tried to, and maybe you fucked up. You know what? Everybody fucks up. If I hadn’t fucked up, we never woulda had you.”

“Woulda been better.”

His father gripped his arm, hard. Under Dino’s grip, the little plastic hospital band dug into his wrist. It read: Joseph S. Nicci, followed by numbers he couldn’t read.

“No. Never. You are my boy. Y’unnastand? Now, I love your mother, and Soph an’ your brother, but I’m gonna tell you until you understand.”

“Yeah?”

“That I love you more than anything. You are my son. You are my blood. My firstborn. I only…” Dino choked up, but forced it out. “I only hope that, even if you really think that you’re…Nothing you can do… will…”

“Okay, Dad. Stop it.”

“Okay.”

They held hands, since hugging was still dangerous.

“Ma says you’re still smokin’.”

His father pulled back, wiped his eyes. “Yeah, well, I did the same thing every time she was in the hospital havin’ you kids.”

“That stuff’ll kill ya.” They laughed, sort of. Dino told him, “Jus’ let me keep makin’ jokes like that an’ I think I’ll be okay.”

“Not in fronta your mother.”

“No hangin’ from the roof?”

“No.”

“No hunting trips?”

“Enough.”

Priests arrived. Cameras arrived. The priests were not turned away.

After the first few dozen visits, Joe noticed the same broken neck jokes worked, made them all laugh, more comfortable. They told him they were praying for his recovery at both St. Dominic’s and St. Augustine’s. “A double dose!” Sister Bernadine called it.

Most never visited twice. His mother told him that folks often came by to make themselves feel better, and just visiting once was enough.

Except Raul, who said he felt guilty about not stopping Joe from getting up. Joe forgave him, asked questions about the team, which led to his life, which led around why Raul wasn’t dating, then back to religion, them having a lot in common there, just different names and stories.

Raul and Dustin would visit, talk about wrestling, watch the tube with him, gossip about the other guys, make shadow puppets on the ceiling do battle to save the universe.

He’d never really noticed how beautiful they were, his little tribal brothers. When Dustin asked to touch him, feel what Raul had jokingly called his “Frankenspikes,” he felt a tingle, a healing, the lightest caress.

But mostly it was family. They ate together in his room as if it were an extension of the house. Marie brought dinner that night, or maybe a week later. He couldn’t tell for a while. Out in the hall, beeps, clattering carts distracted them.

He’d been off saline, other things for weeks, but every now and then rubbed over the scar, the arm plug. On the tube, Doug Savant was being stalked by an ex-boyfriend.

“How old were you when I was born?”

“Eighteen,” she said.

“Were you still in high school?”

“Just out.”

“Was I a prom baby?”

“You were born in September. Add it up.”

He couldn’t.

Marie said, “January. You weren’t the only one who got out of control during Christmas break.”

He tried to smile. “Everybody. They all married so young.”

“That’s the way it works out sometimes.”

“I’m really glad Dad never had to go to war.”

“Me too. I think you done all the fightin’ for both of us.”

“Yeah.”

“So how ‘bout it? Ya gonna come home from the war, Guiseppe?”

They sat for a while, listening to the beeps and sounds of the hospital intercom out in the hall.

She finally spoke again, as if, as always, there was just one more thing. “How could you ever think we wouldn’t still love you?”

“I don’t know.”

“About… your being…”

“Yeah.”

“It’s your pal Donnie, right?”

Unable to nod, he instead smiled.

“I could tell. I mean, aside from those other boys, he was your only real friend you brought over for us to meet, but if you had only let us get to know them and be a part of your life, it wouldn’t have hurt to…”

As she continued talking, he listened, part of him still lingering on the ‘only real friend’ part, trying to ignore the ‘was’ part.