“Bret, are you awake?”
I don’t respond to my father’s query, not out of defiance, but because there’s no real way to do so. My jaw is wired shut, and both of my eyelids are swollen over. My guts are damaged, but I finally showed that I have them.
“Bret, can you hear me?” Mom whispers.
I just lie there listening to hospital life go on around me. From what I’ve overheard, my injuries are extensive. I’ve got a bad concussion, a broken nose, a bruised eardrum, bruised ribs, a bruised kidney, five fewer teeth, and a jaw held together more by steel wire than human tissue.
“Mary, let him rest,” I hear my father say softly. So softly it can’t cover the sound of my mother’s crying or of my father’s uncharacteristic attempt to comfort rather than confront her.
“My baby boy,” Mom says.
“This is my fault, my fault,” I hear my father say, his voice growing fainter as his heavy footsteps lead away from the bed. “My fault, my goddamn stupid fault.”
“Honey, please don’t do this to yourself.” Now it’s Mom’s turn to kick on her empathy machine, a device all hospitals should install. With only one good ear, I strain to hear them.
“I’m as bad a father as my dad,” Dad says, pounding his foot or hand against the door.
“Don’t say that,” my mom says, but everybody in the room knows the truth.
“That Hitchings kid probably won’t even go to jail for this, thanks to his dad,” my father says. “His dad gets him out of jail, while Bret’s old man puts him in a hospital bed. Damn it!”
Things go quiet for a long time, except for Mom’s crying and Dad’s trying not to.
“Mrs. Hendricks, can I come in?” I hear someone say from a distance.
“One second, Alex,” my mother says. I hear both of my parents take a deep breath, composing themselves, trying to put the best face on things for my best friend.
“It’s okay,” my father mutters, even though he’s no fan of Alex.
“How’s he doing?” Alex says, the stress in his voice obvious to all.
“Bret has—” Mom starts, but tears stop her. “Excuse me, Alex.”
“This is my fault,” Alex says over the sound of a chair pulled closer to the bed.
“That doesn’t help anybody,” my dad says, sounding equally as nervous as Alex.
“He stood up for me,” Alex says. “The thing with Kylee and Sean was also my fault.”
“How so?” my father asks as he also pulls his chair closer to the bed.
I listened with pain exploding in every nerve cell still functioning as Alex spills his guts to Dad about everything that went down between Kylee, Sean, and me. He even told him about the stupid fight that Sean and I had over Christmas when Sean told me the way to get back at Hitchings was to let him beat me up and then sue him. He told Dad about Sean wearing my shirt to school. Alex told Dad how I stood up for him, leading to the prom carnage. All the while, I heard Dad’s breathing get heavier and heavier, like a steam engine about to explode.
“Alex, why are you telling me this?” Dad finally asks.
“Because I thought you should know,” Alex said. “Because if I had a dad, I would want him to know these things.”
“That must have been hard for you, growing up without a father.”
“Not really, Mr. Hendricks, not really,” Alex says slow and sadly. “When your father dies, he rejects you once.” “I did my best for my boy,” Dad says.
“He also did his best for you, and for me,” Alex says softly. “That’s the worst thing.”
The door opens and I hear my mother’s shoes on the tile floor again. “Alex, thanks for coming. We’ll let you know when he can communicate.”
“Sure thing,” Alex says, then leans over me. Despite the swelling in my brain, my forehead accepts the kiss Alex plants above my eyes as he whispers: “Radio-Free Flint forever.”
Once the door closes, I hear my parents talking, but they must have moved to the corner of the room because their words are hard to understand from this distance and one-ear deafness.
“I don’t know, Mary, I don’t know,” my father says loudly after a while.
“We don’t have any health insurance, so how are we going to pay for this?” Mom says.
“I said, I don’t know!” My father is raging mad, not at me I guess, but at the world.
“Yes, you do,” Mom says, but Dad’s only reply is to slam the door behind him as he leaves the room. I imagine him sitting in his truck, smoking, and feeling as beat up as I do, except the only medicine he wants would kill him and his family in the long run. Down in the hospital parking lot, among the grieving families with lost loved ones and happy relatives of newborns, sits my father, trying to figure out the best decision to make when you don’t have any good choices.