boyfriend | t.h.

part six - stranded

About six years ago, Tom dislocated his right shoulder. His teammates in high school would have a day before the summer scrimmage. After their winning season concluded, they were still wild about the sport. At first it was pure and innocent fun until they all started to drink, as most teenagers do by the time they're sixteen or seventeen. All fun and games, right? Well, Tom would always store these next few hours in his brain for the rest of his life.

He vividly remembers downing his fourth beer, crushing the can around his fingers and tossing it to the side. As he stumbled up to the home plate, his teammates all gushed at him, trying to distract him while he was in his impaired state. Tom laughed as he tightened the grip he had at the end of the bat. He'd done this a million times before, nothing bad would come of it.

After hearing the ball hit the sweet spot of the bat, Tom followed the way it was going with his eyes but his feet were running toward first base. It was only a few feet away, but it felt like miles as he tried to gain his balance. Before he got closer, the ball was making its way from player to player and it got to the man on first base, but instead of the baseball going into his mit, it bounced off Tom's left cheek.

When Tom opened his eyes, his blurred vision cleared and an overhead light shined into his eyes and it revealed the white metal ceiling above him. As he leaned up against the leather fabric he was lying on, Tom realized he was in the back of an ambulance with two EMTs.

"Sir, lay back down please." One of them said as Tom rubbed his eyes, hissing at the tenderness on his left side.

He did as she said, laying back down but a shooting pain ran through his right shoulder and into his arm. Tom slowly turned his head, seeing his shoulder was lower than it was supposed to be. The heart monitor began to beat faster, the EMTs looking up at Tom and watching him begin to panic.

"What the fuck is wrong with my shoulder?!"

"Sir, you dislocated it. We're going to the hospital right now but we're going to have to put it back into place." The woman told him, trained to be calm, but Tom panicked even more, practically holding his breath at the sudden realization.

Tom only nodded, a few tears prickling his eyes, before the two EMTs stood on the same side of his painted shoulder. He tried to breath in and out at a regular pace but his heart was in his throat, hoping he could endure the pain.

They slowly pulled out his right arm, as if Tom was reaching out to give a handshake, but as the two EMTs began to lift it, the pain intensed and his beady eyes squeezed tight from the tightness increasing. Right as they got to the 120 degree motion, Tom heard the pop next to his ear and he audibly gasped, the ache quickly becoming unbearable and he felt his face getting hotter by the second.

The next time Tom would open his eyes, he saw a TV in the corner of his room playing a rerun of Friends before hearing a monitor chirping at a normal rate. Once again, his tired eyes fluttered open till they were full, leaning on his left side to prop himself on his bed. He glanced down seeing his shirt had been torn in half and recognized the right side of his abdomen was beginning to bruise from falling so hard.

As the chemical-yet-fresh smell of the hospital filled his nostrils, he blinked away a few tears at the pain he felt throughout his right shoulder. His right arm was in a sling, able to see red and purple bruising appearing on his light toned skin from how they had to apply pressure. It was almost sickening. He'd never seen his body so abused looking before, but it was a state of shock. All he could do was shut his eyes, lay back on the crinkled sheet and rest his body into the stiff bed while everyone ran around to tend to other patients behind the four curtains that surrounded him.

Only a few seconds later, his parents would walk in behind a nurse and seeing his one-year-old sister clinged to his mom's hip. Hazel, still young, gazed at her brother with her big, brown eyes, but slowly frowned because she couldn't recognize him with the bruise under his left eye. She hid her face in her mom's chest as the nurse explained Tom's condition to them.