"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 27

Shaking his head, Josh flipped off the bathroom light, shuffling down the stairs and into the kitchen where he found one of his parents sitting at the same table the family had shared so many meals around over the years. At that time of day, his father was always out of the house, working with some various musician doing something, somewhere, so Josh hadn't expected to see him that afternoon. Instead, he stood in the doorway watching his mother as she intently studied a book of recipes. Her glasses were perched on the tip of her nose as she flipped a page and made a note on a pad of paper to her right. Clearing his throat to avoid startling her too much, he smiled a little and offered her a small wave when she looked up. 

"Josh!" she gasped quietly, obviously still surprised by his presence. She tucked the notepad into the book and closed it, turning to face him with a smile of her own. Mrs. Ramsay pulled her glasses off and set them down onto the table silently. "Oh, Josh..." Her tone softened as the smile slowly left her face, focusing on everything she could see that was wrong with him.  

Standing, the petite blonde woman made her way across the floor and over to her son where she lightly laid a hand against the side of his face, softly stroking his cheek with her thumb. He towered over her by at least a foot, so she gently tilted his head down toward her in order to get a better look.  

The singer expected tears again, and he wasn't far off when he saw her eyes glass over, threatening to spill with each fraction of a second that passed. Easing away from her touch, Josh caught her hand and smiled a little more broadly, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek as a distraction. "Anything to eat around here? I'm fu- I'm starving." 

The rest of the early afternoon was filled with a big breakfast of waffles, lovingly prepared by his mother, who forced him to sit in the kitchen with her while she cooked, continually cooing about how she missed cooking for "her babies", especially "her only son." He really wasn't that hungry, but Josh obliged and accepted three helpings as they were handed to him. Anything to waste time anywhere that wasn't his own home. 

After complaining that he was too full to eat another bite, the singer decided that four days without a shower was not only not okay in his book, but it was just downright fucking disgusting. He announced his intention to his mother and Mrs. Ramsay put a hand on her hip, cocking it to the side. "Do you need help with that contraption?" she asked, pointing to the sling on his arm with her free hand. 

Nodding pathetically, he stepped in closer to her and allowed her to slowly and carefully pull the sling off over his head before doing the same with his shirt. "Fucking shit!" he growled once, just as his mother was working to get the tshirt over his head. A little too much pressure against his shoulder had him seeing stars. 

"Joshua!" she warned, pulling the tshirt free from his body and folding it, setting it onto the counter beside the sling. 

He'd always tried hard to be respectful of the woman standing in front of him. That meant curbing a speech pattern he'd become fairly infamous for. Though he tried as hard as he could to avoid accidental slip-ups, sometimes he just couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Sorry," Josh mumbled, ducking his head and poking at the exposed bandage covering the bullet wound.  

His right shoulder was one huge bruise. It streaked down his arm, peppering his skin with various colours, stopping just a couple inches above his elbow. The contusion also saddled his collar bone, creeping southward across both his chest and back, spanning the width of his hand, finally fading back to his normal skin tone somewhere around the bottom tip of his shoulder blade. The three ribs that had been broken on the right blended well with the discolouration of the injured skin around the bullet wound. Everything was highlighted by a ring of bright mustard-yellow around the blue and purple. He supposed he should feel lucky that all the injuries had occurred on the same side so he could at least find a somewhat comfortable position to sleep, but "lucky" wasn't currently a word he'd wanted to use to describe himself. 

Mrs. Ramsay lightly touched a hand to the center of Josh's stomach, tracing a finger across yet another dark mark in the shape of a "U". "What's this?" 

Josh had already spoken to his parents at length about what had happened, but they hadn't actually seen the injuries for themselves. He'd been covered by a hospital gown and blankets the first time they'd been able to lay their eyes on him after the altercation with the intruder and he hadn't even really known the extent of his own injuries until just then, as his mother pointed out the scrapbook of kicks and hits he'd received.  

"Before I was... The guy who... I, uh, he, um... He kicked me...there," the singer said quietly, speaking of the man who had shaken his world apart so abruptly. Josh brushed his mother's hand away and took a step back behind the counter to hide what she'd already seen. Out of sight, out of mind. Or so he hoped.  

Nodding silently, she wiped at her eyes and cleared her throat. "Do you...do you need any help in the shower?" 

"Not since I was five," Josh laughed quietly, shaking his head.  

Smiling, she folded her hands on the counter and rolled her eyes. "You don't have anything I haven't seen before, you know. In fact, if you'd like, I can drag out those old baby pictures of you and...-," 

Laughing again, Josh held up his hand and declined her offer for the second time, even though he probably could have used the help. He just wasn't that desperate. "Thanks, but...no. I think I can get by. I don't need help, but I can't get the bandage wet. Any ideas?" 

It took an hour of struggling and he'd had to call his mother once to bring him a new bar of soap when he dropped the one he was holding and didn't want to risk slipping by trying to bend over to retrieve it, but somehow Josh was able to manage getting cleaned up using just one hand, and he kept the bandage on his shoulder dry, thanks to the plastic wrap his mother had been willing to tape over it. Another hour later had Josh nearly fully dressed. He had to face it. He was going to have to live in sweatpants and slip-on shoes until he could get himself properly dressed again. All things considered, he'd only needed minimal help, though, and that wasn't so bad. Things could have been worse.