Before Riverside

There was pain and then there was pain. Len knew there was a difference.

During the bad year, back in Georgia—long before he'd met Jim and Hikaru—he'd been wide awake one night. He vaguely remembered wanting something from the kitchen, cookies or crackers or hot chocolate. He'd crept out of bed and down the hall, but a noise from his father's room had stopped him. Apprehensive, he'd peered through the crack in the door to see his father doubled over on the floor, sucking in short, labored gasps of air, his face pale and stricken. Next to him his grandmother, her arm around his shoulders, her expression grim. Len's maternal grandmother, who, long after Len's mother had died, loved David McCoy like he was her own son.

A month later, when his father had sat down next to him on the porch, gaunt and wrapped in a blanket, to explain what was going to happen next, he'd been gentle but honest. "We're probably going to have to move to Grandma and Grandpa's house," he'd said, "It's hard for them to keep coming here to help—it'll be easier that way."

Len had known it was coming, but it still stung. The question had bubbled out of his mouth before he'd been able to stop it: "Are you going to die?"

David McCoy had barely reacted. He'd stared out at the darkening sky, the puffy clouds trapping the summer humidity. He hadn't spoken right away, and that was all the answer Len needed.

"You can't die," he'd shouted. "I don't wanna live with Grandma and Grandpa! I don't wanna move to stupid Iowa, there's nothing there but corn and stupid Starfleet people, and—"

"I'm in a lot of pain, Len," his father had said quietly. He'd paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, "But I don't want to die either."

Tears pricking his eyes, Len had leapt off the porch and run off down the hill. No one had stopped him. Eventually he'd come back, because he understood that there was the kind of pain he knew—touching hot metal or turning your ankle on a root—and then there was his father's pain. The kind you were totally unprepared for, that stopped you in your tracks and stole the air right out of your lungs.

Len was vaguely aware that he was lying on his side. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he was afraid to open them. When he'd hit the ground he'd heard something snap.

He tried to take in a breath, and realized he couldn't—the fall had knocked the wind out of him. Running footsteps, coming from far away. He felt himself rolling onto his back, the dead autumn leaves wet and slimy against his bare neck.

Someone—Hikaru—was kneeling next to him saying, "Oh my god, oh my god," over and over again.

Then Jim's voice, urgent: "Len, are you ok? Can you talk?"

His eyes fluttered open. Jim's floppy blond mop and Hikaru's dark, close-cropped hair swam blurrily into view. He tried to shift and felt a spike of terror as he found what was broken. He realized that up until that point he'd only known pain, but never pain, and that now, lying on his back in the leaf litter, he was about to get a taste of what it was like.

"M—my arm—" he gasped.

"Is it broken?" Hikaru asked, wide-eyed.

Len saw Hikaru reach across his body and a jolt of panic shot through his core. "Don't touch it, don't touch it!" he yelped.

"I'm gonna go get help," he heard Jim say. "Ok? Len, I'm gonna go get your Grandma."

"She's not home," Len said, "Nobody's home—they're both out—" And then suddenly he felt it, and his lashes were wet and stinging even though his eyes were closed.

"What about—"

Jim was addressing Hikaru now, who answered in a hushed whisper something Len couldn't hear. He caught the last bit, though: "Jim, what are we gonna do?"

"Stay here," Jim told Hikaru, and Len could hear a note of fear beneath his determination. "Stay with him, ok? I'm gonna get help." Now talking to him: "Ok, Len? I'm gonna go get help. Hikaru's gonna stay here."

He couldn't speak, so he nodded. It was about all he could do.