Page 77 of Back Outside Edge

Because the Schrödinger reference doesn’t prompt a lot of confidence.

SophMarq17

OMG, yeah. Sorry! He’s totally alive. My parents are with him. He’s fine.

It’s enough to make me collapse, full-bodied, onto my couch. When did I even get up, start pacing? No idea, but every bit of the tension that’s been keeping me upright all week snaps out of me, and I’m a puddle.

Evan is fine. Evan is fine.

SophMarq17

Well, not really fine fine.

Shit. I’m sitting again, all but vibrating. Is she trying to kill me here?

Stefan_Petryk_Official

Any chance you could slow down and just tell me what you know without stopping my heart every ten seconds?

SophMarq17

LOL Yeah. He’s in New York, at the hospital. I think for like another week or so? They’re doing surgeries on his knee, or his leg. Or both? Mama keeps crying so it’s hard to get all the details. But he’s ok. Just, like, broken.

Back to collapsed position. Knee surgery, leg surgery, those are fine. Those are expected. They’re things that most of us have to go through at some point or another. Thank fuck. He’s ok.

It doesn’t explain why he’s not texting me back, though.

Is he really that angry? Did I fuck up so badly it’s unforgivable to the sweetest man in the world?

Chapter 30

Evan

6 days after the fall

New York, NY

"Ow!" I whine to my father, who isn’t at all sympathetic. In fact, he's laughing at me, the bastard.

"What, did you think this would be easy?" He sounds exactly like always; the Colombian accent I grew up with slightly less pronounced after a few decades of living in the US, but still Papa's voice.

I'm tempted to revert—to stick my tongue out at him, but I manage to hold it in. "No, but..." I do not manage to hold in my whining, "I didn't think it would hurt this bad."

It's the first time I'm moving out of my bed, and coincidentally, or not, because my doctors are sadists, my pain meds were lowered this morning. I'm not going far, just to the wheelchair. Then Dad can wheel me to the bathroom, where I can, finally, use an actual toilet.

I’m excited about the prospect. I’m less excited about the getting there. My right leg is immobilized, so movement is hard. Rather excruciating too, in fact. The immobilization appears to be lacking in some key areas.

There's a chance that insisting I wanted to use the toilet was a mistake. Bed pans exist for a reason, Evan. Or, hell, I could have let them leave the catheter in.

According to my rehab plan, though, I’m supposed to move today. Might as well give myself an incentive. I’m committed to following the plan to the letter, even if I’m regretting that I thought it was a good idea right now. This afternoon would have been better. Maybe this evening.

However, if I make it to the wheelchair, I get to use the toilet. Plus, I can go for a walk, all the way down the hall and back.

Ok, Papa gets to go for a walk. I get to go for a ride. I only have to make it into this terrible, wonderful contraption. Surely that’s the hard part, and after that, it will all be easy. I grit my teeth, ignoring the screaming coming from my leg, my knee, my hip, which never knew they could hurt so much.

Compared to everything else, my head feels fine. So there, concussion. You lose.

After an eternity of agony, I’ve settled into the chair, and everything calms down a bit. It's a little more upright than I'm used to, which adds to the pressure on my hip, but it’s back to bearable levels. I’m used to pain, learned to block it out when necessary a long time ago.