Fix My Feet When They're Stumblin'

Chapter 31

    Tears streaming down his face and disappearing into his beard, Ronnie laid his forearm across the seat of the toilet and pressed his forehead into his arm, his chest heaving with sobs, his injured leg laid out straight alongside the toilet. After several hours hiding out in the hospital tramping from floor to floor, he had spent the last few minutes vomiting in the men's bathroom on the hospital's fourth floor, absolutely sick with shame. Every time he closed his eyes, his best friend's shocked, bewildered eyes stared through him, stricken, burning him alive. What have I done? I'm a monster - a fucking monster.

    A soft, rapping knock startled the drummer and he twisted around to see an elderly man with wispy white hair in a green polo shirt and slacks standing in front of the open door to the toilet stall, a cart filled with cleaning supplies just behind him. His eyes wandered from Ronnie's face to the abandoned crutches, lying akimbo on the bathroom floor, spread across his stall and its neighbor. "I'm sorry, son, I've just got to clean the bathroom. Are you okay?" His voice creaked pleasantly with age, reminding Ronnie of his own grandfather.

    The simple question, the same one that had triggered the worst mistakes of his life, echoed in his head - "Ron, are you...are you...o-okay? You...o-okay? You...o-okay?" - and suddenly he was weeping anew in front of the man, this complete stranger. "No," he choked out, covering his face with his hands, turning away from the man and struggling to regain control of himself. "I'm - I'm not okay, I'm an asshole."

    "Hmm, I don't think that's really true, son. Do you want to talk about it? Or I could just come back later, if you'd rather...be alone."

    Ronnie laughed mirthlessly, scrubbing his face, trying to wipe away the tears. "No - not...not really. My own fucking wife won't have anything to do with me and I just ripped my best friend's heart out, so...there's no one else to talk to, I guess." It suddenly occurred to him that he was being rude and he looked up at the janitor apologetically. "Uh, not that, uh, I don't want to talk to you, I mean. That would be great, actually."

    The janitor chuckled, turning to grab a black bucket and a worn mop from his cart. "No problem, son. Name's Mack. So, what did you do that was so bad?" he asked, his back to Ronnie as he added soap to the bucket and filled it in the sink.

    Ronnie sighed, leaning back against the stall's wall and closing his eyes - he couldn't bear to see the judgement in the man's eyes. "My best friend and I, we went hiking...I slipped on a rock and broke my ankle a few hours in, like way up the mountain. Brandon got me to this rock to rest and tried to call for help, but his phone didn't have service. I dropped mine when I fell and I let him go back for it to see if it would work...I knew that part of the mountain was dangerous, I shouldn't have let him go..."

    Ronnie fell silent for a minute while he tried to swallow the lump that had arisen in his throat, listening to the soft swooshing sounds of Mack's mopping. "He fell off the fucking cliff, Mack. Busted his head open, shattered his shoulder blade bad enough to tear all through his back, broke some ribs...and then somehow he made it back up the cliff and walked all the way back to me...it took him hours, he left before sunset and he came back in the middle of the night, like maybe midnight...when it should have taken like forty five minutes, tops, if he was healthy. But he was trying so fucking hard, he was hurt so bad."

    Brandon's return played like a silent horror film through the blackness of his closed eyelids and he forced his eyes open, trying to keep the memory at bay. Sighing, Ronnie picked absently at a loose thread on the hem of his t-shirt and tried to calm his breathing.

     "He's all fucked up now, he can't walk right and he has the attention span of my dog. It's hard for him to talk and he cries at, like, everything - he was sensitive before but this is...it's so hard. He can't handle loud noises or bright lights, and...that's our fucking job, Mack. I took his fucking job away from him, and he loves it so much. His life is just his job and his family and I just...I took that away from him when I let him go off on that stupid fucking mountain, Mack.