Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Chapter Twenty-Three: Ambivalent Departure

I sat on the side of my hospital bed, leaning back against the elevated mattress and pillows so the lingering ache wouldn’t gnaw at my abdomen, and watched the second-hand circle the clock face on the wall. It was nearly one-thirty on August fourth and I was waiting for my parents and brother to come pick me up and take me home.

After three weeks of treatment and recovery, I was at last being discharged from the hospital, and my mood was best described as tired and morose. The source of my fatigue was simple enough; I was still on the pain medication, and even at this greatly reduced level, it made me sleepy. My low mood, though, was a little harder to pinpoint. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave the hospital, for hospitals are not comfortable, homey places. They try their best to be, but the treatment always comes first and there’s a dreadful sense of impersonality about them. You’re always just one more patient there, seldom an individual, no matter how friendly you get with the staff. So I wasn’t unhappy to be leaving, but I wasn’t looking forward to going home. I should’ve been, especially after I’d spent so much time wishing I could get home. I wanted my own bed, my own room, my clothes- familiar things. I wanted to be able to do things, not be stuck in one room all day. And the food would be a lot better, and the noise less, and- a lot of other advantages of that sort. But the downside blotted all that out.

The downside was Mom.

It had been almost two weeks since Joe explained what had happened to me, since I’d remembered the fight in the study that had sparked my abrupt departure from our house. The argument that had, ultimately, nearly gotten me killed. Two weeks of getting used to eating again- first liquids, then semi-solid food, since I wasn’t ready for normal food; of carefully sitting up, then standing. Fighting back the pain and dizziness and weakness and gradually recovering the strength to walk around my room, then- slowly- up and down the corridor. The IV and catheter were taken out, the vital signs machine wheeled away, the reduced pain medication administered in pills instead of through the IV tube. Blood tests, X-rays, ultrasounds of my abdomen, more obscure tests on my kidney...all of it painful or at least very uncomfortable. And for every twinge and ache I felt, I blamed my mother.

I hadn’t blamed her for being angry at us. I would’ve been angry too, if I found out I wasn’t getting the full story from someone I trusted to tell me the whole truth. As Joe had said, it wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t honest, either. And not just once, but repeatedly. And Dad had done the same. No- she had the right to be angry about that, even if she disagreed with our stated motive. We’d tried to explain that we hadn’t wanted her to worry; she’d retorted that the only ones we were protecting were ourselves.

That was one issue that was waiting to be resolved when I got home. I only hoped that this time, it wouldn’t involve a shouting match.

But Mom’s favoritism- and her bare-faced denial of it- that, I blamed her for. She, who’d come to me to ask me to persuade Joe out of investigating; she, who’d blatantly favored him with praise and affection and attention; she, who’d taught me to stand up to my wrongs and admit them instead of denying them…and who refused to admit any of her playing-favorites behavior despite how obvious it was... oh, I had problems with that! And the shooting- sure, the man had pulled the trigger, but I wouldn’t have been anywhere near his area if I hadn’t been so hurt and enraged at Mom that I couldn’t stand to stay in the house with her a minute longer.

If there’s one thing I learned from this, it’s how difficult it is to ignore someone when you're stuck in one room and they have constant access to it.

They’d noticed, of course- noticed how my mood dropped whenever Mom came into the room, how I hardly spoke to her and seldom acknowledged when she spoke to me. Well- Joe had noticed, anyway. He had been with me more than Mom and Dad, and he knew I wasn’t so silent and glum when it was just me and him, or if Dad was with us. I had a feeling, though, that Dad put my moodiness down to the effects of the pain medication. I had no idea whether Mom had even noticed my mood or not, nor what explanation she’d given it if she had. I wasn’t terribly interested in what she thought was wrong with me; I just wished she’d leave me alone.

How ironic. You spend years wishing she’d pay you more attention, and as soon as she does, you wish she wouldn’t. But then, all those years, she wasn’t ultimately responsible for you getting shot, either…

I wondered, as my eyes drifted closed, whether Dad had found the guy or not yet, and if he was an old enemy of ours- or Dad’s. It seemed sort of likely; Dad’s made quite a few enemies in his time, and we’ve got a bit of a list started ourselves. People do resent it when you get them into trouble, and amoral, vengeful, determined people are not exactly in short supply among criminals.

I was musing over that, half-asleep, when the door swung open. Joe was the first one in, as usual, and his smile looked ready to meet in the back. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he teased me, coming to my side and smoothing my damp hair. “You look pretty good,” he added judiciously, tilting his head and regarding me with a satisfied air.

“They gave me a shower, and it’s putting me back to sleep,” I explained, smiling up at him.

“Well, get dressed and come home and sleep in your own bed,” he urged, helping me sit up straight.

“Sounds like a plan, and I would’ve done it sooner if you’d arrived sooner.” I stopped as Dad came in, then blinked as he closed the door behind him. Mom wasn’t with them?

Dad must have seen my puzzlement. “Your mother is grocery shopping,” he said, handing me a pile of clothes.

“Oh. Thanks.” I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Relieved, yes, but the fact that grocery shopping ranked higher on her priorities than me getting released from the hospital made me feel pretty cross.

I’m not looking forward to this, I’m really not...

If I’d only known.

“She said she wanted to make your first meal at home special...and you’ve gotta admit, big brother, that making anything ‘semi-solid’ special takes a bit of shopping around,” Joe explained gently, reading my mind with his usual skill. Or maybe I looked as resentful as I felt.

“Oh! Yes, definitely. I’m still not sure exactly what ‘semi-solid’ is,” I agreed, losing some of my irritation and feeling kind of bad about leaping to a conclusion. “Same way I never could figure the difference between sweet and semisweet chocolate chips.”

Dad chuckled and rubbed my head, mussing my hair. “And much testing you did to try and figure out the difference, Frank. I’ll never forget finding you with those two bags open, taking first from one bag and then the other- and trying to persuade me it was a scientific experiment!”

“It was!” I protested, sliding from the bed and wincing a little as my feet touched the chilly floor. “I was doing a taste test!”

“Uh-huh. It never dawned on you to hold your taste test on a volunteer, did I?” Joe taunted, sliding his arm around me to help me walk to the bathroom. “You coulda saved yourself so much trouble, there was someone perfectly willing to help you out with it, but no- off you go and do all the hard work yourself.”

“Setting myself up for my lot in life, little brother,” I explained solemnly. I had intended that to sound like a joke, but there was enough truth in the comment that Joe and Dad gave me peculiar looks. I like to do things myself and dislike asking for help. It’s nice of other people to be willing to help me, and I don’t object to being helped; I just hate asking for it. Because then people feel obligated to do something, whether they want to or not.

Joe shook his head at me, then closed the bathroom door and left me to get dressed by myself. “Give me a holler if you need a hand,” he remarked through the crack.

“I should be okay.” And I was, though it took me about twice as long as usual to dress. Case in point...Joe’s ready and willing to give me a hand, but I don’t ‘give him a holler.’ I do it on my own. At last I stepped out of the bathroom, the ugly sulphur-yellow hospital smock in my hand, and moved slowly to the bed to drop it there. “Only one thing; I need my shoes,” I remarked to Dad.

“On the chair,” he replied as one of the nurses rolled a wheelchair into the room. Being wheel-chaired down to the discharge desk is standard procedure, and usually annoying, but this time I didn’t mind. The mere thought of walking through all the long hallways made me ache a bit. I could manage several ‘laps’ up and down the hall outside my room by now, but from here to the desk would be pushing it.

“Were you given his prescription yet?” the nurse asked. I knew her, of course; we’d shared several discussions about music in between various medical routines.

“Yes, we have it,” Dad said. “Tylenol with codeine,” he added to me as I picked up my shoes and sat down.

“Oh.” I leaned down to put the sneakers on and immediately changed my mind, sitting up with a gasp. I hadn’t done any bending over before, and hadn’t thought about how much it would hurt to do so. “Ow,” I remarked softly as Joe hurried over to me. He didn’t suggest that I let him help; he took my sneakers away from me, got them on my feet and tied them without a word. “Thanks,” I said, and he stood up and smiled through the concern in his eyes.

“Okay?” Dad touched my shoulder.

“Yeah, I just didn’t expect it to hurt quite so much.” I got up a little more slowly and sat down in the wheelchair. Dad rolled me out of the bedroom and I stifled a pang of almost-regret at leaving the place. Joe walked beside me, falling back or dodging forward every now and then to avoid running into people and things. We got to the elevator and down to the discharge desk fairly quickly, but had to wait in a line for a while. Seemed, from what Joe heard and relayed back to me, that someone was having an insurance issue.

“Hey, Joe,” I said thoughtfully after a while.

“Hmm?” He stopped fidgeting and looked at me. I hesitated, not sure how to ask the question.

“The guys- Biff and Chet and Tony and everyone-” My friends had called several times apiece while I was recovering, but hadn’t been allowed up to see me while my kidney was healing. The doctors had explained that they wanted to keep my contacts to a minimum, to reduce the chance of contracting some infection that might damage my kidney further- or even result in losing it altogether. I hadn’t argued.

“Yeah, I was gonna explain about that,” my brother began, flushing. “I told them I’d call and let ‘em know when you were cleared for non-family visitors, but I kinda forgot until last night.”

“Oh,” I answered slowly. So they hadn’t forgotten about me, just hadn’t known they could come in and visit. “Well, no sweat. They didn’t miss much visiting time- only two days. And between all the therapy and me constantly falling asleep, we wouldn’t have gotten much visiting done anyway.”

Joe looked relieved. “When I remembered, I did call,” he remarked, sounding a little defensive, and I could only imagine how much ribbing he’d taken for forgetting. “Told ‘em maybe it would be good to wait till you have some energy back before they dropped over to see you.”

“Drop over? But I’m leaving-”

“Come by the house, I mean. Give you time to get off the painkiller and actually wake up once in a while,” he joked, and I swatted his arm. “And when you’ve gotten used to solid food again, they want to do a big bash for you, if you don’t object.”

Joe knows better than to throw ‘a big bash’, or any sort of bash, without warning me first. I never did like surprise parties much when I was young, because I hated being the center of attention. Too embarrassing. But the celebration of my thirteenth birthday- when my parents invited everyone I knew to surprise me despite me telling them both repeatedly not to- totally killed any tolerance I might have had for being surprise-partied.

“I don’t object,” I replied cheerfully. “Pizza party?”

“Italian, anyway. Unless you’re having major cravings for French food?”

“Ah, too rich,” I demurred. “And the portions are always so tiny...”

Dad, behind me, laughed quietly. “That’s why. The richer the food, the smaller the portion.”

“And the higher the price. No thanks, Italian will do fine, at least for the moment. If I change my mind and want Mexican or something...or Indian...”

“Spicy,” Joe warned as we moved forward a few paces.

“Well, yeah. Either way, I’ll let you know.”