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“It’s Sunday,” she reminds me. “I’m here to pick you up for dinner. At the Gilroys’—I tried calling but you didn’t answer,” she says, moving in my peripheral toward my bedside table. Turning my head, I watch the stranger who is my sister pick up the cell phone she gave me on the advice of my therapist a few days ago, because warnings and reminders beforehand will make transitions and changes in his routine easier for him to process. “You know these things work better if you turn them on, right?” she says, flashing me her straight, white stranger smile.
I look away from her without smiling back. “So I’ve heard.” I’m being a dick. I know I’m being a dick, but I can’t seem to stop. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really want to. I like it when they’re mad at me, like to keep them that way, because when they aren’t their tone changes. The way they look at me is different.
When they aren’t mad at me, I can see their pity. I can feel it. Hear it in their voices.
And it makes me want to eat my gun.
Which probably makes it a good thing they took mine away from me.
I listen to her sigh. Open and close the drawer on my nightstand to retrieve the charge cord she stashed there and plug the phone in. “I ran into Declan in the hallway,” she asks, moving toward me. “What was he doing here?”
“I dunno.” I shrug, watching her move from my peripheral into my direct line of sight. “Can’t remember.” It’s a lie. I can remember but I don’t want to talk to her about it. She doesn’t know what happened after she left when we were kids and she doesn’t need to. She hates Declan enough without me giving her a reason to blame him for what happened to me.
She eases herself into the chair next to me. “You don’t remember?” She sounds concerned when she says it. “Ry, he was just here.”
I give her another shrug.
Her stranger face crumples a little under the weight of her worry. “Maybe I should call—”
“Jesus.” I lift a hand and swipe it over my face. “Look—I can’t remember is my polite way of telling you to mind your own fucking business, okay?”
“Oh.” She sounds both relieved and hurt when she says it. “Okay. I was just worried that—”
“What?” I ask her, forcing myself to look her in the face when I say it. “Worried that big, bad Declan Gilroy came here to hurt your retarded, crippled brother?” I look away from her. Back toward the window, just in time to watch Dec’s truck pull out of the parking lot. “In case you haven’t heard, I might be retarded, but I can still take care of myself just fine.”
Yeah, against a few soft-bellied orderlies maybe, but against someone like Declan you wouldn’t stand a chance, Ranger. Declan Gilroy would have absolutely no trouble with ripping out your spine and shaking it in your face.
“Don’t call yourself that.” Her tone is hard again when she says it, telling me I’ve finally managed to piss her off.
“Call myself what?” I scoff at the window and shake my head. “Retarded or crippled?”
“Either.”
Laughter slices it’s way up my throat like a rusty blade. “Well, what would call it?”
“I’d call it a TBI.”
TBI.
Traumatic brain injury.
“Same fucking thing, Hen,” I shake my head at her like I feel sorry for her. Like she’s delusional. “Call it what you want but it’s the same fucking thing.”
“It’s not.” She wants to shout it at me, I can tell. The Henley I knew, my real sister, would’ve. She would’ve shouted it in my face and probably bloodied my nose for good measure. The Henley she is now, dignified and refined, whispers it. Her ankles crossed, hands clasped together in her lap like she’s having tea with the Queen of fucking England. “The doctors say you’ll get better. You just need—”
“I know what the goddamned doctors say.” I look away from her because I can’t stand the way she’s looking at me.
Time.
I need to give it time.
I need to be patient.
And I need treatment.
But there’s a waitlist with the VA that doesn’t get me in to see a specialist for another six months and when Patrick offered to find one who would work with me privately, I flat out told him no. I’ve taken enough from him as it is. “You know, for someone who keeps insisting that I’m not retarded, you sure to treat me like I am.”
She doesn’t say anything, her lack of response pulls my gaze away from the window. She looks as angry as she sounds, her jaw clenched tight, one hand clutching the other in a white-knuckled grip that’s probably the only thing keeping her from punching me in the face.