Fighting Thrasher Jones

{28} Little Do You Know

I swept the door open, trying to decipher Sabrina's expression as she opened her mouth to speak.

"Benji woke up. Benji's awake!" She exclaimed, throwing her arms around my shoulders. I hugged her back, feeling a smile stretch across my face. I couldn't speak for several moments as my mind whirred with the unexpected news.

"He can come home soon then, right?" I hesitantly asked, pulling back to see her expression.

Sabrina stiffened, refusing to budge as her shoulders shook. "He-he's...Benji is...paralyzed," she said, whispering the last word into my hair.

I froze. "What do you mean, he's paralyzed?"

"You witnessed the last punch that The Bruiser struck Benji with," she said and stepped away, trembling, "He'd packed an excessive amount of force behind his fist and targeted the right side of Benji's head."

Each of Sabrina's words felt like The Bruiser had decided to turn his strong punches on me. The air was stolen from my lungs after each hit.

"Dr. Stein said that the x-rays showed that significant damage has been done to the left hemisphere of his brain, paralyzing the entire right side of his body," she said, voice cracking throughout. Her hand jumped to her mouth as she broke down, crying, "He'll never be able to box or walk again, Drew. H-how am I...I'm going to have to look after him for the rest of his life."

I had to be strong for Sabrina even though I wanted nothing more than to join in her mourning. I owed her indefinitely for giving me a place to stay, but mostly for thawing out my once cold heart. Placing a firm hand on her shoulder, I stared intently into her eyes, and promised, "Don't worry. I won't leave his side; I did that once and I'll never do it again."

Sabrina forced a smile that closely resembled wince. "I'll take you to visit him tomorrow. Dr. Stein said..." she trailed off, failing to meet my eyes.

"What?" I interrogated, "What did Dr. Stein say?"

"Benji is suffering from memory loss," she disclosed, crushing my entire resolve. I stumbled into the wall and wavered unsteadily as the familiar patches of blackness clouded my vision. I can't pass out, I thought, not now.

"Dr. Stein said that the memory loss could be temporary, but not to get our hopes up. He says that if he hadn't known better, he would have thought that Benji had been hit head-on by a freight train and that he's lucky to be alive," Sabrina said, wiping beneath her eyes.

"The sound that The Bruiser's fist had made against Benji's head was...indescribable. It was gut wrenching and had been at a pointblank range. Benji had been utterly defenseless against the assault and I honestly thought that he had died right in front of me," I said, relying on the wall to support my entire weight.

"I just don't understand," Sabrina stated, rubbing her forehead, "Why did The Bruiser have to take it to such an extreme? He had already won the damn match."

"That's exactly what I had been thinking," I agreed. "It was unnecessary, but Carlos had warned us about that happening."

"I'd been there last year when Carlos had fought The Bruiser in the finals. It was a devastating loss and The Bruiser wouldn't stop attacking Carlos until he'd been forcibly hauled out of the ring," she recalled. "I remember screaming while I watched helplessly as Carlos took a gruesome beating."

I swallowed hard, dreading the answer to the question that had to be asked. "Did he recognize you, Sabrina? Did Benji remember you?"

Sabrina looked to me with eyes full of pain as she said, "No. He didn't even know who is own sister was."