Page 91 of Out of My Mind

His mother didn’t say anything back. She started sobbing.

Gideon covered his mouth and sunk to the floor.

CHAPTER thirty-one

Mac

When Mac woke up, he felt pain. His back ached and legs throbbed and head pounded. His body was an orchestra of torture, and the overture wouldn’t stop.

He looked around at the unfamiliar room. The blank walls and the smell of disinfectant slammed his senses.

Mac wailed out in agony.

A nurse ran into the room moments later. She tapped some things on the machine and greeted Mac with a wide smile.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Just give me one second.”

The pain was blinding, literally. Mac’s vision turned white. He wanted to chop off his whole body and leave just his head. He looked down at the tubes and wires covering him. Red and purple bruising blotched his skin.

Just as the pain reached a fever pitch, it began to subside.

“That should be better,” the nurse said, unfazed by his squirming and yelling. She had probably seen worse.

“What happened?”

Before the nurse could answer, someone grabbed his hand. He looked up at his mom, and his dad right behind her.

“Oh, my baby.” She tried to lean down to hug him, but the wires and bed made that an obstacle. He still took in her warmth. His dad kissed him on the top of the head. Mac had to be on drugs because that did not just happen.

“You were in a terrible accident,” she said.

The night came back to Mac in flashes of recognition. The headlights. Being chased. Something slamming into his back. Bits and pieces of a puzzle that wasn’t complete, but was put together enough to make out what it looked like.

“It was Justin Weeks,” Mac said. Saying that name was a deeper kind of pain.

“We know,” his dad said. “He’s been arrested.”

“He has?” Mac tried to sit up, but it caused a sharp hit of agony. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” his dad said matter-of-factly.

“I’m going to need a little more.”

“I’ll take it from here.” A policeman stepped forward. He seemed to be in his thirties, with a sturdy build and a thick mustache that Mac couldn’t stop staring at. “I’m Officer Calhoun.”

“Hi.” Mac winced from a general pain that he would deal with later. “What happened?”

“It seems that the Weeks boy hit you with a baseball bat when driving, and you stumbled off the road over the railing. You tumbled a ways down into the woods.”

Mac caught flashes of trees and bare branches hitting him. He thought he dreamt that.

“How did anyone find me?”

“Well, a woman was driving on the road a few minutes after you were attacked. She found you and called nine-one-one. You were hit right by a private driveway, and the owners had installed security cameras, so we were able to get the whole thing on tape. Justin’s currently out on bail, but we’re watching him closely.” Officer Calhoun had a tiny smile that only Mac seemed to catch. “I have to say, you are extremely lucky, Mac. That road doesn’t get much traffic. If that woman hadn’t stopped, who knows when we would’ve found you. And if Justin had attacked you just a quarter of a mile in either direction, we wouldn’t have caught any of it on the camera.”

His mom trembled behind the cop as that reality sunk in. His father held her tight. He looked at his son with warmth Mac hadn’t realized he missed.

“How did she know to stop?” Mac asked.