Title: How Roger Broke His Arm -or- My First Lesbian
Author: London
Feedback: Oh, come on! Writers as a breed live off of approval. We suck the marrow from every comment, extract all possible meaning… leave our English papers until 10:00 and write fanfiction as "warm-ups"…
Pairing: None
Word Count: 1988
Rating: PG-13 (little Roger has the same mouth we all know and love)
Genre: general/comedy
Summary: Roger tries to see aliens and ends up in the hospital with a broken arm. But did he truly fail?
Notes:Felt iswhat happens when you put your wool sweater in the warm wash: the scales on the fibers loosen, then bond together, creating a small, thick, furry piece of fabric. Yes, this is relevant to the story. Felt as a verb means 'to make felt'. (I knit. A lot.)
The ending may cause offensive, but it's not meant to, it's just Mark and Roger being ignorant kids.
Special Thanks: nah
Spoilers: none
Warnings: Some pretty serious cussing, cussing with reference to religion, discussion of injuries
Disclaimer: Jonathan Larson created RENT and it's probably now "owned" by a film studio

Thirteen-year-old Roger Davis sat on the gurney, topless, holding out his left arm to the doctor and breathing heavily. "This is awesome," he whispered to Mark. Though Roger was clearly in pain, his hair matted thick with sweat, the glamour of a cast and the thrill of staying up until three in the morning kept him grinning fully, up to the moment Roger grabbed Mark's wrist. "My mom's here," he blurted certainly.

"Are you sure?"

Roger nodded. "She's down the hall. Ow!"

The doctor, a relatively young woman with plastic-framed spectacles, raised her eyes and commented snippily from behind chestnut fringe, "Mr. Davis, your arm is broken. Your bone is in two pieces. If you move it, you will cause yourself pain."

Roger rolled his eyes nonchalantly. "Okay, if I hold still will you talk more about the in two pieces thing? Because that's awesome to me. I'd like to know more about that."

Mark clutched his stomach. He hated blood; he hated injuries. Roger's Atari games made him queasy, albeit due to Roger's narration; he had returned the Lord of the Rings trilogy to the library after hearing it mentioned in passing that Faramir took an arrow to the shoulder. The word 'tampon' made him feel faint. When Roger tumbled, the sound of his bone snapping had caused Mark to thump to the floor and vomit.

"I'll go talk to your mom," he volunteered before Roger could convince the doctor to discuss his injury in more detail, and slipped out of the curtained area.

Mrs. Davis arrived with a face of fury, red at the cheeks and brow, eyes gone buggy, her hair disheveled. Though the twisting of the purse handle in her hands betrayed the truth of her state, her worry for her son, something in the contrast of her usually complimentary blue eye-shadow and black-dyed hair against the vibrant red-orange of her skin gave Mark Cohen the distinct impression that any wrong answer would earn him a sound wallop.

In this moment, bathed in the penetrating odor of disinfectant and the searing false lights reflected off white-blue walls and floor tiles, Mark learned the true composition of his intestines. They were woolen. He knew this because in the heat of his terror, they felted. "H-hi, Mrs. Davis," Mark stammered.

She had always been an imposing figure, tall, determined to suck the air out of the room, but never before had Mark been quite so unable to focus on anything but Roger's mother. 'She is going to kill me,' he thought calmly. "Where is my son?" Mrs. Davis demanded.

"He's…" Mark motioned.

Without a word further, Mrs. Davis turned and swept aside the indicated curtain. "Roger Michael Davis!" Her shrill cry echoed through the hospital's clean corridors, rattling carts. Jars of medications and antiseptics crashed to the floor.

Roger recoiled from his mother, then jumped at the pain in his arm. "Jesus fucking Christ!" he yelped. "Mark, you could've fucking helped-- ow, Mom! I'm hurt already, good thing we're at the fucking hospital!" This last comment related to the smack Mrs. Davis had given her son in retaliation for the words spewing out of his mouth. Mark jumped. That could've been him. "Lay off, Mom."

"Honestly, Roger, you should know better-- when your father hears about this--"

The doctor interrupted, raising her voice, "Mrs. Davis, your son doesn't know what he's saying."

Mrs. Davis turned her heavy green eyes to the woman. They were terrifying eyes, eyes that rent souls. "This is a family matter," she snapped. Her attempt at intimidation caused Mark to back against the wall. Roger gritted his teeth, but in pain or annoyance, Mark could not say. The doctor only stared coolly at Mrs. Davis. "Anyway, my son is clearly injured and apparently only half-treated. Why is there only a nurse attending here? I demand that a doctor--"

"I am the doctor," the woman cut in. "And you are harassing my patient. Look, he's thirteen. Of course he knows that word, and with the painkillers he's on you can't expect much of him."

"Painkillers?" Mrs. Davis repeated in surprise. Then, quickly recovering herself, she demanded to know, "If he is on painkillers, why did he express pain?"

"Because," the doctor explained, calmly but clearly nearing the end of her tether, "without your consent, we couldn't give him anything strong. Now, if you would please fill out the forms at the desk…"

Mrs. Davis looked from the doctor to her son and realized that she was defeated. With a clearly displeased "Humph!", she turned her nose up, swung around on her heel and march to the desk as the other end of the hall. As she passed, Mark flattened himself against the wall. When she had gone he burst forth and sprinted to Roger's side. "Did you hear?" he demanded.

"Yeah," Roger replied, grinning hugely. He glanced at the doctor, but she had returned to plastering up his arm. "I think I might've just cussed for the first time in my life without getting my ass kicked."

"Don't let it become a habit," the doctor warned him, suddenly an adult and not at all the impressive knight-figure who had stood up to Mrs. Davis and lived to tell the tale. "You boys had better tell me how this happened."

Roger sighed. "We already told you, I fell off the roof at Mark's house."

"And what were you doing on the roof?"

"Getting down the frisbee," Roger lied smoothly.

"Uh-huh." The doctor turned to Mark and asked, "What were you doing playing frisbee at night?"

Mark was a good boy. He kept himself clear of trouble, visiting the hospital only for shots, the principal's office only for recommendation letters and the Jewish Community Center for youth activities and rugalach. It was Roger who broke bones, received endless lectures, and smoked cigarettes behind his church. Roger was bad. Mark was good. Lying never crossed his mind, because the truth could only protect him. One never heard of being caught out in the truth.

Raising his big, blue eyes to gaze directly at the doctor, he lied in a virtuous tone, "It glows in the dark, Ma'am."

Once Roger had his cast on and was explaining to Mrs. Davis what had happened, dodging the fingers desperate to grasp his ear and haul him to the car, Mark called his sister. "Hey, Cindy?" he asked, holding the payphone with a handkerchief. Who knew what diseases grew in the petri dish of the speaking plate? After all, this was a hospital. "Can you come get me?"

"Mark, it's three-thirty," Cindy said.

"Yeah, but you went to bed at six. I know you did."

She sighed. "Okay. Where are you?"

"The hospital. Roger fell off the roof and broke his arm so I took him to the hospital. Come and pick me up?"

She agreed. It was not until she had him in the car, his eyes focused on the headlights sweeping the road ahead, that Cindy asked, "Okay, Mark. Why was Roger on the roof?"

Lying to doctors was one thing. They weren't really people; doctors, as Roger had explained, were authority figures. The authority figure category was a broad one, and all creatures within its parameters expected to be lied to. "The trick," Roger had explained patiently, "is not to sound like you're lying. You're good, so people don't expect you to lie. That's lucky. It's really just creative storytelling. Thinking fast." He had executed lying drills, asked Mark a barrage of question in a surprisingly authoritative voice, until Mark could spin a web faster than a spider after six cups of coffee.

Cindy was definitely not an authority figure. She was Mark's sister, who had grown up with him. She knew his tells, and he hated lying, anyway. It was unnervingly easy and made Mark question everything he heard. "Roger thought there were aliens," Mark answered honestly. "He climbed out my bedroom window, through the tree onto the garage roof, trying to see the aliens."

"Wait, didn't he jump off the garage roof once?"

"Twice," Mark answered glumly, "when we were bored last summer. He didn't fall off the garage roof. Said he couldn't see through the trees and climbed the gutter up to the roof proper, then he fell onto the garage roof from there, then rolled off the garage roof and fell onto the ground."

Cindy winced. "Is he all right?"

Mark considered for a moment. "They did his arm up in a cast," he replied at last. "Roger was really excited. I think it was worse for me than for him."

"And what was he using when this happened?"

Mark choked.

It was summer holiday, so without school, Mark didn't see Roger again for a week. He called to ask if Roger was all right and spoke briefly with one of Roger's sisters, but when Mrs. Davis heard who had called she hung up. That was the difficulty with Roger and his parents. They knew he was bad--and he was. But he was their only son, their prince, and though Roger caught hell for his misbehavior, his parents maintained to the rest of the world that some outside influence had caused their son's apparent misbehavior.

Mark sat up one night, reading a library book about Mars because if Roger was obsessed, Mark thought it best at least to know what he was talking about. The screen on his window fell, releasing a cloud of dust and dead insects.

"Crap!" Mark jumped out of bed to replace the screen, but Roger was already halfway through the window. He somersaulted through the air quite accidentally, landed hard on his rear and grinned up at Mark. "Hey," he said.

"Um… hey." Mark offered his hand and hauled Roger up. He noticed that one of the supports on the screen had snapped when Roger fell on it. Baseball, Mark thought immediately. Yes, a stray baseball would explain the snap. "How did you climb up here with only one arm?"

Roger shrugged. "It wasn't easy," he admitted. "Sign my cast." He shoved his broken arm towards Mark.

Gaping in disbelief, Mark glanced at his watch. "You climb through my window at eleven fifty-three to ask me to sign your cast?" Roger had not exactly asked. Roger never exactly asked for anything.

"You don't want to?"

Mark sighed, grabbed a pen from his desk and scribbled messily, 'Get well soon. Mark.' Roger read the message and said sarcastically, "Aw. Anyway," and this was without sarcasm, "I actually came to tell you the true results of the mission."

Roger slumped on Mark's bed, grinning madly. The insanity of the occasion bothered Mark. Nothing made sense. Roger had just climbed up the wall with one hand at midnight. Mark didn't want to consider how Roger had punched in the screen without falling. "What mission?" Mark demanded.

"The aliens, of course!" Roger replied, throwing his arms up dramatically and letting them fall. How could Mark think of anything else?

"Oh." Mark sniffed. Usually Roger hid the smell of his cigarettes, nicotine or marijuana, under cheap cologne and peppermint candies, but tonight he smelled only of sweat. It was an unintentional habit of Roger's to be noticeably odorous. "Are you high?"

"Of course not. Anyway it was a complete success," Roger decreed.

Getting high? Mark wondered. Oh--the mission. Roger hadn't thought twice about drugs. "How do you figure that one?"

"Well, I heard my parents talking about that doctor, and they figure she was a lesbian."

"A what?"

"I dunno, someone from the planet Lesba I guess. So we did see an alien, and she set my bones, too! Oh, man, Mark, did you hear the snap? I swear…" As Roger babbled excitedly, Mark shook his head and wound the camera his parents had given him for his last birthday. He needed to catch this on film.

THE END!