"Gaaaarrrrr!" said his mother and rushed out of the room on her spike heels. Beautiful body, without question.
"Now," said Stuart, "we can really talk, can,t we? I mean she,s driving me crazy. My stepfather beats the hell out of her and she blames it on me. Me. I,m the one to blame for his slashing her entire closet full of clothes with a box cutter, me!"
"What else do you remember about the attack?" Reuben asked. It was inconceivable that this ruddy, bright-eyed boy could die from the Chrism or from anything.
"Strong, unbelievably strong," Stuart replied. "And these guys stabbed him too. I saw that! Saw that! I mean they really stabbed him. He didn,t even flinch, man. He just tore them apart. I mean tore them apart. I mean we are talking gross, man. I mean we,re talking cannibalism here. They,re not letting witnesses talk to the press, but they can,t stop me. I know my rights under the Constitution. I cannot be stopped from talking to the press."
"Right. What else?" asked Reuben.
Stuart shook his head. Suddenly his eyes watered and he turned into a six-year-old right before Reuben,s eyes and started sobbing.
"I,m so sorry they killed your friend," said Reuben.
But the boy was inconsolable.
Reuben stood by the bed with his arm around him for fifteen minutes.
"You know what I,m really afraid of?" the boy asked.
"What?"
"They,re going to get this guy, the Man Wolf, and really hurt him. They,ll shoot him up with a machine gun, they,ll club him like a baby seal. I don,t know. They,ll really hurt him. He,s not a human being to them. He,s an animal. They,ll pump him full of lead the way they did Bonnie and Clyde. I mean they were human beings, yes, but they pumped them full of bullets like they were animals."
"Right."
"And they,ll never know what went on in the guy,s mind. They,ll never know who he really is or was or why he does what he does."
"Does your hand hurt?"
"No. But I wouldn,t know if it was on fire. I have so much Valium and Vicodin in me right now that - ."
"Gotcha. Been there. Okay. What else do you want to tell me?"
For half an hour, they talked about Antonio and his macho in-law cousins and how much they,d hated him because he was g*y, and hated Stuart, whom they blamed for Antonio "becoming" g*y; they talked about his stepfather Herman Buckler who paid the guys who,d kidnapped Antonio and Stuart, and wanted to kill and mutilate them both; they talked about Santa Rosa, about Blessed Sacrament High School, and they talked about what it means to be a really really great criminal lawyer, like Clarence Darrow, who was Stuart,s hero, and he would take the cases of the marginalized, the neglected, the despised.
Stuart started crying again. "Must be the drugs," he said. He crumpled up again like a little child.
His mom came in with the chocolate milk shake.
"You,re going to get sick, drinking this!" she said with a vengeance, slamming it down on the bedside tray.
When the nurse appeared, she discovered that Stuart had a temperature again and said Reuben had to go. Yes, she said, they were giving him the rabies treatment, of course, and a cocktail of antibiotics that ought to take care of anything contagious from this wolf being. But Reuben had to go now.
"The ,wolf being,, " said Stuart, "that really has a nice ring. Hey, will you come back, or do you pretty much have your whole story?"
"I,d like to come back tomorrow, and see how you are," said Reuben. He gave Stuart his cards, with the Mendocino address and number written on the back. He wrote all his numbers down for Stuart in his hardcover copy of Game of Thrones.
On the way out, Reuben left his card at the nurses, station. If there is any change, please call, he asked. If he thought about this kid actually dying, he would break down right then and there.
He caught the attending physician, Dr. Angie Cutler, right outside the elevator and urged her to contact Grace in San Francisco, since he,d been through all this with his mother handling the case. He tried to be as tactful about this as he could, but he was inwardly convinced by now that his mother,s treatment of him probably helped him to survive. Dr. Cutler was a lot more responsive than he,d expected. She was younger than Grace, knew Grace, and respected her. She was kind of sweet. Reuben gave her his card. "Call me anytime about this," he said, murmuring something about what he himself had experienced.
"I know all about you," said Dr. Cutler with an inviting smile. "I,m glad you came to see that boy. He,s crawling the walls in there. But he does have marvelous recuperative powers; it,s a miracle. If you had seen the bruises on him when they brought him in."
On the way down in the elevator, he called Grace and urged her please to connect with the doctor. The kid had been bitten. It was true.
His mother was silent for a moment. Then she said in a strained voice,
"Reuben, if I were to tell this doctor the things I observed in your case, I,m not sure I,d have much cred with her at all."
"I know that, Mom, I understand. I know," he said. "But there just could be some really important things you could share with her, you know, about the antibiotics you used, the rabies treatment, whatever you did in my case that might help this boy."
"Reuben, I can,t really call the boy,s doctor out of the blue. The only person who,s been the least interested in what I actually observed in your case was this Dr. Jaska, and you wouldn,t give him the time of day."
"Yeah, Mom, I realize. But I,m talking now about the kid getting treatment for the bite, that,s all."
A chill came over him.
He was walking out of the hospital now to the car, and the rain had started up again.
"Mom, I,m sorry I didn,t stay and talk to Dr. Jaska. I know you wanted me to. And maybe if it will make you feel better, I can talk to the man soon."
And if I had stayed, well, then by the time I,d passed Santa Rosa, Stuart McIntyre would have been dead.
There was such a long silence that he feared he,d lost the connection, but then Grace spoke up again, and she sounded like somebody else with Grace,s voice.
"Reuben, why have you gone up to Mendocino County? What,s really the matter with you?"
How could he respond?
"Mamma, not now, please. I,ve been here all day. If you could just call the doctor, just volunteer, you know, that you handled a case like this one - ."
"Well, listen. You have to take the final rabies shot tomorrow. You know that, right?"
"I completely forgot."
"Well, Reuben, I,ve left messages for you every day for a week. It,s twenty-eight days tomorrow and you have to have the final shot. Does this beautiful young woman, Laura, have a phone? Does she answer it? Could I perhaps be leaving messages with her?"