Neal Shusterman - Bruiser

“It’s not fair,” Cody whines.

“It’s your own stupid fault,” I remind him.

He grabs one of his crutches and jabs me in the foot. “That’s for calling me stupid!”

Brontë and I visit him at the home a few times each week. Actually, we’re both volunteering here— they roped us in after the second or third time. They’re good at that. Now that lacrosse season is over, it’s something to do. Besides, it looks good on college applications.

“I can climb to the first platform, can’t I? It’s not that high.”

“If you do,” says Brontë, “they won’t let you come out here at all.”

He punches his cast in frustration, and it gives off a dull thud like a mannequin leg. It’s a nasty cast, going all the way from his ankle to his thigh.

“I hate it!” he says. “And it always itches!” There were too many questions surrounding Brew’s near drowning. Enough questions that Child Protective Services saw fit to reevaluate us as a foster family and took Cody back. I wasn’t there when he broke his leg, but the accident report tells a pretty clear story. Cody was in his social worker’s office being evaluated. Then, the moment he was told that he wouldn’t be coming back to live with us, he went ballistic and jumped out of the second-floor window into a tree—which might have been all right if he didn’t totally miss the tree.

He broke his leg in three places.

“You’re a very lucky boy,” the doctors told him, but I don’t think he sees it that way. Cody’s a kid who will go through life learning things the hard way. But it looks like this is one of life’s major lessons that’s going to stick.

Dad picks us up in the reception area at five to take Brontë, Cody, and me over to the hospital. Sometimes it’s Mom, sometimes it’s Dad, but never both. Dad moved back into the guest room shortly after Cody left. Negotiations between our parents have stalled. Silence and fast food have returned.

There’s a nurse in Brew’s hospital room when we enter, checking his chart. “Always good to see you,” she says with a smile, and leaves us to our visit.

Cody hobbles on his crutches to a chair beside Brew’s bed, plops himself down, and starts reciting for Brew a blow-by-blow description of everything that’s happened in the Universe of Cody in the three days since he was last here. He doesn’t pause for a response since he’s used to not getting one.

On the wall behind Brew’s bed are pictures drawn by Cody. A silver Mylar GET WELL SOON balloon floats lazily up from the foot of his bed, and will probably be there until the end of time, since those things never lose air. On a table are wilting flowers that Brontë replaces with some fresh ones. Next to the flower vase is a lacrosse MVP trophy.

Brew lies on the bed, eyes closed, connected to devices that looked intimidating at first but that we’ve gotten used to seeing. An electroencephalograph, a heart rate monitor, an IV, and one machine that lets off random, unpredictable pings like it’s sonar checking for enemy submarines.

Brontë sits down and massages his fingers.

“He looks good,” says Dad.

I guess everything is relative. All of his bruises are gone, although there are some scars that I suspect will never fade entirely. He’s peaceful, and takes away none of the pain we feel as we linger by his bedside. Nor does he feel any pain of his own.

If it was a mistake to keep him alive, then I take full responsibility. I admit my selfishness of not wanting to lose the strangest, and maybe the best, friend I’ve ever had. Blame me for forcing him to linger like this. I accept all guilt, because I’m not the kind of person who gives in. I’m not wired that way.

In a while Dad goes to move the car out of the twenty-minute zone. But the rest of us stay a while longer.

“When Brew wakes up,” Cody says, “I’m keeping my broken leg—just like I kept my scaredness when we was up on the electrical tower.”

And I believe he could keep his broken leg. It’s amazing the things you can hold on to when you’re determined to keep them, and the immunity you can develop if you truly want to. I know that Brontë and I have been working on our immunity—doing our best t o want all those unpleasant things we might otherwise give away.

On the way out, we stop by the nurses’ station. “Has there been any change?” Brontë asks. “Anything at all?”

“Well,” says one of the nurses, “we keep seeing unusual spikes in his brain waves. The fact that there’s any activity at all is a very good sign.”

“How good?” Brontë asks.

The nurse camouflages a sigh with a warm smile. “Honey, people can be in comas for months or years. Sometimes they wake up without explanation, and sometimes they don’t. As much as we know about the brain, it’s nothing compared to what we don’t know.”

It’s a speech the nurse has got memorized—in fact, she told us the exact same thing two weeks before. I can’t fault her for giving us a canned response—it’s her job. Still, I’m feeling obnoxious enough to finish it for her. “‘But there are new discoveries every day,’” I say, repeating back to her what she said the last time we were here—what she must say to everyone waiting for a loved one to regain consciousness. “‘Maybe we can be the ones who win a Nobel Prize for unlocking the mysteries of the brain someday.’”

Rather than taking my mocking personally, she sigh-smiles again. “Definitely a sign that I need a vacation,” she says.

“But if he does wake up,” says Brontë, “you’ll call us, won’t you? Promise me that you’ll call!”

“I promise,” says the nurse. “We’ve got your number.”

“We’ve got all of their numbers,” says another nurse.

“Memorized!” says a third.

Maybe we’re the ones who need a vacation.

On a mockingly bright Memorial Day weekend, when everyone else celebrates a day off from work and school, Mom and Dad sit Brontë and me down in the kitchen for a serious conversation. We know what it’s about before they start talking. We know because the two gray suitcases are up from the basement and have been side by side in the guest room for days.

“Your mother and I have decided it’s time for me to move out,” Dad says. They are words Brontë and I have been dreading for so long, I can’t recall when the dread began.

“It’s just for a while,” Mom says, but that’s like closing the barn door after the lawyers have fled.

Brontë’s tears come quickly. “Don’t lie to us. There is no ‘just for a while.’”

Our parents’ eyes have become shiny and wet as well. “Maybe you’re right,” Dad says. “Maybe it’s forever. Maybe.”

It’s the F word that gets my waterworks going. Forever. The escape valve opens; I wipe my eyes quickly and close the valve again. Forever sucks.

While Brontë gets herself under control I say, “Things will probably get worse before they get better.”

“Tennyson’s right,” says Brontë. “And we’ll probably both have bizarre meltdowns every once in a while, even if we seem okay.”

“Yeah,” I say, and add, “If we don’t have meltdowns, that’s when you should worry.”

Our parents look at us with the stupefied kind of amazement that’s usually reserved for slot machine jackpots, or papal introductions.

“How did you two get to be such old souls?” says Dad, incredulous.

Without missing a beat I say, “Prolonged sun exposure,” and pinch crow’s-feet into the corners of my eyes.

“Yeah,” says Brontë. “We’ll probably need Botox at twenty-two.”

And in spite of the seriousness of the day, Mom and Dad can’t help but chuckle.