Meet You There

Chapter Thirty-three: More Revelations

I wake up in an unfamiliar bed, in a nondescript room.

Actually, it's not a room, because there's a curtain on a metal bar cutting me off from the rest of the room.

It doesn't take long to figure out I'm in a hospital cubicle.

Brody is asleep in a plastic chair beside me. I can't tell if Megan is asleep or not, but her head is buried in her arms, which rest on her knee. Both of them look very physically uncomfortable.

“Megan?” I say.

She sits up. “Hey, Ruben.”

“Hey, Megan,” I smile with one corner of my mouth. “So, we're in a hospital.”

“Yep.”

“Cool.”

“Do you remember what happened?” she asks.

I think for a few seconds, and then images of ugly teenage boys attacking me flood my mind and everything begins to fall in to place.

“I got in to a fight with a few high school kids?” Megan nods her head. “But why am I in hospital?”

“Teachers came to break the fight up and you'd collapsed. You took a couple of minutes to wake up after collapsing and when you did, you seemed... out of it. You had a concussion.”

I can't help it, I have to ask. “Do your parents know about this?”

Megan looks deep in thought as if she isn't sure whether she should tell me, and then shakes her head. “I'll explain all that later. Just rest, now.”

Just as I lie back down on my pillow, Brody opens his eyes and sits up straight.

“Hey, Brody,” I turn to him and smile.

He smiles back at me. “Hey.”

We gaze at each other and Megan makes a faux vomiting noise the way she does when we 'make goo goo eyes at each other', as she puts it. “I'm gonna go get a soda and give y'all chance to talk. Want anything?” she asks us.

I shake my head. Brody says he'll have a vanilla coke, if they have any.

She opens the curtain and I hear her footsteps walk down the ward for a few seconds. Megan may be as dainty as a feather, but she is heavy footed, even when she isn't wearing her usual bright pink Dr Marten boots or stiletto heals.

Brody's smile fades and turns in to an expression I can't quite recognize. “I'm so sorry, Ruben, I've fucked everything up, this is all my fault.”

I don't say anything, I just move over in the hospital bed and make room for him and gesture for him to come and lie next to me on the hospital bed. He takes off his shoes and joins me under the covers. I find his arms around me rather than mine around him, the way it usually is. I don't know why he's usually the one being held and I'm the one doing the holding. Perhaps because I'm older or taller. I lay between his arm and his chest and he strokes my hair. It feels different, being the one being held, but not different in a bad way.

“None of this is your fault,” I say. I don't know why he thinks that at all, but then I don't know the full story yet. What happened after I fainted and then came to and them realizing I had a concussion and realizing something was wrong. I vaguely remember Megan and Brody talking in hushed whispers and Frank asking Brody a number of questions. I have no idea how I got here, whether it was by ambulance or car. I don't even know how far away I am. There isn't a hospital in Ranley, only a small general practitioners, but I think there's one in Hillroad. I assume that's where I am.

“It is,” Brody says. “I don't- I don't know what's going to happen now and- I don't know if- I don't know if Dad knows about everything, but-”