Saturday's Storyteller: "My knee was so swollen that I couldn't walk."

by Belinda Roddie

My knee was so swollen that I couldn't walk. Then again, that's what happens when you end the night with a boat tail lodged in your patella.

The circle of cars had dissipated from the abandoned parking lot, and I craned my head to look at my reflection in a fragment of windshield glass left for me on the pavement. Under the dim street lamp, I could see dark purple bruises forming under my eyes, the flecks of blood and marrow decorating the corners of my mouth and giving my teeth a light brown crust. I smiled and waved meekly. Hello, friend. You come here often?

Feebly tugging at my sleeves, I managed to pull my sweatshirt off my shaking frame and apply it to the wound, tying it like a lousy tourniquet. I thought it would be able to stop the blood from continuously streaming down my torn jeans, the red turning into a complex spider web on the denim. Instead, it simply soaked up red bubbles like a lump, and soon the thing was dripping with my own lifeline. My fingers scraped the asphalt for something sharp. I found a blade of glass beside me - from my car's passenger side window - and transformed the cloth into strips, wrapping them around my left leg and wincing as the skin audibly squelched beneath the plasma and fabric.

How had it come down to this? Oh, yes, I remembered feebly, it had started as a simple bar quarrel. I'd call it a fight, but no one got punched. All that happened was a man came up to me at the counter and told me he'd put lead right between my eyes if I ever showed up there again. I had gotten a lot of angry remarks and threats before, so I had blown it off as the usual tough man talk and gone back to my drink. When I was walking home, however, chest lifted from the fumes of Jameson and Bailey's, I had found myself surrounded by the man and his swarm of buddies. Like I was already roadkill and they were vultures eager for a fourth meal.

I was beginning to feel lethargic from all the blood loss. My knee was completely immobile. It would not bend one way or the other. My hands scrambled around my jean pockets and pulled out a freshly scratched cellphone. One side of its protective cover had been snapped off. I used the speed dial. #2. #1 was my mom, and she was five hundred miles away.

As the phone purred its lullaby into my ear, I thought about how I had first predicted these guys wanted to beat me silly. Or rape me. Or both. I could see one cowboy lick his lips, just waiting to "convert" me. His fingers were tracing the outlines of his pants zipper. Ready to flick it open and expose me to rotten meat. But something had gone wrong. Not just for me. For everyone else.

"Hello?"

I was startled by my wife's voice. It must have been three in the morning, and she sounded like she was wide awake. She must have been worried sick about me. I would have let an "Awwww" slip were it not for the brutal pain coursing up my leg as quickly as the bloody river streaming next to me.

"Hey," I managed to whisper, my tongue dry and flapping in my mouth. "Hey, sweetie, it's me."

I heard shuffling on the other line. "Where are you?"

"Guess."

"What?"

"Guess."

"Why do you want me to guess?"

I couldn't help a lopsided smile. "Because you'll never get it right."

"It's not funny."

She wasn't going to indulge in a happy joke-y time. Oh, well, I had wanted to make this light.

"Honey, I'm in the parking lot next to Frankie's. You know, the old liquor store down a couple blocks?"

"Why are you in a parking lot?"

"Heh, funny story, that...the truth of the matter is, I'm going to need a ride home. Or better, a ride to the hospital. You've got enough gas in the car, right?"

I couldn't believe I was doing this. Even after I had been nailed in the fucking kneecap, I was still trying to be my old charming self to her. Just like the day we met at the bowling alley where my brother used to work, four years ago.

"The hospital? Honey, are you okay?"

"Yeah," I breathed. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bit...well...shot."

"Shot?"

"Yeah. Shot. Or...bulleted. Have you noticed there's really no synonym for, 'I've been shot'?"

"Wha...Andy! You got shot?"

"No, no, hon, it's fine! It's just my leg."


"Your leg - Andy, you got shot in the leg?!"

"Yeah. It'll make a great story for the kids."


"Andy, you got shot in the leg!"

"Or maybe I could try to embellish a bit. Say I was wrestling a bear. Holding a six-round revolver."

"Why the fuck haven't you called 9-1-1?!"

I pursed my lips then. I was feeling a little numb. I thought of the lone man who had stepped forward to stop his assumed brethren from catching me in the teeth. I remembered the click of his friend's gun.

"Because..." Why hadn't I called 9-1-1? "...because I wanted to let you know first."

I was lying flat on my back now, phone in my right hand and my left hand pressed against my thigh. With a reasonably loud grunt, I had lifted my nearly paralyzed leg upward, holding it at an angle as the red still dripped down. It was starting to look pink in the light, and the sky was breaking up into darker and paler patches of blue. No stars flickering out yet, though.

"You stay where you are. I'm going to send an ambulance over to you right now."

"Babe..."

"Right now, do you understand me? Do not. Move."

I could remember the guy's face, too. Not anyone else's. His face hadn't been particularly memorable. Maybe a bit of stubble. Maybe some shaggy brown hair that matched my length and wave. Hidden under a baseball cap again. I think it had been a Rangers cap.


Really starting to get sleepy now. I was going to pass out soon. I didn't want to. I wanted to see the lights and hear the sirens. To know I was going to be okay.

"Babe," I whispered into the receiver. "Promise me I'll see you soon."

But I couldn't understand her on the other line. I let the phone slip from my ear. All at once, the night came charging back into my mind like a mad bull. The man who had wanted to kill me had tried. Barrel aimed for the head. But his buddy had grabbed his arm and pulled it down. Pulled it down like a lever on a slot machine. Like the emergency brake on a car.

I had gotten shot in the leg instead of the brain, and as a result, the panic had cascaded down like babbling rain. And I had been left completely and entirely alone.

***

I woke up in the hospital not even knowing I had lost consciousness. My wife was sleeping in the chair beside me, holding my hand. My leg was rather gloriously raised from the bed. Heavily bandaged, but not nearly as bloated or swollen.

The doctor told me I had been fading in and out of reality for a few days now. The bullet had drilled a pretty neat hole in the center of my patella, without compromising the joints or tendons beneath. That was the medical jargon, at least - to me, I heard it more as, "Oh, thank God I'll still be able to walk." Needless to say, I healed up from the operation in about two weeks and hobbled out of the hospital on a cane half a week later.

My wife resorted to feeding me bowls of cereal and watching hockey games with me in the evenings, propping my head against a pillow and giving me the obligatory kisses. When I was well enough to go back to work, I got a cake. That was awfully nice. Then my friend Rob came by with a case of beer, and we partied the old-fashioned "Andy's not dead, and neither is anyone else here" way.

But I wanted to find the man who pretty much had saved my life. That's the way I saw it, anyway. But I couldn't go back to that same bar again, and I definitely didn't want to. The city police hadn't done much to quell my fears, and even if they could find the men who threatened me and wanted to hurt/rape/kill me and urinate on my ravished corpse, I still wouldn't want to be drinking whiskey there again.

Lucky for me, I spotted him at the grocery store when I was buying a bag of chips and salsa for an oh-so-wild night of watching football. Unlucky for me, I couldn't say anything poignant. He didn't say anything poignant, either. We just stared and stared at each other until he was the first to instigate, of all things, small talk.

"Hey."

"Hey," I muttered. My fingers were moist as they slid items across the self check-out.

"How's your leg?"

I bit my lower lip. "Fine, thanks."

"Good."

Was he changing his mind about me? Was he going to beat me to death with something from the meat or produce section because I was willing to let his friends get locked up?

"How...how are you?" I heard myself saying.

He was wearing the same baseball cap, turned backwards this time. He folded his arms behind his cart and cleared his throat. "Fine, thank you."

He waited for me to finish up at the register and jumped right to ringing up his beers and deli supplies when I was done. I was still stuffing my credit card in my wallet and the goods into a plastic bag when I decided to speak more with him. Which promptly made my conscience scream in dismay.

"Why?"

That was it. One word: Why. Could have been more words. Perhaps, "Why did you do something so stupid with your friend's gun?" Or, "Why were you so concerned about the life of a stupid dyke?" Nope. Just, "Why."

But he didn't exactly answer my question. At least, I didn't think he did at first. He seemed to just ramble a bit, a string of words drifting from between his teeth. And he worked seamlessly as he talked, hands whistling across the tiny scanner as "2.99" popped up three times in a row for the same brand of bread.

"Have a girl at home," he said. "Name's Lily. You taught her English at the high school. O'Neill, right?"

"Yeah. The school I don't work at anymore?"

"That's it." His voice was remarkably gruff. "They didn't kick you out, did they?"

"No," I lied. The fact was, they had. People like me weren't exactly viewed as healthy role models in this town. News of my marriage had spread quickly. Talk about a torch and pitchforks moment.

"Lily don't have a mother," he said. "I take care of her. All day and all night. Only go out when my brother's around to help. She's my world."

I swallowed, hard. "She's lucky to have a good father."

"You ever thought about getting a kid?" He never looked at me as he talked. "With your wife?"

"Yeah. Maybe. We're thinking about adopting."

He had finished swiping three dollars in change and was lifting the plastic bags into his cart. He flashed his gaze at me. The same look he had just before he had thrown off his friend's shot.

"You deserve a kid," he whispered, just as he sauntered out of the store with the clatter of two stuck wheels accompanying him.

I'd go into detail about the significance of his words. The big abstract concept of understanding. Of remembering humanity and family. But I won't. Too sappy. Instead, I'll just say I went home and kissed my wife softly, and we watched football, all while the swelling in my knee died down and the red spider web melted away.

This week's prompt was provided by Jocelyn Roddie.