Losers Weepers

  His face ironed out before he glanced at Jesse like he was flagging him down for a lifeboat.

  “Thanks for swinging by personally, Mr. Winters. We appreciate it.” Jesse came forward to shake the guy’s hand.

  “You might as well take it back with you though,” I piped up, trying not to glare at the towering piece of machinery stuffed into the corner of my room.

  From Jesse, a sigh followed a few moments later. From Steve, his brows drew together as if he’d misunderstood me or wasn’t following.

  “You’ll need a chair, Garth,” Jesse said. “No matter what happens or what changes, you’ll need a chair for a while to get around.”

  I snorted. “That’s not a ‘chair,’ Jess. That’s an upright spaceship with wheels and a joy stick.” I shook my head and looked away from where it sat, taking up a chunk of my room. “Take it back.”

  “We’re not sending it back,” Jesse said in a gentle enough tone that I knew he was addressing Steve and not me.

  “Maybe we’re not, but I am.” My eyes flashed to find Jesse hovering above me while Steve hovered over me from the other side. Everyone hovered over me now. Even if I was sitting upright, they’d still be hovering. I hated it. I wanted to be able to look a person straight in the eye when we spoke, but I couldn’t. “I mean, did you see how he drove it in here? With his hand. I don’t happen to have the use of my hands, so even if I wanted to be strapped into that thing, I couldn’t go anywhere once I was.”

  Jesse looked at Steve, who cleared his throat. “The chair is designed for both paraplegics and quadriplegics. You can operate it with your hand or with your mouth.”

  I shouldn’t have been able to feel my heart thundering in my chest and about to break through my ribcage, but right then, I felt like I could. Maybe it was beating so hard it was pounding in my ears and vibrating my brain, but I could feel my heart. “Take it back.” I sounded out-of-breath. “I won’t be operating it with my hand, my mouth, or anything else.”

  “Garth—”

  “I’m not trying to deny what’s happened to me or playing ignorant to the shape I’m in, Jess,” I said, shaking my head. “However, I’m not ready to exchange two legs for four wheels. Give reality some time to settle in before you roll a machine like that into a person’s room, okay?” He was opening his mouth to say something else, but I cut him off again. “Besides, I don’t need to have shopped for something like that to know it costs way more than my pay grade.”

  “Garth—”

  “Especially since I don’t have a pay grade anymore, probably never will again, and am fortunate enough to not have health insurance, thanks to a lack of forward thinking and the professional bull riding circuit being under the impression that health benefits are for sissies.” The silver lining to the night of my accident was that I’d stayed on long enough and earned a high enough score to score a nice chunk of prize money. However, since it was highly likely that would be the last ride I’d ever make, I needed to make my bull riding winnings stretch as long as I could. I wasn’t going to drop thousands of dollars on something I wanted no part of.

  When I was finally finished, Jesse didn’t jump right back in. He stood beside my bed silently, looking at me expectantly. He let another minute pass.

  “Are you done now?” he said, arching a brow. “Can I get a few words in before you cut me off again?”

  I would have made a smartass proceed motion if I’d had the use of my hand, so instead I answered by staying quiet.

  “I wasn’t the one who ordered it. I was just the one who was the one closest to the door and answered it, so stop blaming me for the chair.” Even though I could tell Jesse was irritated, he wasn’t raising his voice. He was like the Zen master of keeping his cool. “And no matter what happens, you’re going to need a chair to get around in for a while. You don’t want to spend day in and day out in that bed, do you?” He paused, waiting for me to answer, but I wouldn’t answer his rhetorical question with a rhetorical answer. “Being able to move around the house and get outside for some fresh air seems only about a thousand times better than being trapped inside this ten-by-ten-foot room.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I muttered. “You won’t have to put up with people gawking at you while you breathe into a tube to make some wheels turn. There hasn’t been anything this gossip-worthy since crazy old Pete Whittaker held a nail gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.”

  I exhaled sharply, picturing what I’d look like scooting along in that spaceship of a wheelchair. I’d never seen anyone use a chair like that in person, but I’d caught glimpses of some documentary about a scientist who used one when I’d been in the waiting room at the mechanic’s. That kind of chair might work for genius scientists, but how was a bull-rider-slash-rancher supposed to carry on working in something like that?

  “But on the bright side, I could rent out a space at the county fair every year and charge to give rides and spins in the freak-show chair. The kids ought to love that, right?”

  Jesse had long ago gotten used to my smartass approach to life and how when I was presented with two ways to address a problem, I usually went with the more controversial, but even his patience with me looked to be waning. It was either that or the dark shadows under his eyes were due to lack of sleep. “You obviously want to fight the chair topic, so I’m going to send in the person who took the time and energy to get it for you.”

  He didn’t say anything else before marching out the door and down the hall. Beside me, Steve shifted again. If he’d been a fan before he’d arrived, he wouldn’t be after leaving. That was the way it would happen though, I guessed. One by one, each of my fans would fall away, either forgetting my name when it wasn’t on their screens or in their papers anymore or being repelled by my current state and the extra-surly attitude that accompanied it.

  Reality after reality kept assaulting me. As if waking up paralyzed weren’t enough, I was figuring out just what that meant, one harsh realization at a time.

  Steve let out a relieved sigh when we heard sharp, rushed steps growing closer. How those steps were a relief to him was beyond me because whenever I heard them, I knew I was in trouble. Those steps and the way the heel of her boot echoed down the hall meant she was barreling for me.

  When she tore through the doorway, I knew she’d probably been helping her dad with the ever-malfunctioning tractor. Grease was streaked down her cheeks and plaid shirt. Where some girls shied away from anything that might put dirt under their nails, Josie dove right in. It was one of the many traits I found so damn attractive in her.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Her voice cut through the room as her arms folded over her chest.

  “Um . . . I’m not really sure, ma’am,” Steve said with an apologetic look.

  “Thank you, Mr. Winters, but I wasn’t directing that question toward you. I was asking him.” Josie’s eyes cut in my direction as she lifted a brow and waited for me to say something. When I stayed quiet, mostly because she could still take my breath away just by walking into a room all riled up and stained by tractor oil, she lifted her other brow too. “What seems to be the problem, Garth?”

  I saw through her tough act though. I could tell she was closer to tears than she was to throwing a fit. It broke my heart seeing her like that. It broke it again when I couldn’t go to her, pull her close, and whisper in her ear that everything would be okay.

  “That thing, Joze. That’s the problem.” I lifted my chin in the general direction of the chair, but I wouldn’t look at it again. I couldn’t.

  “How is having a way of moving around a problem?” She moved closer.

  I could tell she wanted to grab my hand or give me a hug, but she held back, probably because our last few conversations hadn’t been all that kind. My plan was working—she was slowly pulling away—so why did I feel as though I was dying inside instead of flipping internal cartwheels . . . the only kind of cartwheels I’d be capable of from here on out?

  “Because a
person shouldn’t have to breathe into a tube to move, Joze. Because I can’t afford that thing, and I don’t want to take out a thirty-year loan to do so. Because I don’t want to be stared at and pointed at and laughed at when I roll by. I don’t want to be a joke. I don’t want to be like my . . .” The word rose up my throat and froze in my mouth. I hadn’t consciously thought about Clay since I’d woken up in the hospital, but based on that near-slip, I guessed my subconscious had been plenty focused on him. Probably because I was crippled, laid up, and in even worse shape than he’d been after getting the short end of the bull riding stick.

  Josie’s face softened instantly before she rushed the rest of the way to me. “You’re not a joke, baby. You never have been, and no matter what, you never will be.” Her head shook feverishly as she sat on the edge of my bed and slipped her hand into mind. “And if anybody even thinks about laughing at you, it will be promptly and sharply followed by my fist driving into their jaw.”

  For the first time, a natural smile pulled at my lips. I didn’t have to force or fake it, and it felt so damn good I sighed without meaning to. “It would almost be worth making someone laugh just to witness that.”

  She smiled at me and slid a bit closer until her back was propped up against my side. I couldn’t feel her, but knowing that I could still support her in some way, small though it might have been, was a comfort. “Then I better start practicing my right hook.”

  “From what I recall, it’s never gotten out of practice.”

  She laughed with me, being transported back to a time in our lives when life hadn’t been so complicated. “Yeah, you were the whole reason why that right hook never got out of practice, weren’t you?”

  “That’s a crime I don’t mind being guilty of.” I felt a crooked smile slide into place, and instantly, that little glint in her eyes fired to life. One was tied to the other, and when combined, my crooked smile and her glint led to the same thing . . . except they couldn’t now. Or, if my dick stayed as uncooperative as the rest of my body, ever.

  That smile fell from my face as suddenly as it had appeared.

  “What’s the matter with the wheelchair, baby?” she asked softly, brushing my hair off my forehead. That was a touch I could feel, and it was so gentle and warm and comforting that my eyelids dropped closed. “It’s a tool to make your life easier, not a life sentence.”

  My eyes stayed closed as I replied, “It is a life sentence.”

  I heard her exhale, but she kept stroking my hair. “We don’t know that yet. It’s only been a few days. Maybe if I took you in for another X-ray or an MRI, we could get a more definitive answer—”

  I shook my head. “I can’t move. It doesn’t get any more definitive than that.”

  Another exhale, this one longer. “Mind telling me where the Garth Black who didn’t know how or when or even the meaning of the word ‘quit’ went? Where did he go? Because I need him to get through this with me. I don’t need this substitute who’s already waving the white flag before we’ve even gotten started.”

  She waited for my answer. She waited for me to reassure her that I was still there and that I was just waiting for her to call me out on it before I put up a fight, but I couldn’t answer her honest question with a guaranteed lie. I couldn’t promise her the guy she’d grown up with and fallen in love with was the same one sprawled out beside her. I wasn’t that guy anymore, as much as I might have wanted him to come back.

  After letting another minute pass, she cleared her throat. “Thank you, Mr. Winters. I believe I already signed all of the paperwork?”

  “It’s all taken care of, Miss Gibson, and Tom will be over later this afternoon to demonstrate how it works.” Steve shuffled through a few papers and handed Josie a few copies before backing out of the room. “It was a pleasure meeting you both. If you need anything, just give me a ring. I wrote my personal number on the paperwork there.” He was passing through the doorway when he stopped. His gaze drifted to me, and a smile I was all too familiar with crept onto his mouth—the apologetic version. “Good luck, Garth.”

  I nodded. “I think it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than luck to get me through this, but thank you for the sentiments.”

  His eyes drifted to Josie and lingered on her a moment before moving back to mine. “It looks like you’ve got a lot more than just luck on your side.” He let that hang in the air for a moment before he waved and disappeared down the hall.

  I didn’t want to think too long about what he meant, because I already knew I had the best woman in the world at my side, along with more good friends than I deserved. But even before I’d broken my back, I’d struggled with the guilt of accepting that I could never give them what they’d given me, though I’d die trying.

  Now though, I couldn’t even change the oil in Mr. Gibson’s truck or fix the leaky kitchen faucet for Mrs. Gibson. I couldn’t help Jesse toil a long day away over at Willow Springs, and I sure as shit couldn’t crawl onto the back of another bull to put more money into creating Josie’s and my dream ranch. I couldn’t do anything to be worthy of their friendship, nor could I do anything worthwhile to earn it.

  I was a charity case. That was just as paralyzing a realization as the condition my body was in.

  “Please tell me you didn’t sell a kidney or sign up to have your eggs harvested or anything like that to pay for that thing, Joze. Please tell me you didn’t pay for it at all and this is all some big mistake and once Steve realizes that, he’s going to come marching back without so many smiles and nice words and repo that baby right out of my room.” I paused to inhale. I didn’t know why, but talking seemed to have become a rigorous activity. “Please don’t tell me you blew a load of cash so I could drool upright too.”

  She gave me a pity chuckle, but I could tell she didn’t find any humor in my words. “Then we just won’t discuss it, okay? If you don’t want to know the truth, I won’t give it to you. I’ll let you just imagine whatever you want.”

  “Joze . . .” My jaw ground together as I accepted what she was saying. I didn’t need to check the price tag to guess that that thing had cost more than my new truck.

  “You needed a wheelchair, you’ve got one. We can check that off the list,” she said. “The next thing on the docket I need to discuss with you is making an appointment with the local doctor Dr. Payton referred us to. He said this doctor was like some spinal cord miracle worker or something. I called to set up an appointment, and they said they couldn’t get you in until next week. When I said that wasn’t good enough, they changed next week to tomorrow at two o’clock. Now I’m not sure how we’re going to get you there—yet—but I’ll have something worked out by then. I just wanted you to know so you could prepare yourself since I know you’re such a non-fan of doctors and them actually trying to help you.” She didn’t sound as if she planned on coming up for air, probably because she knew I was just waiting to pop in and argue with her. She was right.

  “Might as well cancel it, Joze.” I rushed to get my words out just as quickly as she had. “Because I won’t be going. Let someone else see the ‘miracle worker.’ Someone who actually believes in miracles.”

  She flinched. Just barely, but enough for me to notice. She recovered quickly though. “Be serious. You have to see a doctor. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending like nothing’s happened won’t help you get better.”

  “I’m not going to get better.” My voice was rising, filling the room.

  She shoved off the bed. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I’ve realized and agonized over that and accepted that you might not get better in the way you’re so fixated on right now?” She was talking with her hands and arms, flailing them like she was tossing dozens of invisible Frisbees. “But there is more than one way you can get better, and until you meet with a doctor or doctors, that’s never going to happen.”

  I couldn’t look her in the eye any longer, so my gaze drifted to the ceiling. “There’s no doctor or do
ctors who can make me better, short of figuring out a way to fix my back so I can walk again. Sorry, Joze. I know that’s not what you or anyone else pacing around your living room wants to hear, but I’m not going to smile and lie through my teeth that with some occupational therapy and a support group, I’ll be able to ‘get better.’” My voice was even louder. Was I shouting at her? Was she backing away from me because of the shouting? Or because of what I was saying? Or because of both? Oh God, what was I doing? “I’m not getting better so accept it already! I have!”

  She charged forward, her mouth opening as if she was ready to shout back at me just as loudly and with just as much conviction, but a second later, her mouth closed and that determined gleam in her eyes faded. I watched it fade completely until all that was left was a glazed-over smolder of finality. Then she backed away.

  “Accept this,” she said in a voice so low I had to strain to hear it. “You can push me away all you want, but I’m not going anywhere.”

  THE WHEELCHAIR TRAINING guy came that afternoon. He left about five minutes later. Along with him, the electric wheelchair left too. I told him to make sure Josie got a full refund, and he promised he’d take care of it.

  After he’d left with the wheelchair, I’d expected to hear the same rushed boot-steps bursting into my room, but instead I was met with an eerie quiet. It was as if the house were empty, though I knew someone was lingering close by. I’d caught a glimpse earlier of a folded up piece of paper hanging out of the back of Jesse’s pocket. It was a schedule of who was on “Garth” duty when.

  I was like a child who needed both a babysitter and a caretaker. As someone who’d been so uncomfortable being dependent on other people that I used to break out in hives, I didn’t know what to do with having to be babysat around the clock.