Chapter 42

The next morning I woke up in agonizing pain as my back started spasming, the muscles clenching and unclenching to the point it felt like my spine was going to snap in half. Thankfully, Mom hadn’t gone to work yet and heard me screaming. She’d gone to the pharmacy at some point while I’d been asleep and picked up the muscle relaxers and pain medication.

The muscle relaxers did the job and at least made the spasming stop, although it couldn’t do anything about the rest of me. Everything hurt like I’d been hit by a bus, or at least a pair of baseball bats. I tried to do some stretching like Chef showed me, hoping it would work out some of the bruising and soreness in the muscles, but after a few minutes, it hurt too much to try and keep going. I took the painkillers Mom had picked up, and slowly made my way towards the front of the trailer, holding onto the wall as I walked.

It hurt like hell, but it was a noticeable improvement over the day before when I could barely put any weight on my legs at all. Mom, however, about had an aneurism when she saw me.

“What you are you doing out of bed? You need rest so your muscles can heal. Getting up and walking around will only make this take longer.”

“I’ve been lying down for more than an entire day, and I was starting to get back spasms. Rest doesn’t mean being immobile. I’m taking it easy and moving slow, but unless you want to get a bedpan for me, I had to at least walk as far as the bathroom.”

“Fine, but you’re done now. Go get back in bed.”

“I just wanted to move from laying down to sitting down. My legs are feeling a lot better today.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Fine, sit on the couch, but don’t get up again for a little while, okay? I don’t want you moving all over the place.”

“I won’t,” I said, and meant it.

My legs may have felt better, but I was still pushing myself pretty hard and by the time I dropped onto the couch, which also hurt, I was shaking and sweating again.

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

I’d only had hospital food the day before, and not very much of it, because until they gave me the anti-nausea medication I hadn’t been able to hold anything down.

“I’ll make you something light and we’ll see how that goes,” she said and started to head towards the kitchen when there was a knock at the door.

I could hear her talking to someone, but couldn’t make out what they were saying or who it was, other than it was a male voice, at least until she stepped back a moment later, letting Coach Dean into the trailer. He walked through the kitchen and dining area in the middle living room area of the trailer, holding his worn baseball cap in his hands.

“Hey, Charlie, how are you feeling?”

“Terrible, but I’ll live.”

“I already talked to your mom yesterday, but I wanted to come by and apologize to you personally. I know you’ve been having a lot of issues with some of the other kids, but I never imagined it’d go this far, and I feel we are somewhat responsible because Coach Cooper asked you to stay behind and help move equipment off the field, which is why you were out there all by yourself.”

“It’s okay, Coach. There was no reason for him to think anything was going to happen, and if he had, I know Coach Cooper wouldn’t have let me go out there on my own.”

“I know some folks from the school district are going to come out to see you this week about the attack, since it happened on school grounds and they’re going to tell you all of the ways the district isn’t at fault for what happened. It could cost me my job, but if you plan on suing the district, I’d be willing to testify that there has been a hostile environment in the months before the attack and we’d had enough incidents to know something was coming.”

“We aren’t going to sue the district,” I said.

I hadn’t actually considered that as a possibility until that very moment, but I instantly knew it wasn’t something I wanted to do.

“Charlie, don’t you think we should...”

“No, Mom. I mean, you’re the boss here so I guess if you say we are I can’t stop you, but I don’t think we should. We can see if they’ll cover my medical expenses which, if they think us suing them is on the table, we might be able to get; but I don’t want to go after anything else. After the whole restraining order thing, I’m sure I’ve already got some kind of reputation up there, and I still have two more years to go. I need to graduate and hopefully not have anything following me around that makes it harder for me to get into college. Besides, the district is poor and that money would come out of the money the school uses to teach all of us. I’d only be hurting the rest of the students in the district. They have insurance which should be able to cover our medical bills, so that’s different, but I don’t want the district’s money.”

I don’t think Mom had considered any of that. The not wanting to take away resources from other students’ thing didn’t seem to sway her, but she hadn’t considered how becoming a continual thorn in the district’s side might make it harder for me to graduate and get college recommendations.

Coach Dean understood what I was saying, though.

“I’m surprised. These days most people would prefer to sue and get their big payday, regardless of the cost to everyone else.”

“I’m not only trying to be altruistic. I have to use those resources, too. I promised Mom I’d graduate college, so it’s just as much selfishness on my part as anything else.”

“Okay. Well, I wanted you to know that, regardless of what you hear over the next week from the school, the coaching staff knows how bad of a hand you’ve had to play this year, and we have your back. As do several of the teachers. You’re not as alone at Carr as you might think you are.”

“Thanks, Coach. I’m just sorry I won’t be there to help the team, today. One more game and we’re on to state.”

“It’ll be okay. You’ve done really well in the postseason, and we’ll miss you out there, but I guess this is one of the reasons it’s good it’s a team sport. Just get better in time for state, okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

He and Mom spoke for a few more minutes outside before I heard him drive off.

“What was that about?” I asked her when she came back in.

“Nothing,” she said, but I knew that wasn’t true.

Mom didn’t lie to me, but sometimes she wouldn’t tell me something if she thought it was in my best interest.

“Mom, I really don’t want to go through suing the district. For one, we aren’t going to get someone to do it for free, and we’re going to have to pay upfront. We can’t afford that. It’s okay to make the suggestion and maybe hint that you wouldn’t if the district takes care of my injuries, but I really don’t want us to go further than that.”

“I heard you,” she said, which wasn’t the same as saying ‘okay,’ I noticed.

“So do you have a meeting with the district?” I asked.

She hadn’t said anything about it and I honestly hadn’t thought about it, or even the regionals game today, since the attack. I’d been too focused on missing the audition and how much I hurt to think about anything else.

“Yes. I’m supposed to go talk to the school, tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“Because you’re not going. Sometimes you need to remember that I’m the parent and in charge. You need to stay here and rest. If I remember right, you still have to play at Prom this weekend, right? Schools done and you don’t have anything till Friday. I want you to spend every last minute of the week in bed or sitting in one of these chairs. Mrs. Phillips or one of the girls has offered to come help you with anything you need, but you aren’t to move. I’m a big girl, Charlie. I can handle the school people on my own.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to overstep. I just know that sometimes you go all ‘mother bear,’ and I want to get through the next two years as painlessly as I can, then get away from all the petty small-town bullshit.”

“Don’t be in too much of a rush to grow up. I know you’ve had your challenges this year, but you’ve made some great progress in other areas. Your final grades were much better, you’ve been doing really well in baseball, and you’ve made all these new friends. Enjoy it before you have to go out in the world and start working.”

“I’ll try.”

About thirty minutes after she left I started feeling sick as hell and spent most of the rest of the morning either puking my guts out or lying on my bed, trying to will my stomach to calm down. When Mom came home, since it was Sunday and the doctor’s office was closed, she called this nurse line thing we had access to through her insurance. Between this and getting sick and the hospital after they gave me something for pain, the nurses concluded that I had some kind of bad reaction to the narcotics. Not an allergy, since I only had nausea, but apparently a percentage of people just get sick whenever they take even a small amount of pain killers.

The bright side was that the nausea went away and never returned, since I didn’t take any more painkillers. Of course, it also meant I just had to deal with the pain, which wasn’t great. I took some ibuprofen, which took a little of the edge off, but not much.

After such a terrible weekend, the rest of the week turned out to be one of the most boring weeks of my life. Mom had made it clear that if I even thought about picking up my guitar until after my doctor’s appointment on Friday, she’d snap it in half and I’d never be allowed near a stage again.

It was a bit dramatic, but she did get the point across. Monday I thought it wasn’t even necessary, since my arms hurt so bad I couldn’t pick anything up, anyway. But I started to feel better on Tuesday. By Thursday I was sore but much more operational. If I was being honest, I probably would have started playing again by then, just to relieve the boredom.

The last day of school was Wednesday, but Hanna and Kat came by every day after school and basically hung out with me all day on Thursday and part of Friday morning before Hanna’s mom took me to my doctor’s appointment. I could have probably driven myself, but Mom had gone into ‘hyperactive parent mode,’ and was forbidding just about everything.

I weirdly found I was upset about missing that last week. Education-wise, not being there didn’t really matter, since finals had finished the previous week. The last days of school were mostly getting missed stuff turned in, and goofing off. The thing I did miss was the whole yearbook signing thing. Being homeschooled, I’d never actually done that before, but I had seen it in movies and it was one of those quintessential school moments I kind of wanted to experience.

Hanna was nice enough to take my yearbook with her and get people to sign it, but that wasn’t quite the same thing.

She did bring back one school-related piece of gossip. Rhonda made varsity cheer and co-captain with one of the upcoming seniors, a girl I’d never really met. It was apparently the first time a junior had made co-captain and the first time anyone made captain or co-captain their first year on the squad. I’d heard enough about all of the drama and politics of cheer when we were dating that I kind of understood how big of a deal it was. I would like to say I was happy for Rhonda, but I was pretty sure this was going to confirm for her that all of her decisions had been right. She was already pretty well lost into the worst version of herself, but this would end up making it permanent unless something major happened.

Thankfully, the doctor’s appointment went well. Although I still looked like I’d been in a car accident, physically, I was mostly recovered except for the bruised ribs and the nose, both of which would take a few more weeks to recover. I got a smaller splint and lost most of the padding that had been on my nose, but it still added up to the whole car accident vibe I had going.