Damaged Grump (Bad Chicago Bosses)

My heart pounds with hope as she leads me to the small, bright room that acts as Barry’s makeshift classroom. It’s filled with everything from sensory toys to textbooks and custom computers fitted for his condition.

She heads to the small cabinet where his cognitive therapists keep their notes, and rifles through it until she extracts a few sheets of paper. She offers them to me with a vibrating excitement.

I scan the handwriting on the page.

Definitely Barry’s, but it’s not quite the childish chicken scratch I’ve gotten used to.

It’s smoother, more refined, more like the steady look of a teenager’s writing.

The words are written in stanzas, simple poetry.

Words I recognize.

I’m fucking speechless.

“These are...Jesus Christ.” I swallow, my mouth becoming a desert. My palms prickle like a live current lashes through me. “These are lyrics. His lyrics. ‘Suit of Armor.’ He remembers them?”

I look up with my eyes about to fall out of my head.

“He hums it. Says it’s a catchy song, but he can’t remember every word,” she says. “I’m sorry we haven’t contacted you sooner. But since he has his ups and downs, we didn’t want to get your hopes up just yet. We wanted to be sure it wasn’t a flash in the pan. Also, I don’t think he remembers he wrote it.”

“It’s...” I shake my head sharply, too floored to speak.

Fuck, there go my stinging eyes. Having actual human emotions gets annoying, but right now, I’m too happy to care.

“It’s exceptional, Julia. Thank you.” I take a ragged breath and look up to find her smiling, her eyes wet. A reminder that these aren’t impersonal caretakers collecting a check; they care about Barrett. “Is he awake?”

“In the loft.”

I angle my head, listening.

“I don’t hear anything,” I say softly.

“He’s writing, I bet,” she tells me.

I swallow a feeling of pure astonishment.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Barrett’s had good days before, and then it all slips away from him—but he’s never come this far. I need to tamp down my own excitement, or I might end up pushing him further and faster than he’s ready for.

And I might make him think I’ll only love him if he’s the old Barrett, when that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

I will always love my brother.

Even if he never improves at all.

That love yanks me upstairs, where I find him hunched over his piano with a notepad and a pencil, furiously scribbling. I linger in the doorway, watching him, then ask softly, “Hey, you. What’re you writing?”

He jerks in surprise, lifts his head—and beams at me. “Roland!”

He remembers me again.

As Roland, not Rollie.

I fight back a choked sound, breathing to steady myself as I smile and step into the room.

“Just thought I’d drop in and say hi. What is that?”

He turns the notepad to show me. Musical bars.

He’s written notes scattered on haphazard lines—though, mixed in, I see something else.

That familiar §14.2 again.

What does it mean?

It nags me fiercely.

It must have something to do with his old contracts, maybe, but those are long gone. He destroyed the paper copies right before his incident.

There’s no way Haydn would ever let me take a look at his backups, denying he even had them.

I push that demon out of my head and settle down on the piano bench to celebrate my brother’s recovery, leaning over the notes. I can already tell just from skimming that there’s no true melody here, but he’s trying.

I grip his arm lightly below the wrist before grinning.

“That looks fun,” I say. “Want to try and play it?”

“Oh, heck yeah!”

Heck yeah?

That’s fourteen-year-old Barry, all right.

He used to say that all the time, right before he eased into high school and found out heck was for kids.

We both had guitars then, and if I stopped by his room and asked if he wanted to do a little blues show for our parents, that would be his answer every time.

Oh heck yeah!

“Okay. I’ll scale high, you go low,” I say. “Let’s try and work it out.”

And God, I try.

Too bad it’s just not in me today. Barry plays circles around me while I try to keep up like the lame, distracted asshole I am.

It doesn’t help that he’s not playing the notes on the paper—it’s all in his head, apparently—although he looks at them like he’s reading off the page.

The refrain to “Suit of Armor” comes out like it’s part of his muscle memory.

Something he can’t forget even when he thinks he’s doing another tune.

Right now, listening to my brother play that song so flawlessly fucking breaks me.

After a few tries, I need a break, resting my hands on the keys and offering him a torn smile.

“Sorry, Barrett. I can’t seem to find my muse today.”

He gives me a long, thoughtful look. It’s heart-wrenching to see him looking at me so clearly.