Losers Weepers (Lost & Found 4)

I shook my head, wanting to shoot up in bed and punch something. Putting my fist through that beige wall I’d been staring at all night would have been a good start. “Will I walk again?”

The doctor was looking at me as though he was waiting for me to return the favor, but I couldn’t do it. Hearing him tell me my life might be over would be bad enough without seeing the same message in his eyes.

“Maybe,” he said at last. “Maybe not. Like I said, it’s too early to tell. After some more tests and your body has some time to heal, we’ll be able to answer that question, but for now, I don’t want to offer false hope. At the same time, I don’t want to offer no hope.”

“Aren’t you just a regular ray of sunshine,” I muttered.

“I’ve been accused of worse.”

The sun had risen high enough to stream through the window, bathing the whole room in light. I wished the curtains were drawn. I wished there wasn’t a window there to begin with. I didn’t want the light, because it reminded me of the dark . . . the place I was retreating into.

“When’s the soonest I can be discharged?” I asked. “It’s not like I packed anything and got comfortable, so it shouldn’t take long, right? Think you can find someone to wheel me down to the curb? I’ll hitch a ride home from there.”

The doc let out a sigh as long as it was loud. “If you want to guarantee you’ll never walk again, that sounds like the way to do it.”

I finally made myself look at the doctor. He wasn’t as old as I’d originally thought from just seeing his eyes. I guessed being in his line of work, seeing lives ruined, must have had a way of aging him in other ways. He stuck his hand in the air and waved when he noticed me looking at him.

“You and I both know I’m not going to walk again, don’t we, Doc?” I said, steeling my face. “You know the likelihood, probably down to the exact percentage, of a person ever walking again if they wake up paralyzed from the neck down. So why don’t we cut the ‘therapy and tests’ shit and get me out of this hellhole?”

To the doc’s credit, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. “I also know that percentage decreases every single day you stay paralyzed. Would you like me to give you those numbers as well?”

I blew out a sharp breath. “I don’t need to know the numbers to realize I’m fucked.”

Doctor Payton scooted closer to the bed and set his tablet in his lap. “You want to know how many people I’ve treated like you?”

“There’s only one ‘people’ like me,” I said under my breath.

“That’s the answer I get from everyone. You all think you’re invincible right up until you’re not. Then when you’re forced to confront your mortality, you throw in the towel and give up completely.” The doc’s voice filled the room in the same way the sunshine did—way too damn much. “You cross your arms, wave the white flag, and settle into the mentality of being ‘fucked.’” The doc huffed, shaking his head. “If you think your approach is unique, you’re deluding yourself.”

I shook my head when I wanted to rip the room apart, piece by piece. “Okay then, doc. If you can look me in the eye and tell me I’ve got a good chance of walking again, I’ll stay and do whatever tests and therapy you’ve got up your sleeve. You tell me that, then I’ll stay. But if you can’t, then I’m not going to lie to myself and the people I care about while I suffer through tests that tell me what I already know and therapy that won’t do anything but keep my muscles from atrophying.”

Knowing what back injuries did to people was a blessing and a curse. I’d been around the bull riding circuit long enough to hear the stories and watch former competitors turn into vegetables, breathing into wheelchairs to get them to move. Like the doc had said, I’d never thought it would happen to me. I waited for the doctor to look me in the eye, and when he finally did, I knew what he was going to say.

“My job isn’t to lie to you, Garth. My job is to be straightforward with you and work on a treatment plan to help. You’re right—it’s more likely you’ll never walk again than you will, but that doesn’t mean you won’t walk again. It isn’t a guarantee.”

My gaze drifted back to the ceiling before my eyes closed. Reality? Fuck off. “Then if you don’t mind showing me the door, I’ll be on my merry quadriplegic way.”

The doc stood, shaking his head the entire way to the door. “Sure, I’ll get right on it. Let me see if I can find a taxi to drive you all the way home to Montana.”

The doctor had barely left the room before a couple other people surged through it.

“Where’s Joze?” I asked before I caught myself.

“Nice to see you too, cupcake. Thanks for the warm welcome.” Rowen clomped into the room looking like she was prepared to wrestle a bear. She plopped into the same chair the doc had just been in, and Jesse came in behind her, waving at me as he came around the side of my bed.

“Shit, Jess, and I thought I was in bad shape.” I looked at my friend, trying not to resent him for being able to stand and rest his hands on the shoulders of the woman he loved. It wasn’t him I was mad it—it was my spine and the bull who should have known when he was beat and the circumstance I was neck-deep in. Literally.

Jesse rubbed his face, where the stubble was long enough to be noticeable. But it wasn’t just his lack of shaving that stood out. He had dark rings below his bloodshot eyes and rumpled clothing. From the look of it, he’d slept in those clothes. During the whole ten minutes it looked like he’d slept.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” he said with a shrug, looking away. “Hotel beds suck.”

I knew the real reason he hadn’t slept, and it wasn’t because the bed at whatever hotel they’d stayed in had been a little too soft or hard. Jess was like me—we could sleep anywhere, anytime, even on a slab of granite if it was the only flat surface around. Cowboys slept when they could, where they could, and they sure as hell didn’t whine about some plush hotel bed.

“Yeah, hospital beds suck too,” I replied, not begrudging my friend for lying to me. Had our roles been reversed, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep either. “So where’s Joze?” Apparently I couldn’t catch myself the second time either.

Rowen was in the middle of chugging a monster-sized cup of coffee, but she stopped mid-gulp to answer my question. “Josie is talking with someone about wheelchairs—”

My head whipping her direction paired with the look in my eyes was somehow enough to get someone I’d thought un-shut-up-able to shut up. Mid-sentence. At least I hadn’t underestimated my ability to be intimidating.