“Is that bad?”
“No. It’s solid muscle,” he says, squeezing my bicep as a prop. The nurse steers me toward the clean white sheet of paper covering the flat hospital bed. “Get on there and lie down.”
Two knocks on the door and Mom pops her head through the crack. “Can I come in now?”
Hail, hail, the gang’s all here. The nurse motions for her to take the empty chair next to my clothes. I swing my bad leg up and it hits the paper with a crunch.
“You’re wincing.” Mom wrings her hands. “Be careful—go slow.”
“He’s fine.” Ryan slaps his hand on my back so hard it feels like a million hornets. “He can take it; don’t worry about him.”
You’re right, I only notice pain when a mastodon’s goring me.
“Let’s get the tape measure. Lie flat and still.” He takes a yellow roll from his pocket and hands the end to my mother. “Pin this down by his heel.” The nurse walks toward my head, the tape unwinding. He presses it by the side of my head. “Six foot five and a half. No wonder your leg hurts: you’ve grown almost two inches,” the nurse says. He takes the measuring tape and wraps it around my upper arm. “Flex.”
“Huh?”
“Make a muscle.”
I squeeze it tight.
“What does this have to do with his leg?” Mom asks.
“Nothing. I was just curious.” He takes the tape back and clamps it between two fingers, running the length with a stupid grin on his face. “Jesus…twenty and three-quarter inches! What do you bench?”
I put my hat back on. “Nothing.”
“Not buying it. Schwarzenegger’s arms were twenty-two and a half inches when he was competing. There’s no way you’re at twenty and three-quarter inches by doing nothing.”
“We’re here for my leg,” I say, dropping the bass in my throat as low as it goes. So low, my chest rumbles as I speak. “Get to it.”
Ryan backs away. “Hey, man, no problem.” He raises his hands up, soft palms facing me.
Mom and I lock eyes and she turns to him. “We’d appreciate it if this could be wrapped up as quickly as possible,” she says. “Dylan wants to get back to school. He loves school—he’s very smart.”
The nurse smiles but I can almost smell the drops of piss I alphaed out of him trickling down his leg. “It’s just guy talk,” he mumbles. He clicks the mouse and snaps the computer to life, bringing up my X-rays, and whips his little pointer all around the screen. “All right, so here we are. It’s the pins that are causing the problem because they’re screwed into your bones, and as you’ve grown, they’re pulling against the body of the cast. Hence, the pain. So Dr. Jensen wants to move up the schedule, install some new plates, and redo a cast so it’s smooth. No pins.”
Fine. We already went over this yesterday during the freak-out. When we found out my bone might be permanently effed.
“You should feel proud of yourself,” the nurse says. “They usually pull the pins out while you’re awake, but your break was so bad and you grew so much, you need surgery.”
“Defenestrate” is one of my favorite words. Not the version where you shitcan someone, although I’d really like to fire this nurse-guy, but the original meaning where you throw them out the window. King James II of Scotland defenestrated a dude, and if it worked for him, I imagine it’d work for me. Why not? I would like to pick up Nurse Ryan with my mighty twenty-and-three-quarter-inch arms and defenestrate him.
Splat.
I bet Mom would hold the window open.
She sits there, her leg jimmying up and down like a piston and her mouth mashed into a razor-thin line, so pissed she can barely speak. “How much longer?”
“He’s prepped for 9:15 AM,” the nurse says. He slams a hand on my back one more time, and my eyelid twitches. “All right, man, I’m off to talk to the doc. No food. No liquids. See you soon.”
Mom grunts as soon as the door closes.
“This is supposed to be the best orthopedic practice in Portland,” I attempt to justify.
“I almost don’t care anymore.” Mom rises and comes over to where I’m plopped on the bed. She lays her hand on top of mine. “You must be sick of it,” she says.
“Happens every day,” I say.
She nods.
“When will I stop growing?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you so small and I’m so big?” I ask.
“Genetics are funny.” She squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. “You take after Dad. He was a big guy. You’re just like him, in every way,” she says.
Then I have only eleven years left until I die too.
Mom brushes off invisible pieces of lint from my stylin’ gown. “I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.” She touches her nose to my shoulder. A little nudge. “If you ever feel too big, it’s just because the world can be a little small sometimes.”
My stupid head lands on her shoulder. Her cheek presses on top of my scruffy buzz cut, and her arm wraps up as much of my shoulder as it can reach.