I was much too abstract in the way that I viewed him. I should have paid more attention to Brody, the boy in question. But what I held on to was the lasting certainty that I was going to have to look out for myself.
My mother said the man probably had reasons we couldn’t know. But what I took from that night most of all was the shock at the man walking out on his unconscious friend, the silent story of it. I had broken and splintered my tibia in a fairly major way. I left there with a huge plaster cast on my leg, and I looked forward to having all my friends sign it. The nurse got an orderly to move him onto a gurney, and she was wheeling him away from us before we knew what was happening. He was alive, but he was a dying monster. The man made a choking, burbling sound, desperate and liquid. “Hey, Edward,” I said, and I shook his shoulder, in a rough way, as if I were just a kid making fun of him. But if he died because of us, what then? I was sure we’d never forget, though I think now that people do forget such things. Had I ever seen my mother cheat like this? I understood that she was cheating for my sake. Where was he going? He was gone! When I told my mother, she said, “Oh, he’ll come back.”
And then he edged out of the row and along an aisle and headed through a hallway. He smoothed his friend’s hair down, he patted his head. Meanwhile, the guy next to us had got to his feet and was settling his limp (maybe drugged-out) friend into the molded plastic chair, getting him positioned so he didn’t fall to the floor. I told my mother this, and she went up to the desk one more time. My leg was on fire now, even when I didn’t move it. I had more nerve than she did and was better at persuading people. And if she’d been the one to fall I would’ve dragged her outside and talked a taxi into taking us. If no one else had been around, she would’ve phoned someone to help.
My own friend Nini had yelled to high heaven to save me. They could’ve been brothers, but I thought they were friends. Would you bring someone dead to a hospital? Did people do that? The leaning man was wearing his sweater inside out, and he was sleeping. Ahead of us in the line of chairs was a man with a mustache, with his arm around a man who was slumped against his chest.
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