The Outsiders Complete Novel

Ch. 7

NOW THERE WERE three of us sitting in the waiting room waiting to hear how Dally and Johnny were.Then the reporters and the police came. They asked too many questions too fast, and got me mixed up. Ifyou want to know the truth, I wasn't feeling real good in the first place. Kind of sick, really. And I'm scaredof policemen anyway. 

The reporters fired one question right after another at me and got me so confused Ididn't know what was coming off. Darry finally told them I wasn't in any shape to be yelled at so much andthey slowed down a little. Darry's kinda big.Sodapop kept them in stitches. He'd grab one guy's press hat and another's camera and walk aroundinterviewing the nurses and mimicking TV reporters. He tried to lift a policeman's gun and grinned socrazily when he was caught that the policeman had to grin too. Soda can make anyone grin. I managed toget hold of some hair grease and comb my hair back so that it looked a little better before they got anypictures. I'd die if I got my picture in the paper with my hair looking so lousy. 

Darry and Sodapop were inthe pictures too; Jerry Wood told me that if Sodapop and Darry hadn't been so good-looking, they wouldn'thave taken so many. That was public appeal, he said.Soda was really getting a kick out of all this. I guess he would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been soserious, but he couldn't resist anything that caused that much excitement. I swear, sometimes he remindsme of a colt. A long-legged palomino colt that has to get his nose into everything. The reporters stared athim admiringly; I told you he looks like a movie star, and he kind of radiates.Finally, even Sodapop got tired of the reporter--- he gets bored with the same old thing after a time--- andstretching out on the long bench, he put his head in Darry's lap and went to sleep. I guess both of them weretired--- it was late at night and I knew they hadn't had much sleep during the week. 

Even while I wasanswering questions I remembered that it had been only a few hours since I was sleeping off a smoke in thecorner of the church. Already it was an unreal dream and yet, at the time I couldn't have imagined any otherworld. Finally, the reporters started to leave, along with the police. One of them turned and asked, 

"Whatwould you do right now if you could do anything you wanted?"I looked at him tiredly. 

"Take a bath."They thought that was pretty funny, but I meant it. I felt lousy. The hospital got real quiet after they left.The only noise was the nurse's soft footsteps and Soda's light breathing. Darry looked down at him andgrinned half-heartedly. 

"He didn't get much sleep this week," he said softly. "He hardly slept at all." 

"Hhhmmmm," Soda said drowsily, "you didn't either."The nurses wouldn't tell us anything about Johnny and Dally, so Darry got hold of the doctor. The doctortold us that he would talk only to the family, but Darry finally got it through the guy's head that we wereabout as much family as Dally and Johnny had.Dally would be okay after two or three days in the hospital, he said. One arm was badly burned and wouldbe scarred for the rest of his life, but he would have full use of it in a couple of weeks. 

Dally'll be okay, Ithought. Dallas is always okay. He could take anything. It was Johnny I was worried about.He was in critical condition. His back had been broken when that piece of timber fell on him. He was insevere shock and suffering from third-degree burns. They were doing everything they could to ease thepain, although since his back was broken he couldn't even feel the burns below his waist. He kept callingfor Dallas and Ponyboy. If he lived... If? Please, no, I thought. Please not "if." The blood was draining frommy face and Darry put an arm across my shoulder and squeezed hard.... Even if he lived he'd be crippledfor the rest of his life. 

"You wanted it straight and you got it straight," the doctor said. "Now go home andget some rest."I was trembling. A pain was growing in my throat and I wanted to cry, but greasers don't cry in front ofstrangers. Some of us never cry at all. Like Dally and Two-Bit and Tim Shepard--- they forgot how at anearly age. Johnny crippled for life? I'm dreaming, I thought in panic, I'm dreaming. I'll wake up at home orin the church and everything'll be like it used to be. But I didn't believe myself.