Blood

Chapter 21: Mallory



My eyelids are burning. I don’t know why, but they are.

I struggle to force my eyes open, but when they are, I close them again as soon as I can. Wherever I am, the sun is crazy bright.

Weird, I thought hell was supposed to be really dark. I don’t know, maybe the Christians are totally wrong and whatever this after-life is happens to be in the middle of a bloody desert.

I groan, and try to roll over, pulling at a blanket that’s covering me, but my neck won’t let me turn.

“Mallory?” somebody asks.

“Yeah,” I say without opening my eyes.

My throat is still really sore, which seems weird, since I’m pretty sure I have to be dead.

“Thank God,” mutters the voice. Is it my father’s? Not unless I’m alive, and I don’t see how that’s possible.

“Richard?” my father calls to somebody. Well, somebody named Richard.

Who do I know named Richard?

“Can you open your eyes?” asks somebody else.

I try to nod, but it hurts like crazy, so I don’t.

“Yes,” I say instead. “It’s too…bright.”

My voice sounds broken and raspy.

“Okay,” says the same voice again. “Okay.”

Someone moves, and then there’s some kind of shuffling noise, like curtains being drawn, and the burning sensation leaves my eyelids, allowing me to force them open.

I’m in my room, and have to also be in my bed, I can’t really move my head to see around since there’s some kind of plastic wrapped around my neck I think.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Richard Hawthorne standing beside me.

“Dad?” I ask, since I know I heard him somewhere.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he says from somewhere past the end of my bed. I think he’s by the window.

“I’m alive,” I mutter, not totally pleased or unhappy, just kind of surprised.

“You’re lucky to be,” says Richard Hawthorne. “I still don’t understand how you were able to get stung by that many wasps at this time of year.”

I glance at my father before saying, “Uh, yeah…I just kind of stepped on the nest beneath the snow, and they all swarmed out.”

Dr. Hawthorne nods thoughtfully.

I clear my throat. “What...what’s on my neck?”

Neither my father nor Dr. Hawthorne seem to want to say anything, meaning it’s bad.

Let’s see, I think I fell down a set of stairs…did I hit my neck? Oh…

“So, it’s a brace?” I ask.

Beneath the sheet, I hesitate before trying to ball my hand into a fist. It doesn’t move.

The doctor clears his throat. “When you fell…you broke your wrist…one of your cervical bones was also displaced…and two fractured.”

He says it in an extremely grave voice, but all I really hear is that I broke my wrist. The rest will heal.

I try balling up my left hand instead of the right, and it does so, although it’s kind of ridged. Who gives a damn? It means I can move, so I’m pretty happy.

I close my eyes and try not to smile.

“Am I on anything? For…pain?”

“No,” says Dr. Hawthorne in a rather surprised voice. “You didn’t wake up when I set the bones, so I didn’t give you anything. Do you need something?”

I try to shake my head before remembering I can’t. “No.”

“Alright,” he says. “I think, I’ll leave this with you and leave you for now. Call if anything changes.”

I figure he was talking to my father, so I don’t bother opening my eyes until the door closes and I hear a set of footsteps heading down the hall.

When I open my eyes again, my father is sitting next to me.

From what I can tell, his eyes are red and swollen.

“Christ, Mallory, I’d thought I’d killed you,” he says.

I try to shrug, but it hurts so I don’t, “Better me than you.”

My father seems to gawk at me, and then he seems angry. “I don’t ever want you to say anything like that again. Ever.”

“Why?” I say. “I’m not important to anyone. I’m better off dead than alive.”

My father’s face turns redder than it had been. “Stop that. It’s not true.”

“Yes it is! Justin and you are the only people that care about me, and you’d both be better off. Dad, I tried to kill you!”

But he shakes his head. “That’s not you. That wasn’t your fault.”

I sigh, because I’ve argued with my father about this before and my head is starting to hurt. I wish I could have a drink, but I don’t think I’m allowed to swallow with this brace thing.

“Say you are right, and it’s not my fault. What difference does it make? I can’t control it! Fuck, I’ve been like this for twelve-thirteen years now and I still tried to stab you!”

Tim shakes his head but doesn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” I mutter, since I’d yelled at him. I’m also partially apologising to my throat, since it’s pretty annoyed about that, too.

“No, no. Don’t apologise. Just, try to remember that you have more good days than bad. What? This is only the fourth time this year, and it’s almost December.”

I mentally nod, but still can’t help but think about how much worse my ‘episodes’ keep getting, how much stronger I’ve gotten, how much smarter. Well, generally I’m smarter, although lately I’ve been doubting that more and more.

I also wonder if you’re able to just set the bones in your neck without surgery, since I don’t think that’s how it works.

“Did the doctor cut up my neck?”

My father looks back at me. He’d been looking at the floor before that. “I think so. You were over at his office for…five, six hours. I don’t really know. You’ve got a cast on your wrist, I know that. He was pretty serious about you not getting up.”

I frown. “For how long?”

“Until he comes and says you can get up.”

In my head, I try to figure out how long that would mean. I don’t think Hawthorne’s a completely competent doctor, so I don’t know if he’ll ever let me back up. And then I have my healing. I broke my femur in a fall last year, and it was only a couple days before I could walk on it without a cast or anything. I hate casts, so I had cut it off as soon as the doctor left.

“Will you help me take this thing off, then?”

My father gapes at me. “Christ, Mallory! You snapped your neck yesterday! Give it at least a damned week before you try and take it off!”

“A week? You want me to lie here for a whole week?”

“At least!” Tim shakes his head. “Even if you’re fine tomorrow, what will people think if you’re up and walking two days after you broke your neck?”

I sigh. “Fine.”

“Good, now you heard about the wasps?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I told Richard and your brother the same thing, so it’d be best if—”

The screen door makes a cracking noise, and then the actual front door opens, meaning someone is here. Nobody that comes to our house knocks or anything, so it could be anyone now coming down the hall. Actually, two anyones, I think.

But instead it’s Justin and Cynthia.

“Hey,” says Justin with a forced smile.

I glance at my father and then look back up at Justin. Cynthia’s clutching at his arm, maybe because she doesn’t want to be here, maybe because the state I’m in scares her.

I think the reason my father chose wasps is the burns from the holy water that must be covering my face, which I think look like bee stings.

“How’s it going?” I say.

Justin gives me a look and laughs a little. “Not bad, thanks. Lord Almighty, your face is terrible.”

I think he’s trying to be cheery. I must look really bad, then.

“You reckon?” I say.

Tim stands and moves past Justin, saying something to him that makes him frown as he goes.

Justin and Cynthia walk farther into my room, and then both sit in the chairs next to my bed.

“So what’s the doc say?” Justin asks.

“Oh, not much, just that I’m like as not fucked for life.”

Justin and Cynthia look at each other for a second.

“He’s wrong, though,” I say, since I know he is.

Cynthia smiles at me, although it’s a forced smile as well. “’Course he is. A right dingbat that man is.”

“So I guess I lost my room for the next little while, then,” Justin says.

Cynthia swats at his arm. “And how many times have you kicked the poor bugger out? About time he does the same to you!”

“Maybe,” Justin says with a smile.

Justin and Cynthia look at each other, as though deciding if they should tell me something or not.

Justin looks at me, but hesitates. “This is really selfish,” he tells Cynthia.

Cynthia rolls her eyes.

“What’s selfish?” I ask. I don’t think he means me breaking my ruddy neck.

Justin sighs. “You have to get better, okay? Like, all better.” He looks at Cynthia again. “Cynthia and me…Cynthia’s pregnant. And we want you to be our baby’s godfather. So you have to get better,” he says it all in a rush.

I remember the day I’d went into the Wood, when Cynthia had come by and argued with Justin.

“That’s not selfish, that’s stupid,” I say to Justin.

“What?”

“So, you have George, you have any of your brothers, you have Dad if you really want someone in our family. I don’t think I’m a very good idea.”

Cynthia scoffs. “George would like as not drop my kid on his head. Have you seen how he treats the little Owens? My brothers are idiots, and your dad’s already had to put up with Justin.”

“Oi,” Justin says, but he doesn’t disagree with anything she had said.

Cynthia pays him no mind. “You don’t want to be my baby’s godfather?”

She makes a face, half way between pouting and crying. I know that it’s not real, but it’s still pretty damn convincing.

“If the both of you really want me to, then I guess—”

Cynthia smiles wide and tugs at Justin’s arm.

“We should let him rest,” she says to Justin, who gives her a look.

“You go,” Justin says.

She stands up, but then hesitates for a moment, glancing at me and then looking at Justin. After a moment, Cynthia turns and walks away.

The moment she leaves, Justin smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair of us. If you don’t want to, that’s really okay.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure? I mean, Cyn knows how to be a bit of a pisser when she wants to.”

“So you’re really going to have a kid.”

He smiles a little. “Yeah, I guess so.”

I smile, too, “Are you going to name him after me?”

“Well, of course. Nah, I dunno, I think Cynthia wants to name him something with a ‘G’, after her oldest brother, the one that died in the storm.”

“What was his name?”

Justin rolls his eyes. “George. But she doesn’t want to name him George, ’cuz of, well, George. Mind you, I don’t really want to name a kid after George either.”

“So, when’s he supposed to be born?”

“June.”

I can’t help but frown. “That’s not too far away.”

“No, I know. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I mean, it’s not like we can be here with a baby, or with her parents.”

“I suppose not. Does Dad know yet?”

Justin frowns in answer.

“He’d give you money, for a house or whatever.”

“You don’t think he’d be disappointed?”

He can’t be serious.

I start to laugh, which makes Justin frown further and my neck hurt.

“You do remember that we’re half-brothers.”

He looks at me, puzzled before making a face and saying, “You know, I never actually put that together.”

He laughs and I smile, since laughing hurts.

Despite everything that I am, and what I did yesterday, I can’t help myself from feeling kind of hopeful, both for Justin and my dad, and really myself. I don’t know, maybe that’s a good thing, but it feels pretty damn weird.


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