2006
‘Hello?’
‘Carrie. It’s Hale.’
Immediately, I can tell that something is wrong. My boyfriend has never called me so late. He rarely calls at all, in fact; the trailer doesn’t have a phone line hooked up, and even if it did, his dad wouldn’t spare the charges. As for having a cell phone… well, pigs might fly.
‘Hale? What’s up?’
‘I need you.’
It’s not an I need to be with you. It’s a call for help – and that’s something I never expected to get from Hale. Suddenly the slight tingle of nervousness I felt when I picked up the phone has given way to a full-fledged panic. My heart is knocking against my ribs, and my stomach is doing backflips.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m about a mile out of town. The payphone by the Stop ‘n’ Shop. I don’t have much time left. I need you to come and help me.’
‘Help you with what?
He sighs. ‘I’m pretty banged up. I can’t go home like this.’
‘Banged up? What the hell do you mean, banged up?’
‘I got into a fight. It wasn’t my fault. Three guys jumped me. I need you to come and help me. I wouldn’t ask, but…’
But it’s bad. Real bad. He doesn’t have to say it. I can hear it in his voice, clear as a bell.
‘Where did you say you were?’
‘The Stop ‘n’ Shop.’
The decision has been made already, in the space between heartbeats. ‘I’ll take my bike. I’ll be there in ten,’ I say, and he breathes a sigh of relief.
‘Thank you. I mean it.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Are they still around?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Look after yourself.’
‘I will, I promise. Just get here as fast as you can. And Carrie?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Bring a first aid kit. I think maybe I need one.’
~~~
‘Jesus Christ, Hale,’ I say when I see him. No other words seem quite adequate for the sight that greets me.
He smiles. ‘Oh, honey,’ he says. ‘You think I’m bad, you should see the other guy.’ His voice is raspy and weak, and I’m not surprised: he looks for all the world like he laid down under a lawnmower. There’s a deep cut on his forehead, and a streak of blood has run down his face; his shirt collar is stained a dark red where the rivulet met the fabric. The entire right hand side of his face has begun to swell up already, and I can tell that it’s not as bad as it’s going to get.
My Hale. My beautiful Hale. What the hell did they do to you?
‘What happened?’
‘I told you. I got into a fight.’
‘With who?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it matters, ass. We have to call the police.’
‘The police won’t do anything.’
‘How do you know?’
He pulls a face I’m familiar with: his ‘Trust me, I know’ face. It’s a look that says that there are things in his world that I’m fortunate not to have in mine, and mostly I can believe him – but tonight, it just frustrates me. Someone beat the hell out of my boyfriend. I want them to pay for that, and I can’t understand why he’s so reluctant.
But there are bigger problems at hand now.
I give him a quick once-over, making sure that there’s nothing that’s beyond my capability. If need be, I’ll cycle him over to County General myself, and to hell with him complaining.
I was smart enough to grab a couple of ice packs from the diner freezer before I came out, and I wrap them up before I hand one to him. ‘Press this up against your face,’ I say. ‘It’ll help keep the swelling down.’ He does as he’s told, and is polite enough to not point out that this isn’t his first time using an ice pack; he’s more familiar with the concept than he probably should be.
‘Thanks,’ he says. Even though he’s right-handed and the swelling is on the right hand side of his face, he takes the pack with his left hand, holding it awkwardly across his chest. ‘That’s better.’
‘What’s wrong with your arm?’
He winces, as though he didn’t want to be reminded of it. ‘Something,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what. I took some real kicks when I was down. I put it up to protect myself, and… well, you know.’
‘Jesus.’
He shrugs, with the half of his shoulders that’s still working. ‘It was that or my head,’ he says. ‘Not a lot of options, there.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing broken, I think, but it’s hard to tell.’ It would be a lot easier to believe him if he wasn’t gripping his elbow like he’d been shot. Whatever has happened to him, I can only imagine the pain he’s in right now. Those sons of bitches…
No. I can’t think like that now. He needs help. That’s why he called me, after all.
‘Would you…?’ he says, gesturing to the buttons. ‘My arm hurts.’
I unfasten his shirt, hoping that I don’t see his arm snapped in half beneath the fabric. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Hale’s bare torso, and what a sight it is. A summer working construction has left him toned, his stomach ridged and his arms strong. He’s a lot more tan than he was that first day I met him at the lake – that much, no one could ignore – and he’s lost a lot of the look of the wiry boy who captured my attention what feels like so long ago. It’s all I can do not to stroke my fingers down his body, feeling the firm muscles as I trace what is – somehow, through some trick of fate – mine to enjoy. My boyfriend. My Hale. My –
As I run my eyes northwards, something catches my attention: a small, untanned section of skin, a little bigger than the size of a dime. It stands out bright white compared to the rich caramel of the rest of Hale’s torso, the surface puckered and raw and stretched. I don’t need Hale to tell me to know exactly what that scar is, and what caused it. I’ve seen enough burns at the diner to be intimately familiar with them, and that’s a burn if ever there was, despite its perfectly circular shape. It’s exactly the kind of burn you’d expect if someone, for example, held a lit cigar against your skin. It’s horrifying enough to think of someone doing that to him now, especially given the fact that the burn is so perfectly round there’s no way he put up a struggle. What’s worse, though, is just how well-healed the scar is – and how long he’s been carrying that under his shirt.
How old were you when it happened, Hale? I think. Twelve? Ten? Younger? Did that sick fuck do this when you were too young to realise you didn’t deserve it? How many years did you spend wondering if this was how fathers showed love?
How much damage did he do to you, even beneath the skin?
The thought makes me shudder. All I want to do is kiss it better, to erase it from his flesh – not the mark, I don’t care about the mark, but the suffering that came with it. The cruelty of his childhood. The sorrows that come from having a man like that as a father.
But I can’t – not now, at any rate. I’m needed in the present. I can’t protect Hale from what has already happened.
I claw my focus back. The good news is that his arm is still in one piece, at least as far as I can tell. The bad news is that that one piece seems to be in entirely the wrong place.
Hale looks down and grimaces. ‘Well, shit,’ he says. ‘It’s dislocated.’
‘Dislocated?’
‘Yeah. It’s not good, but it could be worse. It means we can fix it.’
‘Fix it how?’
‘You don’t need to do anything. Just brace yourself against me, OK? On the count of three, I’m going to push against you and pop it back into place. Think you can handle that?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
He smiles, but he’s gritting his teeth against the pain. ‘What happened to Nurse Carrie?’ he says. ‘You’re going to have to deal with worse than this once you get to patching people up properly. This is nothing.’
‘It doesn’t look like nothing. It looks pretty damn serious to me.’
‘It’s got to go back, Carrie,’ he says simply. ‘One way or the other. And it’s going to hurt like a son of a bitch when it does, which is why I need you not to chicken out on me.’
I’m not convinced. ‘Can’t we just take you to a hospital?’
‘Are you paying?’ he asks. ‘It’ll be fine. I promise. You trust me, right?’
‘Yeah.’ More than anyone else in the world, I think. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.
‘OK. On the count of three, alright?’
‘Alright.’
‘Three… two…’
He doesn’t wait for one; before I can react, he jerks himself forward against me, twisting his body against mine. I feel the pop as his shoulder clicks back into place, and then the rush of air as a wailed exhalation leaves his body.
Hale screams as bone scrapes against bone and his shoulder slips back into place. It’s a noise I never want to hear again.
Immediately afterwards, his body goes limp and he lets himself fall back onto the ground, lying on the tarmac of the Stop ‘n’ Shop parking lot like a kid making snow angels. ‘Jesus, fuck,’ he shouts out up to the sky, and then laughs. For a moment I’m convinced he’s gone mad, but then he props himself up in the dirt on his good arm and I see that he’s smiling. ‘Carrie?’ he asks.
‘Yeah?’
‘Promise me something.’
‘Anything.’
‘Let’s not do that again.’
‘OK.’
‘I mean it. No matter how good an idea it seems.’
‘Deal.’
‘Oh good.’
Then he collapses back onto the ground, flat on his back in exhaustion, staring at the stars and laughing at the absurdity of it all.
~~~
I clean off the cut on his forehead with an alcohol wipe and do my best to keep it shut with some Steri-Strips. It’s hopefully enough to keep him from needing stitches, but what do I know? I’m not a doctor. The bleeding seems to have calmed down, at least, which isn’t nothing. I remember reading somewhere that cuts to the head bleed a lot more than you’d expect, even if they’re shallow, because there are so many blood vessels so close to the surface of the skin. That’s why even the most minor wounds can look super serious. I take some solace in that, but still: no one would say that my boyfriend got off lightly.
As far as patients go, Hale is pretty much a model specimen. He doesn’t complain when I insist on cleaning him up, and only lets out the most minor of winces when the alcohol hits his scrapes.
His face is bad, but it’s his hands that scare me the most. They’re covered in dirt mixed with blood, the knuckles scuffed and raw; on one of them there’s a large cut, oozing sticky red that looks almost black in the dim light of the winking Stop ‘n’ Shop sign.
‘What happened to your knuckles?’
He looks down at them like he’d barely noticed, and then clenches and flexes a fist, testing them out and not liking what he finds. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I must have caught a tooth or something.’
‘Oh, well as long as that’s all.’
‘Don’t be like that, Carrie. What was I supposed to do, not fight back? Just let them beat the shit out of me?’
‘I don’t know,’ I sigh. ‘Just… what happened?’
‘I told you what happened. Three guys jumped me. They must’ve known I’d be walking home, late at night. They pulled up in a pickup truck.’
‘Were they trying to rob you?’
He shakes his head. ‘Nope. It wasn’t random. They called out my name before they laid into me. Waited for me to turn around, and then…’
And then it started. The beatdown: a frenzy of kicks and punches from both sides, Hale fighting for what may well have been his life. I can imagine the shouting and yelling, the sound of fists against flesh, the adrenaline running through his veins. The sweat and the blood burning as it runs down into his eyes, almost as painful as the shame of being caught unawares: for Hale, always convinced there was someone out to get him, that might have been the worst thing of all.
This time, at least, it looked like he was right.
‘I mean it, Hale,’ I ask. ‘Who did this to you?’
He sighs. ‘You’re not going to let it go?’
‘Nope.’
‘Scanlon.’ He spits out the word like he siphoned it from a gas tank.
‘Aaron?’
‘Yeah. And a couple of his friends. Older guys, not from school. I don’t know their names.’
‘Would you recognise them if you saw them?’
He pauses. ‘If you’re still thinking about going to the police, Carrie…’
‘Of course I am. You know who did it.’
‘And I know that nobody’s going to care,’ he barks. ‘Don’t you get that? No. One. Cares. Three good ol’ country boys kicked the hell out of a trailer park kid for no good reason other than the fact that I refused to roll over and take it when they decided to give me a hard time. And because one of them is the son of the Head Selectman and the other one has a daddy in the Police Department, nothing will get done. Even if they believed me – which they won’t – then what do you think’s going to happen to them? You think it won’t get ignored, or worse? You think I won’t get made out to be the one who started it? With my reputation?’
He’s right. Christ, I know as well as anyone that it’s hard to get the Eden Police Department up off their asses at the best of times, but for someone from the Grove? Someone claiming to be the victim? There’s no amount of evidence that would leave people thinking Hale hadn’t done something to deserve it.
‘You know what it’d be like,’ he says. ‘“Sure, Officer. That trash Fischer kid was the one who came after us. You know, the one with the drunk for a daddy. Jumped us from the front while we were just out minding our own business and got his blood all over our nice clean clothes. Throw the book at him.” And then all of a sudden I’m the one who’s in the shit, and my Pop’s got another reason to start playing fast and loose with his fists – and trust me, whatever Scanlon and his shit-for-brains friends did, Jim Fischer will do way worse. And that’s just as a warm up. So no, Carrie. No, I can’t go to the police. It’s just not an option.’
His hands have balled themselves into fists of white-hot rage at the injustice of it all, but his voice is calm and measured; he might not like it, but he knows it’s the way things are, and the way things have to be, at least this time. It’s hard to argue with that, even though it takes all of my strength to concede defeat. I don’t want to live in a place where such inequality exists without comment – but I can’t protect him. Not this time. I would if I could, but I don’t know how. Hale’s right, as he so often is. This isn’t my world. It isn’t my fight.
‘OK,’ I say quietly. ‘So now what?’
‘You asking me if I’m going to go after them?’
‘Kind of.’
He shakes his head slowly. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to. I wish I’d been able to get a few more good punches in before they ran off, but…’
‘But what?’
‘But what good would it do?’ He winces as I rub his knuckles with antiseptic; nothing bad is going to happen to those beautiful hands on my watch. ‘Easy, Carrie.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You know, before you came along, I would have gone nuts trying to track those guys down. I would have got myself arrested or worse, just on the principle of the thing. But now…’
‘Now what?’
He sighs. ‘I’m just tired of it all, Carrie. This goddamn town. The goddamn trailer park. Wherever I go, people treating me like I’m an animal, just fighting and causing trouble. Even you, sometimes.’
‘Hale, I don’t…’
‘Yeah, you do,’ he says softly. ‘I can see it in your eyes. But I get it. I can’t really blame you, when I call you out to things like this. That’s just not all I want to be, you know? I need to be more than that. And I think you see that too. And that’s not nothin’.’
He’s right, of course. I’d never say I’m scared of him, because I’m not – there’s nowhere in the world I feel safer than when I’m around Hale – but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s an unknown quantity. The feeling of unpredictability that draws me to him is the same voice of doubt that sneaks into my mind when I least expect it, making it oh-so-clear to me that Hale and I are from different worlds, that I’ll never be able to understand him completely.
He is what he is, that’s all – but maybe, one day, he’ll become something I’m capable of predicting, if not comprehending. If he changes, it’ll be for himself, not for me.
As it should be, perhaps.
‘Carrie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I love you.’
There was definitely no chance of me predicting that. Not in a million years would I have seen that coming.
‘That’s not funny, Hale,’ I say.
‘Who’s laughing?’ Certainly not him; his face is as stern and serious as I’ve ever seen it. ‘I mean it. I’m not just saying it. I love you, Carrie Walker. I really do. Who else would have come out like this for me? Who else would have cared enough? I’ve never had that before. I didn’t think it was even possible for someone to do something like that for another person, let alone for someone like me.’
‘And you think that’s what love is?’
‘Yeah, I do. I really do. Because I know that I’d do it for you, in a heartbeat. Whatever it took, whatever you needed. All that trash from all those songs… I get it, Carrie. It’s not just catchy melodies. It’s what you do when you feel that way. You don’t even question it. You just do it, because the idea of standing idly by while someone you love suffers is the worst thing in the world.’
‘Hale, I…’
‘You know what the worst part was?’ he asks, steamrollering past my objection like he’s scared that if he stops talking he’ll never be able to start again. ‘When they jumped me, I mean. I had that stupid moment of thinking, Well, this is it. I’m fucked. I thought they were going to straight-up kill me right here in this parking lot, and the worst part of it was that I’d never see you again. That’s when I knew. That’s how I know. So yes, Carrie. Yes, I think that’s what love is. And I think I love you. I know I love you.’
The last word is barely out of his mouth before my lips are on his, hungry for him. I’ve kissed Hale what feels like a thousand times since that afternoon under the tree – soft and slow, fast and raw and every which way in between – but never like this. I’ve never needed to before now. Because even though I know I’ve loved him since the first time I ever spoke with him, on that lazy day down by the lake, this is the first time I’ve really known. Known what it felt like. Known it was welcomed. Known what the word really means.
I love you, Hale Fischer, I say with my kiss. I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you bruised and battered and broken, and I love you fighting-strong. I love you quiet and I love you confident. I love you here and now and always. I love you.
But I don’t say it out loud. I can’t. Even though I will myself to phrase it properly, to package my feelings into a neat little box with a neat little bow, the words just don’t come when they’re summoned.
And so I show him with my body, in a way that words could never hope to match.