The next time I woke up all three brothers were still there. My doctor came in to check on me, and shooed them all out. He was tall and kind-looking and reminded me of somebody, though I'm not sure who. His name was Dr. Bryant. He seemed too young to be a doctor, though he certainly knew what he was talking about. I asked him a million questions about what all the tubes and wires on me were for, and he was patient and answered them all and didn't talk any differently to me than he did to Darry, which I liked. He said he guessed I might have to stay for a few days, until my infection cleared up. I also had a dozen or so different nurses who always seemed to be showing up when Darry and Soda were in the room, but pretty much ignored me when I was alone. They were all at least twenty years older than my brothers, but Soda flirted with them anyway. Darry was cordial but less enthusiastic. After he finished with me I drifted back off to sleep.
I awoke to a face that looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't place it until I looked in his eyes..
His eyes were so green. I remembered thinking that they had looked like Pony's, but actually they were a completely different shade of green.
"Do you remember me?" He asked.
"Yes," I said. I did. "But I forgot your name."
"Luke," he said. Right. Luke.
"You found me," I said.
"Well… the dogs found you. But I was there," he said.
"Thank you," I said.
"I'm glad you're OK," he said. "I didn't know it at the time, but I went to school with your brother Darry."
That wasn't surprising. A whole lot more people knew of Darry than he knew of them.
"Darry's here, somewhere," I said. "Want me to have somebody get him?"
"No, No trouble kid. You need to rest. I just wanted to check in on you, I was here with someone else. Just tell him that Luke Kennedy said hi. I was the senior kicker his freshman year."
I wouldn't remember all that. I tried to remember simply "Luke, kicker."
I had trouble staying awake for more than an hour or so at a time. Every time I awoke there were different people in the room. Sometimes it was one of my brothers, or Ben, or Two-Bit, but I was surprised at one point to wake up and find Steve sitting in the chair by the bed. He saw me wake up and appeared highly annoyed. I obviously must have looked surprised to see him because he said, pointedly,
"Soda had to drive Darry to work. He told me to wait here with you." He made it clear that this was a great inconvenience to him.
"It's fine, Steve. You can go. I'm fine here."
"Soda told me to stay, so I'm stayin'." Just to make it known what a pain I was to him, I'm sure. I couldn't believe Soda would leave him, he seemed to be realizing a bit more that Steve did not particularly care for the company of either myself or Pony, but maybe there was nobody else who could stay with me. Or maybe Soda just figured I wouldn't wake up. I was wishing I hadn't, when he started in on me.
"You know, for a little kid, you sure cause a lot of problems for your brothers."
"You know, Steve, I didn't do this on purpose."
"Yeah, well, it would be nice if you used a little common sense once in a while. Now you're stuck in here and Darry and Soda are stuck spending their hard earned money on your damned hospital bills."
I hadn't thought about that. It must be costing Darry a fortune to have me in the hospital. Leave it to Steve to bring that up.
"I don't know what you want me to say, Steve." I didn't.
"Don't say anything. Just stop being such a stupid kid."
I sat there without answering and a few minutes later Soda came in. Steve and I just talked to Soda like our little exchange had never taken place, but we didn't speak to each other again. I was relieved when he left.
"Soda, you don't have to have somebody watching me every second," I said. "Nothing is gonna happen to me."
"I know," he said. " I just feel bad, you waking up with nobody here."
I wanted to say that I would have preferred nobody to Steve but I didn't. I don't know why Soda likes him, but he does, so I held my tongue, for his benefit.
"So what are we going to do today?" Soda joked, looking down at me completely confined in bed. You just had to smile around him.