DISCLAIMER: See all the others: no change, not mine, no foolin'
A/N: Thanks once again for reading & reviewing. It's so appreciated! And though not a review from this story, thanks, Chaosbaby, for the note about the 'Briley' name-sign you saw! Who knew Mama & the pharmacist moved to NYC!!
FOGLE TOWERS: streetside
They pulled away from Fogle Towers, Logan's head tipped tiredly back against the headrest, eyes closed. His face was a portrait of hopelessness; he didn't see it yet--he didn't understand that the messages lined up on his machine waited to get their audience with Eyes Only's mind and spirit, not giving a damn how the crusader accomplished all he did. Bling sighed inwardly, wondering what he could do to bring Logan back to himself and his work. It was important to so many–and so important to the man at his side...
Bling glanced over again, frowning at the strain he saw on Logan's face. He was well aware that it was the product of the emotional workout Cale'd just had, and not the physical: although it was still work for Logan to get in and out of the car, their work-outs in therapy were now appreciably longer, with more sustained physical effort than was involved in these mere transfers. No, this exhaustion was a product of the additional reality check he'd just had, the visit to his home to see some changes already made, to see what else needed to be done...to see yet another stanza of what was lost to him... Bling wished that all his patients could see the glass as half full, but that just didn't happen. And it didn't seem to matter whether or not they were the rare ones like Cale, who enjoyed the luxury of being able to buy all the accommodations available–some patients could only see the loss, at first...
Mind made up, Bling turned north, away from the hospital, accelerating into the flow of traffic. If Logan had truly been worn down by the trip, Bling would have taken him back right away. But given the nature of his exhaustion, Bling wouldn't relent. He had one more stop to make...
43rd STREET REC
Bling pulled up in a parking lot next to a large brick building, now showing its age but also all the signs of loving, home-grown maintenance. The parking lot needed repaving, though, and the bumps they took, with turns to avoid more, roused Logan from his indulgent torpor. He lifted his head, looking around. It was the first time he'd spoken since getting back in the car.
"What's this?'
"C'mon and see." Bling opened his door to get out.
"I thought we were going back..." It was a request–no, a plea: he felt exposed, out in public like this; he still couldn't stand the thought of anyone he knew seeing him like this, dependent, wings clipped. It was bad enough, the strangers' pitying glances or unabashed, rude stares...
The one time he tried to talk about it with Bling, the therapist practically ignored him, dismissing his observations as being too self-conscious, overly sensitive, products of his imagination...hadn't he? Well, Bling hadn't had to face what he was facing, tied to the chair; of course he thought it didn't happen. But it did...
"Got something to show you." Bling turned back toward Logan, finding exactly what he expected-- a sulky expression not completely covering the fact that underneath, the man was still frightened of entering the world–and his future–as he was now. He softened a little to nudge, "let's go."
"What?" Prickly now, Logan wouldn't make eye contact, but wasn't looking at the surroundings outside or seeing the car's interior. That meant he was again focused on the inner demons not yet purged. But this time Bling held some hope...
"Come see." Bling said yet again. He stepped out of the car and bent back down to say, "I'll be waiting just inside the doors."
"Bling..." Watching the therapist walk away unconcerned, leaving him alone in strange surroundings, Logan sat back, feeling indignant–and pissed. Some bodyguard he'd make, just taking off like that, leaving Logan to drag out the chair and himself, again, alone, this time in a torn up lot... What kind of a therapist leaves their client out and vulnerable like that, anyway? he wondered. Before he'd been shot, he huffed to himself, no one would have done something like that to him... he wouldn't be in the hands of someone hauling his ass around town, making demands...
Hating the injury and all that came with it, Logan hunkered down in the seat, arms folded tightly. Well, fine, he decided. He could be stubborn too, as Bling happily reminded him too frequently. He'd just wait 'til Bling got fed up and they'd both go back...
...until he realized two minutes later, with a sinking feeling, that Bling was more stubborn than anyone he knew–if anyone could wait inside, hours...days...weeks–Bling could do it. Logan snorted...then sighed... and finally turned to struggle with the chair, grimly, to get it out from the back seat, so he could put it together. The sooner he got moving, he could hear Bling saying, the sooner they could go back to the hospital...the sooner he could go back into hiding...
The parking lot surface was pitted, cracked and rough the entire path into the building, making even Logan's light, quick chair a strain to maneuver up to the door. Struggling for a moment with the stiff, heavy door, Logan managed to pull it open, noting a dingy brass plaque that, once upon a time, had proudly announced that one was entering the 43rd Street Recreational Center. Logan pulled his way into the building. Eyes adjusting to the inside dimness, Logan saw Bling look back at him from the inner doorway in which he'd been leaning–
...which led into a wooden-floored, mid-twentieth century vintage basketball court...
...which was, at the moment, bearing up under a noisy, clanging, obscenity-laced and sweat-soaked basketball game of blinding speed and spinning wheels...
"What took you so long?" Bling drawled.
Logan didn't move, frozen. Bling had talked about this, about these guys who played basketball in chairs, a proposition that Logan could not consider and would not hear. No way could basketball–real basketball–be played in a wheelchair, and not by people with injuries like his. But Bling persisted, Logan had ignored or refused or argued–and suddenly, he'd found himself hoodwinked into being here. He glowered, saying nothing, again hunkering down to wait.
"Oh, c'mon, Logan, come watch–you're here, you might as well learn something."
Bling could play him like a violin: he couldn't not bite at the bait: "Learn something?"
Bling grinned as Logan reacted, enjoying the point scored. "Yeah–that you've been wrong, all this time, about wheelchair basketball. It's real basketball and it's not for sissies." As if on cue, behind Bling was a noisy crash as two players went after the ball, careening into each other and spilling one of the two out on to the court as the other deftly caught himself , arm out, when his chair started to pitch over. Logan watched in surprised admiration as the man, with a twist of his shoulder and a shove, righted himself, and continued to stare as the player then pushed over a few feet to grab his opponent's chair and pivot it around to his fallen opponent who was pulling up to sit. The game suspended itself for the very few moments all this took, the others chatting or stretching casually, the spill clearly nothing unusual to them. The whistle sounded and play picked up again. "See?" Bling offered.
He did. As much as he wanted Bling to be wrong, just once, again he wasn't, and Logan couldn't take his eyes off the ten players pounding up and down a regulation basketball court, with regulation goals, setting picks and sinking hook shots and making sweet steals to lob court-long passes to a speedy guard ahead of the pack...
Thirty minutes later, Bling spoke again. "Change your mind?" he asked, quietly.
Logan tore his eyes from the clusters of men breaking for the afternoon, game over. These guys played a game that at times was a tougher, harder one than he was used to seeing in any back-alley pick up game played on foot. He blinked at Bling, his admiration for the players demanding his honesty. "Yeah." He almost smiled a little...
"Hey, BL!" Before either could say more, one, then two more, of the players coasted over to where the pair still waited in the doorway. "New blood?" The first grinned at Logan, then up at Bling.
"Hi, Corey–hey, guys" Bling added the two behind. "Logan, this is Corey, the team's captain; that's Don, and this is Miguel. Guys–Logan."
Hey, Logan," As Corey reached out to offer his hand, affably, Logan realized he was taking the hand of the player who had caught and righted himself mid-tumble–a feat that still amazed him. He smiled, a bit sheepish suddenly, and mumbled a hello. As the others also offered their hands in greeting, Corey asked, "So Logan, you play?"
"What, basketball? No..." he shook his head quickly.
"But you did...." Bling corrected.
Corey pounced on that, not even giving Logan a moment to glare up at Bling. "Good–so come out with us, practice, you'll be back at it in no time."
As Bling watched carefully, he saw the light in Logan's eyes shift as he dared to consider it, rejected the possibility... reconsidered... and shrugged, "I'm still not too good at just...moving, yet..."
"Oh, basketball will fix that." laughed Miguel, easily. "We''ll go easy on you–at least the first practice."
"If you got BL as your coach, you got it made." Corey encouraged. "He's got more moves than the dudes been in the chair since they was babies."
As the others chuckled, welcoming him in a comfortable, unselfconscious way, Logan found himself wondering if he could ever do something like this...he dared to glance up to Bling and say, "I'm not sure BL is ready to take me on as a basketball project." He looked back to the others on wheels, refreshingly eye to eye with him, out here in the Big World. "He tells me I haven't done enough of the boring, day to day stuff yet."
"Ah, really new blood..." Don piped up. "Good. I won't be the newest, then..."
Logan looked at him, surprised. The guy, who looked to be maybe twenty five or so, was stunning in his ball handling, coordinating his forward motion with ballet-like dribbling, passing and shots. He played as if he'd been at it since he was a baby...
"Look, just come watch a practice, if you like" Corey offered. "Next Tuesday at 7, right here."
"Thanks" Logan finally smiled, uncertain, but pleased with their reception, and sat by as the others spoke briefly with Bling about a tournament and an injured player. He considered how vital and alive and strong these guys seemed. A real mix of ages and shapes and colors and, apparently, backgrounds, not one of them could ever be taken as an invalid...and he watched them with another new hope in his eyes...
As they went out to the car, Bling was quiet, hoping Logan would speak first–which he did. "Bling--" he wavered, words insufficient. "Thanks."
Bling's eyebrows went up–that was even more that he'd hoped for. "You interested?"
"In playing?" At Bling's nod, Logan stopped, looked down for a moment, then back up to Bling. "Yeah, I am, but..." Cale paused, a self-consciousness there, defenses down. "I think I need a little more time, to let it soak in..." He hoped Bling could understand that this was something he did not want to rush and end up hating because he hadn't done things right... "Is that okay?"
Bling saw something new in the man's eyes, and nodded. "Yeah, we can do that."
"Thanks" the soft smile was genuine, open this time.
"Get in the car" Bling smiled at him, his own hopes buoyed considerably. "Time to go."
They'd pulled away from the rec center and had been riding in silence for at least five minutes, Bling noting that Logan was lost in thought, but not brooding or withdrawn as he so often was. Bling felt increasing relief that things might just work out for Cale, after all, and let the man work on his thoughts without poking at him...
"So...do you...go in and work on modifications in everyone's house?"
Bling glanced at his passenger, now speaking after long moments of silence, and wondered what trail of thought had led to his question. He nodded to say, "If they want. Or if they want to do the work themselves, I might go and help plan it out." Bling looked back to see a look of interest–and the wheels turning. For whatever reason it happened, it appeared to Bling that he just might have suddenly gained the attention of Eyes Only, on a topic now of keen interest to him–and he wouldn't let the opportunity pass, not if EO might be coming out of retirement... He continued, " I've worked a lot with the guys who did your place–they really don't need much input from me, except maybe the person's height and weight, any special matters. They've been doing this a long time–used to be they did a lot of public buildings, back when the ADA was actually enforced. But now, no one's checking compliance–it was one of the first things to slide when the economy tanked." Bling mused. "Nowadays, the only compliance they fund is curfew enforcement and sector pass checks, and let the ramps cave in."
"And the rec center parking lots have more craters than the surface of the moon..." Logan sat quietly for a moment, staring at the city streets before him, seeing the people making their way along the sidewalks, the voiceless thousands who were just trying to get by...remembering the gym full of men in chairs, for whatever the reason, hustling and fighting and demanding that they were as normal as anyone... none of them, not any on the street or in the gym, should have to fight the economy, too--and certainly should not have to fight their own government. It was obscene...After several moments Logan turned back to ask, "Could you have ever imagined, fifteen years ago, that you'd be living in a police state?" He sighed. "How'd we get to this, Bling?"
Bling shook his head, not sure how Logan had made the leaps from topic to topic, but feeling hope growing further to hear it. "Hell, isn't that what you've been doing, these past, what, five or six years, looking into how the government has gotten so turned around and corrupted? If in all that time you haven't figured it out, I don't know that anyone can answer that."
"I guess we let it happen; it's not the first time--something as catastrophic as the Pulse, there's an immediate emergency and a panicked response; everyone buys into the idea that it's worth giving up some individual freedoms for 'the good of society'–and we didn't question it when they said it had to be that way to keep us 'safe.'" Logan laughed humorlessly. "But this time it really got away from us. Suddenly we look up and we have to have a government pass to go more than ten blocks from home." He looked back out across the Seattle streets. "We never learn..."
Cale fell silent again, lost in thought; this time Bling's subtle glance to his passenger showed him that Logan was brooding again–but for the first time since he'd been hospitalized, Cale seemed to be focused on everyone else's problems–not his own immobile legs. He let Logan ride in silence, remembering the beneficiaries of Eyes Only's crusades.
It wasn't too long before Logan spoke again. "What about your clients who can't even buy the stuff-- the bars or whatever–let alone pay for the changes. What do they do?"
Bling shrugged, keeping his voice neutral. "They do the best they can, without." He tried not to look over at his passenger. He dared to believe he was hearing Eyes Only waking, rousing after a forced hibernation–and reminded himself to practice patience...
...silence...then...
"Didn't you tell me there was 'Net access in the medical library?"
"...mmm-hmm.."
"You can get me in?"
Bling chuckled. "Yeah. But it's not so much 'getting you in'--it's more like pointing you there. Any of the unit residents are welcome to use it, any time." Bling again stole a look over to Logan, wondering if he truly was seeing something more there...when Logan didn't speak right away, Bling nudged with a little nonthreatening 'I told you so:' "See what you missed all this time, not paying attention to the orientation stuff they tell you? No tellin' what else you might have had at your fingertips..."
It was silent for only another few seconds. "Bling--" Logan looked over to the man behind the wheel, and it dawned on him that the unassuming, quiet man had rescued him, and had given him another chance at life...the man who, he now understood, he had learned to trust above anyone else in his life, as it now was... "Can we go back?"
"Back --where...?" Bling held his breath, hoping it didn't show...
"To my place. I..." Logan looked away for a moment, appearing to be rattled a little, even having made his decision, whether or not he had truly admitted to himself yet. "Maybe...I should get those messages..."
...To be continued...