IN THE ER, they wheel Calvin behind a curtain, and tell me to stay in the waiting room until my mother gets there.
The waiting room is bad. Sticky plastic chairs, people coughing. It’s worse than the Metro bus during Trivia Quest. Thank God it’s only a few minutes before Mom rushes in and hugs me.
“I was just upstairs with your grandfather! What on earth is happening?” she shrieks.
Then she sprints down the hall to find a nurse.
Gramps ambles in a little later. He’s got his arm in a tight black sling, and he eases himself into the plastic seat next to mine with a groan, propping his cane on the armrest. He smells a little funky—it’s been a rough day. “Well, here we are, Stanley,” he says, staring at the TV bolted onto the wall. “What in heck was your fool brother thinking? See, this is the very reason why your mother should’ve let me teach him to shoot.”
“Or it’s the reason you shouldn’t have given him that stupid gun in the first place, since Mom didn’t even want you to,” I say.
“When did you get so full of sass?” Gramps mutters, clicking the channel to something about mega-tornadoes.
We don’t talk much after that.
An hour later, Mom comes back. “Calvin’s having foot surgery,” she says, plopping down in the nearest plastic chair and rubbing at her eyes. “The bullet nicked a toe bone, and they need to check an artery and do cleanup. But he’s lucky. It’s just minor. He should be fine.”
Gramps juts his stubbly chin toward Mom. “I’ll tell you something. Your brothers were all wild hellions, but even they’d never have pulled a stupid stunt like Cal’s today.” He sits back and crosses his arms. “This has to do with his father being missing, here at a what-you-call critical juncture in the young boy’s life.”
Mom sits up very straight. She looks really pale. “I’m not talking about this,” she says to Gramps, carefully pronouncing every word. “I’m calling a cab to take you home.”
Gramps looks at me like I’m with him on this. But I’m not.
I mean, I can see ways in which they’re both right. Mom’s right about the gun being stupid, and deadly dangerous in the hands of someone as dopey as Cal. I mean, he could have killed himself.
And Gramps is right about Dad not being here when we need him.