I Was Robin

            What did Mom say when she came to visit with Dad? Time heals all wounds, scars fade, nothing lasts forever, you’ll be okay. Bullshit, I think and the dirty word feels heavy on my tongue. I look around as if expecting someone to hear my thoughts and yell at me. It’s childish, I’m not a child, I’m not a child, and I set my jaw before staring up at the ceiling again.

            Mom doesn’t actually know that every time I close my eyes the images come back. Dreams turn into nightmares, and there’s this - this hole, a gaping hole left. It’s the only thing of Bobby I have left. My throat stings, my nose stings, my eyes sting, but my legs, no, they don’t sting, they actually don’t sting anymore. Why don’t they sting anymore, Mom? I want them to sting. I want them to sting!

            “There. That’s it,” Nurse Joy says. I blink my eyes at her, and some of the sting goes away as my inner tantrum stops. No, no, come back, come back. I need you. My head's still spinning, and I want to kick Nurse Joy but that’s mean and I’m not mean but I have mean thoughts sometimes and Dad I actually don’t know if that makes me mean, don’t it?

            She carefully settles me into my bed, carefully tucks a blanket beneath my chin. I carefully make sure she doesn’t see my crossed eyes, but then I turn away from her, feeling kinda bad. She hasn’t actually noticed, though. I listen to her papers rustle and the ruffle of her pulling aside curtains to cover all the patients in my ward, and she gets ready to leave. She comes back to me once more. She’s actually nice, always smelling like apples but then I remember Bobby smells like apples.

            Smelled like apples. Before I sang off-key in that car and he turned to laugh at me and--

            She’s here. I close my eyes, not tightly enough to seem fake, but not so loosely my eyelids would fall open. It actually always worked on my parents. Bobby had taught me - my breath catches as Bobby’s name enters my mind again, and it’s stronger than any blow mean Timmy Turner from fifth grade gave to other puny kids like me. I cough to cover my choked sob, and tears sting my eyes, but why won’t they come out? They have to come out, they came out from Dad and they came out from Mom and Bobby hates me he hates me he would want me to cry, wouldn’t he? But Bobby is nice, Bobby was nice and he’s not here and he’s not nice anymore how could he do this to me--

            The air becomes still as Nurse Joy hesitates. My eyes don’t open, and she finally leaves. Then I turn over, as much as the top half of my body actually can, and clutch the pillow to my face, covering hurting eyes and pain and I pull it tighter against me, try to stuff it into the hole inside me which yawns, and I swallow so the lump in my throat can fall into it, and maybe, maybe fill it. It’s actually rude to yawn and not cover it up.

            I crack my eyes open and lay in the stillness, watching the white ceiling, the white walls, the white everything. I liked it better when I had the Batman signal on the top of my ceiling and instead of a papery ugly green robe I had my Robin pajamas. But I actually am not Robin anymore. Batman’s gone, Batman’s gone. No Batman, no Robin.

            An hour passes and the last of the footsteps of the night disappear. The nurse on duty’s walking into the east wing. There’s silence. I ease myself up into a sitting position. Needles and exercise have actually made the pain above my butt go away, but it still kinda hurts as I grab the handlebar of my wheelchair.

            I wheel myself down the hallway, and a slice of the moon peeks down from a wide window. It illuminates the metal on my chair. For a second I am driving, zoom zoom zoom, but light turns green to yellow and suddenly there’s another car where did the car come from Bobby no Bobby look-