Angels And Bad Men

By: David H
(© 2011 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 3
"Puzzles and Pieces" 

At the end of the second week after the attack, the stitches started to become really itchy.  That Friday morning, Parker was there to sit with me, so I asked him to take me to see Dr. Hodges, our family doctor, to have the black sutures removed.  As I sat in the office there were a lot of children running around.  It was almost as if their parents didn’t even want to try to control them; they were running around like heathens.  Parker could tell I was getting nervous, and he gently placed his hand on my shaking right knee. 

Finally I was called back to see the doctor.  A few x-rays were taken of the affected areas and I was then taken to a room with an exam bed that I couldn’t have comfortably lain across even if I’d wanted to.  Such a thing just wasn’t made to accommodate a man as tall as I am.  In the silence of the room there was little solace.  As I looked around, I was reminded of sitting in the hospital.  I began to recall all the uncertainty I felt.  I was made to think of the pain that had forced me to put my life on hold for the last two weeks.

Dr. Hodges came into the room just before I was about to go stir crazy.  We talked for a few minutes.  She wanted to know what had occurred, so I told her.  I didn’t precisely know what had happened to me, but there were the reminders of my visible injuries proving something had indeed taken place.  She was nice, as she’d always been.  She was apologetic.  She was real.  My nerves were at ease for the moments that she was in the room with me.  I could see why we’d been coming to her since she returned to Oneonta from medical school somewhere up north.

With as much precision as Dr. Abney had put them in my head, Dr. Hodges took the stitches out.  There was virtually no pain as they were being removed.  It just pulled a little as she removed each of the nine or ten stitches.  When she finished, Dr. Hodges wiped the area with a little cloth and then threw it into the trash bin.  As I sat up into a more comfortable position, she looked at me.

“If you need to talk to a professional, Ryan,” she started, “please let me know.  I know a few people that would be good.”

I politely thanked her as she handed me some paperwork to carry to the discharge people.  We smiled at one another, and I went out to leave.  I paid the bill with my Visa card and left the area, returning to the waiting room where the children were still running around aimlessly and annoyingly.  Parker jumped up and walked behind me as I simply strode out of the office.  I couldn’t handle waiting on him.

It had been two weeks since I’d left my condo bound for my parents’ house, and I never would have imagined the level of stress that would surround me. By the time Parker got to his truck, I was already sitting in the front seat.  I felt like I was going to cry.  It was all just so… very… emotional.  I could almost feel everyone within a hundred feet of me watching, looking at the tall freak with the scar.  Parker said nothing as he pulled from the space.  My brother, the man that he is, was never too vocally expressive of his feelings, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t an emotional person.  It also didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel or understand what I was going through.  Still, we drove back home without a single word being shared between us.

By the time we arrived, Mom was already home from work.  Justin was obviously at practice, since my car (which he’d been driving for a couple of days because there was something wrong with his) wasn’t there.  I walked into the house and flung the door open.  My mother said something to me, but I didn’t want to communicate with her.  I didn’t want to hear her.  I only wanted to be alone--very, very alone. 

I walked into my room and shut the door, locking both it and the door that led into the bathroom located between my room and Justin’s.  I stood there and looked around.  This room in which I stood was the only place, right then, where I could be safe.  Mom knocked on the door, but I asked to be left alone for a little while.  Just outside my door, I knew that my mom was almost beside herself, but I could also hear my brother defending my actions.

I lay down on the bed and curled into my own little equivalent of a fetal position.  I didn’t want to sleep; I didn’t want to rest; I didn’t want anything but solace, peace, and quiet.  I wanted to be lost in something other than these moments and thoughts that ran across me like a herd of cattle over a clear pasture.  I was exhausted from  being scared of people outside my family.  I was weary of being impatient around any children other than my nieces.  I was tired of being an even bigger freak than I’d always felt I had been.

I started crying uncontrollably.  I’d always heard that people had to hit rock bottom before they could start to climb, but this didn’t feel like rock bottom.  It only felt like things were getting worse, far worse.  I couldn’t control myself at home; I couldn’t control myself away from home.  Lord only knows what would have happened had I tried to return to Tuscaloosa on my own.

I could see nothing, yet everything, all at once.  I forced my mind to remember stepping out of Brian’s car that night.  It was filled with bottles and papers.  The vehicle’s interior was grey, like the outside.  I couldn’t open the door by myself at first.  The handle was funky, so Brian had to reach across the car and help me get it open, since neither my mind nor my hands were working too well.  I almost fell as I climbed from the car, but I caught myself on the door.  Brian asked if I was okay, and I laughed it all off, telling him that I was fine.  As I stood at the door of his car, a white SUV with bright lights whipped into the parking lot.

I started walking across the pavement toward my apartment, guided by the light that I’d left on as I departed for The Bar.  Brian honked as he pulled out of the space.  I turned to wave at him.

That was the last thing that I remembered in that moment.  That was all.  My memory somehow wouldn’t let me go past that point.  Either I blacked out, or my mind was a separate being and it wouldn’t let me relive or experience what had happened to me in that parking lot.  It was frustrating to think that I knew what had occurred but was completely unable (or subconsciously unwilling) to remember.

For days, I barely left the room.  The only reasons I had to leave were to get water, munch on light snacks, or go to the bathroom.  On some warped plane, that room was the only place I was safe.  As soon as I left its confines, I gave up a little bit of that safety, even to just go take a piss in the bathroom that joined my room with Justin’s.  My mood even caused me to miss my grandmother’s Easter lunch, an event that she, according to her own admission, liked planning more than any other holiday.

On Wednesday afternoon I was lying in my room.  The bed was no longer comfortable, but it was a place where I could sprawl out or ball up, depending on my mood at that moment.  I’d been awake for hours thinking about a thousand and five things that ranged from the completion of my degree to (again) what the hell had happened to me.  Had I just stumbled?  If I had simply fallen, why was I still feeling like my world had been shattered?  If something else had happened, what was it?  Had I been… attacked… as my cousins told me?  If I had, why?  What could I have possibly done that angered someone to the point that they felt it necessary to beat the shit out of me?  Surely all of it was just in my head.  As certainly as I was lying there, anything could be the truth.  Anything could have just been images, things my mind wanted me to see to prepare for the worst, while the whole time my conscious self was hoping for the best.

I looked at my cell phone at around two.  Mom would be home soon, I thought, as she’d been coming home directly from work.  Dad would follow in a couple of hours; Justin would be home around seven; and I could from a distance at least observe and be a part of their world.  For me, that’s where I felt like I needed to be, as I was beginning to feel like a burden on everyone.  By staying in my room, I wasn’t encumbering anyone.  By giving Justin my credit card and a shopping list, I didn’t have to leave except to do those things that I’d been doing for a few days--just sitting there, being.

True to my prediction, Mom got home around 3:30, but there was someone with her.  I could hear them speaking Spanish in the next room, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.  The voice was deep and thick, as if it came from someone I thought wouldn’t have come to upset the routine that my mind had created earlier.

After a moment, the door to my room opened and someone slipped in.  I was lying with my back to the door, so I couldn’t tell who was coming in to see me.

“Primo?” he asked gently, sweetly.

“Armando?” I asked.

“How are you doing, guy?” my cousin asked as he sat on the bed behind me. 

“I’m okay,” I answered, much in the fashion of a child who’d been punished for something.  The irony was that I was punishing myself for something.  For what, though, I didn’t know.

“You so sound it!” he commented, sarcastically.  I could feel his smile, despite the fact that I hadn’t turned to see him.  “So, Titi called me and told me that you hadn’t gotten out of bed for a few days.”

“Right,” I said, not intending to sound terse or succinct.

“Well.  You should get up.  I mean, I came all the way from T-town to see my favorite cousin,” he went on.  Again I could feel the smile, but my getting up would be putting a burden on someone that I cared about so very deeply.

“Thank you for coming,” I mustered as I turned over to look at him.

In my mother’s family, emotions always seemed to run close to the surface, despite how much we tried to hide them.  Parker, Justin, and I were no exception to that rule, nor was Armando immune from the curse.  With that being said, I could feel that he was hurting as much for me as I was for him.

“Do you remember that time when I came up here for the whole summer?”

Fondly, I did.  My smile was the affirmative answer for which he was looking.

“Well, I remember being so nervous when I got here, but, just like when you were in Fajardo, you made me feel at home here.  That was quite possibly the best summer of my life.  Thanks to you, of course.”

“What made you remember that?”

“Being in this room, I suppose,” he answered.

“You didn’t just come all the way to check on me, did you?”

“No,” he answered honestly.  “Ry.  I talked to the police this morning.”

“And?”

He stopped.  It felt as though he were having to find the strength to force himself to say something to me.  “The detective that was assigned to your case had just gotten the file.  He hadn’t even had a chance to look over it yet.  But I’ve talked to a few people at The Bar, and a couple of the regulars heard some things.  I told the detective to go talk to them.  He said he would.”

“So, there’s no news to speak of?  What did the people at the bar say?”

“They were saying that they heard some redneck talking about you,” Armando said.  “Linda, the bartender, seemed weird about it all, though, when I asked if she knew anything.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know.  Just weird,” Armando answered.  “Don’t worry, though.  We’re gonna find out what happened, and this will all be better,” he tried to assure me, but I wasn’t buying it completely.  There remained more unanswered questions than answered ones.  There was still a mystery that couldn’t be solved like on those police shows that I’d watched with Laura the week before.

That night, Armando stayed with us, but only on the condition that I join the family for dinner.  It was eerily quiet, except for Mom and Dad talking with Armando about school and work.  Justin got home right in the middle of dinner and then told us about his practice and the incompetence of the coach that he was thankful was being replaced that summer.

By ten, everyone except for Armando and me were in bed.  Armando eventually lost his own battle with sleep at around one, but I was still wide awake.  By the time I finally drifted off, there was little comfort.  It wasn’t restful.  It wasn’t peaceful.  Why had I acted the way I did the week before at the doctor’s office?  Why wasn’t I happier than I was to see Armando, who’d made the trip just to see me?  Why couldn’t I just remember?

To say the least, it was just as frustrating to not know the reason as it was trying to figure it out.

To be continued...

Posted: 11/25/11