There was the hope for awhile that he would regain function in his legs. There was that hope. Once it was clear he wasn't going to die they started hoping for the next thing, the legs working again thing that would make it possible for him to get out of this one.
The doctors were talking to his dad, telling him that with a spinal cord injury they had to wait for the swelling to go down before they could determine the true extent of the injuries. Jimmy heard this in a vague, dream like state. Oxygen tubing in his nose, an I.V. in his arm, various monitors around him making strange beeping noises. It was all he could do to be alive, never mind walking again.
His friends came and visited. Most of his friends. Marco cried, just cried right in front of him in the visitors chair, and all he could say was, "Oh, Jimmy…" Hazel cried, too, but not in front of him. Her eyes were always red and she sniffled but she didn't cry. She was being strong in front of him, even through the pain killers and the haze he could see that. Paige smiled at him, but her eyes were red, too. They always looked that funny sea green they got when she cried. Craig looked stunned, he took deep breaths and glanced around a lot. Spinner, however, couldn't seem to make it in.
No Spinner. No legs working again either. Each day that went by past the magic date when the swelling had gone down enough was proving that the paralysis was permanent. One psycho went into the school and out of all those kids there that day, all those kids who had ever shoved him against the lockers or tripped him or called him a name, out of all those kids he was the one who got shot. What sort of lousy odds were those? He'd won the lottery alright.
Psycho Rick, with his encyclopedic knowledge and his strange speech patterns and his general inability to fit in and his anger. Had he actually thought he was starting to like the kid? Had he really, after what he did to Terry? He relented, he'd given the kid a break and nearly got killed for it.
Every day in the hospital was a boring day. Test after test that simply showed the same thing, there was no connection from his brain to his lower body. He'd never walk again, but that wasn't the end of the list of nevers. He'd never run, play basketball, jump, be normal, again. Never.
At first Hazel came to see him a lot. Everyday. As time wore on she came less, still a lot, still at least three or four times a week but not everyday. Paige's visits tapered off, too. She averaged once or twice a week. Spinner never came. Never. Not once. It was Craig and Marco who came everyday.
Craig and Marco became his links to the outside world. The world beyond the hospital room and the hospital bed and the hospital staff and himself. The smell of that outside world clung to their clothes, it was in their hair. He could see the pen marks on their hands from the school day, could see lipstick on Craig's cheek where girls had kissed him. That world was real and alive and vital. Not like the hospital. The place of death and nevers.