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28.
The click of the door shutting behind me was inaudible above the beeping of the heart monitor, but my intake of breath as I surveyed the room was not. On a hospital bed not dissimilar from my own was Glen– his face was darkened with fading bruises, and stitches ran down the left side of his forehead. His blond hair was matted to his skull. His eyes were closed, but with all the injuries he had I couldn't possibly imagine it was in peaceful sleep. His right arm was in a cast much like the one on my left arm, but unlike mine Glen's cast covered not just the upper portion but the entire length of the arm.
I stepped closer, hesitantly. The room was so quiet that my single footstep sounded like the explosive discharge of a gun.
"What, are you guys back already?" Glen asked, eyes still closed. "No way was that enough time to get me a– Char? Shit, man, what happened to you?"
With his eyes opened, Glen wasn't quite as horrifying a sight. His usually tanned skin was marred, but his gaze was as blue and vibrant as ever. Hearing my friend's voice made everything slip away for a moment– the anxiety of my conversation with Edward, the tiresome lecture from my mother, the fear of the last moments I remembered before waking up in the hospital. It was like being whisked into a separate reality. Although, given the situation, not necessarily a happier one.
"I'd ask the same, but I guess I already know what happened to you," I grumbled.
Glen grimaced. "Don't," he said pleadingly, and then added with a tiny smile that was full of hope, "You've already let me down by not being Matt with my Chuck Box burger."
I knew that every time this conversation came up, it would be the same. Glen would avoid it, and he would look at me beseechingly, wishing for me to avoid it as well. But how could I?
I crawled onto the tiny hospital bed next to him, our uninjured arms touching as we lay side by side. Glen was one of the few people whose touch comforted rather than revolted me. "Are you kidding? You get hamburgers? I'm stuck with hospital food," I joked, doing my best to refrain from saying something rude.
Glen handed me his phone. "Just text him and tell him you're here."
I didn't bother explaining all the gory details in a text, just sent– I want two. Make one without ketchup. You want two? Okay, fatass
Glen and I snickered over that for a moment before lapsing into silence. Very rarely would I say a silence with Glen has been uncomfortable– after all, he laid with me for days on end while I did nothing but stare at the ceiling mutely and cry intermittently. When you've shared that experience, you acclimatize quickly to quietness. But it was difficult, more difficult than I thought possible, to say nothing. Saying the things I wanted to would only sadden my friend, and I had no desire to do that. But not saying them was almost as bad. Someone had to– Matt wouldn't, even Ben wouldn't. And Glen didn't have any support system outside of us and Josh and he was the problem in the first place.
"He should be in jail, Glen," I finally snapped in impatience as my thoughts spun out of control.
"Don't be like that," he said, voice instantly taking on the weariness of someone who'd seen more than a 17 year old should. "It was just a fight. You just– you can't understand because you don't have a brother."
"And thank God for that because if it's normal for siblings to beat each other into hospitalization then I don't want anything to do with it!"
Glen didn't respond. I stared steadfastly at the ceiling and knew he was doing the same.
"It wasn't a fight," I whispered to the white tiles above after the briefest of silences. "I know it wasn't, because it never is. You don't fight back."
"It's not– he was drunk. He didn't mean to."
"I know he was drunk. He's always drunk. When isn't he?"
"He's all I have."
Glen's tone was subdued and broken, and I shut my eyes as if it would stop me from having to be a part of the entire situation.
He went on, "It's been hard for him. He's been stuck with me since he was 18. He didn't have to give up his life to take care of his 11 year old brother but he did, and–"
"Stop making excuses for him. You would have been better off if he didn't."
"But then I wouldn't have any family." He spoke so quietly that some parts of his sentence were drowned out by the heart monitor. But I knew what he was saying. He'd said it before. He'd probably say it again. "We're the last of the great Whitlock soldiers," he went on in a tone that wanted so badly to be light and joking but just wasn't.
"He's dangerous," I said, my eyes still shut. I half-focused on the red spots trickling through my vision, comforted by the simplicity of the shapes. But then the splotches became red streaks across a blackened battle field, and I opened my eyes to focus once more on the whiteness of the room. "I should just tell the cops since you won't– at least then you'd be safe."
"I wouldn't do that to you," Glen said softly, and then added waveringly, "I didn't do that to you, when you didn't want to go to the cops."
"That's different! It was a one-time thing; this is always!"
"He harassed you until you moved! Josh doesn't want to hurt me, if he deserves to be in jail then Jason certainly–"
"Don't say that name."
My voice was more harsh than I intended it to be– but it always was, when the subject turned to him.
I felt Glen crossing his arms next to me, and a moment later heard him mumble, "Ow..."
Glancing over I saw that he was now gently cradling his broken arm in the other rather than holding them defensively against his chest.
I scoffed. "Nice try."
The tension ebbed away like blood from a wound. "Shut up... So." Glen turned slightly and I did the same, facing him more directly. "What did happen to you?"
"I fell out a window and down two flights of stairs at a hotel."
"What were you doing in Phoenix?" he asked. "I mean– uh, I'm sorry about those stupid texts, I was just upset."
I knew what he was thinking– that I'd come back to do something about Josh. I also knew that he'd feel both guilty over my injuries and distressed by my hatred of the brother he loved so much if I let him go on thinking about it.
"Those fucking texts, Glen, were written in all manner of languages which I cannot speak. One was French. But not good French– I could barely make heads or tails of it. I'm going to need several dictionaries to decode them."
"No, no, don't bother," he said quickly, relief evident in his voice. "I mean, they were unimportant. They didn't say anything that you... that matters."
I wondered what they'd said. They'd been sent several hours apart, so it meant that all day something had been going on.
"Why didn't you call Matt?"
"I can take care of myself."
"Call Matt next time."
"He was away," Glen said, sounding annoyed now. "On a business trip with his dad. Ben was busy."
"He said he was busy when you called?" I asked skeptically.
Glen grumbled under his breath a little. "I didn't call. He'd been telling me for a week about this date he was going on."
"Ben doesn't date, he fucks casually." Ben has rounded the bases more times than Hugh Hefner, I swear– except he has no interest whatsoever in the things you'd see between the pages of Playboy. I'm not sure how he manages to have so much sex, considering there must be a limited number of gay men in Phoenix, let alone gay men willing to have casual sex with a total stranger.
Glen shook his head. "That's just the thing, though, it was a date. He– I mean, he's been eating."
Our conversation was interrupted by a ruckus in the hallway.
"I wonder what that's about?" Glen mused as the sound of muffled voices grew louder and more distressed.
"Missing patient'd be my guess," I told him with a dismissive wave of my hand.
"Char?" Glen was as good at loading his voice with disapproval as parents were.
I sighed. "I'm quite alright here."
"The nurse in charge of you will be in shit."
"They'll find me in a bit without my help."
Glen frowned, but didn't argue further. "So what were you doing in Phoenix?"
"Oh. I, um. I just was stressed out in Forks."
This time Glen's disapproval was sharper and less easily avoided. "You came for drugs," he stated without the barest hint of question.
"No. I mean. Shit. Yes, but. I haven't done anything except fall out a window and lie in the hospital, so, I'm just as clean as before."
Covering up the whole vampire situation with a tale of relapse made it awfully difficult to avoid lectures, it seemed. But for once, Glen didn't lecture me. He didn't ask to talk about my feelings. I watched him pick at a loose thread on the hospital sheets with his good hand. I suspected that he was still thinking of Josh, the only thing that was ever capable of taking his mind off of my problems, it seemed.
But he proved me wrong when he finally spoke. "Amanda's pregnant."
I started, and knocked by head against the wall. On top of the pain I experienced just moving, this made me hurt enough to shriek briefly.
"Ow, fuck, what?"
"I mean, it's a recent thing. I'm not saying– you guys weren't even having sex for like half a year before you moved, obviously you would have known."
"Right, right."
"It's good for her," Glen insisted.
"She's 16! How's it good?"
"It– I mean, she's really pulling her shit together. Finding out she was pregnant made her, you know, have an epiphany. She's been clean since right after you moved. She's getting better."
"She shouldn't have to," I mumbled. "She never would have been involved in any of that shit to begin with if she wasn't dating a fuck up like me."
"You know I love to make you feel better, man, but– yeah. It wouldn't have happened if you didn't get her into it." Glen curled closer into me, and we huddled together like a pair of men in the trenches. "Still, she doesn't blame you. And– things are looking up now."
I didn't respond, feeling my weariness settling over me. My entire body was ebbing with pain, and my mind was going numb from so many emotionally exhausting conversations. I heard my own breathing settle and deepen, and Glen's heart monitor slowed gradually as we laid there into the rhythm of someone deeply asleep.
