Christmas Dance (pt2)

I woke up lying face down on the cold asphalt. I didn't know where I was or why I was on the ground so I started to roll over to sit up. Right away a pair of hands held my shoulders and a man's voice I didn't recognize said, “Stay still. Don’t get up.”

My glasses had been knocked off and I couldn't see anything clearly. All the things in front of me were diffused as if filtered through a rainy windshield. There were a lot of lights but I couldn't see any faces clearly and none that I knew. I also wasn't able to recognize any of the voices of the people holding me down. Then I had a dreamlike vision; I didn't know if it was real: a pair of white shoes, seemingly not attached to anything, rising and falling. Then I heard a woman’s voice, loud and strong, “Don’t move him. I’m a nurse.”

I tried to roll over again to see what was going on, because it still hadn’t dawned on me that I was the one she was talking about. Again the hands on my shoulders kept me down, but this time it felt like there were more of them, and some at my side holding my waist and legs. That’s when I got scared. I heard Kyle’s voice but I couldn’t make sense of what he was trying to say.

I began feeling pain all along my body. Everything seemed to hurt at once, but some places more than others. And I started shivering uncontrollably, which didn't help the things that hurt. It was a cold night, but mostly, I think, I was shivering from adrenaline.

At the hospital I was examined, cleaned up, and bandaged. My foster parents, Roberta and Big John, showed up and the doctor told them I had a concussion and a lot of scrapes and sprains. The right side of my face from eyebrow to chin was one big road rash and my right ear stuck out now, red and swollen. I had similar scrapes and swelling on just about every joint on the right half of my body. They ace-wrapped my knee and elbow, splinted two fingers on my right hand, and a nurse put a butterfly bandage on the cut over my right eye. As banged up as I was, the doctor felt that x-rays weren't necessary.

“Wake him every hour,” the doctor said. “Ask him a few questions when you do. If there are problems, bring him back in right away.” and with that we were off. I was given a pair of crutches and released at about three in the morning.

Back at the Reynolds house, it was decided that I should sleep on the couch so that Roberta, Big John, and Kyle's older sisters, Debbie and Donna, could take turns waking me on the hour. When I woke late the next morning, I was confused all over again: why am I on the couch and why do I hurt so much? Roberta, Kyle, and Debbie were sitting in the living room staring at me which added to my confusion.

Slowly, I remembered what happened the night before, but I didn't remember anyone waking me every hour. “You guys forgot to wake me up in the night.” I managed to croak out.

Roberta laughed that throaty laugh she has (which I always thought was from her pack-a-day habit), “No we didn’t, dummy.”

Kyle said,“We woke you every hour, just like the doctor told us.” He had a big shit-eating grin on his face. As I was his best friend, I assumed the grin as him being happy that I was alive.

“How come I don’t remember?” I asked, trying to get myself into a sitting position.

Roberta laughed some more, “You carried on conversations until we told you to go back to sleep so we could get some rest.” If the Bronx accent wasn't enough, using words like "conversations" and "yous" always reminded me that Roberta grew up in New York.

“I did?” I felt so groggy and confused. I didn't even remember walking out of the hospital.

Later in the day, Roberta asked if I wanted to call either of my parents and let them know what happened. The last number we had for my mother wasn't working and we had no other way of reaching her. It had been a while since we'd heard from her and I knew that she could be anywhere in the state now. I wasn’t sure we should tell her anyway; there wasn’t anything she could do and it would just make her worry.

With my father, I was a little concerned that he would read it in the Los Gatos Daily which might cause trouble. He didn’t seem to take any interest when I saw him in town three weeks ago, but I felt that calling him was the right thing to do.

I dialed the number I had memorized years ago and my dad picked up, “Hello?”

“Hi, dad? It’s me, Jack.”

“Oh, hi. What’s up?”

“I, uh, I just wanted you to hear it from me. I was in an accident last night. I was run over by a drunk driver.”

“Oh?” There was a long pause then and I’ll never know what he was thinking, but what he said was, “How’re you doing in school?”

“Um, fine, I think. We just finished the semester and I'm pretty sure I passed everything.”

“Good.”

“Uh, well, okay. I, uh, I just didn’t want you to read it in the paper and worry, so I called.”

“Okay. Thanks. Bye then.”

“Bye.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, perhaps some worry or concern for my situation, but his attitude took me by surprise. Maybe he assumed because I was calling that I wasn’t hurt, or at least not hurt badly. He didn't even sound concerned about school though - it was just something to talk about. At that moment, I realized that I was truly a foster child now. My mother had disappeared and my father didn't care. Things could only get better!