by Jamie Pacton
We hold each other, standing together in the middle of the waiting room.
“He’ll be okay.” I say, trying to reassure myself as well. I rub Mom’s back as she cries.
“Kit?” Jett’s voice touches the edge of our circle, bringing me out of the moment with Mom. He’s holding a Styrofoam takeout container. “I’ve got to go home. But I’ll check on you later. Once I get my siblings sorted out.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, shaking my head.
Mom gives my arm a squeeze and heads over to the nurse’s station.
Jett thrusts the takeout container toward me. I open it and a laugh spills out of me as I take in the gooey, gloopy stack of food.
“Pancakes?” My stomach rumbles.
“I picked them up from your mom’s diner because we missed our late-night after-work breakfast. Plus, my mother always says feed a cold, but breakfast a worry.”
“Thank you,” I say. I throw my arms around him. He stands aloof for a moment and then leans into me. I don’t care what rules I’m breaking for the moment. It’s good to hold Jett.
He pulls away first and rummages in his pocket. He pulls a plastic fork out and hands it to me. “See you soon.”
Before I can say anything else, he plants a quick kiss on my cheek and turns away.
I hold my hand to my cheek, a smile finding its way to my lips. Layla walks in at that moment and shoots a look toward Jett’s retreating back. I shrug, still grinning.
“Kit. Chris is awake. C’mon.” My mom grips my hand, and I grip my pancakes, and together we stride down the hallway toward Chris’s room.
AS IT TURNS OUT, THEY WON’T LET YOU KEEP TAKEOUT CONTAINERS of pancakes in the ICU. So, I have to leave them in the nurses’ station fridge. Mom goes into Chris’s room first, but I linger by the fridge, still holding the container. Delighted Chris is awake. Unsure I want to see him all banged up and injured.
Being a Knight was supposed to be fun. Something Chris and I practiced together. Everything at the Castle is scripted, sorted, and planned in advance. People aren’t supposed to get hurt.
So what happened tonight? How did Chris injure himself so spectacularly?
As I stand there, hand on the fridge door, our first training session comes back to me.
Chris was seventeen and had moved up the ranks to top Squire. He was still in high school, but his tryouts for the Knight position were coming up. He needed someone to practice with, and I was the only one available and willing to help. I was almost fifteen and had just been hired at the Castle. I spent every minute that I wasn’t handing out cheesy souvenirs watching the Knights.
Every day for the month before his tryouts, Chris and I would get the bus over to the Castle after school and watch the Knights’ mock fights. Chris would record them with a phone he’d borrowed from his girlfriend, and then we’d practice the moves back at home after school.
Every weekend, the clang of blunted metal practice swords would ring out throughout our house.
“Outside!” Mom would roar. Dad usually wouldn’t look up from whatever bottle he was trying to find the bottom of.
Chris and I would then take our battle down the stairs and into the yard, dancing across the turf like Westley and Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.
At first it was about trying to sword fight gracefully and avoid each other’s blows. Then, we’d work on the skill exercises. We didn’t have our own horses (shocker, I know), so we’d hang a set of rings from a low-hanging tree branch and ride our bikes up the driveway with long sticks in hand. It was remarkably stupid and incredibly fun.
“Hold that lance!” Chris had shouted during one of our first training sessions. “You’re meant for more than wenching, sister of mine! RIDE!”
When we graduated from our short driveway, we moved to a city park down the road. There was a long trail that ran beside a pond filled with suburban runoff, electric-green lily pads, and cattails. Midway down the path, right in the center of a narrow isthmus where the path crossed the pond, Chris had hung five rings in a row from an overhanging willow branch. He argued that putting the rings on this narrow strip of asphalt between the ponds would force us to stay balanced, just as if we were on real horses.
It was my turn first.
“Ride!” I whispered to myself, balancing my feet on the bike pedals.
I gripped the end of a garden rake that was standing in for today’s lance, and I pedaled. The trees and playground equipment raced past, smears of green and yellow. Kids’ laughter filled my ears, and I imagined they were roars from a crowd at the Castle.
As I approached the rings, I adjusted the garden-rake-turned-lance (exactly like the ones we’re using to train at Layla’s) in my right hand. As real knights had done in the Middle Ages, I angled it across my body.
My left hand gripped the handlebars, steering.
“GO KIT!” Chris yelled from the sidelines.
One ring, swish.
Two rings, swish.
The rings rattled down the garden rake’s pole and landed on my wrist like bangles. A wide grin split my face. One more left.
I was almost to the last ring, balanced perfectly in the middle of the isthmus, when the wind shifted. The ring wavered, and I adjusted the garden rake accordingly. It was a matter of the briefest bit of timing. Maybe a butterfly flapped its wings in South America and that threw me off. Maybe there was a stone on the path. To this day, I don’t know. But whatever it was, it disrupted my fragile balance. My hand slipped; the pole dropped from my grip. With a clatter it fell onto the path, bounced sort-of sideways, and somehow wedged itself in the spokes of my bike. The front of the bike tipped forward, rocketing me off the seat.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed as I tumbled into the pond.
Rocks scraped my arm as I fell, and I landed in the sludge deep within the cattails. Mud splashed up into my face, and one of my slip-on sneakers came off in the muck. Water rose up to my waist.
“KIT?!” Chris crashed through the reeds, looking for me.
“I’m fine,” I called. I reached into the mud, looking for my sneaker, but it was long gone.
Chris appeared at the edge of the bank, parting the cattails to gape at me. “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have insisted we practice on the isthmus.”
I started to reply, but—no joke—at that moment, a frog leaped off its lily pad and landed on my head.
Brave Kit, sitting in the mud, with a frog on her head.
Laughter bubbled out of me, and I reached for Chris’s hand.
“I’m fine,” I managed to get out through gasps of laughter. “Not your fault at all.”
He pulled me up the bank and we collapsed on the ground, both of us laughing too much to speak. A mother pushing a stroller called out to us, “Are you two okay over there?” She shot us a look like she suspected we were smoking pot or something.
“Totally fine,” Chris had called out, waving her down the path.
“But, m’lady,” I added, “we fear the garden rake may never be the same!”
Giggles overtook us again, and when we were finally done laughing, we lay on the grass, looking up at the spring sky.
“Still want to keep training?” Chris asked as he handed me a water bottle. I used it to wash some of the mud from my face and hands.
“Ha! Of course. I’m going to be a Knight. Even if it kills me.”
“At this rate it very well might,” muttered Chris.
I punched him lightly in the arm, and we retrieved our bikes. As we ambled home, we talked about sword moves and new plans for training.
But now, despite all that training, being a Knight could’ve killed Chris. Was it worth it?
I still want to say yes, but first I want to see Chris. Shoving the pancakes from Jett into the nurses’ fridge, I walk down the hall to see what shape the Red Knight is in.
“THE GOOD NEWS IS, HIS BACK’S NOT BROKEN,” SAYS A SKINNY doctor in neon-green running shoes as I slip into Chris’s
room. He looks at the chart he’s holding and makes a cryptic doctorish noise.
Chris lies in the bed, wearing a light blue hospital gown. Bandages poke out from beneath the gown, and his right arm is in a cast. A bandage wraps around his forehead, covering the nasty cut on his head. His long hair is smushed beneath it. His eyes are closed, his breathing shallow.
He looks like a caricature of an accident victim. Someone who’s so injured, it’s almost cartoonish. Except it’s not. And this is real life.
“What’s the bad news?” I say, walking over to Mom and putting an arm around her waist. She stands beside the bed, gripping the bedrail so tightly her knuckles stick out like pebbles beneath her skin.
The doctor looks at both of us. He sucks on his teeth for a moment and puts Chris’s chart down. “The bad news is, your insurance isn’t the greatest. And X-rays and those surgeries we did to set the bones in his arm are expensive.”
“How can you discuss money at a time like this?” The question escapes my lips before I can stop it. I glare at the doctor, knowing it’s not his fault, but taking my frustration and worry out on him.
The doctor shrugs, holding up his hands. “I wouldn’t if I could help it, but it’s hospital policy. We have to inform you of costs and insurance information.”
“We’ll figure it out,” says Mom. She bites on her bottom lip. “What sort of recovery are we facing?”
The doctor drones on. Telling us about physical therapy, what sorts of exercises Chris will need to do, and how his knee is seriously messed up (my words, not his).
I brush a piece of hair from Chris’s cheek. “What about riding? When will he be able to ride a horse again?”
The doctor gives me a flabbergasted look. “Were you not listening? Your brother has a broken arm, torn ligaments in his knee, fractured ribs, and his head is in bad shape. He’ll be on painkillers for a few days, and then we’ll recommend physical therapy. It’ll be a long time before he gets on a horse again.”
There’s a noise from the bed, and Chris groans in his sleep. The pain medicine the doctors have given him must be working, because a smile crosses his face as his eyes flutter open.
“Hey, Kit,” he says. “How’d the garden rake come out?”
I swipe at the tear leaking from my eye as I give him a weak smile. “It didn’t stand a chance.”
“Mr. Sweetly,” says the doctor, coming over to the bed and shining a light in Chris’s eyes. “You’re very lucky. We’d like to keep you here for a few days to keep an eye on your vitals and make sure everything is setting properly.”
Chris nods his head, half listening. Soon, he’s snoring again. Mom follows the doctor into the hallway, peppering him with questions. I pull up a plastic chair so it’s right beside the bed and take Chris’s hand. The machines by the bed beep like video games from the ’80s. I yawn, suddenly exhausted. My fear is still a cold lump in my belly, but at least now Chris has a direction and plan for recovery. I can deal with a plan.
“You can get through this.” My voice is just a whisper. I squeeze his hand as I say it. “I know the Red Knight will ride again.”
23
I’M NOT SURE WHEN I FALL ASLEEP OR WHEN MOM COMES back, but a cheerful nurse buzzes in early on Saturday morning, opening the curtains and shooing us out so she can check Chris’s vitals and give him a sponge bath. A piece of paper covered in numbers falls to the floor as Mom stands up. I get a look at it before Mom snatches it away. “Estimate for Hospital Services” is emblazoned across the top, and at the bottom there’s a big circle around a double-digit number with too many zeros after it.
I want to puke thinking about how we’re going to get that much money.
Still waking up, Mom and I stumble into the hallway and walk toward the waiting room. I clutch my backpack to my chest. All the other Castle staff are gone, but I hope someone told them Chris was awake.
“Coffee?” I ask.
Mom’s bun has come undone and dark circles ring her eyes. She nods and stretches, reaching toward the ceiling like she’s doing yoga.
“Be back soon.”
Shouldering my backpack, I make my way to the bank of elevators. The door opens with a ding. Despite the early hour, it’s crowded with several nurses in scrubs, a woman in a bathrobe, and two sleepy-looking middle schoolers carrying Styrofoam takeout boxes. A gray-haired woman in a pink sweatshirt and rhinestone-covered baseball hat wrinkles her nose when I step into the elevator. She moves to the far back corner, putting as much distance between her shiny self and my rumpled one as possible. My last shower was yesterday morning before training and work. I’m sure I smell fairly medieval right now.
I give up on making my hair behave sometime between the third floor and the lobby. When the doors ding open, the nurses and kids shuffle out.
“You look exhausted,” says the old woman in pink as she walks past me. “My husband’s been in here for two weeks. Best to pace yourself, dear.”
Much to my surprise, she gives me a small, sympathetic pat on the arm.
I smile to myself, buoyed for a moment by the small compassion of a stranger.
The cafeteria is at the end of another long hall. It’s crowded with doctors in white coats, men and women in green scrubs, families getting breakfast, and an enormously pregnant woman who’s moving up and down the cafeteria line, looking like she can’t decide between Jell-O and crying.
I fill two cups of coffee and move into the checkout line.
“Four fifty-six,” says the teenage girl behind the register. She looks almost my age, and I wonder for a moment why she’s not in school. What sort of shit does life have to throw your way to end up cashiering in the hospital before six o’clock in the morning? Then I remember this is my spring break week and it’s Saturday, and her presence there makes more sense.
Smiling at her in an attempt to pass on a little bit of the elevator woman’s kindness, I pull a crumpled five-dollar bill out of my pocket and hand it to the girl. Since I missed out on last night’s tips, it’s the last of my cash.
My stomach grumbles as the smell of bacon rises from the person’s plate behind me. I’ll only have change left after the coffees, but at least there are still the pancakes I left in the nurses’ fridge.
Thank you, Jett, for always showing up. With pancakes. And for generally just being a miracle of a human.
I’m about to take the receipt from the girl when I freeze.
“What’s he doing here?” I mutter, peering toward the ketchup station in the dining area.
My dad’s hair is still long, but it’s now almost fully gray. He wears a faded flannel and dark blue jeans.
God help me, he’s brought Len’s electric guitar and has it out. In the middle of the hospital cafeteria. Face-palm.
Oblivious to the looks he’s getting, he strums a few riffs lightly, looking completely out of place. Fury chases embarrassment as I watch him. I want to go over and dump my coffee on his head. I also want to skulk out of the place, ignoring him completely.
How did he know Chris was here? We haven’t seen him since he left. Does he think he can just come back into our lives and pretend like everything is okay?
“Miss?” The cashier knocks on the counter like she’s banging on a door. “You have to move on. It’s breakfast rush. You can’t just stand there.”
I come back to myself and shake my head. I’ll ignore him for now and get coffee to Mom. Maybe he’ll be gone when I come back for lunch.
Trying to hide behind a group of med students in scrubs, I make it to the door. But, like Orpheus, I’m betrayed by my treacherous heart. I turn, and my dad’s eyes meet mine.
“Kit-Kat!” he calls out, waving to me.
I sigh. Sometimes the only way out is through. Taking a long sip from my coffee, I wave back and walk toward his table. At first I think he’s going to hug me, but then he stands up and gives me another weird little wave. Then he changes his mind and opens his arms.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he say
s. His voice is strained, like he’s trying too hard.
I pull out a chair and sit down, neatly sidestepping his hug. “What are you doing here, Lars?”
His eyebrows go up at my use of his first name, but he doesn’t say anything. Up close I can see all the gray in his stubble and the deep circles under his eyes. He looks rough. Like the last few years have been hard, despite the glossy church advertisements that have somehow airbrushed his face into a smooth, youthful picture.
“Len called me last night, asking about the guitar. I didn’t tell him I was going to bring it by the Castle. I was there for the whole show, sitting in the Green Knight’s section.”
“And you didn’t even say hello?”
“I talked to Chris before the show,” he says, picking up a coffee stirrer and twisting it in his hands. “He didn’t want to talk, but I wanted to apologize. Which he took badly.”
Maybe that’s why Chris was distracted enough to fall off his horse and get so injured.
“He’s furious at you. As he should be since you stole all his money for college.”
Lars shakes his head. “I wish I could make up for the college fund I … um … borrowed from. But I don’t have the money anymore.”
I gape at that. “Borrowed?”
He has the good grace to look embarrassed at least. When his heroin habit ran through all his and Mom’s savings, he drained the college funds Mom started for us when we were kids. Somehow, she’d kept them hidden from him. She had thousands of dollars of cash stuffed into jars and hidden in an old box of diapers in the attic. But he found them. And wiped them out entirely. The party he must’ve had from that money took him halfway across the country and into who knows what sorts of sleaziness.
“I’m clean now,” he says, taking off his jacket and pulling up his sleeves. Where before there had been long track marks, like overgrown roads running down his arm, there are now just knotted skin and thick scars. “I left the church because of a fight with the other guys, but I’m still clean.”