Chapter Twenty-Four: Uneasy Homecoming

The drive home was swift, once we finally got out of the hospital; it was only half-past noon and at that hour of the day there was little traffic. I dozed off during the ride, lulled by the smooth motion of the car and the hypnotic sight of scenery blurring past the backseat window. Someone- probably Joe- shook me awake when the car halted and I was only marginally aware as he helped me into the house and up the stairs. I actually had to stop twice on the way up to my room. Going up the steps hurt more than I’d expected it to, and that, added to my fatigue, made it a real challenge. My legs were feeling very weak when I got to the top and it was a good thing Joe was beside me, to keep me walking straight.

When I woke up, the clock beside my bed read four in the afternoon. I was lying on my back; my bedroom door was closed and afternoon sunlight was glittering on my window. I blinked around in confusion; I didn’t remember falling asleep and I wasn’t expecting to just open my eyes and suddenly be at home. Then I remembered being discharged, the drive home, climbing the stairs- and smiled. It felt so good to be in my own room, in my own bed! For a moment I luxuriated in the smooth, firm mattress, the fat pillow, the cool sheet...and then I turned carefully onto my side and let my eyes drift over my bookshelves and computer desk, stereo- and Joe, sitting quietly in my computer chair, reading a book.

“Hey,” I said softly, and he looked up with a jolt.

“Hey yourself,” he answered, smiling at me as he pushed his hair off his forehead. “Sleep well?”

“I don’t even remember falling asleep,” I admitted. “Man, I missed this bed.” I took another contented look around the room and noticed that there were no gaps in my books or CD’s, despite the fact that Joe had brought me books to read and music to listen to, as a change from watching the hospital’s TV. “Oh, no, my stuff,” I groaned, sitting up. “I totally forgot to bring everything home!”

Joe’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Don’t worry. Dad and I stuffed it all into the bags while you were getting dressed,” he explained, holding up several empty blue bags that were hanging off my bed frame. “I put everything back while you were asleep.”

“Oh! Aw, thanks, Joe.” I rubbed my face, trying to remember. “I guess this stuff’s knocking out my power of observation, too. I don’t even remember you carrying anything.”

“That’s ‘cause I wasn’t. Dad hung ‘em on the back of the wheelchair.”

“Ohhh.” I yawned, then stretched, carefully. It made me ache inside, but the pain passed quickly when I relaxed.

“Mom’s home, and she’s making seafood chowder, she figures that’ll qualify pretty good as semi-solid. And pudding, I think.”

“Sounds great.” I smiled in anticipation; Mom makes some of the best chowder in the state. “I dunno if I’ll be able to handle the clams, but the rest of it...”

“They do tend to be chewy,” my brother agreed. “But everything else’ll be as tender as anyone could ask for. You gonna be able to get downstairs? You had some trouble coming up.”

“I remember that,” I agreed ruefully, pulling my thoughts away from tidbits of shrimp and crab, potato and carrot and... “I didn’t expect it to hurt like that, but I guess I should’ve. Same way I should’ve expected it to hurt when I leaned over- uses some of the same muscles.” Mussels, and wild rice... “Man, I’m hungry already. When do we eat?” I added, laughing a little.

“It’s only ten after four !” Joe exclaimed, grinning. "Be patient." He put the book down, got up and walked over to the side of the bed.

“That's my line. Say, you’re getting taller again, aren’t you?” I asked suspiciously, looking up at him. He took it as a joke and laughed, resting his hand on my shoulder for a moment.

“I’ll go see if there’s anything in the way of appetizers. So will you come down, or eat up here? Mom already said it’s okay if you’re too achy to manage the steps.”

“Oh.” I gave myself a little shake, chagrined at how forgetful and disordered my thoughts were. “Um, let me think a minute.” I swung my legs over the bed and slowly stood up, feeling Joe’s hand return to my shoulder. Just in case, little brother? Don’t worry, I won’t fall- this time. “The thing with going downstairs is that I’ll have to come back up again.” I pressed gently against my belly, testing for soreness, and found a fair bit. Well, it was to be expected; a three-hour nap, even in my own room, wouldn’t have stimulated a sudden burst of miracle healing. “And I think I’d rather not try that again till I’m a little less sore.”

“Okay. I’ll tell her,” my brother said agreeably, and headed out the door. I followed him into the hall, but turned the other way, towards the bathroom. I got back to my room before Joe did and settled onto the bed again, this time sitting up. I still felt pretty foggy, but less sleepy, content to sit quietly and take in the familiar room- and to muse a little over how apprehensive I felt about being home. I wondered where Dad was, and whether Mom would come up to see me, now that she knew I was awake.

I was distracted from my thoughts when I heard Joe’s voice at the door saying, “Here’s your appetizer.” I looked over and smiled as he nudged into the room, a glass of chocolate milk in each hand. He handed me one and I took it with thanks. It tasted so good- the hospital milk was always skim, which tastes more like water to me than anything dairy. Joe settled back into my desk chair, putting his own glass on my desk, and picked up his book. I noticed at once that he hadn’t come sit right beside me, and was glad of it. Not that I disliked having him nearby- just the opposite- but I felt it was a good sign. It meant he was feeling secure enough about my recovery that the far side of the room was close enough for his protective feelings.

Besides, my bedroom isn’t nearly as unnerving a place as a hospital room, and it’s a lot more familiar. We both feel safer in here.

I took another drink of the chocolate milk, feeling my hunger subside, then slid off the bed again and moved to the bookshelf to find myself something to read. Joe glanced up and observed as I selected the ‘Alex Delaware’ book that I’d never finished reading and returned to the bed. It took me a while to find my place, but once I did, I quickly got lost in the story. I doubt that anyone alive ever could be quite as observant as that psychologist, but it does give me a goal to aim for.

Around quarter to six , with the milk long gone, my stomach started grumbling again. That’s one thing about liquids: the stomach deals with them very quickly and you get a lot hungrier, a lot faster, when you’re not eating solid food. You end up on a three or four-hour ‘feeding’ schedule. And the delicious smell drifting up from the kitchen didn’t exactly help, either.

Mom came up with the chowder at about five past six , just as I was starting to debate with myself about going downstairs after all. She put the bowl down on a pot-holder on my nightstand, then leaned over to give me a hug and a kiss. I forced myself not to turn away, but I couldn’t bring myself to hug her back. “Thanks,” I told her, picking up the spoon.

“How’re you feeling, honey? Sleep well?”

“I didn’t intend to fall asleep, but I feel pretty good,” I replied. “The stairs gave me some trouble, I wasn’t expecting that. But all my walking was on level floors,” I finished, only just realizing it myself. All that recovery and no stair-climbing exercises. “It’ll probably be easier in a day or two,” I added after a moment.

“I hope so. You take it slow and easy, all right?” As I nodded, she picked up my empty glass. “I’ll get you some more milk in a minute. Oh, and your father had your prescription, it’s on the kitchen counter. Let me know if you want it.”

“Okay,” I replied vaguely, shifting to sit on the side of the bed. I moved things around on the nightstand until it looked more like an impromptu table- if a bit lower than most- and then cautiously started eating. Joe put his book down, made some remark about the wonderful smell, and left. Mom soon returned with the refilled glass of milk (without chocolate) and a small portion of soft bread on a napkin.

“Try dunking,” she advised, putting the napkin beside the bowl. I thanked her again and she smiled and left. I went back to eating, savoring the hot, thick soup and wondering why nothing in the hospital had tasted half so good. I even managed the chunks of clam fairly well, chewy though they were. Everything else was very soft, not quite melt-in-your-mouth but close enough. The bread was still warm and had been buttered, and I enjoyed that very much as well.

She’s still paying me attention…maybe… maybe she’s feeling guilty about the fight. Maybe she’s finally agreed that she has been favoring Joe, and is trying to make up for being so indifferent to me. Or maybe it’s just ‘cause of the shooting.

I shrugged off the thought; time would tell, one way or another. Maybe it was a good sign; perhaps we could work this all out without everyone exploding again. I hoped so. I wasn’t strong enough to run out of the house, this time, if there was another eruption- or three.

I hate arguments in general, but fights where I’m involved aren’t quite as bad as fights where I have to watch or listen from the sidelines. At least if I’m involved, I have some effect on the outcome. I can’t control the argument, but I can at least influence it, and control myself as well. But when I’m an outsider, hearing the cruel and spiteful and unfair things that people will say to each other- when I’m watching a relationship disintegrate right in front of me- it’s awful. And the most frightening part is that nothing I do ever makes it stop. Especially in my family; we all have to burn out our anger before we can settle down and listen to reason. Even me, sometimes. Joe hates fights as much as I do, but he handles them better, on the whole. He reacts to them more or less the way he reacts to being badly scared or enraged in any other circumstances: he gets uptight about it in a major way, but when it’s over he shakes it off and is back to more or less normal within the hour. Usually less. (The only exception to this is when he takes it into his head to hold a grudge; those last forever and a day!) Meanwhile, I’m still tense and fretting and have to struggle not to make things worse by brooding over them. Those are the times when I really envy my brother!

When I finished eating, I gathered up the spoon, bowl and glass and carried them out of my room and down the hall. I paused when I reached the top of the stairs, listening as sounds drifted up from the dining room. Voices talking- Mom and Dad, and occasionally, Joe. Clinks and rustles, and once, a thump and an “Oops.” I heard Dad chuckle and Joe laugh, and tried to squash a feeling of loneliness, of being left out. I silently knelt, wincing, to place the used dishes on the top step, then got up and retreated to my bed, feeling discontent and rather divided. Maybe I should’ve made the effort and gone down. But would things be as relaxed and- and- I couldn’t remember the word. Camaraderie, or something like that.

Maybe they’ve gotten used to not having me around. Maybe if I was down there with them, it’d be all awkward.

That made an unfortunate amount of sense. I sighed, pulled myself up from the bed and went down to the bathroom again. When I got back to my room, I tried to continue reading my book, but ended up staring out the window at the familiar street and neighborhood. I watched the summer sun slowly edge down the sky and sighed to think of all the vacation I’d lost. At least it wasn’t like missing school; I didn’t have three weeks worth of homework to catch up on, nor would I have to face stares and murmurs and talk when I returned to classes.

That made me remember my friends, and my spirits lightened a little as I thought about the get-together they wanted to have for me. Then I wondered if anyone had gotten word to Callie, my on-again, off-again girlfriend. She was with her parents in California , visiting family and incidentally checking out whatever celebrities she might happen to run across. I couldn’t remember when she was supposed to get back, and was just debating a look at a calendar to see if I’d written it down, when Joe walked into my room. He was carrying a glass custard dish of chocolate pudding and a clean spoon.

“You okay, Frank? You look down in the dumps all of a sudden,” he said in his straightforward way, sitting down on the edge of my bed as I turned back to the window.

I shrugged. “Joe, did- did Callie ever call, or did anyone tell her?”

There was a significant pause before he answered me. Joe doesn’t have anything specific against Callie, but he’s wary of any girl I go out with. My first ‘girlfriend’, Susie Chambers, tried to use me as a cover for her heroin use and dealing when I was fifteen. Joe warned me several times that she was bad news; I arrogantly (and stupidly) dismissed him as ‘little brother being jealous’, no matter what he told me about her. Joe finally lost all his patience and went to the police, who kept tabs on her (and me) for a few nights running and soon arrested her. I’d been first furious, then shocked, then- finally- humiliated when they told me her first drug-related arrest had been when she was thirteen. And she was not the sixteen she’d pretended to be, but almost nineteen.

Ever since, Joe’s looked somewhat askance at my judgment where girls are concerned. Even he has to admit that Callie’s okay, though; she’s strong-willed and sometimes opinionated, and she likes to take Joe down a couple pegs whenever she can, but she’s as honest as the day is long, sensible, courageous and very patient. She’s also twice as pretty as Susie, easily; Susie went for the ‘bad-girl’ look- like wearing black all the time, wearing some very weird metal jewelry and dying her hair every week- while Callie’s fashionable (at least, I think so) without being too preppy.

“Yeah, she’s called a couple times.” I heard a clink as Joe set the dish on the nightstand and put the spoon on top of it. “But she kept getting the answering machine and not leaving any number to call her back with, so I couldn’t do much. Last night she called- around eleven- and I updated her. She was pretty upset, said she wished she could come right home and see you but there was no way her parents’d let her fly home and then stay home alone until they got back-”

“And you didn’t even think to mention any of this?” I turned to frown at him.

“Sorry,” he murmured, sighing. “It slipped my mind. Anyway, there’s your stuff.” He nodded at the dish and spoon and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

I draped my arms across the windowsill and rested my cheek on the back of my wrist with a sigh. Why I so often take my bad moods out on my younger brother is something I’ve yet to figure out; it makes me feel so wretched and yet I keep doing it. Joe certainly didn’t deserve to be growled at- he’s a little scatterbrained sometimes, but he does faithfully write down and deliver phone messages, which meant that Callie hadn’t left any specific message for me.

And isn’t it perfectly reasonable for him to be a little scatterbrained now, worrying about you day and night, always by your side, doing everything in his power to help you stay comfortable and recover? Look how nicely you repay him- with surly criticism. Never mind your parents didn’t clue you in, either- and Mom and Dad had far more opportunity to notice messages and convey them than he did- no, you take it all out on Joe…

I pushed myself off the bed, stood- wincing as I moved- and left my room to go apologize.

 

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.