Edward Adrift

me when I was in school made it miserable for me a lot of the time. I never tracked how often I disliked school, but it would be fair to say that the truly surprising days were the ones that I enjoyed. I liked the work; if I could have been alone at school, just me and my teachers, I might have had a fun time. I don’t want that for Kyle. I don’t want him to have to feel that way about school.
    “Tell your mother,” I say.
    “Edward, can I ask you a question?”
    “Yes.”
    Kyle isn’t looking at me. “Did we have fun?”
    “Kyle, you’re my first and best friend. We always have fun.”
    “After you’re better, will you come see me again?”
    “I promise I will.”
    He covers the distance between us and hugs me, and it hurts terribly, so much that, at first, I think I’m going to pass out. But I don’t pass out, and I hug him back, and it hurts again, and I don’t care.
    Finally he lets me go.
    “Good-bye, Edward,” he says, opening the door.
    “Good-bye, Kyle,” I say. “Tell your mother.”
    He’s gone now, but I can hear Donna say, “Tell me what?”
    I’m sneakily clever sometimes.
    Sheila Renfro comes into my hospital room and closes the door behind her.
    “Don’t get comfortable, silly,” she says. “You have to get up and walk. Doctor’s orders.”

    It’s amazing to me that it’s nearly 2012 and the only cure for broken ribs is to let time heal them.
    I don’t find that approach altogether appealing when I’m made to get out of bed and walk. There is no other way to say it: it hurts like a motherfucker. That’s not a precise statement. Of course there are other ways to say it, but why would I say it any differently? My way is direct and emphatic (I love the word “emphatic”).
    I swing my legs off the left side of the bed, a maneuver that hurts no matter how delicately I try to perform it. As my torso torques (that rhymes, sort of), I try to scoot my back along the bed so I don’t have to aggravate my ribs. I manage this somewhat successfully, but then my feet are on the floor, I’m on my back, and my butt is sliding toward the edge of the bed. This isn’t good.
    Sheila Renfro and a nurse, whose name is Sally, reach for me.
    “Give us your hands,” Sally says.
    I lift my arms, and my ribs scream. Not literally, of course. Ribs don’t have mouths or voices.
    They grip my hands and drop their rear ends like anchors.
    “On three,” Sally says. She counts it off: “One…two…three.”
    Sheila Renfro and Sally pull hard on my arms, and I try to shove myself up with my feet. The pain is the worst it has been, and I scream.
    Sally, I guess, has seen a lot of people scream. She seems unconcerned. Sheila Renfro cups her palm on my face and tells me, “You did good, Edward.”

    Sheila and I make two laps around the hospital hallway. I tell her that I have to pee, and she says, “Go ahead. They put a catheter in you. What do you think this is?” She taps a bag that hangs from the monitor I’m pushing. It has yellow liquid in it.
    “My pee?”
    “Well,” she says. “It’s not mine.” And then she laughs.
    Sheila Renfro is pretty funny sometimes.
    “What are you going to do when you get out of here?” she asks me.
    “I don’t know. Drive back to Billings, I guess.”
    “It’s a long way when you’re feeling bad. It’s a long way under any circumstance.”
    “Yes. The distance is unchanged by my physical condition.”
    “That’s what I’m saying.”
    “Dr. Banning told me he didn’t want me to fly.”
    “You could come stay at my motel for a while.”
    “You’d let me?”
    “Of course. You’re going to pay, aren’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    Sheila Renfro laughs. “I was just kidding. You don’t have to pay. You can be my guest.”
    Sheila Renfro is pretty funny sometimes.
    “I could pay, you know,” I say. “I’m fucking loaded.”
    She puts a hand on the small of my back. It feels warm, and for just a moment, I forget the pain.
    “I know you are, Edward,” she says. “Don’t cuss around me.”

    Sheila Renfro says she’s going to stay with me in the hospital. She doesn’t put it in the form of a request. It’s a declaration.
    I tell her I don’t know if they’ll let her, that hospitals have rules about such things. When Sally comes into the room to give me my Percocet, which is a kind of painkiller, I ask her if Sheila Renfro can stay in my room.
    Sally says, “Absolutely, we can set up a reclining chair for her in here, if you’re