Losers Weepers

  At first, Josie had encouraged me to take part, but after a handful of no ways from me and her working her ass off taking care of the ranch and me, she was frequently staggering into bed at nine. She didn’t have the energy to face everyone else either.

  It had been a month since the accident and almost three weeks since I’d taken up residence in the wheelchair. A month since I’d been initially paralyzed from the neck down and three weeks since my legs had stayed that way. I didn’t try to think it, and I sure as shit didn’t voice it, but I knew with every day that passed with me a prisoner in this chair, the likelihood of it becoming permanent grew greater. Each passing day only further secured my future of spending my life paralyzed.

  Whenever Josie guessed I was getting a bad case of the self-pities, which was more frequent than the times she picked up on, she reminded me of how lucky I was to be alive and to have regained movement in my arms and chest. I knew she was right. At least, part of me acknowledged that, but the other, darker part of me just couldn’t buy into it. Sure, I might have been able to shave my own face and brush my own teeth and slip on my own hat, but in terms of the definition of a man, I came up as empty in that department as if I’d still been paralyzed from the neck down . . . or even if I’d been dead.

  I was no good to anyone anymore. At least not really. No one might have come right out and said it, but that didn’t change the truth that I’d become an inconvenience to those closest to me. The very people I cared about and wanted to be able to express that care and concern to were the ones plagued with the responsibility of attending to me.

  Mrs. Gibson made and brought my meals to me every day, never once complaining and always with that gentle smile. Some flower plucked from her gardens sprouted out of a small vase on each one of my trays. I’d tried making my own breakfast of eggs and bacon a few mornings ago, but it turned out I probably shouldn’t have started with something so ambitious and gone with cereal instead. The experiment had ended with me dotted in hot bacon grease and a pile of cracked-open eggs oozing on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t even make myself a fucking meal.

  Mr. Gibson and Jesse had seen to getting my truck brought back from Casper, and even though I’d been relieved to have it back, seeing it parked in the driveway and collecting dust turned into more of a daily torment than the pride and joy my truck had been before. When I’d caught sight of a weed tangling up inside of the wheels yesterday, I’d charged down the ramp, ripped out the weed, and torn it into a dozen tiny pieces as if it had been enemy number one.

  At the conclusion of my mini tirade, I’d found Mrs. Gibson watching me from the kitchen window with an expression of concern. I guessed that her concern was more for her daughter than for me, but at least so far, I hadn’t heard either of Josie’s parents whispering across the dining room table about me being a good-for-nothing parasite leeching off Josie’s goodwill.

  But I guessed that day was coming, and I didn’t want to be around when it did. The Gibsons were good, hard-working people who’d taken their time warming up to me but had finally come around. Whatever their feelings for me though, their daughter came first. When they finally came around to admitting to each other and to Josie that I would only be a cinder block tied to her ankle and dragging her down her whole life, I wanted to be prepared to agree with good grace and back away.

  Josie had seemed content to float with her head in the clouds for the last couple of weeks when it came to my physical limitations, but I didn’t have that luxury. Instead, I’d been confronting worst-case scenarios and nightmares. I didn’t have a choice.

  I loved her. Because I did, I had to do what was best for her.

  Every day that passed, it became more and more evident that I wasn’t what was best for her anymore.

  That became overwhelmingly obvious when I’d been wheeling myself around the barn in an effort to get some fresh air and see how the wheelchair held up on the uneven terrain. Maybe if I’d had a monster-truck-modified wheelchair, I would have been okay, but I wasn’t exactly sporting the Cadillac of wheelchairs. The first small patch of mud suctioned to the wheels and brought me to a screeching halt.

  I could have called out for Mrs. Gibson—the house wasn’t far from the barn, and she always seemed to have one eye and ear trained on me—but I wasn’t going to let someone else drag me out of this mess. I would do it. Even if it took me until midnight.

  I’d only been working to free the chair for a few minutes, and had already broken out into a sweat, when I heard a familiar voice coming from inside the barn. Josie had left earlier with her dad and the other hands and said she wouldn’t be back until lunch. It couldn’t have been much past ten though. She was talking to someone, although I couldn’t make out anyone else’s voice. I stopped fighting with my wheelchair so I could focus all my attention on listening.

  “Garth won’t tell me anything. I don’t even know if he’s talked to you since we left your office a few weeks ago.” Josie’s voice was higher than normal and more breathy sounding. It almost sounded as if she were on the verge of having a panic attack. I still couldn’t make out another voice though. “I need to know, Dr. Murphy. I need to know what’s happening and what’s going to happen.”

  My heart came to an abrupt stop. It stayed that way for a few beats too—long enough for pain to start manifesting in my chest. She was on the phone with my doctor, practically begging him for information on me. She’d come across as so cool and put together when I was with her, but when she was alone, when she was her truest self, she was falling apart as much as I was. I should have known—even my brave, fearless Josie had weak spots in that seemingly impenetrable coat of armor.

  A person could be stronger than the next, but that came with the burden of their weak spots being weaker too. I was one of Josie’s weak spots, just like she was one of mine . . . but she was the beacon of my strength too. I didn’t need to have it confirmed to accept that I’d ceased to be that for her.

  “Screw confidentiality. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with being left in the dark and fed a bunch of shit like I’m some mushroom.” She took in a breath so deep that I could hear it through the barn wall. “I need to know what’s going to happen,” she finished in a voice so small I almost couldn’t make it out.

  She was right—I hadn’t talked to Dr. Murphy once since we’d left his office. I’d deleted plenty of voicemails from his office requesting calls back and checking to see if I’d like to schedule an MRI or get a referral for therapy. Sometimes facing reality was hard enough without having to figure out a way to navigate through it.

  “Fine. Let’s talk in hypothetical terms then.” Her voice was back to its typical pissed-off volume. That was a tone I was familiar with. “Let’s say fictional Mr. Smith got into a fictional accident and damaged his spine. He’s been hypothetically paralyzed from the waist down for close to a month now, after having regained movement in his arms and chest a few days after the initial trauma.” So much condescension oozed from her tone that I was impressed the doctor hadn’t hung up yet. Or maybe he had and she just hadn’t realized it yet. “What is the likelihood, if there is any, of ‘Mr. Smith’ regaining the rest of his mobility?”

  After that, she was quiet for a minute. Or maybe it was more like two. When I heard Josie again, it was a long sigh I heard first.

  “So there really isn’t much likelihood at all is what you’re saying.” Another sigh followed that, followed by what sounded like a whimper she’d choked back before it could escape. “Mr. Smith won’t walk again is what you’re telling me.”

  My chest pulsed with pain again, curling me over in my chair. What she’d just been told by Dr. Murphy was something I’d accepted days ago for the most part, but having to witness her accepting it while having it confirmed for myself in a very tangible way accelerated my journey toward that breaking point that had, even a few weeks ago, seemed a ways out on the horizon. Now, though? It seemed like if I extended my arm, my fingers could have just scraped its sharp surfac
e.

  “No, I understand,” she said. Her voice seemed to move around the barn, but I guessed that was because she was pacing. “If science fiction becomes reality or a medical breakthrough kicks some serious ass or if miracles suddenly start cropping up to be plucked for the taking, Mr. Smith might walk again. Am I understanding this correctly?” She paused for a few seconds. “That’s what I thought. Thanks for playing the hypothetical game with me. I hate not knowing what’s going on. I hate not being able to prepare myself for what’s to come.”

  The mail truck puttered up the driveway, making enough noise I couldn’t hear whatever was or wasn’t said next. The Gibsons’ mailbox, like the rest of the their neighbors’, was down at the end of their driveway, right off the main road, but the mailman had been hand-delivering the Gibsons’ mail for years. I thought it had something to do with Mrs. Gibson always having something to offer him when he showed up—like a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade or sweet tea or a warm cup of coffee or tea in the winter. Today it looked as though she’d just brewed some sun tea and was carrying a glass of it down the steps to him. He turned off the mail truck and thanked her with a smile, draining the glass in two drinks.

  With the truck off, I could hear Josie’s voice again.

  “What can we do now then? For Mr. Smith?” she asked, her voice returning to its normal tone and volume. The shock had passed, and she was rolling up her sleeves. “Do you think an MRI would still be helpful? What about physical therapy?” Josie was quiet another minute. “Yeah, okay. That makes sense. I’ll talk to him. No promises he’ll listen, but I’ll pass it on.”

  After that, they had a minute of conventional back and forth before the call ended. Josie must have left through the barn’s back doors because I never saw her slip out the front, which I was closest to, still stuck in the mud and feeling like my chest had become the trampoline for a family of elephants.

  I wasn’t going to walk again. That was it. I knew I should have been thankful for the mobility in my arms, but conjuring up thankfulness was hard when I’d just had it pretty much confirmed by my physician that I wouldn’t walk. I’d heard it in Josie’s voice too. The finality. The acceptance. She’d been holding on to hope for so long that I must have extended my pinkie and curled it around that string of hope without even realizing it. Now that her hope was gone, whatever trace amounts I’d let trickle into me from her had been killed.

  It might have been that overwhelmingly surge of anger that seemed to rise from my feet and erupt through the rest of my body that got me out of that muck. Or maybe the mud had, like everyone else, given up on me.

  As I rolled back to the Gibsons’ house, not really knowing where to go now, I stopped in the driveway and looked around. My truck was growing weeds in the driveway—I’d never drive it again. My horse was getting fat and lazy in the barn—I’d never ride him again. My girlfriend was out working her parents’ ranch when we’d one day dreamed of working our own—I’d never ranch again.

  My whole life, everything I’d been and everything I’d wanted to become, was spiraling away from me. Fragments of the man I’d been and the man I’d wanted to become were gusting out of reach. My life as I’d known it was over. My life as I’d hoped it would be would never come to fruition.

  The man I was right now, crippled in more ways that just physically, was both my present and my future. I could have tried to deny that, but I couldn’t have kept the façade going for long. As out of control as everything around me felt, I had control of one thing still. One aspect of my life that was vitally important. Josie.

  My life might have just smacked into a dead end, but that didn’t mean hers had to. My life might have been over for all intents and purposes, but hers was only getting started. As simply as closing this chapter of her life and starting a new one, she could go forward instead of stagnating in this hell, caught in the middle of the living and the dead.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been siting there, basically saying good-bye to the life I’d known, when Mrs. Gibson came out onto the porch, the screen door whispering shut behind her.

  “Garth?” she called, wiping her hands on her apron. From the look of the flour dusting her face and hands, she’d been making biscuits for dinner. “You’ve got mail. Do you want me to leave it in your room for you, or would you like it now?” She pulled an envelope out of her apron pocket and held it in the air.

  I couldn’t see who it was from, but I didn’t need to. I’d been expecting that letter for weeks. “I’ll take it now, Mrs. Gibson.” I lifted my shoulders and braced myself. I supposed this was the best time to get the letter. All of my hope was gone, so there was nothing left to take.

  When she’d made her way down the stairs and over to me, she placed the letter in my hands. “Do you need something, hun?”

  I almost laughed at the irony of her question. I needed so many somethings I could have kept listing them off until the final harvest had come in for the season. However, even Mrs. Gibson, with all her good intentions and well-meaning, couldn’t have put a dent in all of the somethings I needed.

  I shook my head. “Thank you, Mrs. Gibson. For everything.”

  She smiled at me. “Thank you for always making my daughter happy.”

  It was difficult to do, but I managed to return her smile. It was almost like she could read what I was feeling—almost like she knew, as I did, that I couldn’t make her daughter happy anymore. She held my gaze for another moment before climbing the stairs and disappearing back inside the house, leaving me alone with my letter and my bleak future.

  I didn’t wait to tear open the letter. I slid the letter out and unfolded it. It was the bill from the hospital, and it was as catastrophic as I’d anticipated. The number literally took my breath away and would finish draining most of my savings. The same savings I’d been building in order the purchase a large chunk of land and a large herd of cattle. Instead, it would go to a hospital I’d spent a whole two days in. How could one accident and the forty-eight hours that followed be responsible for completing re-mapping my entire future?

  How could one moment, one flash in time, be responsible for changing my whole existence?

  LIKE MOST BAD plans, mine had started out seeming like a good idea. At least it had until I’d hit the second mile. One mile in a truck flashed by in a blink. One mile on a horse passed by having a conversation with another ranch hand. One mile on foot might not have passed as quickly as the other options, but even that was better than the one I was stuck with: pushing myself in a wheelchair that had been a price-conscious purchase instead of a comfort-conscious one when Rose Walker had picked it up.

  I’d made it down the Gibsons’ long driveway which, thank God, was a slight downhill, and the first mile after that had been along a paved road. The second one had been the same. The third, fourth, and fifth miles? They had been nothing but gravel, pitted roads that made my teeth chatter and my bones shake to the point of breaking.

  Thankfully I’d been on the paved roads during the later morning, so most people were already at work or school. Even though it was past dinnertime by the time I started my last mile down yet another bumpy dirt road, I was far enough out that I hadn’t been passed by a single truck for over an hour. That was good since one out of every other driver that had gone by broke to a stop, stuck a head out of the window, and asked if I needed a lift. I’d declined—I was too damn prideful to ask for a lift—but if another truck had come along during the last mile, I might have thrown my arms up in surrender and begged a ride to my destination.

  My phone hadn’t started ringing yet, which meant Josie was still out busting her ass doing work I should have been helping her with. When she did start blowing up my phone when she realized I’d disappeared with no indication of where I’d gone, I already had a plan for how to handle it. I’d had five miles and nine long hours to put together that plan, and it was as close to airtight as any plan conceived in my depraved mind could have been.

  Her first call came
a little before eight, right as I was rolling the last few yards toward my destination. The porch lights weren’t on, nor were any of the other lights inside, and the paint had long ago flaked away from the exterior . . . but it was home. It was my home. Our home. The one we’d purchased together, had planned to fix up together, and had hoped to ranch the land surrounding it together. It looked like a piece of shit, closer to needing to be demolished than fixed up, but it was our piece of shit. It had been our dream. Once upon a time.

  I worked up a glare as I stared at it. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”

  It didn’t respond.

  “I don’t know what the hell wire tripped in my brain to think I could fix you up, but I think I’ve finally come to my senses and seen you for what you are: a piece of shit.” I was drenched in sweat from the journey, panting from being parched and exhausted, but I felt like I could have cursed at that house all bloody night long. “I guess the two of us really do deserve each other. We’re both falling apart, more damn work than we’re worth, and should be steam-rolled. You want to make a bet on which one of us will give out and break down first?”

  This time, the house answered in the form of a few shingles sliding down the roof to the ground.

  “I’m a serious competitor, so if you think dropping a few shingles will make me shiver in my boots, you’re wrong. Now if your roof caved in, that would be something else, but right now, my money’s on you outliving me.” The hospital bill buried in my back pocket started to burn. “What money I have left, at least.”