Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits

by Michael Murphy

  After a brief hesitation, Jimmy sat next to him. “How’s he doing?”

  “He banged himself up, but he’ll be fine.”

  “He was— He hit his head pretty hard.”

  “It’s just bruised. Although I hear you kept him from bashing his head on the ground during the fit. That’s good. He could’ve really hurt himself otherwise.”

  The EMTs had said something similar when he explained what happened, but Jimmy had been far too worried to process it. “After the seizure, he was just sort of staring.”

  Adam nodded. “That’s normal. He just had a big electrical storm in his brain. Takes a while for everything to settle down.” He turned to look at Jimmy straight on. “You did exactly the right thing for him.”

  Jimmy didn’t feel like he’d done anything. He kept hearing three sounds replaying in his head like a tape loop: the snap of bone, the crack of skull against pavement, the scream that had torn from Shane’s throat. Jimmy put his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his palms.

  Adam cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Shane’s been through an awful lot for a young man. He carries a lot of burdens.”

  “He told me about Jesse.”

  “Yeah.” Adam’s sigh was noisy in the quiet room. “You know, I always taught my kids to take responsibility for their actions. Sometimes I think Shane listened too hard to that lesson. Maybe I should’ve taught them more about forgiveness. Forgiving others and forgiving yourself, because the good Lord knows we’re all of us only human.”

  Since forgiveness was something Jimmy had no experience with, he didn’t answer. And that worked out because Adam had more to say. “When Shane first told us about him and Jesse, I didn’t handle it like I should have. I guess it kinda threw me for a loop. I hurt him, and I sure didn’t mean to.”

  Jimmy pulled his hands from his face and sat up straight. “He told me about it. He’s not angry at you over it, you know. He said you needed time to adjust. He knows you love him.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. How did your people take it when you told ’em you liked men?”

  “I don’t have any people,” Jimmy replied, looking away.

  “I see.” A long silence fell. Adam stretched his long legs in front of him. “Here’s what I want to tell you about Shane. In spite of everything that’s happened to him—hell, maybe partly because of it—that boy… that man has a light to him. And I ain’t saying this just because I’m his daddy. I saw that light the very first time I met him. He was only six. You know that I’m not his biological father, right?”

  “I… I heard that. But he says you’re his real father.”

  Pleased, Adam smiled. “I am that. Couldn’t love him any more if he was my own blood. But even before I was his father, before I loved him, I saw what he is. He’s….”

  “Special,” Jimmy finished for him.

  “Yeah. Special.” He paused and then lowered his voice. “Look. I don’t know anything about you. I’ve heard some good things from Belinda and a few other people, and I gotta tell you, Shane’s judgment about people is usually pretty good. But if you do anything to harm my son….” He let the threat remain unvoiced.

  Jimmy remembered the way Shane had looked at him that morning after they’d made love, and the way he’d hung on to Jimmy when he cried. And Jimmy had a pretty good idea that hurting Shane was inevitable at this point. But it would be the second kind of hurt—Shane would soldier through. “I don’t want to hurt him, sir.” That, at least, was God’s honest truth.

  After another long look, Adam nodded cautiously. “I don’t want you to let this seizure scare you from him. Like I said, he’ll be fine. And he doesn’t need anyone to take care of him. He’s got half the town willing to do that if he needs it.”

  “I think mostly he can take care of himself.”

  “Yeah, mostly. It wouldn’t be a bad thing for him to have someone he could take care of, though. Just a little bit.”

  Jimmy squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean just because Shane’s special don’t mean you gotta be perfect.”

  “I’m certainly not perfect.”

  “None of us are,” Adam said, chuckling.

  “But… I don’t need taking care of. I’ve been doing it myself for a long, long time. I’m not what Shane deserves either, and I won’t stick around much longer. He knows that. I told him from the start.”

  Adam looked at him gravely but didn’t respond. Jimmy again rested his face in his hands.

  A while later Val emerged. She looked tired too but straight-backed and determined. Still, Jimmy suspected that once she got home, she was going to need to fall apart a little. She smiled at him. “He’s waiting for you. Second door on the right.”

  “Thank you.” He stood and began to walk, but stopped as he was passing her. “Will he get to leave soon? He doesn’t like hospitals.”

  She gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. “He just needs to do some paperwork and he can come home today.”

  With a nod, Jimmy continued toward Shane’s room.

  Sitting up in the hospital bed, bare-chested and with the sheet pulled up to his waist, Shane looked thin and drawn. The mark on his forehead had bloomed deep purple and his right forearm was splinted, but he smiled when Jimmy entered. “Did you ever get anything to eat? You gotta be starving,” Shane said.

  “I ate.”

  Shane narrowed his eyes, probably because he knew the hospital was too small for a cafeteria and nothing else was within walking distance. “What did you eat?”

  “Vending machine.”

  “Oh. I had hospital food. Not sure which of us got the worse end of the deal.”

  Jimmy didn’t want to pace, so he sat on the bedside chair. “How do you feel?”

  “Like an idiot. Man, I’m sorry to put you through this.”

  “Put me…? Shane, you’re the one who had the seizure.”

  Shane squished up his face. “And it was my own damned fault. I didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat anything, and then I had a fucking meltdown. Any of those things could trigger me. I know better.”

  The same bland watercolor hung in this room. This print was smaller but also crooked. Jimmy stood, walked over, and straightened it. Then he returned to his chair and sat down. “Your head’s okay?”

  “As okay as it ever gets. This is gonna need surgery, though.” He winced when he lifted his arm.

  “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  Shane winced again when he shrugged. “More plates and pins. I’m practically the Tin Man.”

  “I think of you more as Steve Austin.” Jimmy briefly hummed the theme song and sound effects from The Six Million Dollar Man, but Shane only looked puzzled. Ten-year age difference. “When are you having the surgery?”

  “A couple of days. They want the swelling to go away first. And I’ll have to go down to Modesto for it ’cause this hospital doesn’t do nonemergency orthopedics.”

  Fuck. “That sucks,” Jimmy said.

  “It really does.” Shane chewed his lip for a moment. “They had to cut my shirt off.”

  “Good thing you have three more.”

  “Two. You keep that one. My camera….”

  “Broken. I gave it to Belinda. Maybe it can be fixed, but I doubt it. The memory card looks okay, though.”

  “Thanks. You thought of everything, didn’t you? God, I’m really glad you were there. Must’ve disgusted you—between the bawling and the pissing myself.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I wasn’t disgusted.” Terrified, more like. He forced a smile. “You know, back in my youth I used to drink a lot, do whatever drugs I could get my hands on. Once I was in Portland and my wallet was unusually thick. I’d just finished a decent gig on a fishing boat up in Alaska. I went on a bender. Most of it’s just a blur—I don’t even know what I took. What I do know is I woke up in a park one morning with my wallet gone and my head feeling like it’d been through your dad’s combine. My backpack was gone too, so all
I had left was the clothing I was wearing. Which was lovely, considering I’d managed to piss and shit myself, and puke all over my shirt for good measure. That was disgusting. And it was also just about the time I decided maybe it would be a good idea to kick a few habits.”

  Shane gave him a long look before sighing and taking his hand. “Thanks, Jimmy. Do you think I could get you to do me one more favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Pack up some clothing for me. A few days’ worth, I guess. Mom does laundry pretty often.”

  “For the hospital?” Jimmy asked, confused.

  “For the ranch.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m gonna be pretty useless for a few weeks. I could probably do most of my work at the bar, but everything else—bathing, eating, getting my goddamn clothes on….” He looked distressed, and Jimmy understood what the argument with his mother had been about.

  “I’ll help you,” Jimmy said.

  “Thanks. There’s a suitcase in my closet.”

  “No, I mean you can stay at the Snake and I’ll help you out. Um, unless you’d rather go to the ranch.” He hadn’t planned to make the offer, and it occurred to him belatedly that Shane might prefer his family’s care to Jimmy’s.

  But Shane was staring at him with wide-eyed wonder. “Seriously? You’d do that for me?”

  “It’s not that hard. I had a gig for a while as an orderly at a nursing home, and you’ll be a lot easier than that.”

  “And you’re really willing to do this?”

  “Of course.”

  Shane’s smile lit up the entire room.

  Chapter Twenty

  VAL WAS not enthusiastic about the change in plans. But as Shane angrily reminded her, he was a grown-ass man and the decision wasn’t hers to make. Then, quite unexpectedly, Adam entered the fray to support Shane. “He’s gonna go nuts at the ranch, Val. Least he can keep busy at the Snake.”

  Val turned to stare at Jimmy, who was trying to skulk unobtrusively in the corner of the little hospital room. He realized that while he’d been worrying about Adam and his combine, it was really Val he had to watch out for. But she conceded this battle, at least. “I’ll give you boys a ride to town.”

  Jimmy earned extra points with her when he took the plastic bag containing Shane’s soiled clothing without flinching, then took off his borrowed Pendleton shirt and helped Shane slip it over his shoulders. “I can’t believe I gotta walk down Main Street in a hospital johnny,” Shane groused.

  “We can use the service entrance in the back instead,” Jimmy offered. “Although you’ll be depriving Rattlesnake of a show.”

  Shane gave him a sweet if slightly woozy smile. The doctor had given him pain pills for his arm.

  Between the pills, the fall he’d taken, the lingering effects of the seizure, and the general craziness of the day, Shane was a bit unsteady on his legs. With encouragement from Jimmy and Val, he agreed to sling his good arm around Jimmy’s shoulders for the walk to the car. Jimmy didn’t mind bearing a little of his weight, because for a few minutes in the cemetery, he’d feared he’d never touch Shane again.

  Val had an SUV, which was fortunate because it was relatively easy for Shane to climb into the backseat. Jimmy buckled him in and sat beside him. Before heading back to the ranch in his pickup, Adam wished them both a good evening, and then Val climbed behind the wheel and left the hospital behind.

  It was only a few miles, and nobody said much. Shane slumped against Jimmy and mumbled something incoherent.

  Adam must have called Belinda to let her know they were coming, and she was waiting for them at the open service door. She clucked her tongue when she saw Shane. “Your face!”

  “You should see the other guy,” he said with a giggle. The pain meds were definitely kicking in.

  The service door was close to Shane’s apartment, which made it easy to get him inside. But as the four of them entered the living room, Jimmy remembered that their morning lovemaking was still evident in the bedroom—the empty condom wrapper on the floor, the bottle of lube at the bedside. And the bedding was a mess. “Uh, hang on a minute, okay?” he said and settled Shane on the couch. Then he ducked into the bedroom to get rid of the evidence.

  But when he returned to the couch and helped Shane up, Shane smiled loopily at him. “Did you hide the lube?”

  A forty-three-year-old man who had seen and done the things Jimmy had should not have been capable of blushing so furiously. It didn’t help when Belinda choked on a suppressed laugh. Val only sighed.

  “Let’s get you into bed,” Jimmy said, trying to demonstrate that he could care for Shane even while dying of embarrassment.

  “I want you in my bed. With less clothing.”

  Jesus Christ.

  Jimmy decided getting Shane out of the hospital clothes and washed up could wait. He led him to the bed, gently pushed him onto the mattress, and pulled off his boots. Then he tucked him in. “Take a nap, okay? I’ll bring you some decent food in a while.”

  “Okay.” Shane suddenly looked solemn. “You’re not gonna leave, are you?”

  Shit. “Not for a bit.”

  “Don’t want you to leave.”

  With an attempt at a reassuring smile, Jimmy patted his shoulder and returned to the living room, where Belinda and Val were deep in conversation. When they stood close like that, he could really see the sisterly resemblance. It was slightly unnerving when they turned in unison to look at him. Trying not to flinch, he closed the bedroom door.

  Val spoke first. “You’ve known him less than two weeks. Are you certain you want this responsibility?”

  “Ma’am, Shane’s been kind to me since I stepped foot in town. I’d like to do this for him.”

  Her tense shoulders relaxed slightly. “All right. But let me know if you need anything.”

  Belinda gave her sister a look Jimmy couldn’t read; then she turned to Jimmy. “I have a suggestion for you. Move into this apartment. It will make it easier for you to help Shane. Besides, we’re heading into the busy season and I want to be able to rent out 107 to guests. In return, I can increase your pay by $150 per week.”

  Struck nearly speechless, he gaped at her. “You… you want me to… share with Shane?”

  “Yes.”

  “I…. What if Shane doesn’t want me to?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He glanced at Val, expecting her to protest, but she remained silent. “I guess it makes sense,” he admitted.

  “Good,” Belinda said with a pleased smile. “Now, once you’ve moved your things over and you and Shane have eaten, I have a few tasks for you. The guests in 204 say their light keeps blinking, and 103 claims their climate control’s not working properly.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling back.

  ON MONDAY, although the bruise was livid, Shane felt much better and wanted to work. He insisted that Jimmy help him get dressed, but Belinda refused to let him into the bar. “I have plenty of coverage for the next few days. You rest that arm. You want the swelling to go down so they can fix it for you tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  “You haven’t taken a vacation in years, Shane. Relax a little. I’m sure you’ll be back to work by the weekend.”

  He gave her a sour look but didn’t argue, no doubt knowing he had no better chance against her than against his mother. Wisely, Jimmy kept out of it. He was just the hired hand.

  He was also certain that Belinda deliberately gave him a light workload that day. Helping Shane didn’t really take up much time, so that left them both with not much to do. Jimmy caught the anxious look in Shane’s eyes and knew he was worried about the next day’s surgery. “Would you show me your photos?” Jimmy asked.

  He and Shane spent several hours leafing through Shane’s photo albums. They looked at pictures Shane had taken over the years as well as the ones his family had collected to help with his recovery after the accident. Shane explained
each one, and although Jimmy should have been bored, he wasn’t.

  Eventually they ran through the entire collection. Then Jimmy looked around the living room and kitchenette and had another suggestion. “How about if we tidy up a little?”

  “My mess is getting to you already?” Shane asked with a grin.

  “Well, it’s not gonna kill me. But….”

  “But you’d rather we be neat.”

  “Yeah.”

  Shane had already cleared a dresser drawer for Jimmy and given him a little space in the closet. And Jimmy had to admit, it was nice having an en suite bath and easy kitchen access. He scrubbed and folded and let Shane tell him where everything went.

  The cleaning didn’t take very long, though, and Shane’s anxiety increased as the day progressed. Then Jimmy spied the little pile of library books. “How about if I read to us?”

  “I’d like that.”

  They finished the Neil Gaiman and got well into the wizard book. Jimmy’s voice grew hoarse, but it was really nice to sit on the couch with Shane’s legs draped over his lap and Shane’s ready smile so close at hand.

  Only when his voice was close to giving out did Jimmy set the book aside. He asked a question he’d been wondering about all day. “When they do your arm tomorrow, can they take out the pins in your leg at the same time?”

  Shane grinned. “You think the surgeon has a buy-one-get-one-free deal?”

  “Well, I just figured since they have to knock you out anyway….”

  “I asked yesterday, but the doc said no. I’d have to be on crutches for a while if they did the leg because the bone would be kinda weak. And I can’t do crutches if my arm’s all fucked up.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy said, disappointed. The seizure and broken arm wouldn’t have been entirely bad if they’d indirectly led to a reduction in Shane’s discomfort.

  They had calzones for dinner. Jimmy had to cut Shane’s for him, but at least Shane could manage the fork left-handed. “After the accident, I had to learn to feed myself again, like a little kid. I hated that.”