The first twenty-four hours, Auggie had a hard time staying awake. Some of that was the head injury. Some of that was the strangeness of the hospital: the antiseptic smell, the sound of footsteps at irregular intervals, a stranger’s laughter, light when there should have been dark. Men and women kept coming in and asking him questions, and when they’d leave, he’d tumble into another fitful sleep. And some of it, he knew, was whatever they’d give him. And a small part was that he didn’t want to deal with whatever was coming down the road.
He knew he didn’t have an option when the lights came on and he heard a familiar voice.
“Get up, dickcheese. Right fucking now. I know you’re faking.”
Squinting against the sudden brightness in the room, Auggie said, “Hi, Fer.”
Fer looked terrible. His eyes were so shadowed that it looked like he’d gotten punched. His hair was lank and greasy. He was wearing an old LA Ram’s sweatshirt and an ancient pair of blue jeans, his comfort clothes.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Fer said.
That was the tip of the iceberg. Fer shouted for a solid forty-five minutes. A female nurse came and asked him to keep it down, and he shouted at her until she left, crying. A male nurse came. That poor guy was actually sobbing by the time Fer was done with him. In between bouts with the staff, Fer gave it to Auggie with both barrels, and Auggie got smaller and smaller in the bed.
“And if you weren’t such an actual, living example of the stupidest cock-gobbling cunthole that any human being has ever been saddled with, if you weren’t such a fuckup and facing criminal fucking charges, August, I would drag your ass out of this bed right now. You’re done here. Do you understand me? You’re done. If they throw your ass in jail, fine. But as soon as your asslips stop dripping your cellmate’s cum, you’re coming home.” Fer drew himself up. He hesitated. And then his voice broke as he said, “I am so disappointed in you. I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Auggie started to cry.
Fer shouted for another half an hour, which was strangely comforting, and then he sat on the hospital bed and hugged Auggie until Auggie’s snot and tears had soaked through the sweatshirt. Fer scratched his scalp and neck, alternating between brisk and gentle.
“Tell me all of it, Augustus. And for the love of God, help me understand why.”
So Auggie told him. Not all of it, although he tried. He kept to the clearest reasons: Orlando’s plea for help last semester, and then Auggie’s own involvement once he had raced after the shooter at Nia’s demonstration. The fear that he and Theo were both targets, and the need to find the shooter before the shooter found them.
“Why the hell would you get involved in something like this?” Fer asked.
“It just happened.”
“I know that line, Augustus. That’s what you’re going to tell me when you’re squirting babies out of your little boy pussy. But nothing just happens. You let a guy put a dick up there, cause and effect.”
Auggie shoved him off the bed and wiped his face. “You’re such a homophobe.”
“Christ knows I’m not going to put your little bastards in diapers and formula. They can suck on your tits until the milk runs dry.”
“What happened to you when you were a kid? What messed you up so severely in the head?”
“You,” Fer said, and his grin appeared and vanished like a card trick.
“Fer, please don’t make me come home.”
“What am I supposed to do? Less than a month ago—less than a month ago, Augustus—you called me and told me you’d gotten mugged. Then, yesterday, I got a call telling me you were unconscious in the hospital, beaten within an inch of your life. And if you open your mouth and tell me those things weren’t connected, I’m going to flip you over and spank your ass raw. Those rent boys you keep hiring with my money are going to think they’re plowing into a pair of traffic lights. Do you understand me?”
“Oh my God. This is actually worse than being dead. Do you understand that?”
“Augustus!”
“Ok, yes. I . . . I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Of course I worry! All I do is worry about you! Jesus fucking Christ, I worry about you getting your heart broken again, I worry about you getting gay bashed in this state that is the geographic equivalent of America’s pucker, I worry about your grades, I worry about your major, I worry about you getting a job when you graduate, I worry about you making the right kind of friends, I worry that you aren’t having enough fun, I worry that you’re having too much fun, I worry about you finding a nice guy that’ll get your tummy packed full of babies, I worry about you so much that I don’t sleep sometimes. I love you, you stupid drip of cocksnot. How the fuck am I not going to worry about you?”
Auggie cried some more. Fer cooled down after round two. Things got better, and they split the Jell-o that came with Auggie’s dinner and watched Wheel of Fortune on the CRT mounted in the corner.
“Fer,” Auggie said when Fer was getting ready to leave for his hotel. “Please don’t make me go home.”
Fer grunted.
“Please. I promise things will be different.”
“If,” Fer said as he pulled on an old barn coat that Auggie hadn’t even known he owned. “If you do not get sent to prison, where your asshole will be converted into a receptacle for toilet wine—if!” He held up a finger. “We can discuss maybe the possibility that you could be allowed provisionally to finish the semester.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Fer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Jesus Christ,” Fer muttered as he left. “What the fuck did I do to deserve this?”