I nod. “Okay.”
Sam sniffs me as I walk by him and holds his nose.
“I don’t smell that bad,” I grouse.
He grimaces. “You kind of do.”
“Fine!” I say. “I’ll shower.” I point my finger at the three of them. “Then I’ll make you all sorry.”
“I’ll be sorry if you don’t shower,” Paul mumbles. But he’s smiling.
I go into the bathroom and avail myself of the tiny shower in Logan’s room. I don’t need much, but I do need to wash off the funk accumulated by waiting in a hospital for four days. I get dressed quickly and brush out my hair. I return to find the three brothers looking down at Logan. Matt’s mouth is moving in prayer, but I can’t quite hear him.
“You can’t pray without me,” I protest. I step forward and put myself in their circle, and Matt prays for Logan. And so do I.
Logan
A strong grip jerks me from the darkness as someone tugs on my toe. Fingertips slide up my heel, and I rock my foot, trying to knock them off. Paul used to pop my toes when we were small. He would grab my ankle and hold me still while he pulled on my toes until they popped. It didn’t hurt, but it was damn annoying. And it’s just about as annoying now. I really like the darkness. There’s no pain in the darkness.
There’s a twinge in my arm, and I start to float. The pain recedes, and I feel like someone has untethered me. I blink my eyes open to see how far I’ve floated, and I see Emily. I open my mouth to tell her how f**king happy I am to see her. She’s blurry, but I blink and blink and blink until she comes into focus. I try to speak, but I can’t. My throat is dry, and there’s no sound coming out. But then I remember that I’m deaf. I can’t hear my own voice. Not much of it anyway, and especially not without my hearing aids. My hearing aids must be gone.
Where am I? I can’t remember how I got here. But Paul and Matt and Sam are looking down at me. Sam’s crying, and Paul puts his arm around him. I can read his lips. Something about it being okay to be a p**sy when your brother might die. He can cry all he wants.
Where’s Pete? He must not be here. Where is here?
The darkness beckons, and I fight against it. I push and push and push, but it takes me in its greedy grip and holds on tight.
Emily
Logan hasn’t woken up since his last round of pain medication. The doctors say that he should have more and more periods of lucidity as the days pass, but it has been hours since his lashes last fluttered. I am tired, so tired. And to think that I showered for this.
“You should take a nap,” Sam says. It’s his turn to stay with me.
“Do you think he’s ever going to wake up?” I ask.
He nods his head. “I know it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
He shrugs. “I just know.”
I wish I felt as sure about it. “Have you talked to Pete?”
He shakes his head. “They won’t let us see him. Your dad is working on it, though.”
My dad has been helping with Pete’s defense. He hired a criminal attorney and has paid for him to have the best representation. But that may or may not help him when they go to trial.
“Your dad’s a pretty cool guy,” Sam says.
I nod. “He can be. He can also be an ass.”
“He’s trying. That’s better than nothing.”
My dad is like a pit bull all of a sudden. He’s loving and affectionate and playful, and yet there’s a tiny little part of him that will fight to the death. And he’s fighting for the Reeds. He fought for Logan, bringing in the best neurologist he could find. He fought for Pete—and is still working on that—and he’s fighting for me. He comes by every day to talk. He’s on crutches, but he’s getting better. He has a lot of guilt where Logan is concerned.
Sam sits down and puts his feet up on the edge of the bed. He slumps in the chair and crosses his arms, closing his eyes. The room is dark, and no one is moving around. He’s asleep in moments. The boys are all so tired. I look down at Logan and touch my finger to his lips. He doesn’t stir. I look over at the recliner a nurse brought in just for me, and I don’t want to use it. I pull the covers back and slide into bed with Logan. Pete opens his eyes and looks at me when he feels the bed shift. He shakes his head and grins. “If you try to defile him in his sleep, I’ll have to tell him about it when he wakes up,” he teases.
I settle my head on Logan’s shoulder, careful of his wires and tubes and bruises. “Do you think he’d mind?” I ask.
Sam chuckles. “I think he’d f**king love it. Are you kidding?”
I settle against Logan’s side, relaxing as I take a deep breath. I let sleep overtake me, and I dream about Logan.
Logan
I’m walking in a field of flowers. They’re life-size and black haired with a blue streak down the side, and they reach out to caress my arm as I walk by. I grab for one, and it skitters out of my grasp, running away from me. I reach for another, and it does the same thing.
I stopped dreaming in words a long time ago. I only dream in sign language, but I hear a voice. “Logan,” it says. It’s a voice I know, and the field suddenly smells like my mom. The flowers part, and she stands there in the open space, her great, white robes billowing around her. She’s not signing to me. I can hear her voice, just like I did until I was twelve. I can hear it as clear as day.
She doesn’t approach me. She wraps her hands around her mouth and says, “Logan! It’s time to go back.” I’m supposed to come home from the park by the time the streetlights come on. If I’m not home, she’ll come and find me, and I never like it when she comes to find me. It’s embarrassing. So, I always make it home before the streetlights.
Until today, apparently.
I can’t find the stoop for all the f**king wildflowers that stand in the way. If not for those, I’d have been home a long time ago. The flower closest to me crooks a petal at me and beckons me forward. It doesn’t speak. It opens its mouth, but it doesn’t have a voice. My mom does, though. She cups her hands around her mouth again. She’s growing impatient. I had better hurry.
“Logan, it’s time to go back!” she yells.
The flowers fade, sinking into the air like pretty, rainbow-hued cigarette smoke, until there is only one left. My mom yells for me again.
I blink my eyes and stare upward. There’s a dim light above me, and machines light up on my left in time with my heartbeat. I wiggle my finger. My nose is itching, and I need to scratch it, but when I try to lift my arm, it’s heavy. It’s much heavier than I can ever remember it being before. I groan, struggling with the weight of it, until I pick it up. But it’s unwieldy and it falls on my chest.
There’s a gentle hum against my throat, and I tip my head to look down at it. It’s not my blue-haired girl. I blink my eyes again. It hurts just keeping them open. I look at the form next to me again, and it’s my Emily, snuggled into my side. She’s just blond now.
Thank God. Of course she wouldn’t be anywhere else. I force my arm up and lay my hand on the side of her face. Unfortunately, I kind of tap her cheek heavily, and she startles in my arms. She sits up and looks down at me.
“Oh my God!” she says. “Are you awake?”
I try to nod, but it hurts. “I think so,” I say. But my throat is raw. She leans over and picks up a cup, lifting a straw to my mouth. I take a sip, and then she steals it from me.
“Not too much,” she warns. Her eyes are filled with tears. “Are you really awake?” she asks again. She leans over and shakes Sam’s leg. It’s propped on the edge of my bed. He jumps in surprise and nearly falls out of the chair as he fumbles to right himself.
“Logan?” he asks, sitting forward.
Emily says something to him, and he rushes forward. He looks down at me and says on a huge exhale, “Thank you,” as he looks up at the ceiling.
“What happened?” I ask.
A tear rolls down Emily’s cheek, but I can tell underneath it, she’s pissed at me. “You did something so stupid. And I thought you were going to die.” She takes my face in her hands. “Are you really back?”
“Back from where?”
She laughs. “Wherever you’ve been for ten days.”
Ten days? What the f**k is she talking about?
“You got hit by a car.”
Memories crash into me like the car did that night. That’s why I hurt. That’s why I’m in this bed. “Your dad?” I ask.
“He’s fine, numbnuts,” Sam says.
I nod. “Good.”
“If you ever do something so stupid as try to get yourself killed again, Paul’s going to murder you,” Sam warns. But he reaches for my hand and grips it tightly, our thumbs crossing the way they do when people shake hands. “I’m glad you’re back,” he says. His blue eyes, so much like mine, stare into my face. “You broke your head. And your leg.” He leans forward like he wants to tell me a secret. “And I heard that you broke your dick, too. Emily’s all upset about that part. She doesn’t give a f**k about your leg.”
Immediately, I want to check my parts. He laughs, though.
“Emily can check it out for you later.”
“She really doesn’t spend a lot of time down there,” I say. My head is swimming from the pain meds.
Sam turns away so he can laugh. “He’s pretty f**ked up,” he says. Emily’s face colors profusely.
“I can’t believe you said that.” She pokes her bottom lip out, and all I can think about is kissing her. But I can’t even lift my head, much less anything else.
“Sorry,” I grunt. “I hurt,” I say, moving my arm.
Emily kisses my cheek. “Let me see if the nurse can bring you anything,” she says. “They wanted to know when you woke up anyway. Be right back.”
She walks out of the room. “That’s the first time she’s left you since this happened,” Sam says. “Well, except for the funeral.”
“What funeral?”
His face is solemn. “The boy driving the car that hit you. He died. She’s been here every day except for the funeral.”
For ten days, she hasn’t left? “Why?”
“She wouldn’t leave. I don’t know. Matt had to make her take a shower,” he laughs. “She was pissed for hours.”
“I’d love to have seen that. I thought Matt could do no wrong when it comes to her.” I moan—I’m really hurting.
“The honeymoon period is over,” he says. “You can only get a pass for having cancer for so long,” Sam says, like what he’s saying is a fact. “Then the girls start to treat you like you’re a normal a**hole again.”
“Where are Matt and Paul?” I ask.
“Paul has Hayley tonight, and Matt went home to sleep.”
I nod.
“Pete?”
Sam’s face falls. “Still locked up.”
My heart twists in my chest at his words. A nurse walks into the room, and she’s carrying a needle. Thank f**king God. She smiles but she doesn’t speak to me. Hearing people always worry about how much I can understand, so they avoid communicating with me unless they have to.