by Roman, J.
“You have the keys?” Uncle Charlie asked. Uncle Mark nodded. “Drive safe.”
I texted Jason rapidly. I’m on my way.
TY was his only reply.
It took us five minutes to get back to the car, and I was already a ball of nerves by the time we pulled onto the winding road that led back down out of the parkway and to the turnoff for the highway. It was going to take us forever to get there.
“What is Jason going through, Tommy? I know you think you’re helping him by keeping his secrets, but you’re not. If something bad is happening, there are people who can help,” Uncle Mark said as we began our slow descent. “We could help.”
I shook my head. “I can’t, Uncle Mark. I wish I could. Trust me. I just can’t. If I do, I’ll lose him.”
“If it’s dangerous, Tommy, you might lose him if you don’t tell.” I hated when grown-ups talked like they knew everything. Uncle Mark couldn’t possibly know what it was like for Jason, or for me for that matter. I had been under so much stress since he’d come back into my life. The first time it hadn’t been bearable. The weeks of breakup were only that, a break. I couldn’t abandon him to his fate any more than I could stop loving the hell out of his crazy ass.
Uncle Mark sighed at my silence but didn’t say anything else.
JASON was on the curb where I usually picked him up, but something was definitely wrong. He was curled on his side with his hoodie up. I’d only seen him like that once before and that had been when his stepdad had hurt him, beat him up so that his torso was one big bruise. My chest tightened, and my heart pounded so loudly I thought surely Uncle Mark could hear the incessant drumbeat.
“Is that Jason?” he asked as he put the car in park.
“Yeah. I’ll get him. He probably doesn’t recognize the car.” Uncle Mark was looking around like he had been dropped in the middle of hell, and I could understand where he got the impression. Jason lived in the most run-down apartments in town. The pavement was broken everywhere, and the steps that led up to the second floor were rusted through in some places. Gang graffiti and a combination of old and souped-up cars were crammed in the parking lot. The music was audible even through the doors, pounding with a mixture of about four different kinds of radio madness. His eyes lit on the blue kiddie pool at the end of the bottom row of apartments that was filled with beer cans.
“Uh-huh. Be quick.”
I opened my door and rolled out of the car. “Hey, baby, we’re here.” He didn’t move at first and that made my stomach twist. What was wrong? Finally he moved, slowly. He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked up. Instant rage blinded me. The right side of his face was one big ugly bruise, and his eyes were filled with pain.
“Jason… Jesus, what happened?” I knelt on the ground beside him and tried to pull him into my arms.
He grimaced. “He hit my mom. He wanted to do me again after I texted you, and she said no and started yelling, and he hit her. The fucker.” He was ungodly pale where he wasn’t bruised. “I couldn’t let him hit her like that. I mean, she’s not much of a mom, but she’s mine. Yah know?” He swayed and leaned into me. I wrapped my arm around him. This couldn’t be shrugged off, not by any stretch. This couldn’t be hidden. “Stomach hurts,” he warned before upchucking all over my lap. I gagged at the smell and turned my head as the warmth soaked my jeans. “Sorry,” he murmured, dragging his hoodie over his head and using it to mop up my lap. “I’m so sorry. Jeans are hard to clean. Expensive too. Laundromat always eats the quarters.”
“Jason?” My eyes were riveted on his arms and neck. His entire body looked like he’d been dragged behind a car. He was only in a thin black wifebeater shirt, and every inch of skin was blackened.
His hands continued to scrub my pants, oblivious to my concern. “He sure can hit hard. You think he was a boxer in high school? Do high schools have boxing?” He seemed listless, and that more than anything scared me. I’d seen guys on the wrestling team with concussions, and their eyes looked like Jason’s, dilated and glassy.
“Where is he? Where is your mom?” I asked. I was dimly aware of Uncle Mark opening the driver’s door and hurrying toward us.
“Don’t know. Mom took his truck while we were brawling.” He giggled like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He grimaced and wrapped his arms around his stomach. “Hurts, Tommy. Hurts real bad.”
“She left you?” I asked in disgust. She’d enraged his stepdad and had left Jason to deal with it? I thought of several choice words to describe her in my head, “bitch” the milder of my selections.
“I don’t know. Hurts.” His eyes shifted from me and went up. “Hi, Mark. Please, don’t be mad.” He vomited again; there was blood in the yellow soup this time.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Uncle Mark said, a quiet horror in his voice.
“No!” he shouted, crab-crawling backward. “No hospitals!” My vision blurred, and it took me a minute to realize I was crying. Then he slumped over, limp.
Uncle Mark reached for him and yelled at the same time. “Fuck!” I’d never heard him curse like that before. “Help me, Tommy. Grab his legs, and be careful.”
I shook. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got to get him to the doctor.”
We got him to the car, and between the two of us, we managed to wrestle his dead weight into the backseat. I crawled in after him to keep him on the seat, holding his head in my lap. “Jason, wake up,” I said, tapping his cheek lightly. “Come on, baby. Wake up.” I wiped the tears from my cheeks in annoyance. I couldn’t break right now. Tears were stupid.
Uncle Mark dialed 911 from the driver’s seat. “I have a seventeen-year-old boy in my backseat who has been severely injured. I don’t know by what. We’re on our way to the hospital now…. He was throwing up and complaining of pain…. He’s unconscious now. We’re ten minutes from the hospital.” He paused, listening to what the lady on the other end of the phone was saying. “He’s my nephew’s boyfriend. His name is Jason Strummer. We were going to pick him up for a family picnic. Tommy, take the phone, tell her what you know,” Uncle Mark said, holding up the phone so I could grab it.
“Hello?” My voice cracked as I answered.
“Hi, Tommy. My name is Miranda from 911 dispatch. What happened?” She sounded nice, like my mom, but stern too, like when I didn’t clean my room when I was supposed to. I let out a sob.
“I know it’s hard, Tommy, but I need you to tell me everything you know.”
I let it out. I let it all out, from the rape and continued abuse, to Jonathan’s threats, to what I knew about tonight. I was hoarse and we were pulling into the emergency vehicle lane when the words finally stopped.
“We’re here,” I said.
“All right. They should be waiting on you. You did good, Tommy. You did very good.”
I hung up the phone as Uncle Mark threw the car in park, and a bunch of people in scrubs came out with a hospital bed. I helped them get Jason onto it as they talked rapid-fire to one another.
“Seventeen-year-old male, unconscious, severe bruising. Possible ruptured spleen, concussion, blunt force trauma to extremities and a dropping BP,” one of the guys said as he held onto Jason’s wrist. I moved with them, jogging to keep up with them. Uncle Mark was right there beside me. Jason’s eyes fluttered, opened, and then he panicked. He struggled, and they had to hold him down as he screamed, fighting them as they tried to get an IV in his arm.
“Jason,” I sobbed, scared to death by what was happening.
“We need a sedative over here! I need both of you to wait here,” one of the trauma doctors said, motioning to the waiting room. “I’ll send someone out to you as soon as we know what’s going on and he’s stabilized.”
Uncle Mark led me over to the seats the doctor indicated, and we sat in the uncomfortable chairs. My butt went numb almost instantly, but its numbness couldn’t compare to what I was feeling inside. Was this really happening?
Everything had been peachy earlier. The break was just starting, and everything was all right. Jason was getting better. He was going to make a stand soon. I guessed it was too late for that.
“I have to call someone to pick up the boys.” Uncle Mark got out his phone and dialed. I barely paid any attention as Uncle Mark called Dana, his coworker, to go pick up the rest of our family before he called Uncle Charlie and recounted the whole horrible event.
The minutes ticked on, and we didn’t speak. I was lost in the what-ifs in my head. If I would’ve broken Jason’s silence for him, he wouldn’t be in the hospital right now. Or maybe he would have been. He was reckless at times. Maybe he would’ve hated me. He still might.
“You should’ve said something, Tommy,” Uncle Mark said quietly. “You should’ve told us what he was going through.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. The vomit on my jeans made my stomach roil. “I know. He just made me promise that I wouldn’t. I thought I had everything under control, and then when he left I didn’t have to anymore. I’m sorry.” I felt like I had a hundred-pound weight sitting on my chest. “I’m so freaking sorry.”
Uncle Mark put his hand on my back and rubbed in slow circles. “No matter what happens, Tommy, this isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault. And it isn’t Jason’s fault. What that man did was terrible, and there is a special place in hell designated for him.”
“He’s going to be all right,” I said stubbornly. “He’s got to be all right.”
“I don’t know, son. Let’s just wait and see what the doctors say.”
The waiting was awful. I paced, I went to the water fountain, I went to the desk and badgered the receptionist. Every minute that ticked by was like a parade of days. Two hours later, a doctor came out to talk to us.
“You’re waiting on Jason Strummer?” he asked, his pale blue scrubs the only real identifying characteristic about him. He was otherwise pretty nondescript—brown hair, brown eyes, medium build.
“Yes,” Uncle Mark said, standing up. I followed suit and watched as the doctor shook my uncle’s hand.
“How is he?” I blurted, unable to help myself.
The doctor’s eyes flicked to me before shifting back to my uncle. “He’s about to go into surgery, but he’s stable. He had a ruptured spleen in addition to his concussion and is bleeding pretty severely into his abdomen. He’s got some cracked ribs and a broken forearm as well as some other relatively minor injuries, but that’s the worst of it. He’s going to need some recovery time after surgery, and he’s going to be hurting for a while. He’ll need some counseling to deal with the sexual assault. We have a Joshua St. James on file for his emergency medical contact. Is that correct?”
“That’s Kevin’s dad,” I said. “He’s Jason’s other family.”
“Are you his family as well? I need someone to sign a release form to allow us to operate.”
My uncle shook his head. “He’s been staying with us, but he left a couple weeks ago to go back home. We have no legal right to sign it. His legal family is who did this to him.”
The doctor nodded. “I’ll get the social worker on staff to sign off on it, then. The police are finishing up with him now, and they’ll want to talk to you.” He shook my uncle’s hand again. “I’ll have someone call his emergency contact and tell you when he’s been taken up to a room.”
“Thank you,” my uncle said, sitting back down as the man walked off. He looked at me. “Do you have Kevin’s number?”
I nodded.
“Call him and let him know what is going on. I’m assuming that if Jason had his family listed as his emergency contacts, they’ll want to know what is happening.” He motioned toward the automatic doors. “Step out if you’re going to be a minute.” He hadn’t stepped out, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. I took my cell phone and headed outside into the cold. What a day it had been already. I dialed Kevin’s number and waited. It wasn’t too big of a surprise when he answered on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“Jason’s in the hospital.”
There was a pause on the other line. “What?”
“Yeah. His stepdad. We’re with him now, but your dad is listed on the emergency contacts. He’ll probably be getting a phone call.”
Kevin let out a string of curses. “Tell me everything.” I did as rapidly as I could. “I’m going to talk to my parents. I’ll see you in a minute. We’ll be coming. My dad is going to freak.” He hung up before I got a chance to reply. For the first time in a long time, I prayed. There wasn’t anything else I could do.
Chapter Seven
KEVIN and I took sleep shifts in the lobby. Since the police were still doing their thing, they wouldn’t let anyone go up to his room, but we kept a vigil in the hospital, waiting for news. We knew he’d made it out of surgery, knew he had come out of recovery, and was resting in his room. But I don’t think any of us believed it. We just wanted to see for ourselves that he was okay. My Uncle Charlie had showed up around the same time Kevin’s family had, and the adults had almost instantly fallen into a discussion of what Jason’s future would hold, instructing Kevin and I away so their debate could continue in relative privacy. Left to ourselves, Kevin and I fell into our own discussion of the boy who’d brought us together.
“I know you want him to stay with you, man, but it would probably be better if he stayed with us,” Kevin said groggily as I put a Coke in his hand. “He’s my brother.”
I knew he was right. Despite the fact that I wanted to keep him with me always, our relationship was explosive and complicated, and sometimes he didn’t need that. Sometimes he needed a brother. I didn’t know if we would continue dating now that things were out in the open, but I hoped so. To be his boyfriend, I couldn’t be his keeper.
“That’s up to everyone else. It’s not our decision.” I felt like I needed to say that, even if I did agree. It wasn’t like we were the be-all-end-all in the decision of his fate.
“No, it’s not. But I want your support.” The words were unexpected.
“Why?” I asked.
He gave me a weird look, like I was a moron who didn’t get something obvious. “Because you mean as much to him as I do.”
I considered that, and I didn’t know if I believed it. Kevin was one of Jason’s nonnegotiables. “I think you’re overestimating my appeal.”
“I think you don’t know what he’d do to keep you, Tommy. He trusts you with everything.”
It made me love him more. “I’ll have your back.”
We exchanged the first smile of the evening. “Thanks, man.”
My uncles came over to us and sat down on either side of me, and Kevin’s parents followed at a slower pace. “Everything okay?” I asked as my Uncle Charlie rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Yes, Thomas. I’m just tired. The police and the social worker came to speak with us. We might be able to work something out about his living arrangements. But we wanted to talk to you first.” I’d never seen my uncle look so utterly exhausted. I felt terrible for putting him in this position.
“So what did you need to talk to me about?” I asked, feeling the strong desire to crack my back. Man, these chairs are uncomfortable.
Uncle Mark spoke. “We think it’s best if Jason stays with Kevin and his family, but if you feel strongly otherwise, we’re willing to take him home with us if they’ll let us.”
“Why do you think it’s best?” I asked. Kevin and I had already decided this unofficially, but I wanted to hear their reasoning.
Uncle Charlie gave me a one-armed hug. “He’s going to need a lot of one-on-one care when he gets out of the hospital and not just for his injury. He’s going to have to have counseling, and we have no idea how he’s going to react to his secret being out in the open. You all went to extreme lengths to keep it under wraps, and that reeks of him being ashamed of it. It’s going to be a major adjustment. With all of you boys in the house, we just don’t know if we have enough time
to devote to him like he needs. Couple that with your relationship with him, and we don’t know if it’s healthy for you either, Thomas.”
“I can handle it,” I said automatically. Then I examined what I said. Did I mean it? Could I handle it? I sighed. I can’t. I can’t handle it. My mom had always admired my quiet strength, but sometimes strength meant asking for help. “No. You’re right. It wouldn’t be good for me or for us. I can’t help him.” It was hard to admit that, hard to say that I wasn’t nearly as superman-like as I wanted everyone to think I was.
My uncles looked relieved. “That’s a very mature thing you just said,” Uncle Mark said, putting his arm around my shoulders just above Uncle Charlie’s. “So you agree?”
I nodded. I could be there for Jason, I could even help take care of him to a degree, but I couldn’t be his keeper, and I couldn’t put everything on my shoulders. I glanced over at Kevin’s parents, and they looked just as exhausted and relieved as my uncles did. In that moment, I had the sneaking suspicion that our family had just gotten bigger.
IT TOOK them forever to put him in a room where we could go see him. Unfortunately, visiting hours were almost over by then, and we wouldn’t get to stay with him for very long. Tina, Kevin’s mom, had already declared she was staying with him overnight. At least that was something. I didn’t want him to be alone.
Uncle Mark let me go to the gift shop and get him some flowers and a stuffed animal. I picked out some kind of blue and yellow flower that smelled pretty good with a “get well” balloon shoved in the bouquet. Jason would probably get a kick over the fact that I brought him a stuffed animal like a girl on Valentine’s Day, but the lion, with its soft fur and big green eyes, reminded me of him a little bit. He’d gone through hell and was coming out on the other side. I thought that made him pretty damn badass, and I suppose I was stuck on the symbolism from my lit class. Who said that high school English imparted nothing to those of us who had no interest?
I took the elevator to the fourth floor and managed to somehow find my way back through the maze of hallways to Jason’s room. Everyone else was already inside, but I hadn’t gone in yet because of my pit stop at the gift shop. I reached for the door and swallowed. Why am I so nervous? It’s just Jason, the guy I’m crazy about, the guy I can’t stop thinking about. If I was being honest with myself, and I had no intention of being so, I was scared of how he was going to react. I didn’t want him to be mad at me.