Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (22 page)

I know before he opens his muzzle that he’s going to make a smart remark about his thumb, but he shuts it quickly and then just says, “Yeah, I’ll live.”

“’
Cause you know,” I say, “guys on the team break their thumb like every other game.”

“
Well, shoot me full of painkillers and give me a million bucks and you can break my thumb whenever you want.” He resettles himself in the seat and winces. His breathing’s harsher than usual, but I don’t see any gleam of tears in his eyes when I glance over. “It’s kinda numb at this point,” and then he grits his teeth as we rattle over a pothole, “except when it gets jarred.”

“
Sorry.”

“
What do your parents pay taxes for, anyway?” The joke falls flat. He holds his paw to his chest and doesn’t speak again until we pull into the hospital parking lot.

The emergency room smells like our training room. Lee refuses my help filling out the form, muttering, “I can still write.” There’s nobody else in the room, so I smile at the nurse, an elderly jaguar. She smiles back, and comes around from behind the desk to take the form when Lee’s done rather than making us come back to her.

“
You’re that football player,” she says to me as she picks it up. Her voice is sharp, but friendly, slightly Latin-accented.

Lee’s ears flick. I just nod. “I play for the Firebirds,” I say.

“
Mickey Miski’s boy, right? I remember when you won the game against the Hilltoppers.” Her smile is bright. “Nobody has run that fast since.”

“
Thank you.” I beam at her. Lee relaxes a bit.

“
They haven’t won that game since you left, you know.”

I smile. “I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”

She glances over the form and says to Lee, “You can come on back. The nurse is ready.”

He looks at me as I get up, and she sees it. “You want to come back with him?” She says it “weeth.”

I get up. “Yeah.”

So we go back to the exam room, where a young female raccoon asks Lee how he’s doing. She takes his paw during his noncommittal answer and gently examines the thumb. I hadn’t had a chance to see it clearly yet.

The sight makes me wince. His thumb is hanging unnaturally away from the rest of his paw, disturbingly loose. He’s holding it very stiffly, and trying not to look at it. “We’ll get this into x-ray right away,” she says. “How did it happen?”

He could say anything. I didn’t coach him or ask him to lie. He doesn’t look at me. “I, uh, fell,” he said. “Tripped...landed on the paw.” He gives her a sheepish smile.

She writes that down. “Have you been drinking tonight?”

He shakes his head. “A little wine with dinner, but just a glass.”

“
Okay, that’s not a problem.” She makes some notes while I watch Lee, his muzzle still turned away from me. He could’ve said “it happened in a fight,” or he could’ve been completely honest. I clench my fists and then force myself to open them and place them on my knees, breathing. I want to know what happened between him and my father.

I know my father would try to intimidate Lee physically. We grew up with spankings, cuffings, roughhousing, physical play. But I didn’t think he’d actually hurt Lee. He was rough with us boys, but only once got into a fight that he got in trouble for. Had to file a police report and everything. This time, though, Lee didn’t give him up. That’s something Dad always used to say to me, that family trouble stays in the family, and for Lee to respect that, that means a lot to me. It means he’s not giving up on being part of the family. Or at least, not giving up on me being part of the family.

He’s hunched over on the exam room bed, the tremors in his ears and toes the only sign of pain I can see as the nurse manipulates his paw, and I think about how brave he is to have stood up to my father. And I think about what it means that I never, even for a moment, considered the possibility that he might be the one lying.

The nurse takes him away to get x-rayed, and tells me that I can wait here for him. I sit in the extra chair in the empty exam room, and my thoughts turn to the chance that I might never be able to bring him home. That I might have to spend Christmas Eve with my parents and Christmas Day with him (if it’s not a Saturday or Sunday, when we have to practice or play). Weddings, my birthdays, family vacations—football keeps me away from some of them now, too many. But I’d give up football sooner than I’d give up my family. My heart pounds no matter how much I tell myself I don’t have to make that choice.

I remember again what Lee told the nurse. That helps; I relax in the chair, my tail curling and uncurling rhythmically as I clasp my paws over my chest. I know it’ll take time, but when I tell Dad about this, it’ll help, I know it will.

When Lee gets back from the x-ray, the nurse tells him the doctor will be with him in a minute, and leaves us alone. I look up; he grins down from the exam table.

“
She gave me a pill,” he says, holding up his paw. The thumb looks as bad as ever, except it’s back in its proper place.

“
Just one?”

He thinks. “There might have been three.”

I remember Fisher on the table in the training room. Lee’s starting to get that same dazed look. “So?” I gesture at his thumb.

“
It doesn’t hurt as much. She popped it back in the socket.” He smiles lopsidedly, and his tail, hanging off the back of the table, wags lazily. “I think that hurt.”

“
They gonna fix it up? Firebirds’d have that wrapped and set by now.”

“
Yeah, well, this is middle America. We don’t all have our own private health care.”

“
Hey,” I say, reaching over to put a paw on his knee. “Thanks.”

He blinks at me. “F’what?”

The door opens, and I jerk my paw back. A white-coated pine marten wanders in, stifling a yawn. “Mister Farrel?” He raises his eyebrows at me.

Lee raises his paw. The doctor holds up an x-ray and nods. “That’s a match, all right. Dislocated. You win a brand new cast.” The raccoon nurse comes back in after him. “Sir, if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the waiting room,” the marten says to me. “It’ll only be about fifteen minutes.”

“
Sure.” I stand, head to the door, and look back. Lee and I are used to saying things with looks, even when drunk or on painkillers. He flicks his ears, and gives me a smile that lets me know he was exaggerating his dopiness, and I grin back and give him an exaggerated thumbs-up, which makes him grimace. I’m still chuckling at his pained expression as I plop down in the waiting room.

It’s empty except for me and the jaguar nurse. I grab a magazine, but I can’t focus on it. So I toss it back on the table and just stare at the hideous paintings on the wall, thinking again about family and about Lee.

“
Excuse me.” The nurse has come out from behind the desk and is leaning over me. I read her nametag: Duena.

“
Hi.” I smile.

She looks toward the door back to the hospital. “That fox, Mister Farrel...”

I incline my head, feeling a little chill settle into my chest. She goes on. “You know, little Mike Harnby is, um...” She chews her lip. “Not so little now. He has a friend, a possum. I saw them at the Lakeside, with Mike’s parents.”

“
I’d heard,” I say.

She puts a paw on my shoulder. “It was a brave thing you did. It is hard to be yourself. But it is easier if there is someone who understands who you are,
si?
”

“
I guess.” Her eyes are old and kind. I find myself not as wary of her knowing about Lee as I’d thought I would when she first made her remark.

“
I will not tell anyone,” she says.

It takes me a moment to realize that she’s promising not to tell anyone if I confirm it, not that she’s already figured it out. I nod. This shouldn’t be as hard as my press conference, but it feels like there’s cameras on me. “Yeah. He’s my...friend.”

Her smile gets huge, and her eyes well up a bit. “We will take good care of him. Do not worry about him.”

“
Thanks,” I say awkwardly, and she keeps standing there as though expecting me to say something else. So I say, “You’re very kind,” and that satisfies her.

Lee comes out about twenty minutes later, paw held awkwardly in front of him. Because I’m looking mostly at the white plaster cast against his black fur, I don’t see right away that he’s got a small bottle in his other paw. The raccoon nurse follows him out.

“
Did you pick white?” I ask, eyes on the cast. It looks huge, engulfing his whole paw. Only his fingers show. “Or didn’t they have black?”

He tries to focus on me. “Picked white,” he says. “Their black…didn’t match.”

The nurse comes up to his side and smiles. “He was very fussy about the color,” she tells me. “You’ll be taking him home?”

I hesitate. But she doesn’t care what ‘home’ is, she just wants to know if I’m taking care of him. “Yeah.”

“
Okay,” she says. “The cast should be completely dry in ten minutes. We gave him instructions to take care of it. He’s had plenty of medication for tonight, and tomorrow he can start taking the pills, only as needed. Instructions are on the bottle. You’ll be okay?”

“
Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”

She smiles and walks back to the back. Lee watches her go, but he’s kind of staring, looking dazed. I stand up and hug him, and despite the pain medication, he stiffens, eyes on the jaguar nurse behind the desk.

“
It’s okay,” I say softly next to one of his ears, which flicks. “She’s cool.”

His muzzle shifts so he’s not looking at the jaguar nurse any more. “Mmkay. Where we goin’?”

“
Gotta go home and get our stuff,” I say, leaving out the part where I hope we’ll be able to stay at the house. I’m not that sure about it, but I know how Lee’s going to react if I tell him.

When we pull up outside the house and I ask if he minds waiting in the car, he just shakes his head minutely and leans back into the car seat. So I leave the car running and the heat on, and I flick on the radio.

The house is quiet. I knock, and then open the door without waiting for an answer. Once inside, I can see the flicker of light from the TV in the living room. Our bags are sitting in the hallway, and the kitchen is dark.

“
Mom?” I call.

“
Your bags are there,” she says.

I stop in the doorway of the living room. She’s sitting on the couch. “His paw’s in a cast,” I say.

She looks at me, and I’m a little surprised at the mix of anger and regret in her eyes. “Do you want us to pay for it?”

Is she resentful? Is she offering? I can’t tell. “No, his insurance covered it, and I make plenty of money.” More than Dad, I almost say. “I just wondered, I mean, it’s really late. Can we just stay here? We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

She sighs. “I don’t think—”

The den door bangs open. My father stands there, glaring at me. “Absolutely not.”

I flinch, and then hate myself for it. My fists clench, and claws extend. “You’re kicking me out?” They’re both silent. “What happened to family? What happened to ‘love you no matter what’?”

“
This isn’t about you,” Dad says. “It’s about him.”

“
He didn’t give you up.” I glare, to hide the twisting in my stomach at Dad’s growl when he talks about Lee. “At the hospital. He lied for you, after what you did.”

“
So you still believe him.” Dad folds his arms.

I growl, “He’s part of my life.”

Mom isn’t looking at either of us, but she doesn’t look like she’s looking at the TV, either. Dad is staring right at me, challenging. “He is not part of ours.”

I meet his stare across the length of the room. “So you’re kicking me out.”

“
No,” Mom says quietly. Dad sets his jaw, his tail lashing.

“
Fine,” I say. I turn around and stomp into the foyer, grabbing our bags. I hesitate there, waiting for one of them to call me back in. Of course they won’t let me just go out and stay in a hotel, right?

Dad yells after me, “Don’t even think of trying to bring him back here.”

“
Fuck you,” I mutter, but loudly enough that there’s a chance Mom might hear me. It makes me feel daring, rebellious enough to throw the door open and slam it shut behind me.

I throw the bags in the back seat and get in behind the wheel. For a minute, I just sit there, looking at the house, and then I slam my paws against the wheel so hard they sting. I do it again. Lee stirs and looks at me. “Don’t fuck up your paws,” he murmurs.

“
Yeah.” I start the car and pull out.

His half-lidded eyes follow our progress down the street, around the corner. “Where we going?”

I’m just driving. I grip the wheel so tightly my fingers hurt. “I don’t know.”