A steady beep, beep, beep was annoying me. It was as bad as a mosquito buzzing in your ear. "Somebody turn it off," I thought. "I'm trying to sleep here."
I felt something cool and wet against the skin on my forehead. I tried to raise my arm, but pain shot through my shoulder.
"You moved your hand," someone said. "Do it again, CW. Please."
"Was that Momz talking?" I wondered.
I cracked open my eyes. My hand was on top of the covers, laid across my belly like someone was preparing me for a funeral. "Not a funeral," I thought. "There's a tube taped to your hand."
"Hospital," my mind said. "That explains the beep."
My memory came flooding back.
"The Ox." I didn't realize I'd said it aloud until Momz squeezed my arm and started to cry.
"You scare me to death for three days and then you ask about that stupid bike," she said.
I opened my eyes, but closed them quickly. "The light," I moaned.
Momz immediately closed the curtains, plunging the room into semidarkness.
"Just let me call the nurse,. She reached for the call button.
"Wait." There was something I needed to know first. "Why are you here?"
"What do you mean why am I here? I'm your Mother."
"But I did something awful."
"And? You are my son, CW. You can't do anything to drive me away. I'm going to love you no matter what."
I tried to process that. For the first time in my life, I understood unconditional love. Momz was here. She loved me even though I had pretty much spit in her face.
"Now, I am going to get the nurse." She pushed the button.
I looked over at the door. There was a cop standing outside talking to a woman.
"Why the cop?"
"They're waiting for you to wake up."
"Am I under arrest?"
"No, no," Momz shook her head vehemently. "They want to hear your version of what happened."
The nurse came in. The cop looked up from his conversation and walked over to the door. The nurse started to close the door in his face. "We need some privacy, here," she said.
The cop stuck his foot in the door. "Well, I need to talk to him," he said.
"And you will, when he's medically able. He's just waking up from a coma. I've called the doctor. You just cool your jets until he clears things."
She firmly pushed the door shut. "Sorry, Patty," she said. "I wish I could send them packing for you."
"Them?" I said.
"There are two of them, a man and a woman. They're investigating the accident." Momz sighed. "I know, you want to help, Sande, but he's got to talk to them sometime. Might as well get it over with."
"Says who," I mumbled.
The nurse shined a light into my eyes. She checked the blood pressure reading on the machine hooked up to me. She took my temperature and checked a bag hanging by my bed.
"Piss?" I asked. "Do I have a catheter?"
"Of course," Momz said. "You've been out for three days."
"How're you feeling?" the nurse asked. "Pretty rough, I imagine."
"You got it," I said. "Jack hammer in my head. Shooting pains in my shoulder. Sore back."
"You're one lucky boy," she said. She waved at the helmet sitting in the corner. Someone had stuck flowers in it. "There's one heck of a gouge in the back of that helmet. It saved your life."
Just then the doctor came through the door and closed it behind him. "So," he said. "You've decided to rejoin the land of the living."
"You call this living?" I asked.
"Well, that's good," he said. "He hasn't lost his sense of humor."
"Why are you talking in the third person?" I asked. "I'm right here."
He laughed. "I've been talking to your Mom for three days. Sorry. I'm Dr. Patel. I'll try to remember that I now have a responsive patient."
He did some poking and prodding of his own.
"You're going to be in some pain for a while," he said. "We'll need to keep you here until we're sure there are no long term affects from the concussion and nothing internal to worry about. You dislocated that shoulder." He pointed to the right one that had been giving me fits. "We put it back to rights, but it'll be sore for a while. The nerves might take a while to heal. A couple of ribs are cracked, and your right arm was shattered in two places. It's going to take a long time to mend. You've got bruises all up your back. Your leather jacket protected you from asphalt burn, but you'll never wear it again."
"Popz jacket," I thought. "Damn."
"Do you feel up to talking to the police?" he asked.
"Not really," I said.
He pushed a button on a machine beside my bed. "That's a drug pump," he said. "We've had it administering a constant low dose of pain meds. Whenever you got agitated, your Mom gave you an extra dose. You're old enough to know when the pain is intolerable. All you have to do to get relief is push this button," he pointed to a button glowing red. "We're going to keep you on a low dose for a couple more days and then wean you off. We don't let you take this thing home." I must have looked doubtful. "Don't worry, you can't OD. The pump has a safety feature that keeps you from over medicating. That's why the light is red. Even if you pushed the button now, you'd get nada. It only dispenses when the light is green," he said. "I just gave you a pretty strong dose of pain medicine. It's going to knock you out again, but next time you come around, you need to talk to the cops." He winked at me. "Night, night."
I don't even remember closing my eyes. The next thing I knew, I was looking around a dark room. Momz was asleep in a recliner. I took a breath and felt a sharp pain. I ached all over. I carefully took my left arm and reached slowly over and pushed the button on the pain machine. The extra beep roused Momz.
"You okay?" she asked.
"I just pushed the button," I said.
"I heard. It probably won't knock you out the way it did earlier. The doc lowered the dosage."
"It's alright." It took longer to kick in and when it did, it just took my pain not my consciousness. I stared at the ceiling for a while. There were red numbers glowing on the ceiling. "4:14," I read. I turned my head slightly to the left. My projection alarm clock was sitting on the rolling tray by my bed. I smiled. "Momz," I thought as I drifted off again.
The nurse came in shortly after 6 to check my urine bag and record my vitals. Momz set up and stretched.
"The police are going to come in after breakfast, Patty," she said. "We can't keep them out any more."
"I know," she said. She got up and hugged the nurse. "Thanks for everything, Kat. I told them I'd come back to work today. Tell your relief to keep an eye on him tonight." she added
"You know I will," she said. "It's Sande again. She was here when he woke up."
"Good," Momz said. "She's a sweetheart."
Nurse Kat left.
"So, like, you know all the nurses?" I asked.
"A lot of them." She raised her eyebrows to a comic level. "I work here, you know."
"Before the cops come in, we need to talk." She had turned serious. "I got a public defender for you. He's someone I knew in school, a zealot when it comes to defending the down and out. When his classmates went on to bigger and better things, he stuck with public defending."
"I thought you said I wasn't under arrest."
"You're not, but you could be. Jake and Marlow will probably set you up to take the fall."
"They wouldn't do that. They're my homies. They're like brothers. Brothers stick together."
"Your homies are 18." She flopped her right hand towards me as though she was Vana White indicating a lighted letter. "They are adults. They will be tried as adults. You are 14. You are a juvenile. Unless a judge decides differently, you will be tried as a juvenile. That means if you behave and do your time, your brush with the law will be kept off the books once you are an adult. Who do you think will take the fall here?"
"But if they finger me, I'd be in juvie for, like, four years. They wouldn't do that to me. Homies don't rat each other out." I looked towards the door. "Are they in here? Can I talk to them?"
"Marlow is a resident of the county jail. He had minor cuts and bruises. He's under arrest. Jake is down the hall, under guard. He broke some things and had to have surgery. He's also under arrest. You won't be allowed to talk to either one of them."
"BJ?" I asked.
"He's here. He's been in a coma, too."
"Been?"
"Still is. He's in bad shape, CW."
I gulped. "So this lawyer. Will he be here when I talk to the cops?"
"He wants to be. He said you shouldn't talk to the cops alone."
"Well, he doesn't need to be here. I don't remember anything. I've got amnesia."
"Oh, CW, they're not going to buy that. And even if they do, how long do think you can pretend you don't remember. I mean, you obviously know that y'all hit BJ. You'll eventually slip up. Then they'll slap you with obstruction. Just talk to the lawyer and tell them what he advises."
I glared at Momz. "I don't remember what happened. I just know that the ox collided with a bicycle. I got that from what the nurse said about my being lucky, and the helmet, and things I overheard," I insisted. "The details are fuzzy, pretty much nonexistent."
There was a knock on the door. A guy in jeans and a t-shirt with the Joker on the front came through the door carrying a breakfast tray in each hand. "Breakfast is served," he said, handing a tray to Patty and setting the other one on my rolling tray.
He stuck out his hand, "Grady," he said.
I raised my left hand slightly and sort of waved. "CW," I said. I wondered why the orderly was introducing himself. "Aren't you kinda old to be working as an orderly?"
Mama choked on the swig of orange juice she'd just taken.
"You don't mince words, do you?" He laughed. "I like that. And yes, I am too old to be working as an orderly. Most people tell me I'm to old to be working in the public defender's office, too. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment."
"You're my lawyer?"
"That's right. Beggars can't be choosers." He ginned and waved towards Momz. "Your Mom and I go back a ways. She called in some markers, and here I am."
"Well, she wasted her time." I glared at him.
"How so?" He looked amused.
"I can't remember the details of what happened. I know we crashed, but I can't remember anything before or after the crash."
"You can't remember or you chose not to remember?" The amusement was gone from his eyes.
"Whatever." I started to shrug and then thought better of it. "The results are the same. I can't tell the cops what happened because I don't know."
"As your lawyer, I advise you to try real hard to remember." His eyes never left my face. "You can still be tried as an adult, you know. A judge will decide. You're facing a lot of charges here. And if that boy dies.." he trailed off.
"Dies," I thought. "If BJ dies." I sortta blanked out. I couldn't even think about that.
"CW, CW" Momz was standing by my bed, slapping my hand.
"I'm okay, Momz. Geez, I was just thinking about what the lawyer said." It was a half-truth. I had been thinking about it before my mind wandered into la la land.
I picked up my spoon and shoveled a couple of bites of yogurt into my mouth. I washed it down with some apple juice. "Poor excuse for a breakfast," I said.
"Now that you're awake, they've got you on a soft diet until they see how you're doing."
There was another knock on the door. Momz opened it. A couple of cops stood outside the door.
The lady cop asked, "Is he through eating?"
"Yeah, I'm through," I said. "This garbage ain't worth eatin'."
She and her partner came in the room. "I'm Kiara. This is my partner, Joseph. We need to ask you some questions."
"Shoot," I said.
She looked at Momz and Grady. "Before we start, are these your parents?"
"That's my Momz." I pointed my finger. "The dude is my lawyer."
"Oh, you called a lawyer? You're not under arrest, you know."
"I know."
Momz interjected. "I called Grady. I'm CW's Mother. It's my job to protect him. He's only 14."
"Protection is part of our job, too," Kiara said. "We're on the same side."
"We'll see," Momz said.
"Well, since you've got a lawyer here, you don't mind if we record this, do you?"
"Be my guest," I said.
Grady nodded his assent.
"For the record," Kiara said, "This is officer Kiara Jackson."
"And officer Joseph Oldstein," the man added.
"We are talking with CW Braisford about a motorcycle vs bicycle accident on December 31 at the corner of Maple St. and Oak alley at approximately 9pm." She looked at me. "Tell us what you remember about the accident," she said.
"Nothing," I said.
"Nothing? You don't remember anything? Like, who was driving for instance."
"No." I shook my head and then regretted it. I was rewarded with a stab of pain. I grimaced, but continued. "I snuck Jake and Marlow into F2 through the lose slat on the fence. It's the only way in without the cameras' picking you up. They climbed in the back window." I figured if I was up front about the sneaking around, they'd think I was on the up and up about my memory.
"Just for clarification," the dude cop said, "Jake is Jacob Sullivan and Marlow is Marlow Breland. Correct?"
"Yeah."
"And F2?"
"F2 is my crib. It's a shed near my house. I named it Funk Too. I have a tree house I call the Funk."
"Okay," the female interrogator said. "You can go on."
"I went in the house and got some chips and a drink. There were sandwiches in the fridge. We ate. The plan was to hotwire Blue Ox and take her for a spin."
"The lady cop interrupted, "Blue Ox is the name of your motorcycle?" she asked.
"It's the name of Popz bike," I said. "I sort of inherited it. But I wasn't supposed to ride it until I was 18."
"So you hotwired the bike," she said.
"I said that was the plan. I guess we did it cause y'all say I was in a motorcycle wreck. But I don't remember anything between when Jake spiked the cokes and when I woke up in here."
"Wait," the male cop said. "Jake spiked the cokes? With what."
"Just a little vodka," I said. "It wasn't enough to get us plastered or anything. Just a little pick-me-up."
"Well, if you don't remember anything after drinking that coke, maybe he spiked it with something else, and you just didn't know."
"Nah," I said. "He wouldn't do anything like that. I've probably just got amnesia or something."
"I think he's had enough for now," Grady said. "He needs some pain medicine and some sleep."
"Did the doctor say anything about amnesia?" the lady cop asked.
"No," Momz said. "He's only been in once since CW woke up. He hasn't had time to order a neurological workup."
"We're going to keep someone posted outside your door," Kiara said.
"I thought I wasn't under arrest."
"You're not. It's for your protection. Your homies might decide to send in someone to tamper with a potential witness."
"But I don't remember anything," I insisted. "And even if they thought I did, they wouldn't do anything to me. We're tight."
"They don't know what you remember." She winked at her partner. "And I'm not going to tell them."
"Tight gets kinda elastic when there's a brush with the law," Joseph said. "Someone's going down for this. You don't want to be the fall guy."
The cops left. That's when I saw that there was another cop outside the door. Evidently those two were the investigating cops. They weren't detailed to my room. There was another lady cop in the hall. The two who questioned me stopped and said something to her. She turned and looked at me. She smiled and waved. She stuck her head in the door. "I'm Jasmine," she said. "If you need anything, just holler. I gotta sit out here anyway. I might as well be some help."
"Good cop, bad cops," I thought. "They were leaving little Miss Sunshine to get under my skin."
At 10:30 Momz went into the bathroom and came out in her uniform. "I'll be downstairs," she said. "I'll come by and check on you during breaks. You tell Sande if you need anything."
"Okay." I was glad to be left alone. I needed to think things through so I could come up with a plan, but thinking hurt. Instead, I pushed the pain button and drifted to sleep.