Dub
Two days later, Dub sat in his bed in the hospital. The doctors had put a cold pack on his black eye and stitched up the cuts on his face and head. They said his organs hadn’t been permanently damaged, but his abdomen still felt bruised from the kick Andro had delivered a few nights ago. He’d suffered a concussion, too, and they’d monitored him for signs of a brain bleed. Luckily, there’d been none.
You’re not as tough as you thought, Andro.
So many people had been in and out of his hospital room in the last twenty-four hours it was crazy. A bunch of nurses and doctors. A detective Officer Luz had been working with on the burglary cases. A social worker. An attorney who worked juvenile cases.
The bimbo reporter with the big boobs had come to the hospital to interview him, but the doctors had turned her away. She made a report from the parking lot anyway. Dub saw it on the six o’clock news. She called him a hero.
He didn’t feel like a hero, though.
He just felt like someone who wanted the world to suck less.
He had no idea where he’d be going when he was let out of the hospital, and nobody seemed to be able to tell him for sure. The social worker and attorney told him things were still being worked out and not to worry.
How could he not worry? This was his life. He felt like a stray dog in a pound, stuck in a cage, waiting to see whether someone would come along and adopt him or whether he’d be stuck there forever.
Officer Luz spoke with his teachers and the administrators at Paschal High. It wasn’t clear yet if he’d go back to the school, or that he’d get full credit for his courses since he’d missed so many classes, but she’d rounded up the homework he’d missed and brought it to him at the hospital. She’d plunked his laptop computer down on the bedside table, along with the backpack and history book she’d found in his mother’s apartment when she’d gone there with the crime scene team to look for evidence against Leandro Silva.
“Are you kidding me?” Dub said. “You expect me to work on homework in the hospital?”
“Yes,” she’d said firmly. “I do.”
She was pushing him. He kind of liked her for that.
“There’s something else you and I need to discuss,” she said.
“What is it?”
“You and Jenna.”
He felt his face heat up. Megan looked a little embarrassed, too.
“You’ve been through enough already,” she said. “I know what happened between you two. Be careful, okay? Don’t screw up your life and hers, too.”
“I won’t,” he promised. And he meant it.
It was ten in the morning on his third day in the hospital when a knock sounded at the open door of his room. He looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway.
“Hi, Wade.” She walked slowly up to his bed. “You … um … you look like you’re healing up real good.”
It was true. He was doing well with the physical injuries. His emotional injuries, though? He’d need way more time to deal with those.
“How about you?” he asked.
“I’m … okay.” She sat down on the end of his bed and looked down at the covers. “I never should have gotten back with Andro.”
Ya think? He didn’t say the words out loud. He wanted to lash out at his mother for what she’d done, but what good would that do? If he’d figured anything out over the last few days, it was that his mother was one hot mess. His feelings had been all over the place. He’d gone from wanting to protect her, to hating her, and now, to pitying her. Whatever connection he’d had to her, whatever obligation he’d felt, whatever hopes he’d had that one day she’d act like a real mother, all of that was gone now. In an odd way, it was a relief to finally accept that reality, to break the chains that had bound him.
Katrina took the edge of the sheet in her hand and worked it nervously between her fingers. “I’m going to rehab. I leave this afternoon.”
“Good luck. I hope it works this time.” He meant it. For her sake.
She looked at him with eyes full of pain and sorrow and shame and regret. “I’m sorry, Wade. I really am.”
You know what? He believed her.
She stood and walked to the head of his bed, bending down to give him a soft kiss on the forehead. “I love you, Wade.”
He offered her a soft smile. “Back at ya, Mom.”
His mother had been gone only a few minutes when Officer Luz and Brigit came to the room. “Knock-knock.”
Dub raised a hand to wave them inside. “Come on in.”
Megan stepped up beside the bed. “I was just on the phone with your defense attorney and the prosecutor. Looks like things are finally sorted out. You won’t be facing any charges.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Good to know.”
“And as far as where you go from here,” she hiked a thumb toward the door, where Trent and Wes now stood. “These two gluttons for punishment say they’d be happy to take you back so long as you’re fitted with a tracking device.”
Dub’s laugh made his ribs twinge. As much as he’d wanted a mother, these two men weren’t a bad substitute. Besides, Wes had man boobs. That kind of made him a mom, right?
Trent came into the room first, a bag in his hands. “Hey, there, Dub.”
“Hey.”
“Surprise!” Wes seesawed the plastic food container in his hands. “I made your favorite lasagna.”
“Great,” Dub lied. The only good thing about running away was that he hadn’t had to eat that horrible lasagna.
Wes set the food container down on the table next to Dub’s laptop and leaned both ways, looked at Dub’s bandages and bruises and stitches. He opened his mouth several times as if wanting to say something, but closed it each time as if he couldn’t find the right words. Finally, he just reached out, took Dub’s hand in his, and gave it a squeeze.
Trent stepped up to put a reassuring hand on Wes’s shoulder. When he let go, he pulled a small foam basketball and a plastic over-the-door hoop from the bag in his hands. “You up for shooting some hoops, Dub?”