“Tag, can you hear me? Damn it. I think he’s having a seizure!
It was Moses talking to me, but he sounded odd, far off. Like his voice came from far across the field where Molly was buried. Across the field and past the truck stop that paid a negligent vigil on a dead girl. The roaring of the trucks continued, one after the other, a typhoon of semis flying past me.
“He’s biting the shit out of his tongue! Put the mouth guard back in his mouth! Tag! Tag, come on, baby!”
The pain in my head was suddenly so enormous there was no way I could open my eyes. Maybe I was the one with a bullet in my brain. Maybe my sister’s killer had killed me too. No. That wasn’t right. Molly’s killer was dead. I killed him. I found him and killed him. And the dogs found Molly.
“Mr. Taggert, if you can hear me, can you try to open your eyes?”
I tried. I tried to open my eyes. The pain ricocheted in my head again, the sound of a gunshot reverberating from my memory into my present. Nah. That wasn’t it. There wasn’t a bullet in my brain. There was another problem with my brain.
Once, my sister Molly had dared me to eat two handfuls of sand. She’d said I couldn’t do it. So of course I had. It hadn’t even been wet sand. It had been gritty and sharp, and so dry that it got stuck in my throat and I’d coughed sand for three days afterward. My mouth felt like that again. I couldn’t swallow and my tongue was fat and foreign behind my cracked lips. My throat was on fire.
Maybe I was back on the beach with Molly, the sky a never-ending blue, interrupted only by a low-flying plane pulling a streamer about car insurance behind it. But the buzzing and the light didn’t come from the bright sky above a long stretch of beach, and my throat wasn’t filled with sand. Bright lights circled my head instead of bi-planes, and the buzzing morphed into beeping machines and worried voices.
“Mr. Taggert?”
“Call me Tag,” I rasped.
“Tag, do you know where you are?”
“Montlake Psychiatric Hospital,” I whispered. I could even smell the bleach.
“Mr. Taggert?” Moses didn’t call me Mr. Taggert. No one at Montlake called me Mr. Taggert. Not even Dr. Andelin. Maybe I wasn’t at Montlake. But I was in a hospital. I was sure of it.
“You were in a fight, Mr. Taggert. Do you remember the fight?”
“Did I win?” I whispered, trying to lift my hands to see my knuckles. If I was in the hospital because of a fight, then I probably hadn’t won. My dad would be so disappointed. I shut my eyes against the light and the voices, trying to remember how I lost.
“I’m proud of you, David.” My father hadn’t ever said that to me. Eleven years old, and he’d never said he was proud. But he was proud now.
“You are?” My voice cracked in amazement.
“Yeah. Sometimes we have to get mean in life to get some respect. There’s nothing wrong with defending yourself. It’s not a popular thing in this day and age. People think it’s enlightened to be weak. It isn’t. There’s a time for words and a time for action.”
I nodded. I liked words. But action had felt amazing.
“Words work much better if the person you’re talking to knows you got something to back it up if words fail. How long you been tryin’ to be friends with that kid?” My dad looked over at me and then back at the road.
“A long time.”
“I thought so.”
“I think I broke his nose.” I tried not to sound as pleased as I felt.
“Yeah. You probably did. But now that he knows you can, he won’t be quite as quick to start a fight, now will he?”
“Nope.” I was silent for several minutes, until I forced myself to confess. “Dad?”
“Yeah, son?”
“I liked it. I like fighting. I want to do it again.”
“I want a rematch. I thought I won. I thought I had that guy beat. The bell rang.” I tried to form the words but they were slurred and sloppy and I wasn’t sure anyone would understand. It was the sand in my mouth. The sand and my sore tongue. Damn my mouth hurt.
“You won the fight. It was over. But you had a seizure, Mr. Taggert. We need to find out why.”
And then my eyes closed and the world went dark, darker than the world had ever been. That was the last thing I remember. And now I was here. Now I was in a hospital, the one place I’d sworn I wouldn’t return to. And there would be no more running away. So what did I do now? Where did I go from here? I didn’t know.
Idon’tknowwhattodo Idon’tknowwhattodo Idon’tknowwhattodo—the old refrain was back in my head, an ear worm that refused to morph into a solution. So I was talking to the tape recorder. Again.
Someone on Cordova’s payroll had delivered my truck to the hospital, as well as all my things. I got a nurse to help me up—I was shaky and dizzy, but I could get around well enough—and I positioned the player by my head on the flattened out hospital bed, talking into it so I wouldn’t have to hold it up to my face. They wouldn’t keep me here much longer. We would be heading back to Utah in a day or two. Axel would be driving my truck home. When I said I could do it, Millie had cut me off immediately and the nurse had laughed.
I hadn’t been alone with Millie. Not once. She’d stayed close, her hand on my arm, always touching me, but we hadn’t had any time to ourselves. I didn’t want a repeat of the scene with Moses, and I had no idea what to say to her. The seizure had left me exhausted and sleep was a relief. When I was awake and she was nearby I could only stare at her, cling to her hand, and try to imagine what she was thinking. What she was feeling. I think I knew, and her agony only made me want to sleep again. I’d tried once to tell her how sorry I was, and she just nodded and said, “I know, big guy. I know.” But her eyes had filled up with tears, and she’d laid her forehead down on my chest to hide them from me. I’d smoothed her hair until sleep pulled me under.