The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B

by Teresa Toten

  “Oh, stuff it, dude. I am fatter! Can ya dig it?”

  “That’s, uh, righteous. I think.”

  “Yeah, bro, it is righteous!” said Ben.

  “Yeah?” said Adam, perking up. “Why?”

  Ben laughed. “Dude, I’m gonna gain at least seven more serious pounds!”

  “No way!”

  “Way! Spring training for the junior football team wannabes, man. What I gotta get me is some firm fat. I’m going to definitely try out for the football team next year. So I’m going to work on getting into big-man shape.”

  “Sounds like a helluva plan, Stan. I’m with you. I’m thinking about trying out for track this spring.”

  “No way!”

  “Way!”

  “Why the hell not, eh? Who says a whack-job can’t be the marathon man and a Jew can’t be an epic nose-tackle?”

  “Not me!”

  “Perfection! I’m gonna do it, Adam. I’m gonna be a football star. I decided this week.”

  “With a side order of cheerleaders to go!” Adam turned on his light, shaking his head and smiling.

  “You bet your bony ass. They’ll all be after me. Let us pause for a moment and hold that photo.”

  Adam grinned. He couldn’t help it. “I got it!”

  “Are you smiling at your stupid fish?”

  “You got it in one, Stones.”

  “Primo. Well, my work here is done. See you Sunday.”

  How did he know? “Sunday, yeah. Stones?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have no … Just thanks, man.”

  “Hey, glad do my bit for the Batman.”

  They both hung up at the same time, and Adam just knew that Stones was wearing the same smile he was. It was a three-minute phone call and not even half an hour since Adam had reached his door. But he felt good. And that’s when he knew.

  The changes were cutting too deep and quick. He had to find himself a better safety harness or this roller-coaster ride was going to kill him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  At 8:59 a.m. on Thursday, February 23, Adam threw his hands up. I give up. He walked away from his first class, which was biology in the big lab. The little lab was still okay, but the big lab had been trouble for months, and that morning, he couldn’t break through with all the distractions.

  Signing up for spring track tryouts, Ross?

  Did you see that ass-kicking Warhammer YouTube link?

  Can I borrow your notes from last week’s experiment?

  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  Adam had arrived at the door at 8:40, as he always did when it was first-class big lab. This gave him plenty of time to perform the necessary cleansing rituals, get in and pretend he was trying to catch up on the experiments by the time everyone else straggled in. It always worked. Everybody bought it. Never underestimate the cunning of the damaged. But not today. Adam wasted precious alone time at the threshold obsessing about Robyn. The look and feel and taste of her. The sadness and need in her kisses. Need? Whose need?

  Either way, Adam was definitely on the wrong side of the threshold by the time the first few kids started down the hall towards class. It was a double period. At 8:43, while Adam was orchestrating the very first of the cleansing moves, he was hijacked by panic. He would lose her. Of course, that assumed that he had her to lose. But considering and reconsidering the kiss, as he had done exactly one hundred and thirty-three million times since it happened—that kiss, no, kisses plural, and the feel of her hand in his and her body against his body—well, maybe he did have her to lose. But now, today, in front of the large lab, it was clear that Adam would lose her, would have to lose her. This was inevitable because it was inarguable that Robyn was getting better. Maybe she was even fixed.

  Why was she still in Group?

  Adam’s heart had been hiccupping ever since and he kept screwing up the clearing. So at 8:59 he threw up his hands and headed for the library, doing his level best to impersonate a normal boy.

  And that’s where they eventually found him. Sister Mary-Margaret and his dad entered together, and Adam’s hiccups stopped cold.

  “Son, we’ve got to go.”

  Adam shot up like a sprung coil.

  “No, Adam, it’s okay. It’s just that Wendell—”

  “Sweetie? What happened to Sweetie?”

  “He’s okay and it’s all going to be completely fine, but he’s in the hospital.” His father raised his hand to stop the torrent of questions before they started. “He broke his arm rather badly on the monkey bars and they’re going to check for a concussion. They want to keep him in overnight for observation and to continue with tests.” His dad sank into the library chair beside him. “Thank you, Sister.”

  She made a face. Sister Mary-Margaret did not care for being dismissed.

  “Adam will not be returning to class today.”

  Sister pursed her lips. “As you like, Mr. Ross. I’ll inform the office.”

  As soon as she was out of earshot, Adam’s dad leaned into him. “Well, there’s a face that only the Church could love.”

  “Dad! Harsh … if accurate.”

  “Yeah, I’ll fry for that, but that old brick has been making everybody miserable since I was here.”

  Adam blushed, remembering how he used thoughts of the poor sister’s person to douse his hysterical hormones.

  “Look, son, don’t worry. Wendell’s going to be fine. But right now he’s having a major fit because he needs his Batman.”

  Adam gathered up his stuff in seconds and off they went.

  “Do I want to know why you weren’t in class?” asked his father.

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Dad?” Adam pulled his father’s arm. “Not the south doors, okay?”

  “But the car is—” Then he caught his son’s expression. “Front door?”

  “Front door.” Adam almost tripped over his guilt. His dad already looked wiped.

  They went straight to Glen Oaks Hospital, his mom’s hospital. Sweetie lit up as soon as he saw Adam, but he still looked as white as a Kleenex.

  “Batman! Batman, I knew you’d come. Don’t go, okay?”

  Adam gave his little brother a big squeeze, which was tricky given the bizarre contraption they had his arm in. “Well, this a superior mess you got yourself into.”

  “Yeah, a mess! And they’re going to screw me up! I don’t want to get screwed!”

  “Oh, sure, you say that now,” said Adam, patting Sweetie’s good arm.

  “Adam!” His father tried to keep a straight face. Even Brenda smiled, or tried to.

  “So?” Adam turned to his dad and stepmom. “What the hell?”

  “They just came in and the resident said that he may need surgery to put in stainless steel screws.” Brenda’s lip quivered but she continued gamely. “They’ll do more x-rays and, uh, different kinds of x-rays.” Even from a distance he could tell that her eye makeup had dried into tire tracks down her face. “We just couldn’t wait until you got here, but Sweetie has been very brave.”

  “They want to put me in a cat tunnel. I’m not going to a cat tunnel, Batman. No sir, no. Not unless you come in it with me.” He clung to Adam with his good arm. Adam returned to Brenda for a translation.

  She sighed softly. “Sweetie was so incredibly brave during his x-rays, but they hurt a bit, didn’t they, dear brave boy? But they feel they want to do a CAT scan to be sure about the concussion.”

  “And they take my blood, and this is a horrible, horrible place!” Sweetie’s chubby little arm finally released its viselike grip on his brother. “And they poke me and pinch me! Let’s go home now.” Sweetie tried to swing his legs off the bed.

  “Whoa! Hey, little guy, I think they need you to stay here for tonight. You can go home after the CAT tunnel and maybe a couple of other little things.”

  Sweetie’s lower lip trembled.

  “But I’ll stay for all of the tests, okay? Even the tun
nel one, I promise. It’ll be righteous.”

  “I don’t want to have screws in my body.”

  “Hey, they didn’t say that you need them for sure, right? Maybe you’ll just get to have a really cool cast.”

  “Really?” Sweetie’s eyes widened. You could tell he was mulling over the concept of “cast as fashion accessory.”

  “Absolutely!” Adam ruffled Sweetie’s hair. “All the best people have the best casts. I had one.”

  “For real? I don’t remember.”

  Adam picked through his memory banks. “You weren’t born yet, goof. I was, like, three or four and I broke my wrist.”

  Sweetie looked to his father for confirmation.

  Mr. Ross nodded. “You were just about to turn four, and you broke it and the bed frame when you and Ben miscalculated on your mattress turbo-torpedo routine. It was a navy blue one, as I recall.”

  “I can have colours!”

  The crisis had passed.

  “Thank you, Adam.” Brenda scrubbed her face with her hands. “No one loves you more than Sweetie—or than us, really. When this is over, you … well, your father and I have been talking about this a great deal, and it’s time. We both want you to—”

  “You keep your goddamned claws out of my son, you bitch!”

  It was Adam’s mother. She loomed in the doorway.

  “Carmella, stop!” His father stood up.

  She was still in her scrubs and was glaring at Brenda. “Haven’t you taken enough?”

  “Carmella, enough!”

  She waved him off. “I’ve read all the reports; the kid will be fine.” She turned on her heel. “Adam, get up. We’re leaving!”

  “Nooo!” Sweetie threw off his covers.

  Adam felt blood surging in his ears. He needed to count and clear, but there was no time. He turned to Sweetie and put his finger on his lips. “Shh, it’s okay. Stay still, I’ll be right back!” He jumped off the bed and was out of the room before anyone could say anything.

  Adam caught up to his mother halfway down the hall. She looked broken. He could tell from watching her from behind, from her walk, her shoulders. He had failed.

  “Mom, wait!”

  His mother slowed her pace.

  “Mom, holy hell! What? Did you get another letter?”

  She stopped.

  “Look, Mom, I’ll come home tonight after all his tests, but I can’t come now.” They could both hear Sweetie crying for him. “Dad will drive me back after I do the CAT scan thing and whatever else.”

  His mother just stood there, immobilized in the hospital’s fluorescent light.

  “Mom, come on! This is big for Sweetie and it’s freaking him out. Brenda too. She didn’t mean what—”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what she did or did not mean. I know what she’s up to.” She crossed her arms but it was too late. She had lost. Again. They both knew it.

  “So I’ll see you later.” He gave her a quick, hard hug. “I love you, Mom.”

  It didn’t make the betrayal any easier for either of them to swallow, and she didn’t hug back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Adam helped Sweetie into the Kung Fu Panda pyjamas that Brenda had rejigged so they now had no left sleeve. “See, I told you that you wouldn’t get screwed.”

  Sweetie beamed at him. “I love my cast!” Sweetie, of course, had chosen a glow-in-the-dark neon-orange colour. Between the cast and the night lights, the bedroom looked like it was tricked out for Halloween.

  “So what the hell happened? You are the man on the monkey bars. I’ve seen you—you’re Cirque du Soleil material.”

  Sweetie considered that for a while, stumped by the Cirque reference. “I fell down, and then I don’t remember none of it until Mrs. Brenda Ross was crying and crying and driving the car and then I was crying and crying. Was I bad?”

  “No, goof!” Adam finished buttoning. “You were doing regular, real tough-boy stuff. I bet Dad was secretly relieved.”

  “Relieved,” repeated Sweetie, memorizing and storing the word in his Sweetie Filofax.

  “And you were unbelievably brave, even in the cat tunnel.”

  “Yes, I was.” Sweetie nodded. “I was very, very brave.” Then he got up from his bed and helped himself into Adam’s.

  “Hey, cut it out! You’re hogging all the covers.”

  “I have a secret,” said Sweetie, tucking the covers into himself with his one good arm. “I’m not really a brave boy,” he whispered. “I’m a little bit scared a lot.”

  Adam kissed the back of his brother’s head. “Look, that’s no biggie. Most people are. Don’t you worry about it. You’re the bravest scared five-year-old I know.”

  “Will I be for sure brave by the time I go to the senior kindergarten school?” Sweetie yawned.

  Adam knew that this was more a question about when fear would stop than when bravery would start. “Yeah, maybe. But if not, soonishly thereafter.”

  “How about when I’m fifteen?” The voice got smaller and smaller.

  “When you are fifteen, little guy, you will be a bona fide superhero, I promise. Now go to sleep, it’s almost midnight.”

  “I can’t, Batman, can’t …”

  Adam threw his arm over his brother. “Shh, think of the number one hundred and eleven. Remember the one, one, one?”

  “Okay …”

  And he was asleep, just like that. The kid had an on-off switch that Adam would have killed for. He turned off the table lamp, which barely made a dent in the brightness given the glow of all the night lights.

  It didn’t matter. Adam was wide awake, watching his thoughts do laps around the over-bright room.

  He had kept his word. On Thursday night Adam had made his dad drive him back home even though it was so late. Sweetie’s tests hadn’t ended until 11:41 p.m., and Adam didn’t get back to his house and through the door until 1:03 a.m. Even with his mom asleep and the darkness shrouding the mess, 97 Chatsworth was smothering.

  So he couldn’t sleep there either. But when it came right down to it, he’d rather be awake in the glaring light with Sweetie hogging all his blankets than alone in the claustrophobic darkness of his own home. The truth made him sick.

  Adam had not once asked his mother about the letter, but it was clear that she had received another one. Her eyes were hollow. It was probably why she’d gone berserk at the hospital, but he couldn’t very well explain that to Dad and Brenda, and he couldn’t make himself ask about the letter. Adam didn’t ask over breakfast, or after school the next day. There was lots of time. He just couldn’t bear the answer.

  She was trying so hard. His mother had made cinnamon pancakes for breakfast on Saturday and they’d eaten at a newly reclaimed rectangle on the kitchen counter.

  “Will you be okay? Not too lonely?” he asked while waiting for Brenda to pick him up.

  “No, honey,” she said in the bright chipped voice she’d been using all morning. “Didn’t you notice? I’ve taken out five big trash bags this week and still you can’t tell, so this weekend I’m going to tackle the kitchen area for sure! And, well, let’s face it: that’s going to be a massive job. Just wait until you come home, though! You won’t recognize the place!”

  “That’ll be real nice, Mom.” Adam smiled at her, stuffing down nausea with his pancakes and maple syrup. She had said the same thing two weeks ago, before his last weekend at Brenda’s, and two weeks before that. “It would be good for you to do that, real good. But I want to help.”

  “Sure, baby, sure, and you will, as soon as I break the back of it. I just have to get it going and get a bit more organized, and I have to do my sorting or it will be impossible.”

  She clutched Adam to her when she heard the horn. It was a clumsy hug because he was so much taller now and neither of them was quite used to how the new parts fit. She ended up kissing the back of his ear.

  “As soon as I just get the worst over with, I promise you can help and then we’ll get our house back! How
great would that be?”

  Brenda honked again.

  “Yeah, great.” He grabbed his things. “That would be great.”

  His mother stayed rooted to the kitchen, wearing his father’s fraying cable-knit sweater and holding a green garbage bag.

  “Uh, I hope that Sweetie is … Tell them … well, say that I …”

  “I will, Mom. Don’t worry, I’ll make them understand.” He shut the door as fast as he could.

  Each time he left for them, he felt he was abandoning her.

  At 1:39 a.m., Adam blinked at the brightness and then at a sleeping Sweetie. The cast alone took up most of the bed. Sweetie’s accident—that was a close one. Too close. He was doing a crappy job all around.

  Adam got up carefully, stretched and began. He paced in concentric rectangles while tapping into his left hand. This kind of pacing required tapping. Ninety-seven sets. Adam tapped to thirty-three and then started again.

  And again.

  At 3:17 a.m., Adam sat down on Sweetie’s bed, watching his little brother breathe. He guarded him while not breaking pattern. Seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one … He could not mess up again; the consequences were too dire, and already those he loved were paying the price. It still didn’t feel “just right,” so Adam had to focus hard on a few more rounds. This required seventeen sets of fast tapping and two rounds slow into the one-elevens. Sweetie loved one hundred and eleven. But Adam was tiring and he’d get muddled and have to start all over again.

  At 4:57 a.m., Adam unplugged all of the night lights. “It was all my fault, little guy.” He smooshed Sweetie up tight just the way he liked before climbing into the sliver of bed that was left for him.

  “It won’t happen again,” he promised the dawn.

  And at 5:03 a.m., Adam Spencer Ross finally fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Nice to see you, Adam.” Chuck directed him to the overstuffed armchair and pulled up his own across the little coffee table from Adam. He clicked on a recorder, a Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder. Chuck cleared his throat.

  “March 2, 5:35 p.m., with Adam Ross.”