Purple Hearts Read online

  “We don’t have a place to put a wheelchair in the Honda,” Jake said, uncomfortable.

  “Maybe we could rent a van?” Hailey asked.

  Cloud head tried to reassure regular head that it would be fine. But I couldn’t not care about the prospect of being alone in Cassie’s apartment, in a neighborhood I didn’t know, unable to tell anyone I was there without having to justify our situation.

  “Nah, I’ll be up and about soon,” cloud head said, hoping I was right.

  “Take care of yourself,” Jake said. I shook his hand. Hailey bent down to hug me.

  From the windows of the van, cloud head waved good-bye.

  • • •

  When I woke up, we were in East Austin, and the Oxy had worn off, leaving a headache and a beating in my joints. I started to dig into my bag to pop another pill, but before I could find the bottle, Cassie was sliding open the van doors.

  “Hey,” she said, her hair up in a tiny ponytail. “Let’s get you settled.”

  The bastard nurse came around the front of the van, scoping out the little white house as he activated the platform. There were two front doors, one with a red A over it, one with a B.

  “You’re on the first floor, then?” he asked Cassie.

  “No, um. Second, actually,” she said, her tone uncertain.

  “Second, as in upstairs?” I said.

  I could barely walk for five minutes without collapsing in pain, let alone take stairs. Cassie hadn’t mentioned this. I could feel my jaw clenching. It would take all the restraint I had to wait to explode at her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I told you that.”

  Oh. I might not have been fully present during that conversation. Shit.

  The nurse nodded toward the second floor. “You gonna need my help to get him up there?”

  “Nope, we got it covered,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, and pulled the lever to bring the platform back into the vehicle. Cassie looked at me, incredulous, and back at the nurse, but he closed the van door, turned the ignition, and drove away.

  Cassie threw up her hands. “What do you mean, ‘we got it covered’?”

  I didn’t want his hands on me, carrying me like a wet noodle. And maybe this was what I needed to start walking. No choice. A kick in the ass. “We’ll be fine. You saw me today. I can probably get up there by myself.”

  She wheeled me down the sidewalk, my bag on her back. “Are you kidding?” Cassie paused, softening when she saw my face, and approached the door. She gestured toward her body, perhaps two-thirds the size of mine. “Look at me.” She turned toward the door and knocked on A. “I’m gonna grab some help just in case.”

  “Wait, Cassie . . .” I clutched my wheels, still fuming.

  A middle-age woman opened it, dirty-blond ringlets framing a kind, puffy face. She wore leopard-print leggings and a T-shirt that said WAKE ME UP WHEN IT’S OVER.

  Amen to that. She looked down at me, her expression curious. I nodded hello.

  “Hey, Rita,” Cassie said, putting on a big smile. “This is Luke, my new husband I was telling you about.”

  The stairs swallowed all of my concentration. At least ten minutes later, we were still only halfway up, and I was soaked with sweat from the effort. My wheelchair was folded at the bottom of the steps, my bag on top of it, guarded by a yipping mutant of a dog.

  “One, two, three,” they counted, panting, and I pushed as hard as I could with my good leg, their bodies propelling me upward and forward, landing on the next step with less than a millimeter to spare. My bum leg trailed uselessly behind me, pins flaring with every movement.

  Six more steps to go.

  “This is a bad idea,” I said for the fifth time. “We should just call the hospital. I should go back.”

  In the physiotherapy room mirror I’d watch myself hauling the limb in its droidlike, knee-immobilizing brace with the swing of my hips, or even my hands, like a cord of wood, an object that didn’t even belong to me. Sometimes I could put weight on it, but tonight I could give it about twenty pounds of pressure before the pain would stab me enough to almost knock me out. Less than 25 percent of body weight, that’s for sure.

  Cassie and the nurse were right, and I hated them for it. I couldn’t do this alone.

  “We can do it,” Cassie said, beads of sweat dripping down her red face.

  “I’m game,” Rita said, her breath thin. “This is the closest I’ve been in twenty years to a sweaty man under fifty years old.”

  Every step was harder than the last. By the end, I could see tears mixing with Cassie’s sweat. I’d landed my full weight on her toes more than once.

  I sat at the top of the stairs as Cassie and Rita went to fetch the wheelchair.

  My leg was trembling, my stomach heavy, my face burning with shame. They shouldn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have to do this. And if this was a sign of what was to come, then I would either be stuck at Cassie’s place, completely frozen, or the equivalent of a two-hundred-pound toddler who’d throw a tantrum every time he had to get out of his stroller.

  They held the chair steady as I dragged my lower half up to the seat, grabbing on to any available hold like some desperate, feral creature, slithering into a sitting position.

  “Bye now,” Rita said, holding an ice cube to her forehead. “Thank you for your service.”

  I could barely respond. The appearance of my creamy, sticklike shin peeking out of the bottom of the brace made me want to vomit.

  “We did it!” Cassie said. “You want a glass of water or anything?”

  My mouth was dry, but hell if I wanted her to serve me. “No, thank you.”

  “Chin up, dude,” she said. “I wrote out my schedule for you so we can come up with a system.”

  While Cassie was in the kitchen, I wheeled to where she had put my bag on the floor, reaching with hungry fingers for the straps, hoisting it onto my lap.

  On the sky-blue futon, which I assumed would be my bed for the foreseeable future, she had set a folded blanket and a pillow, and on top of that, a handwritten piece of paper reading Cassie’s Schedule.

  I could make out the phrases in her slanted hand: Nine AM wake up and play for two hours, sorry, I’ll be playing the same songs over and over. Doctor’s appt on the 9th. Band practice every Tuesday and Thursday.

  I took a pill and closed my eyes. I hoped by the time she left the apartment, I’d be knocked out.

  Cassie

  “So it’s basically like having a roommate,” I was telling Toby.

  Cross-legged on the floor, I aimed the lance at the pad of my thumb and waited for the stick. I’d told Luke to text me if he woke up and needed something, and came here to take a shower, and to remind myself of why I spent the entire day carrying Luke’s sweaty body around my apartment. When Toby asked me what I had been doing all day, I couldn’t bear lying to him. The Loyal. I did this for The Loyal, and now not only was he my actual partner, he was the only member of the band who didn’t know.

  By now I had become good at telling the story. I would almost forget why I was telling it. It had become banal. Casual. A story about health-care premiums and city hall. But of course that wasn’t true. I would have to leave his apartment and at some point I would put my arms around another man, if only for show.

  He was walking in a circle around his living room, running his fingers through his long brown hair, Lorraine following him like a shadow. He threw up his hands. “Yeah, like a sexy soldier roommate who’s also your, like, legal partner!”

  I stuck my thumb onto the meter, and waited. Eighty. Good. Even though I’d been doing this for months now, I still waited on every glucose score like I was waiting on the lottery. But it was more like most tickets were winning tickets, and you were dreading when you lost.

  “No, no, no, not sexy,” I assured Toby, thinking of Luke as I had found him before I left, head lolling on his shoulder as he slept. I had wheeled him gently against the wall, putting one of Mom�
��s old throw pillows behind his head. I would have moved him to the couch but I didn’t think I could do it without him being awake. “Plus we barely know each other.” I thought of our e-mails and Skype calls and wondered if my words were entirely true. There was the night before he deployed, too. . . . But, then again, I didn’t know the Luke who’d come back, the man who would stare out the window for hours, not talking, bristling every time I approached.

  “Then why would you trust him? That’s what I don’t get.”

  “T, I was desperate. You saw what happens when I get low blood sugar. It could happen again, and I just can’t afford another visit to the ER or”—I held up my meter—“any of this stuff on my own.”

  He paused, picking up Lorraine, drumming her back. “Yeah,” he said, staring into space. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “He also needs money, I think. I don’t actually know.”

  Toby jumped on that. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I thought it was best that I didn’t ask too many questions about his situation. Mind you”—I held up a finger, because Toby was starting to protest—“this was before I knew I had to live with him.”

  He glared at me, brows furrowed. “So you didn’t plan to live with him.”

  “No! Toby, no. Like I said, we have to keep up the ruse until he gets officially let go from active duty. It’s for you and Nora just as much as me,” I added.

  “Because you can use your extra time for the album?” Toby said.

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know, Cassie.” His pace had slowed again. “I mean, we’re serious, right?”

  “Yes. And I like it a lot.”

  He smiled at that. I knew he would like that.

  He set Lorraine down on the ground. “Honestly. Honestly, tell me something.”

  “Honest,” I said, scooting forward on the couch, giving him my full attention. At least I could give him that right now. That seemed to be what he wanted. It was cute, almost childlike.

  “You agreed to marry him,” he said, putting one finger out. Then he put out another. “And now you have this guy sleeping on your couch, in your home. And you expect me to just believe that you two don’t have a thing for each other.”

  My chest tightened. A thing? Sure, Luke and I slept together once, and now we did things like watch each other go through various medical procedures and fight at our best friend’s funeral. We couldn’t have a thing if we tried. “Um. No, no, we don’t. How can I explain this?”

  “Yeah, explain it.” He stood in front of me. “Please. Before I start fantasizing about beating this guy up.”

  “It’s not complicated,” I said, even though it was. But there was no way to explain it that Toby wouldn’t misunderstand. I swallowed. “I want you, and that’s it,” I said, knowing how vague that sounded, and stood up to wrap my arms around his neck, kissing him hard enough that he’d forget.

  Luke

  I was running through green hills on packed earth that formed a circular track. Up and down, up and down, and Jake was there in one of the valleys, lying with Hailey and JJ on a blanket. They called to me with faraway voices: Yes, go, yes, go.

  Suddenly, Jake yelled and I could hear him better. “They’re picking us off from the northwest hill.”

  Which one is the northwest hill? I shouted.

  A gun sounded right next to my ear.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on Cassie’s couch.

  Still dark. I reached behind me to the table next to the couch, feeling around the ashtray and roach clips and guitar picks and diabetic-candy wrappers for the edge of the lamp, working toward the lamp cord.

  I needed distraction. I needed to slow my heartbeat down.

  Cassie had stacked her magazine subscriptions next to me on the floor. SPIN, featuring a girl with buckteeth and braids—read that one; Rolling Stone from September, August, July, and June—read those. I knew more about the evolution of David Bowie’s career than I’d cared to.

  I clutched the couch cushions to pull myself up to sit, swinging my gimp leg around. I’d been here about a week now, and every day I’d try to get into the chair on my own. Mostly I could do it.

  I rolled my chair in front of my legs, and locked the wheels. The scars winked at me. They looked like bad bruises that would never heal, with dark holes where the pins went in. I grasped the back of the chair and pushed with my good leg, up, up, up, and for a second it seemed like I could swing the momentum of my hips over to the target.

  Then the slightest twist of my ankle on the floor and the pain came streaming back. And just like that I felt the bullets again. The metal spikes stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.

  I was on the floor, rolling. Wetness on my cheeks. Stabbing, stabbing, up through the bottom of my foot and from the sides, my bones were made of pain. A gunshot sounded near my ear.

  It’s not real.

  Footsteps.

  Cassie knelt and bent over me, her hair on my face, smelling like sleep. “Did you fall out of bed?”

  “No,” I said, and I wanted to explain exactly what happened, but the stabbing dominated my thoughts. The red polka dots on the dust. A pair of boots. I pulled them toward me.

  No.

  Open your eyes.

  “One, two, three,” she whispered, and I was sitting upright on the floor in the pile of old magazines.

  Her eyes were half open, her tank top thrown on backward and inside out, a strap falling off her shoulder. “Can you get back on the couch from here?”

  “No,” I told her, avoiding her eyes.

  She put her hands underneath my armpits, the skin of her chest in my face. I turned my face away, blood rushing to my head.

  I propped my hands on the edge of the couch, ready to push.

  “Were you having a bad dream?” she asked.

  “No.”

  If I told her what I saw, she might think it worse than that, but it wasn’t. It was just a bad dream that happened to come when I was half awake, half asleep, sometimes all awake, mostly all asleep.

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Right. One, two, three.”

  When I was back on the musty cushions, Cassie straightened, gave me a weak smile, and sat on the floor.

  “You can go back to bed,” I said.

  She rubbed her eyes. “No I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  She looked up at me, confused, a little hurt. It must have been my tone. Damn it. I didn’t mean for it to sound as bitter as it did. When the Oxy wasn’t working, it was like the pain was a filter for everything I said, clipping it, spiking it.

  She shrugged. “I just can’t get back to sleep once my brain starts going. I’m supposed to get drowsy on metformin, but it never seems to work. God, I hope it’s working in general,” she mused.

  Metformin was one of her diabetes medications. I’d peeked in the medicine cabinet on Wednesday while I was washing my hands. She had seven altogether. Even under my health insurance, that was a lot. A lot to pay for, and a lot to put down your throat.

  I wanted to be kinder. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “You— I’ve kinda noticed in the past week,” she began, then stopped, choosing her words. “Luke, you make noises a lot when you sleep. Like screams.” She continued, slow, each word making me feel smaller, more compact. “Do you think we should rethink the plan? And maybe get you some help?”

  Just like that, kindness failed me. I felt like a floodlight was shining. How was it possible to feel so exposed under the stare of just one person? Her eyes were still sleepy, gentle, but if this was her version of kindness, I didn’t want it. It was too close to pity.

  I tried to keep my voice level. It didn’t work. “I said sorry for waking you. I don’t know what else to say. If you want to go back on the plan, then that’s on you.”

  “Hey, whoa,” Cassie said, standing. “It was just a suggestion.”

  “Just say the word and I’ll do it.”

  “Uh, okay.” She picked up
the pillow from where it had landed on the floor and tossed it next to me. “I’m not your boss, or your mother, or whoever. I was just trying to point out that something seems to be off.”

  Her gaze burned. Everything I wanted to say was cycling at once, up and down, like the hills in my dream, and I couldn’t figure out which one to take hold of. I kept going toward anger because it was the easiest. But it wasn’t the only thing I was feeling. Everything else was buried under my nightmare.

  Jake, with Hailey and JJ, lying on the blanket. Why hadn’t Jake called me? What if Johnno had showed up in Buda again? Is that why Jake wasn’t calling again?

  Running. No, wheeling. Limping.

  The gunshot in my ear, sounding real. Frankie’s boots on the splattered ground.

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “Rad,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m gonna go in my room and not sleep. Thanks.”

  “Fuck,” I said, burying my face in my hands. The closest I’d get to another apology. I needed to condense everything into one thing. I wanted cloud head, but the stabbing pain had subsided. Technically I didn’t need the pills.

  I reached for them anyway.

  Cassie

  “Okay, like, when George Harrison was with Pattie Boyd, he wrote ‘Something,’ he wrote ‘If Not for You,’ ” I was saying to Nora as I sat behind my piano in her unfinished basement, holding my hand out for the joint. Toby was sitting next to me on a milk crate.

  She passed it to me, shaking her head while she held in the toke. “Nope, nope,” she corrected, “ ‘If Not for You’ was written by Bob Dylan. George just covered it.”

  “Nora’s right,” Toby said.

  “Of course I’m right,” Nora said, not looking at him.

  I sucked in, watching the fringe on Nora’s vest sway as she got up to get her guitar. It was Fleetwood Friday, but Toby and I had both forgotten. So there she was, in all her glory, and I was wearing Toby’s Longhorns sweatshirt. I’d never forgotten Fleetwood Friday, even before Toby was in the band.