Broken Identity

by Ashley Williams

  Ronnie thought about it. “Or I could just pretend my life’s in danger and I’m running away from the bad guys.”

  Drake stood up slowly and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that would probably work, too,” he said awkwardly. “Come on. I’ll help you.” He put Ronnie on his shoulders and told him to grab the fence and hang on tight.

  Ronnie clung to the fence like a cat does a carpet when it’s bath time. Drake wanted to laugh, but now was definitely not the time for joking around. Now was the time for action. Neither of them would ever be laughing again if they didn’t get a move on.

  Drake could have climbed the fence ten times faster if he hadn’t been so concerned about not making a sound. Because the chain link fence was along a strip of asphalt, it made an unpleasant scraping sound every time the fence rattled. That meant Drake had to be extra quiet and even slower in his movements. With a little more slow motion and the right sound effects, he’d be the spitting image of the six-million dollar man in action.

  “All right, Ronnie,” he said once he was at eye level with him. “I’ll be right here when you climb, OK?”

  “OK,” Ronnie said, almost doubtfully.

  “You go first, and I’ll be right behind you. Just don’t look down.” Drake waited until Ronnie was a few feet above him before climbing again. “When you reach the top, you’ll climb over the fence to the other side and—”

  “Climb over the fence?”

  Drake stared at Ronnie. And at what age is common sense supposed to kick in? “Yeah, what else? You expect a slide or somethin’ to get you down?”

  Ronnie bit his lip.

  “Just do what I say, OK? There’s a bunch of weeds on the other side, so it’s not like you’d break any bones if your foot slips and you accidentally fall.”

  Ronnie’s eyes grew large. “You mean I might actually fall?”

  “Oh, just forget I said anything! Keep climbing!”

  It wasn’t long before Ronnie reached the top. Drake met up with him quickly to help him over the fence. “You can make this as easy or as hard as you want it!” he said, prying Ronnie’s pallid fingers away from the fence. “C’mon, if they find us, they’ll kill us!”

  “But what if I fall?”

  “At least you’ll get to the ground sooner!” Drake said. “Get over it, Ronnie. You’re stronger than you think. On the inside, I mean. Don’t be afraid. Don’t you see you’ve already made it this far? The rest is a breeze from here.”

  That seemed to calm Ronnie’s nerves, or perhaps it was just Drake’s wishful imagination. Ronnie glanced at Drake sheepishly and said, “Thanks. Sorry for acting like such a baby.”

  Drake allowed himself to smile. “You can thank me when we’re both on the ground. Now go.”

  With a new sense of courage, Ronnie puffed up his chest, stiffly brushed the tears from his eyes, and went down the fence so fast that even Drake was amazed.

  “Good. Now go over to that bush over there and wait for me.” Drake swung one leg over the fence and got his footing.

  Then he heard a door open inside the building.

  Ivan swore.

  Drake turned his head in the direction of the window and heard a gun click. Before he had a chance to react, a sharp pain entered his left leg.

  Then next thing he knew was that his body smacked the ground hard as another shot took a chip out of the pavement only inches away from his head.

  Ivan was trying to kill him. Kill. Drake tried to scramble to his feet, but his body wasn’t working right. It was his leg. That’s right. He had been shot.

  Try crawling. He dropped to the ground and elbow-crawled toward a tree. He was losing blood; he could feel it sting as it left his body. He just hoped he didn’t lose consciousness from the pain before the next bullet turned his world black.

  The pain in his thigh made him want to throw up. It was all he could do to keep from passing out. Another bullet fired, barely missing him again as he crawled behind a thick-trunked white oak. He thought he heard Ronnie crying and screaming for him to get up, but all he could concentrate on was the pain. The throbbing, blinding, sickening pain. He tore his fingers into a mass of dirt and roots and heaved the rest of his body behind the enormous tree. There, behind two and a half feet of impenetrable wood, he crumpled to the ground without any strength to go further.

  Still, he felt anything but safe. He sensed that in a matter of minutes he was going to die. He wanted to die. He couldn’t imagine a pain worse than this. Lying face down with uncontrollable shaking hands covering his head, he tried to look down at his leg, but couldn’t force himself to do it. He could feel the warm, sticky fluid seeping and intermittently spurting from his leg and was almost glad he couldn’t see.

  “Ronnie,” he said hoarsely. Unknown to him, Ronnie had already been there beside him the whole time. “Ronnie…” He sucked in a deep breath of frigid air and found it difficult to continue speaking. “Go, Ronnie. Go hide. Don’t…don’t let them find you.” Ronnie tried to argue, but Drake just shook his head weakly. “Go.”

  Tears streaming down his red cheeks, Ronnie turned and fled.

  Drake was too tired to watch him run off, so he let his head fall to the damp earth, content to die there. He didn’t want to live anymore. He hated his life, and this kind of death was exactly what he deserved. I just hope I die before Ivan comes out here and finishes me off.

  He stared impassively across the street and watched as the streetlights began to swirl and form a huge, orange blur. Then other colors were added—bright blues, purples, greens, and pinks. The sickeningly intense brightness of the colors made him close his eyes. But they were there too, tormenting him, playing cynical games with his mind as the reality of death settled in. Then let me die. I want peace.

  Drake opened one eyelid and drew in another labored breath. He thought he saw the flashing lights of a police car in the distance just before he lost consciousness.

  Chapter

  16

  HEALING PROCESS

  The first thing Drake Pearson saw when he opened his eyes was a large bouquet of mixed, colorful flowers. Am I dead? he wondered, struggling to keep his eyelids from falling closed again. The room was an off-white color, and he had a migraine. That was about all he grasped before his world went dark again.

  For the next twenty minutes, his eyes kept fluttering open on and off. If he could only lift his head to look around, he would, but even moving an inch seemed impossible. So he was content to simply gaze around with complete oblivion. The light in the room—added to the intense glow from the broad window to his right—was too bright, and he couldn’t hold his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. Oh, man, it hurts. I wish someone would close the blinds.

  He wanted to reach down and touch his leg, but he felt so drugged that he wasn’t sure he had arms anymore. What time was it anyhow? What day was it? And what was going on in his body that was making him feel this way? Motionless and utterly worn out from who knew what, he decided not to fight his fatigue any longer. He let his eyes stay shut and merely listened to the sounds around him.

  People walking. A recurring beeping. Moaning in another room. Someone crying. Everything was so loud that the conflicting noises hurt his ears. What is this place?

  He opened his eyes again—bad idea. A wave of nausea punched him in the gut. He sealed his eyes shut, wondering where this pain was coming from and why he was experiencing it in absolute confusion. He tried not to think about it; thinking only seemed to intensify the nausea.

  Slowly, the sour taste of vomit filled his mouth. He swallowed a thick gob of saliva and pushed the bitter flavor back down to his stomach. His bottom lip quivered. His entire body began to shake. He tried moving his arm again. His brain told him he was wiggling his fingers, but his other senses gave no evidence of it. Either his whole body was numb, or he had no body at all. If I am dead…No, this is stupid. I have to wake up. This has to be a dream.

  If only he had feeling, he would pinch himself. Wake u
p, wake up! C’mon, you stupid body, work! How frustrating not to have any control over his own body. It was as if he were paralyzed from his head to his toes. The only part of his body that seemed to have retained any of its normal qualities was his brain. He still felt the same, thought the same, but everything else was completely wrong. His irritation soon progressed into rage, but realizing he could do nothing but lie in this position, he stopped fighting.

  Drake opened his mouth to release a lengthy yawn and sensed tears rising to his closed eyes. Gotta get outta here, he kept repeating to himself. Gotta… He felt sleep coming and welcomed it gratefully. Maybe things would be different when he woke up next time.

  As long as Drake had slept, he still felt as tired as he had been when he first drifted off to sleep. Hesitantly, he opened one eye, hanging in suspense that just maybe he would wake up in a different place.

  But, no. Same room, same white walls, and same old migraine pal. Only this time, he wasn’t seeing things through double vision. Whatever drug that had been in his body earlier seemed to have wore off while he had been asleep, and that at least made him feel a little less dead.

  He shifted his body slightly and for the first time became conscious of the pillow under his head. At least I can feel that. What a relief. For a while there, I swore I was going crazy. He peeked again and saw that the flowers were still there. More colorful perhaps, or had his brain simply not been up to par then and remembered them differently?

  The light didn’t bother him so much anymore, so he took the time to study every detail of the room more closely. The parted blinds were long and thick, the wallpaper was end-of-the-spectrum white, and the chair in the corner seemed as isolated and confused about its presence here as he was.

  He heaved a sigh and straightened his legs. What a relief to know they were still part of his body. He sensed his strength coming back, though that strength seemed so insignificant now.

  He flinched. Ouch! What was that? Another surging pain ran down his leg, then faded as quickly as it had come. The gunshot. Wasn’t that yesterday, or has it been longer? He gasped. Ronnie! Oh, man, what happened between then and now?

  He tried to push himself up, but he was brought down again as another throbbing pain coursed through the nerves in his left leg.

  Something stirred beside him. He froze, waiting for nothing in particular but dreading it nonetheless. Then, a familiar voice said, “Drake, are you awake?”

  It was Andrew. “Yeah,” Drake answered groggily, sounding nothing like himself. “Where am I?”

  Seeing Drake was too weak to turn his head, Andrew picked up his chair and moved it on the other side of Drake’s bed. “The hospital.”

  Drake sighed and closed his eyes. “Guess a lot happened last night I never knew about. Or was that even last night I got shot?”

  “It was last night. I called the police after you left and gave them everything you told me. It took them awhile, but they tracked down Miller’s Diner and located from there where those men were holding Ronnie. The gunshots also gave them a big clue.”

  “Did they have to put up a fight?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a fight. They had those thugs surrounded and in handcuffs in no time.” He coughed up a laugh and said, “You don’t mess with the Springfield police. Those guys were behind bars so fast they didn’t know what hit ’em.”

  Drake wasn’t smiling.

  Andrew subdued his pasted-on smile and said in a lower voice, “I’m sorry you got shot.”

  “Huh, isn’t that ironic? I don’t feel sorry one bit.”

  Andrew avoided that impending argument by saying, “Good news is the doctor said you were shot in the muscle of your upper leg, barely missing your femoral artery and femur. No fractures, no life-threatening bleeding. It’ll take time to heal, of course, but after that you’ll be able to—”

  “Leave.”

  Andrew paused and focused on the swirled marble tiles on the floor. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Why would it be any other way? If you’d only seen the look on Ronnie’s face when he…wait a minute, where is Ronnie anyway? Is he OK?”

  “He’s fine. He came running out of the bushes as soon as he saw me step out of one of the police cars. The first thing out of his mouth was that you were asleep under a tree. I knew that didn’t sound right, and when I came to investigate, I found you lying there bleeding. I rushed you here immediately.”

  “Why are you still here? Don’t you have more important things to do than watch me lay here helplessly?”

  “Ronnie and I spent the night. He’s still here, actually, sleeping in a pull-out cot beside you.”

  Drake folded his arms close to his chest. This room was cold enough to hang meat. He heard deep breathing beside him and thought about all Ronnie had gone through in the last twenty-four hours. “He must hate me after all I’ve done,” he said quietly.

  “Hate you?” Andrew shook his head and said, “Just the opposite. He’s talked non-stop about you and how brave you were. He even bought you something with his own money.” Andrew reached across Drake’s bed and grabbed a teddy bear decorated with a halo and wings. He set it next to Drake’s hand. “He got it because he called you his guardian angel. As soon as we walked into the gift shop, he knew that’s what he wanted to get you. It took all his money to buy it too. All of twelve dollars and forty-eight cents. But he wanted to buy it. Said you were worth it.”

  Drake looked down at his crisp sheets. Go ahead and rake me over the coals. He touched the bear’s soft fur and withdrew his hand. “I don’t feel worth it. Why can’t he see I was the reason he was kidnapped in the first place? Why didn’t you tell him that first day that it was me who made the phone call and set you up? It would have solved a lot of problems that way.”

  Andrew leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “It wouldn’t have really mattered, would it? He wouldn’t have believed me. In his eyes, you’re a hero. Don’t you see? He wants to be your friend so badly if you’ll only give him a chance.”

  “I said I was leaving before, and this time I mean it before I go screwing up something else.”

  Andrew looked hard at Drake. “You’d do that to Ronnie?”

  “If he had enough sense, he’d realize it was for his own good that I leave.”

  “No, if you had enough sense, you’d realize what a great friend you’ve been ignoring for so long. He looks up to you.”

  “I know. You’ve told me that a billion times now, but you aren’t putting that guilt trip on me. It’s not gonna work.”

  Drake was bullheaded enough to argue with a pole. Andrew had let him rant long enough, and he wasn’t going to let him win this time. “If you feel any guilt, it’s your own conscience trying to wake you to reality. In that bed over there is a seven-year-old who loves you to death, but you’re treating him as if he means nothing to you.”

  “He does mean—”

  “How do you think that makes him feel, Drake? Yes, granted, it was your fault he was kidnapped. I’m not going to try to hide that, and yes, it made me very angry. But what are you gonna do? Go walking out of his life as if he never existed? For the past few weeks, you’ve been part of our family, whether you see it that way or not. And families have a really hard time letting each other go.”

  Drake let his mouth fall open in unbelief. “Well, try to look at it from my perspective! I feel like such a failure. Everything I’ve done since I first came here has been wrong. I lied to you, I lied to Ronnie by not telling him the truth about me in the first place, and I even managed to pull off lying to myself. I thought I could change, and wanna know something else that’s hard to believe? I thought you could change me. It took me this long to find out I was the problem. No one else. It’s me. I can’t be part of your lives because I know I’ll just fail at that too.”

  “How do you ever expect to get better if you’re always beating yourself up? You don’t think you’re good at playing the piano, you’ve complained about the yar
d even though I told you that you did a great job, and you’re always putting yourself down.”

  Drake looked at him blankly. “My life stinks, OK? I’m living proof of what my old man said I would be. Nothing. If he could see me now, he’d tell me that a thousand times over.”

  “Then who are you gonna listen to? Him or yourself? You’re not bound by what other people say about you. You’re only bound by what you confess over yourself,” Andrew said.

  “You can’t wipe away eighteen years that easy. You don’t know who I had to live with. Dad berated me all the time, and it was a battlefield almost every night just to see who would win the shouting match. You don’t realize what I had to go through every single day of my life. I could say the sky was blue, and my dad would swear up and down that it was a different color. No matter what I said, it was wrong. I could buy him a pack of cigarettes for his birthday, and he’d complain that it was the wrong kind. You don’t know what it feels like to have someone you live with hate you like that. He told me once I couldn’t change. He said I could never climb the ladder and have nice food and clothes like everybody else because I was born trash and would always stay that way.” Drake bit his lip and said, “You know what? He was right.”

  Andrew stretched out his hand and gently smoothed down a wrinkle in the hospital sheet. If he had thought Drake seemed distant before, he seemed even further away now. Andrew had the feeling he was no longer part of Drake’s world. Just a memory, a person who would soon be forgotten in time.

  But God had bigger plans, better plans. Plans to fulfill and revive. Andrew wasn’t ready to give them up. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Drake, but you can’t use that as a crutch for the rest of your life. You can rise above.”

  “No, I can’t,” Drake said sharply. “I tried, and look where it got me.”

  “Well, then is it me who’s stopping you? Do you have this idea in your head that I have some sort of resentment toward you? I’ve forgiven you, Drake. It’s over, so let it go,” said Andrew sincerely.