Free The Heart Does Not Grow Back: A Novel by Fred Venturini Page B

wanted to stay passed out, but the real truth is pain does not release you; it doesn’t let go. It settles in and gets comfortable until drugs or time chase it away, and even then, sometimes it hides, whispering at all the wrong times.
    I remember headlights and sirens, chatter and spotlights, stretchers and parental screams. The flickering lamps of an ambulance. Uniformed people asking me questions I didn’t answer. A medic called me a lucky boy as he inserted an IV.
    I don’t have nightmares anymore, but most nights, before drifting to sleep, I can’t help but see her. Too many times I felt more sorry for myself than for Regina. I can admit that. I had no misconceptions about who I was. I knew something was broken inside of me, but I had no strategy to fix it and no hope of finding one.
    The note she’d left in my locker stays in my top dresser drawer, but I don’t know why. She’s gone. All that remains is a body under a dome light staring at me with one blue eye, seeing a true part of me I could no longer hide.

 
    EIGHT
    Tape and gauze smothered my partial ear. My hand was bandaged so completely it felt like a club. Even with the painkillers, I had trouble sleeping. A nurse checked the various electronics attached to me and woke me up. I saw Mom asleep on an easy chair pulled up beside my bed, her purse on her lap. It was two in the morning and I didn’t wake her. She looked terrible, tired, sick. Each day I noticed something different about her, but on that night, I noticed her breath, her ease of sleep. Perhaps it was just the emotional aftershock, but I finally knew how bad it was. My sobbing woke her up. She scrambled to my side, taking my healthy hand, sandwiching it in hers, crying along with me, kissing my cheek, our tears mixing on the palette of my flesh, the sterile, sour smell of tape and gauze blending with perfume that reminded me of cherries.
    I squeezed her against me with my good limb.
    “Mack?” I whispered.
    “I saw him earlier. He’s going to be fine.”
    “Fine for a normal person, or fine for him? How bad is he hurt?”
    “He was shot in the shoulder,” she said. “They’re going to do some surgery, but his life is not in danger.”
    “Which shoulder?”
    “The right one.”
    “Then his life is in danger,” I said.
    She leaned over my bed, her legs wobbling and weak.
    “Mom, sit. I’m doing fine.”
    Sobs gobbled up her words. She put the back of her hand to her mouth, as if to excuse herself, then sat. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’m just so happy you’re okay.” Then she lost it, doubling over into her hands, the rise and fall of her back betraying every crippling sob.
    We cried together, apart, for different pieces of ourselves that were dead or dying. I finally asked. “Mom what’s wrong with you? Please just tell me.”
    She sniffled, breathed, then shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
    “Have you seen a doctor?”
    “Yes. Oh yes, of course,” she said, lying. She smoothed my hair, smiled at me until I fell asleep again.
    The next day, I was up and around, a deep itch burning under the gauze of my ear and hand. The doctor called it normal, the itch of healing, a good sign. My hand had been operated on to clean things up, screw some things together. Half my ear was gone, but my hearing was intact. This was worse than any “healing” itch I’d ever experienced. The flame of this itch was like poison ivy blossoming under the skin, an itch that destroys your regard for your own flesh, making you want to scratch so deep there’s nothing left but bone.
    When Mack could take visitors, I headed up to see him. He had most of his right side wrapped in bandages. He was fresh out of surgery, his eyes shiny with drugs. We clamped our hands together and leaned into a clumsy hug.
    “I’ll be robotic, man,” he said, nodding at his shoulder. “I’ll throw the ball a hundred miles an hour now.”
    They had saved his arm, but he would need more reconstruction. The