die catfish, die. - 11. ampersand

I will not pretend, I will not put on a smile,
I will not say I’m all right for you
When all I wanted was to be good-
To do everything in truth.
To do everything in truth.
You bloody motherfucking asshole.

_{MARTHA WAINWRIGHT - BLOODY MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE (2005)}

* * * * *

Something metal rattled, and Eli felt his body shake back and forth. As he started to come around, he could hear a steady beeping, a hissing noise, and voices.

“Where are we on the albuterol?”

“It’s pumping through the oxygen now.”

“Thank you. ETA?”

“Three minutes.”

Somewhere, Eli could hear a siren warbling.

Eli was startled awake, pushing against someone who was trying to push him back. His eyes darted around. There was a man and a woman on either side of him, each in a blue jump-suit, the woman had her hair pulled back into a tight, blond bun.

“Easy, Elijah. You’re okay. I need you to relax and breathe slowly.” She brought her gloved hand out in front of her sternum, then made a brushing movement up to her nose as she sighed deeply. “Slowly, honey. You’re okay.”

Eli slumped back on the gurney and glanced back and forth between the paramedics.

“Do you know where you are, Elijah?” The man asked. “You know what happened?”

Eli shook his head and took a deep breath, the pure oxygen making him feel a little high. A pain shot though his side; he crumpled to the right and yelped. Suddenly, he realized what hurt: everything.

The female paramedic pulled him so he was upright. “Normal breaths. You might have a broken rib or two, so it’s going to hurt you pretty badly if you try to breathe too heavy. Okay?”

Eli’s eyes misted. He nodded at her.

“We’ll be at the ER in a minute, and they’ll have a doctor look at you, okay? You went unresponsive, but you were breathing when we got to you. We called your mom, and she said she’d meet us at the ER.”

Fuck, he thought. He tried to think of an excuse so his mother wouldn’t come unhinged.

“What hurts, Elijah?”

“My sides.” His voice came out muffled through the oxygen mask.

“Try not to move too much. We’ll get you an X-ray and see what’s going on.”

“Do you know what happened?” the man asked.

“Asthma attack,” Eli mumbled.

“Where did these bruises come from?”

Eli stared at the man and blinked.

“What can you tell me about how you got hurt? I need to know so the doctors know what to do when we get to the hospital.”

Eli shook his head and looked down toward his feet. He could see out the ambulance’s back window, and down the street the cars that had pulled off to the side of the road started to pull out and drive again.

The woman talked into the walkie-talkie clipped to her shoulder. “Twenty-one inbound, one minute out with patient Elijah Bridges—that’s bravo, romeo, india, delta, golf, echo, sierra. Age fifteen. Parent is inbound. Severe asthma attack, possibly caused by minor blunt force. We have bruising on the ribcage, possible broken ribs. One bruise in the area of the lower back over the liver, hematoma with possible internal bleeding. Patient is currently nebulizing oxygen and albuterol. Over.”

“Twenty-one, we are waiting at dock four,” a voice cracked back over the walkie-talkie.

“You sure you can’t tell us what happened?” the male EMT asked.

Eli kept staring at his feet.

The EMTs stared at each other for a brief moment, then the female looked down at Eli and squeezed his hand. “Are you okay to go in by yourself? Do you want me to wait with you until your mom gets here?”

The ambulance stopped and started to back up. Eli could see three people in blue scrubs walking along the back of the ambulance, waiting for the vehicle to stop. One was a very attractive man, with thick arms and spiky hair. An ID lanyard dangled around his thick neck, and he looked like the kind of guy who could lift Eli up into his arms as if Eli was a feather.

Woof, he thought. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Sir Nurse would be with him through this whole ER visit. Maybe he’d have to stay overnight for observation and mister nurse would give him a sponge bath.

Then again, with his brief track record with hot men in the medical field, well… this was not the place he wanted to pop a boner.

“Elijah?”

Eli jerked at the paramedic’s voice, and he glanced up at her. At his feet, the doors shot open.

He smiled at the paramedic as best he could. “I’m fine, thanks.”

* * * * *

His mother came around the corner, looking through the door with her head cocked and neck extended like a giraffe. She held a hand over her chest as she walked into the room, studying Eli from top to bottom.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“It tickled,” Eli said, deadpan.

She sat down in the chair next to the gurney. “Have you seen a doctor yet?”

“When I came in,” he mumbled, trying not to speak loud enough to tweak one of his ribs. “He said they’d talk to me when you got here.”

She shook her head. “What on earth happened?”

Shit. “I blacked out and woke up in an ambulance.”

“What the hell do you mean you blacked out? I thought we had everything managed.”

“I don’t know,” Eli cried. “I just had a bad attack, and I couldn’t get to my inhaler in time.”

“Where in the hell was your inhaler, Eli?”

“It was in my leg pocket. Christ, Mom.”

“Don’t Jesus me, baby. This is serious.”

Eli didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep up the charade, especially with his mother already acting as a bedside jury.

There was a soft knock on the door. The muscled nurse quietly stepped just inside the room holding a clipboard.

Eli felt every square inch of his skin turning strawberry red, tingling with excitement.

“Hey, Elijah,” he said softly. “You doing okay?”

Eli melted at the sound of his voice. Take me, now!

The nurse nodded at Eli’s mom. “The doctor will be in to speak to you in half an hour or so, but, uh, there are two gentlemen from the police department who would like to have a few moments of your time.” He smiled sheepishly as he signaled two officers into the room.

One was decked out in blues, the other wore a button-down and a tie, his badge clipped to his belt. He held a very thick briefcase by the handle.

Now, Eli’s skin tingled for a very different reason.

The uniformed officer rested his hand on the handle of his gun and stopped at the foot of Eli’s bed. “Hi, Elijah. I’m Officer Storey. How are you feeling?” he asked sympathetically.

“I’ve been better,” Eli said softly.

“I need to ask you about what happened,” he said.

Eli’s mother stared at Eli, drilling a hole into the side of his head with that motherly laser vision she had. “Eli?”

“Can you tell me what happened?” the officer asked. The other officer stood in the corner of the room and watched.

“I had an asthma attack and passed out,” Eli said. “I woke up here.”

“Someone at the scene said they saw a kid in a red shirt beating up on you.”

Jesus fucking shit!

“Do you know the boy who assaulted you?”

Eli shook his head. “N… no.”

“Eli?” His mother chided.

“I don’t know who it was,” he said, angrily and loudly enough to twist one of his broken ribs around a bit. He cringed and held his side.

“The witness said that he took a picture.” The officer tapped on his phone a few times and held it toward them. “He said he thought it might be the kid here.”

It was a photo of Joey standing shoulder to shoulder with Chase and Chet, watching as Eli was loaded into the back of the ambulance. It may have been the crappy lighting, but Chase looked white as a sheet.

Eli shook his head. “I don’t know.”

His mother pressed her lips flat and leaned back into the chair with a terse sigh. “Officer, can you give me a few moments to talk to him?”

“Ma’am?”

His mother nodded.

The two officers stepped out. She followed them to the door and shut it, then turned around and planted her hands on her hips. “Who is he, Eli?”

“I don’t know!” Eli argued, then yowled in pain. He held his hand over his ribs, which just hurt him even more.

She took a few steps forward. “Elijah James,” she pointed her finger at him and stabbed at the air, “you might think you’re able to get away with lying to me, but you do not lie to an officer of the law.”

“What the hell makes you think I’m lying?” he snapped back.

“Bill Clinton can lie about an affair better than you can lie about anything, and he got stuck on the semantics of the word is.”

“Mom!”

“I let the phone thing go, Eli. When you told the officer you didn’t know where Jacob’s phone was, I figured you needed it to heal for a little bit, and then I’d take it back to his mother. I knew you were lying then, and honey, you’re easier to read than a Dan Brown novel. Someone assaulted you. And I want to know who this boy is.” She snapped her fingers twice. “Out with it.”

“I told you it was an asthma attack.”

“Someone saw you get hit.”

Eli glanced to the side and crossed his arms, an IV tube getting tangled around his wrist.

His mother sighed and walked to the edge of his bed. Eli jerked as she lifted the side of his hospital gown.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She traced one of the bruises with her finger, then lifted the gown a little more to inspect his torso. “Shit, Elijah,” she whispered. Then, through a clenched jaw, she said, “I want to know who did this to you. Right now.”

“I said I don’t know,” he grumbled.

“You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”

Eli shook his head at her.

“You’d think the son of a lawyer would know that lying to a cop is a felony.”

“I don’t know him,” he growled back.

“Fine.” She slapped her thigh. “Fine.” She walked toward the door and pulled it open, signaling for the officers to come back in.

Officer Storey stopped just inside the door. “I need you to tell me what happened so I can take a report.” He clicked a pen and held it over a clipboard, looking expectantly at Eli.

A torrent of thoughts washed over Eli. He wasn’t sure what a kid like Joey would do if he was cornered, especially with something like that. “The kid jumped me. I don’t know who he was.”

“The kid in the photo?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know who did it. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“If you didn’t get a good look at him, how do you know it wasn’t him?” Storey asked, holding up his phone.

“It happened so fast. I don’t know.”

The officer sighed. “You sure you’re telling me everything you know?”

Eli hesitated. “Yeah,” he said softly.

“This is Detective Hybrooke. He does forensic photography. Since this is an assault, he’s going to need to take some photos for evidence.” He glanced over to Eli’s mother. “Is that okay?”

“Do what you need,” she said with a hint of anger in her voice, more than likely directed as a cautionary tone toward Eli.

The detective set his briefcase on the counter and opened it. He pulled out a camera and several tools.

“Ma’am? May I have a few moments to speak to you in the hallway?”

Eli’s mother followed the officer out into the hallway as the detective set up his gear.

Hybrooke disappeared into the hallway for a short moment, then returned with the male nurse.

Could this day get any fucking worse? Eli wondered.

“Elijah,” the detective said, “you can call me Mike, if you’d like. I’m going to have the nurse help with your gown, and help me get you positioned so I can take photos of your injuries, okay?”

“I guess,” Eli squeaked.

While the nurse helped Eli get free of the arm holes on his gown, he could hear his mother in the hallway:

“The one on the left, he comes over to our house sometimes. His name is Chase. Don’t know what his last name is.”

“Have you ever seen the one in the red shirt?”

“I don’t know who the other two boys are, no.”

“Do you know where Chase lives?”

“They’re off Riverbrook and Castleview. Middle of the block, west side of the street, house with the red door. Can’t remember the house number, but there’s a white minivan parked in the driveway sometimes. I’ve only dropped the boys off there once or twice.”

“That’s right around where he was picked up. You think Chase will have any idea who this other kid is?”

“I have no clue.”

“Do you think Elijah would have any reason to withhold information? I get the feeling—”

“I don’t know, officer.”

A bright flash blinded Eli. He was now completely naked, lying in the bed with nothing more than his gown covering his lower half.

The detective set a small, angled ruler against his skin, below his ribs, and took a few more shots and varying distances. He glanced up at the nurse. “Can you lift him forward so we can get a dorsal view of that lateral bruising under his rib cage?”

I’m right here, you douche.

The nurse braced his arm across Eli’s chest, and lightly brought him forward; his skin was so warm and soft.

Eli closed his eyes and heard the shutter click several times.

“Hold the scale against his skin there for me, would you? The bottom should go along the top of his buttock.”

The ruler was uncomfortably cold. Eli jerked to the side when the nurse applied a little pressure to his sides, trying to pin the scale against his skin.

Gently, he sat Eli back against the bed.

“Your neck is a little red,” the detective said. “Did your attacker try to choke you? Did he hit you in the neck?”

Eli’s skin crawled as he recalled the texture of the bark against his back, the choking feeling of Joey’s arm against his neck. He shook his head. “No, nothing like that,” he said quietly, keeping his gaze fixed across the room. “He just kicked me a few times.”

As the nurse helped Eli back into his gown, the detective packed his camera away, only adding the ruler back to the kit after it had been swabbed with an alcohol pad; the sickly sweet smell of isopropyl wafted across the room.

“There we go,” the nurse said. “All better?”

Eli blushed, and averted his gaze to the other side of the room. “I’ll be fine,” he said softly.

The nurse checked over Eli’s vitals. Once he had initialed the chart, he waited for the detective to finish with his gear. "Just hit the buzzer if you need anything and I'll be right in," he said to Eli. "Okay?"

Eli nodded slightly. "Yeah. Cool."

The nurse escorted Hybrook out of the room, and lightly shut the door behind them.

Eli sat alone in the room, head propped uncomfortably forward on a small stack of pillows, angled toward a muted television running a CNN broadcast of a Donald Trump rally where he had pretended to act offensively retarded.

Eli took in a shallow sigh, toying with the idea of pushing the button just so he'd have a little eye candy before his mom came back.

Anderson Cooper came onto the screen and continued to silently lip through his monologue, with his soft skin, perfect white hair, and chic wardrobe.

His mother slipped quietly into the room; the chair screeched as she pulled it across the tile. Once she was sitting down, she set her bag on the floor next to her, leaned back and crossed her arms.

Eli studied her out of the corner of his eye.

She sighed for his attention. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

Another twinge shot through him. Eli cringed and shifted around to find a less painful position. “Could we not?”

“What’s gotten into you? Why would you lie about something like this?”

“I don’t know the fucking kid, okay?”

She sighed again. “Watch your mouth, Elijah. We’re in the pediatric ward, and there are kids all over the place.”

Eli stretched his toes out and tried to mentally move his pain somewhere else on his body, but no mattered how he twisted or turned, the aches would not go away.

Someone pulled the curtain in front of the door back, and the ER doctor walked into the room. “How we doing?” he asked Eli as he came in.

“We have been better,” Eli mumbled.

He looked over toward the chair. “And you must be Mom?”

She leaned forward a bit. “I am, yes.”

“I’m Doctor Zahn. I looked at Elijah when he came in. I wanted to come in and go over a few things before we handed him off to the pediatric docs.” He lifted a few pages on Eli’s chart. “Looks like there’s one broken rib, and three bruised ones. The bruise on his back doesn’t look serious, but we’re going to wait until Eli urinates so we can test it for blood. If that comes back fine, then we’ll probably discharge him tonight. If we do, you’ll need to watch out for any blood in the urine, dark brown urine, that sort of thing.”

Eli’s mother nodded. “What about the asthma attack? We’ve been managing his asthma well up until now.”

“I’m guessing it was brought on by stress from the assault. The damage to the ribs may have had Elijah gulping for air, or the hormones in his body surged and started a reaction. Either way, I’m sure it was event related.”

“What do we do about the ribs? Is he going to need surgery or something?”

Doctor Zahn scratched the bridge of his nose with his pen. “There’s nothing we can do for broken ribs.” He looked over to Eli. “You’re going to have to do the best you can to ride it out. Take Tylenol every few hours to help manage the pain. You’ll just have to stay away from any of your comedian friends, because it’s going to hurt to laugh for a month or two.”

“Great,” Eli whispered.

“We'll fill a prescription for a weeks worth of painkillers. Probably Tylenol 3, which has codeine in it." He hitched his thumb at Eli. "So don't let him operate any heavy equipment or tanks or anything until then. Once he’s released, barring any serious problems, I’d say you should schedule a follow-up appointment with his pediatrician in two weeks.” Then, to Eli he said, “just call the nurse in when you have to pee. We’ll get you out of here as soon as we can.”

* * * * *

Eli lay sprawled across his couch, naked, his gaze stuck to the ceiling. He tried not to breathe, to move, to do anything that would start the chain reaction of pain coursing through his battered torso.

The door at the top of the stairs opened.

Shit, Eli thought. He gingerly pulled one edge of a blanket over his crotch, wondering how much more of his mother he could handle today.

“Eli?” It was Chase.

Eli remained on the couch, drawn out like a starfish.

Chase stood over him, casting a nervous glance.

“Excuse me for not getting up,” Eli wheezed.

“Are you naked?” Chase asked.

“It hurt too fucking much to put on clothes.”

“Your mom said you just got back from the hospital.”

“Yep.”

Chase turned away and hunched slightly. He sighed. “Are you mad at me?”

Eli let the question hang in the air for a moment. “I don’t know how to answer that right now.”

“Your mom drilled me pretty good upstairs.”

“Thank God it wasn’t me. She wasn’t too happy with me either, what, with all the cops and everything.”

“The cops?”

“Yeah. The whole ‘I got jumped and didn’t see who did it’ thing. She knows I’m lying, but not why.”

“Eli, I’m sorry.” Chase stood unmoving, his tone distant. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Can we talk about this some other time? I’m in a little pain here.”

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore. I… I didn’t know he’d take it this far, and I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“What? Just like that?”

“I’m sorry. Just pretend you don’t know me. It’ll be better for the both of us.”

Eli sighed, then cringed, then mewled. “Goddamn it,” he squeaked.

“I’m sorry.” With that, Chase left.

* * * * *

Eli stared across the table at Benjamin; Benjamin stared back. Soft Norteño music played through the restaurant, trumpets and accordions slicing through the murmur of voices. Eli was on enough painkillers that this little encounter might be tolerable.

Benjamin lifted his glass and took a generous gulp of his Horchata.

Eli felt his face fall into a scowl.

Somewhere, a baby began to cry. The smell of refried beans and carne asada permeated the air. A waiter walked a plate of fajitas to a nearby table, the pan sizzling and sputtering and steaming.

His mother had been speaking, her voice finally cutting through Eli’s jumbled brain. “…and there was a witness who got a picture of the kid who did it. He told the cop he was absolutely sure it was this kid. Nope.

“I talked to Chase’s mother last night, and she tells me this other little bastard was running around with Chase when it happened, and the cops can’t really do anything else. But on the bright side, at least we finally hit the deductible on our medical insurance for the year.”

Aunt Marlene took a loud sip off her Midori Margarita, rattling the ice around in the cup as she gave it a gentle shake. She stared the waiter down, Eli guessing she was telepathically begging for another drink, but the waiter turned and retreated to the kitchen. She shook her head and set the glass noisily on the table. “So this little turd really let into Eli, huh?”

“Kicked the shit out of him from the looks of it.”

Benjamin scoffed quietly enough not to draw attention to himself.

“Takes a bit more than that to bring a kid like Eli down. He’s a scrappy one. Aren’t you, Eli?” Aunt Marlene gave him a light elbowing to the side.

Eli yelped and fell into his mother.

Eli's mother looked down at him, then over to her sister. “Marlene!” she hissed.

Eli pushed his face into his mother’s side and tried to control his breathing, eyes filling with tears. Marlene had nailed him right in the broken one.

“Pussy.” Benjamin chuckled.

Marlene backhanded his arm. “We talked about this. Keep your mouth shut.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

Eli’s mother leaned against the table with her elbows. “Benjamin, have you ever had a broken bone?”

“He’d bawl his little eyes out if he got a splinter,” Marlene said, offhandedly.

“Jesus, Mom!” he yelled.

Several people at a nearby table turned to look at him.

“Well, you can’t really do anything with a broken rib,” Eli’s mother continued. “It hurts to breathe, it hurts to move. And pair that with an asthma attack. I know you know what that’s like.”

“So what? Nobody would have gotten close enough to hit me.”

“Benjamin, stop it,” Aunt Marlene warned.

White hot hate twisted inside of Eli. Hate for Joey for what he did. Hate for his stupid cousin or brother or whatever he was. Hate for his stupidly inept aunt. Hate for himself that he didn’t want to tell his mother about Joey, or risk Joey hurting Chase when the fallout had settled.