FIC: The Secret Life of the Canadian Teenage Knee
Title: The Secret Life of the Canadian Teenage Knee
Fandom: The Sentinel
Rating: PG for language and underage drinking
Category: gen
Wordcount: ~3800
Warnings: None
Summary: The situation with Jonathan's knee comes to a head.
This is the final-for-now story in my series about teen sentinels (and Blair and Jim dealing with Blair's work with young sentinels). Thanks go to the nice folks on little-details who helped me toss around knee injury ideas.
The Secret Life of the Canadian Teenage Knee
In didn’t happen every night, but when it - when Jonathan would get out of bed, sneak out of the dorm, find the bottle of rum he’d stashed nearby, and take three careful gulps - there was nothing Jason could do but lie in bed as he felt Jonathan slipping away from him.
On the nights it didn’t happen, Jason found it pretty easy to go to sleep. It was so much easier to get comfortable in William Ellison’s big, creaky spare bedroom, even with the white noise generator off, than it had been up at the camp. Normal houses were supposed to be hard for Sentinels, but Mr. Ellison and Ms. Wang didn’t really use much in the way of perfumed soaps or whatever. And he was sure nobody was listening to his breathing, his heartbeat, even his stomach gurgles.
And it was comforting to know that, less than a mile away, Jonathan was also drifting to sleep, gradually letting go of a swirl of thoughts that Jason usually couldn’t understand. The words were hard enough; but sometimes there were more symbols than words, all standing for things that, once Jonathan explained them, Jason didn’t think really needed words or symbols at all.
A chair needed a word, because you might want to say, “The boy sat in the chair.” Okay, that was a stupid example, nobody actually talked like that, but he couldn’t think of a better one. But Jonathan didn’t think much about chairs, unless he got thinking about what made a chair a chair. He thought about lines curving in space, and the problems of made up, screwed up people in books.
But two or three nights a week, in the month since they’d done that thing they’d done when he’d first moved into Mr. Ellison’s house, were like this one. Jonathan would be upset by something - tonight a few questions wrong on a math test - and wouldn’t be able to let it go.
“What does it matter? You have an A,” Jason thought at him. A wall of anger came back.
Jason now felt feet hitting the floor, felt a jab to a knee that wasn’t his. Sweat pants on, slip-on sneakers slipped on. “If you’re going to do this, for Pete’s sake take a jacket,” Jason aimed Jonathan’s way.
“Mind your own business,” Jonathan shot back. But he put on a jacket.
Jonathan slipped into the hall, then opened the door to the boys restroom intentionally loudly as he passed.
“Nice touch,” Jason thought.
“Thank you. You know, sarcasm suits you.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
A feeling of perplexity from Jonathan, as he tried to figure out whether this was true. Jason shot him an image of himself standing in front of a white board with the word “SARCASUM” written out on it.
“That’s not how it’s spelled.”
Now Jonathan was USING Jason’s hearing to avoid the night guard… Jason hated that he did this, especially for something he knew Jason didn’t want him doing.
Feeling his disapproval, Jonathan was now trying to block him; tonight’s method was to fill his mind with the remembered tones of a fire alarm. The volume didn’t actually matter, but the mind-filling worked, and maybe if he’d tried this 10 minutes ago Jonathan wouldn’t be sneaking out of his dorm right now… Jason tried to project this, but couldn’t get past the thrum.
And now Jonathan half-jogged down the path toward the stream that ran behind the dorm, his sense of anticipation building. In just a few more moments, the bottle would be in his hand, rum-minus-Coke in his mouth, down his throat, into his brain, pushing Jason out. And, then, sleep.
The bottle was stashed behind a rock, amongst leaves, on the farther side. Jonathan picked his way down the bank, but his knee was hurting from trying to jog on it. But to cross on the rocks he needed to take a large step…
There was a twist, and a pop, and…
Agony filled Jason’s mind; then his ears. He needed to…
He swung his own feet onto the floor, but his knee buckled and he fell. He tried to scream with his own mouth but he couldn’t…
He was cold and wet and he couldn’t move and surely someone could hear him…
People. Kids. Dorm parents. “Call 9-1-1.” “I already did.” “Let’s get you out of the water.” “What were you doing outside?” “I’ll call his parents.”
Thad, of all people, on his left side, and Benji Yu from soccer on his right, lifting him out of the water. Damn damn damn he hated that anyone saw him like this, but at least the stream could explain any water on his face, and Jason didn’t know how Jonathan could be worried about THAT when he could hardly breathe through the pain…
Now there were sirens, sirens in Jonathan’s ears, sirens in Jason’s, and still Jason could not move from where he lay on the floor, gasping, trying to scream.
He needed to get to Jonathan…
Jonathan was being lifted by strangers who smelled funny, was being strapped to a rolling bed - “stretcher” Jonathan hissed in his mind, “it’s a fucking stretcher, don’t you know anything?” - and was now moving across uneven ground, wincing at every bump. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you,” Jason thought back at him.
Slowly, slowly the pain faded…
After forever, Jason finally pushed himself up and back until his back was against the bed. Well, that had been horrible… What time was it? 1:27? Okay okay okay it was late and dark and cold out but that wasn’t a problem.
He rose - his left knee still hurt, but, no, that was still Jonathan’s knee, his knees were the most stable thing about him. He put on the previous day’s socks, his only pair of shoes, the new lightweight jacket Ms. Wang had taken him out shopping for a few days ago.
He slipped out of the bedroom and down the back stairs - no sense waking anyone, it was so late. Out the back door…
Jonathan was that-away, through the neighbor’s yard and beyond. Jason started walking.
- - - -
Thanks to Chief Jim’s hikes, moving through woods was no big deal. Jason could find any path that was there for finding, and discovered he was also a pretty good judge of how easy undergrowth would be to push through.
Crossing the highway was a bit more challenging - not the road itself, in the middle of the night there weren’t many cars, but Jason cut his hands on the barbed wire on the top of the first tall fence he encountered. After that, he took off his jacket and used it to cover the barbs; it ripped a little when he pulled it down, but not so badly that he couldn’t wear it.
But eventually a broad street with gas stations and office buildings seemed to be going the right way, so for a while he jogged along it. But then it went left and Jonathan was to the right so Jason was again in woods, then a swamp, then woods again.
It was starting to get maybe a little lighter out when the trees parted for a big red-bricked building. The first door he tried was locked, so, keeping a hand on the building, he walked around to the right. And now there was pavement, and a door that opened for him.
That was really nice of it.
“Sir?” “Sir?” “Can we help you?” “What happened to you? Come sit…”
Jason pushed through a set of swinging doors, then another set, then past a man on a cot who who who who who…
And a little boy crying because because…
And a woman had his arm now. Malorie. She was wearing her longer-sleeved scrubs to cover the bruises…
And now here was Jonathan, on a cot, his mother rising and coming towards him but Malorie was hurting so badly and she needed to know. “Gersh shouldn’t have done that to you. Believe what you know,” he said to her, and she gasped and let go of him and Jonathan’s mom was coming towards him and he was falling…
- - - - - -
He was in a warm room filled with sunlight, naked except for his boxers, under sheets and blankets that smelled like Mr. Ellison’s house. There was a needle going into his left arm; this should have freaked him out, but it didn’t.
He wasn’t alone; he looked right, and there was Jonathan’s mom. Mrs. Coleman.
“Hi,” she said. “You okay?”
He rolled away from her, stopping when the movement hurt where the needle entered his arm. “Yes,” he said, “Go away. Please.”
After a moment, she did.
- - - - - -
The next time Jason woke up, he felt it was nearing evening; sunlight no longer came through the window, and the needle was no longer in his arm. And Mrs. Coleman had also stayed away. Three for three, as Jonathan would say.
“Jon?” he reached out with his mind.
“Jase? Where are you?”
Jason swung his feet to the ground and held onto the side of the cot for a moment, expecting to be shaky, but he was fine.
On the closest counter, fresh boxers, a pair of his sweat pants, and a Cascade Academy t-shirt Jonathan had given him were in spread out, next to the white noise generator he used at Mr. Ellison’s house. The only familiar person-smell in the room was Mrs. Coleman’s, so she must have gotten his stuff for him. For an instant Jason felt an acute stab of guilt; but it wasn’t his fault she was in Cascade in the first place.
Under the sweatpants were socks and his slippers; she’d been thorough.
Jason quickly got dressed, then surveyed the space for other stuff that might have been brought; nothing except the boxers he’d been wearing, and Mr. Ellison’s sheets and blanket. His original clothes and shoes, and the jacket he’d probably destroyed, were missing.
He wrapped everything that wasn’t the hospital’s up in the blanket, then took it into the hall with him, feeling a little silly. A nurse-type woman walked past and smiled at him, not seeming at all bothered to see him standing there. “Elevators are that way,” she said. “Your family said to tell you ‘Fifth floor.”
Family? Fear flooded him. But, no, they wouldn’t have called his family… and if his mom and dad had come, ‘Fifth floor’ wasn’t the sort of thing they’d say.
It wasn’t until he opened the door to what he knew to be Jonathan’s room, saw Jonathan reclining in a hospital bed, left leg in a brace on top of the sheets… saw Jonathan turn in surprise… that something - some block in his brain - lifted. He’d completely forgotten why he was there, why Jonathan was there, that he was pissed as hell at Jonathan… had forgotten that Jonathan had been doing stupid, dangerous things simply because he couldn’t handle the bits of Jason’s brain that leaked out sometimes.
He took a step back and leaned against the doorframe, hugging his bundled belongings to his chest.
“Get over here,” Jonathan said, but Jason shook his head.
“I’m serious. Don’t just stand there halfway in the hallway.”
“See ya,” Jason said, starting to push off the door frame, but then Jonathan was trying to get off the bed, and the pain that caused hit Jason so hard he almost dropped his stuff as he clutched at the wall for balance.
“Stay STILL!” he hissed.
‘Yeah, I get that,” said Jonathan. “We need to work this out. Please.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Jason, “since you said please.”
He pulled over a plastic chair and sat facing Jonathan. “Grounds rules,” he said. “Don’t do shit like this again. No more drinking just to block me out. I can’t stand it.”
He felt Jonathan trying to construct a lie, something about not knowing it bothered Jason. “Don’t bullshit me,” Jason said. “Rule number two. You can’t lie to me. All it does is make me mad. Like I’ve said before, I won’t hold your thoughts against you, but I ask you, as a friend, don’t make this harder.”
“I spin things,” said Jonathan. “You don’t, but I do. I spin things all the time.”
“Fine, whatever,” said Jason.
“Is there a rule three?” Jonathan asked.
“Not really,” said Jason. “Just, we need to figure out what’s going on between us. Really figure it out. Take it to Dr. Blair and Officer Jim. They might know how to break it. Or maybe we can just undo what we did, that made this mind-share thing happen.”
Saying that last bit out loud hurt, almost as much as Jonathan’s fall into the stream had hurt. More than the barbed wire for sure.
“God, Jase,” said Jonathan. “Don’t give up on me, okay? Not now, at least.”
And Jason realized that Jonathan had been blocking… somehow blocking… a heck of a lot. Pain, embarrassment, despair… especially despair…
“You’ll be okay for fall soccer!” Jason exclaimed.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Jonathan, shutting his eyes, making his face as neutral as he could. “And the camps I need to go to, if I want to play in college even for Rainier, are this summer. But why should I bother, if this is just going to keep on happening?”
“Can’t they operate?”
“By the time the swelling goes down enough to do anything, it’s really too late.”
“A doctor said this?”
Jonathan, eyes still closed, face still blank, nodded.
“Then let’s stop the swelling,” said Jason. He rose and moved to get as close to Jonathan’s left knee as possible. Brace on or off? Leaving it on would probably be better both for Jonathan’s comfort and, as Jonathan would say, ‘plausible deniability’ later. He placed his hands on both sides of the brace…
VERY interesting. Under a layer of mostly-water, Jonathan’s kneecap was out of place, the ligaments that were responsible for its stability missing in action. Ah, there they were, inches away. “There are a bunch of things going on,” he said. “It’s a lot like last night in that stream, and all those people coming to see what was going on. There are parts trying genuinely to be helpful, but having no idea what they’re doing. And parts just getting in the way. And parts trying to heal things, but they’re actually the most dangerous, because things aren’t in the right place right now, and there’s nothing your body can do by itself to get ‘em there. So someone else has to move them, which is what surgery is for. So what I have to do is - first, get the healing to stop…”
He pressed, and pressed, and thought, “wait, wait, trust me, wait….” And something in Jonathan paused…
“And now for all the fluid - some is to help with pain, and some with healing, and some just comes…. I’m going to leave just a little, to help pillow things… Let me calm the nerves while I’m at it…”
It really wasn’t hard, he knew Jonathan’s systems so well by now.
The brace was noticeably looser under his hands now, so he leaned back a little and looked up. Jonathan was - well, a mess, really. Hands over his face, starting to breath hard, trying not to cry.
“It’s okay,” said Jason. “But, I think maybe the answer isn’t us getting farther apart, I think it’s us working closer together.”
Jonathan lowered his hands, face again neutral. “That’s going to be really hard for me,” he said.
“See, honestly! You can do it!” said Jason.
- - - - - -
The nurse who came in a little while later checked the brace and tightened it. “Did you fiddle with the straps?” she asked. “Well, don’t.”
Two dinners appeared; Jason ate all of his and half of Jonathan’s. Later, Jonathan’s dad came, with playing cards, Jonathan’s laptop, a few text books, and Jason’s cell phone.
Looking at Jonathan’s knee where the brace left it exposed, he said, “This doesn’t look at all like how your mother described it. I mean, it’s clearly not what a knee is supposed to look like, but it’s not nearly as puffy.”
“No, you’re right, the inflammation has really gone down,” said Jonathan. “Bodies are amazing things.”
“Right…” Mr. Coleman looked from Jonathan to Jason and back again. “I’ve got to go to Jonathan’s school, try to smooth things over yet again. Apparently there was a bottle of booze found on the other side of the stream Jonathan was rock-jumping in.”
“There are bottles of booze all over campus,” said Jonathan.
“Let’s hope so,” said Mr. Coleman.
- - - - - -
The cell phone, it seemed, had mostly been brought so that people could call through to Jonathan - yes, he was fine there without an adult overnight; yes, he had all his homework; no, his knee didn’t hurt too badly, he’d even switched from opioids to Tylenol.
Jason, though, did get one call, from Ms. Wang - yes, he was also okay, yes, the scrapes on his hands (which somehow she’d seen? Just how busy had he been, in that time between collapsing in the ER and waking up in that room with Mrs. Coleman watching him?) were fine, no, Mr. Ellison wasn’t going to kick him out, but maybe he was going to upgrade the security system and face it inward. Yes, he was good at spending the night in Jonathan’s room.
- - - - - -
The next morning, they were both woken by an orderly who kicked Jason out of his chair and into the hallway so that Jonathan could prepped for an MRI. Being a wall away from the white noise generator was hard; but fortunately it only took a few moments, then Jonathan was rolled away in a wheelchair, left leg outstretched.
Jason ducked back in the room, then ate most of both breakfasts which arrived shortly after.
An hour later Jonathan was back, along with a bunch of medical people, both adult Colemans, and Dr. Blair. It seemed Jonathan was a medical oddity, and immediate surgery wasn’t just possible but necessary, as both inflammation and healing had stalled out. So the hospital’s lead orthopedic surgeon had cleared his mid-day schedule, and they were good to go.
Had Jonathan eaten anything that morning? No? Good.
Did Jason and Jonathan need a moment alone before surgery? Um, no, they were good.
Then Jonathan was carted off again and Jason found himself being hustled into a waiting room along with Jonathan’s parents and, more surprisingly, Dr. Blair, who plugged Jason’s white noise generator - that thing got around - into the nearest wall socket, then sat next to him.
“Nothing personal, Dr. Blair, but why are you here?” Jason asked.
“I’m here to watch you, make sure you don’t do anything… unexpected,” said Dr. Blair.
Oh. OH. He looked at his palms. “I guess I went a little crazy the other night,” he said.
“You walked eight miles, straight line, in the dark.”
“Not absolutely in a straight line.”
“I can show you a map. Jim and I went looking yesterday for where you crossed highways. By the way, Jim says you’re shit at covering tracks.”
“Didn’t try. Anyway, I’m sure Jim has done the same thing, lots of times.”
“No he hasn’t. Jason, what it is you have going with Jonathan - we all agree, it’s not healthy. Not safe. We want you to move back to the camp.”
For some reason, this was way more funny than upsetting. “If I’d been at the camp I’d still be walking and probably eating tree bark by now.”
Mrs. Coleman, from across the room, called, “He has a point.”
Several rooms away, he felt Jonathan slowly fade out of consciousness. It was a horrible, sickening feeling, and Jason closed his eyes. Part of him did want to get up, find Jonathan, stand over him until… until… but, instead, he calmed his breathing and said, “They just knocked him out. Sorry.”
“You good?” called Mr. Coleman.
“Yeah,” he said, then turned back to Dr. Blair. “Jonathan and I talked a lot about this last night. He’s going back to school ASAP. I’m going to go with him, carry his stuff, keep him from doing anything he shouldn’t. ‘Broadly defined,’ he says. I’ll work on my own stuff while he does all his advanced-level classes. And I’ll supervise his healing and learn the whole process inside-out in realtime.”
“What?”
How had they not figured it out? “I did it,” he said. “I made it so his knee could be operated on today. I almost had it all worked out, how his knee could heal without surgery, weeks ago, but it required him to stay still and that just wasn’t going to happen. Plus it was right after he pulled me out of Dawson, so I was in terrible shape. But I’m stronger now, and he’s a lot more desperate and inclined to behave himself.
“Plus, us being apart just doesn’t work. We pick up too much of each other, and it distracts us from what we’re actually trying to do. It’s worse for him than for me because he’s not used so much input, and because he’s trying to do a lot more than me.”
“Cascade Academy won’t agree.”
“Jonathan just got his SAT scores back. He the highest scores of any CA student EVER.”
“Well, the scoring’s been recalibrated, verbal scores are now 60 points higher than when I…”
“EVER,” repeated Jason. “They’ll let him stay, they’ll let me hang around. Maybe we’ll live in the dorms, maybe he’ll stay with me at Mr. Ellison’s, but we have to be together most of the time.
He paused. “I’m hoping the dorm works out. I’m friends with some of his friends there already, though Jonathan can’t believe it, because he’s such a prick sometimes. But not everyone there’s a genius.”
Mrs. Coleman snorted into her coffee. Mr. Coleman called over, “Let me know how we can help.”
Dr. Blair shook his head. “This is unknown territory. Be careful.”
“Thanks,” said Jason.
- - - - - -
And, gentle reader, I’m going to end my tales of Jonathan and Jason, and Blair’s work with young sentinels, here for now. I think Jonathan will play soccer again ☺ but becoming a surgeon as quickly as possible will be more important to him very soon, so that he and Jason can fix the world, one blown knee at a time.
All feedback welcomed.
Fandom: The Sentinel
Rating: PG for language and underage drinking
Category: gen
Wordcount: ~3800
Warnings: None
Summary: The situation with Jonathan's knee comes to a head.
This is the final-for-now story in my series about teen sentinels (and Blair and Jim dealing with Blair's work with young sentinels). Thanks go to the nice folks on little-details who helped me toss around knee injury ideas.
The Secret Life of the Canadian Teenage Knee
In didn’t happen every night, but when it - when Jonathan would get out of bed, sneak out of the dorm, find the bottle of rum he’d stashed nearby, and take three careful gulps - there was nothing Jason could do but lie in bed as he felt Jonathan slipping away from him.
On the nights it didn’t happen, Jason found it pretty easy to go to sleep. It was so much easier to get comfortable in William Ellison’s big, creaky spare bedroom, even with the white noise generator off, than it had been up at the camp. Normal houses were supposed to be hard for Sentinels, but Mr. Ellison and Ms. Wang didn’t really use much in the way of perfumed soaps or whatever. And he was sure nobody was listening to his breathing, his heartbeat, even his stomach gurgles.
And it was comforting to know that, less than a mile away, Jonathan was also drifting to sleep, gradually letting go of a swirl of thoughts that Jason usually couldn’t understand. The words were hard enough; but sometimes there were more symbols than words, all standing for things that, once Jonathan explained them, Jason didn’t think really needed words or symbols at all.
A chair needed a word, because you might want to say, “The boy sat in the chair.” Okay, that was a stupid example, nobody actually talked like that, but he couldn’t think of a better one. But Jonathan didn’t think much about chairs, unless he got thinking about what made a chair a chair. He thought about lines curving in space, and the problems of made up, screwed up people in books.
But two or three nights a week, in the month since they’d done that thing they’d done when he’d first moved into Mr. Ellison’s house, were like this one. Jonathan would be upset by something - tonight a few questions wrong on a math test - and wouldn’t be able to let it go.
“What does it matter? You have an A,” Jason thought at him. A wall of anger came back.
Jason now felt feet hitting the floor, felt a jab to a knee that wasn’t his. Sweat pants on, slip-on sneakers slipped on. “If you’re going to do this, for Pete’s sake take a jacket,” Jason aimed Jonathan’s way.
“Mind your own business,” Jonathan shot back. But he put on a jacket.
Jonathan slipped into the hall, then opened the door to the boys restroom intentionally loudly as he passed.
“Nice touch,” Jason thought.
“Thank you. You know, sarcasm suits you.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
A feeling of perplexity from Jonathan, as he tried to figure out whether this was true. Jason shot him an image of himself standing in front of a white board with the word “SARCASUM” written out on it.
“That’s not how it’s spelled.”
Now Jonathan was USING Jason’s hearing to avoid the night guard… Jason hated that he did this, especially for something he knew Jason didn’t want him doing.
Feeling his disapproval, Jonathan was now trying to block him; tonight’s method was to fill his mind with the remembered tones of a fire alarm. The volume didn’t actually matter, but the mind-filling worked, and maybe if he’d tried this 10 minutes ago Jonathan wouldn’t be sneaking out of his dorm right now… Jason tried to project this, but couldn’t get past the thrum.
And now Jonathan half-jogged down the path toward the stream that ran behind the dorm, his sense of anticipation building. In just a few more moments, the bottle would be in his hand, rum-minus-Coke in his mouth, down his throat, into his brain, pushing Jason out. And, then, sleep.
The bottle was stashed behind a rock, amongst leaves, on the farther side. Jonathan picked his way down the bank, but his knee was hurting from trying to jog on it. But to cross on the rocks he needed to take a large step…
There was a twist, and a pop, and…
Agony filled Jason’s mind; then his ears. He needed to…
He swung his own feet onto the floor, but his knee buckled and he fell. He tried to scream with his own mouth but he couldn’t…
He was cold and wet and he couldn’t move and surely someone could hear him…
People. Kids. Dorm parents. “Call 9-1-1.” “I already did.” “Let’s get you out of the water.” “What were you doing outside?” “I’ll call his parents.”
Thad, of all people, on his left side, and Benji Yu from soccer on his right, lifting him out of the water. Damn damn damn he hated that anyone saw him like this, but at least the stream could explain any water on his face, and Jason didn’t know how Jonathan could be worried about THAT when he could hardly breathe through the pain…
Now there were sirens, sirens in Jonathan’s ears, sirens in Jason’s, and still Jason could not move from where he lay on the floor, gasping, trying to scream.
He needed to get to Jonathan…
Jonathan was being lifted by strangers who smelled funny, was being strapped to a rolling bed - “stretcher” Jonathan hissed in his mind, “it’s a fucking stretcher, don’t you know anything?” - and was now moving across uneven ground, wincing at every bump. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you,” Jason thought back at him.
Slowly, slowly the pain faded…
After forever, Jason finally pushed himself up and back until his back was against the bed. Well, that had been horrible… What time was it? 1:27? Okay okay okay it was late and dark and cold out but that wasn’t a problem.
He rose - his left knee still hurt, but, no, that was still Jonathan’s knee, his knees were the most stable thing about him. He put on the previous day’s socks, his only pair of shoes, the new lightweight jacket Ms. Wang had taken him out shopping for a few days ago.
He slipped out of the bedroom and down the back stairs - no sense waking anyone, it was so late. Out the back door…
Jonathan was that-away, through the neighbor’s yard and beyond. Jason started walking.
- - - -
Thanks to Chief Jim’s hikes, moving through woods was no big deal. Jason could find any path that was there for finding, and discovered he was also a pretty good judge of how easy undergrowth would be to push through.
Crossing the highway was a bit more challenging - not the road itself, in the middle of the night there weren’t many cars, but Jason cut his hands on the barbed wire on the top of the first tall fence he encountered. After that, he took off his jacket and used it to cover the barbs; it ripped a little when he pulled it down, but not so badly that he couldn’t wear it.
But eventually a broad street with gas stations and office buildings seemed to be going the right way, so for a while he jogged along it. But then it went left and Jonathan was to the right so Jason was again in woods, then a swamp, then woods again.
It was starting to get maybe a little lighter out when the trees parted for a big red-bricked building. The first door he tried was locked, so, keeping a hand on the building, he walked around to the right. And now there was pavement, and a door that opened for him.
That was really nice of it.
“Sir?” “Sir?” “Can we help you?” “What happened to you? Come sit…”
Jason pushed through a set of swinging doors, then another set, then past a man on a cot who who who who who…
And a little boy crying because because…
And a woman had his arm now. Malorie. She was wearing her longer-sleeved scrubs to cover the bruises…
And now here was Jonathan, on a cot, his mother rising and coming towards him but Malorie was hurting so badly and she needed to know. “Gersh shouldn’t have done that to you. Believe what you know,” he said to her, and she gasped and let go of him and Jonathan’s mom was coming towards him and he was falling…
- - - - - -
He was in a warm room filled with sunlight, naked except for his boxers, under sheets and blankets that smelled like Mr. Ellison’s house. There was a needle going into his left arm; this should have freaked him out, but it didn’t.
He wasn’t alone; he looked right, and there was Jonathan’s mom. Mrs. Coleman.
“Hi,” she said. “You okay?”
He rolled away from her, stopping when the movement hurt where the needle entered his arm. “Yes,” he said, “Go away. Please.”
After a moment, she did.
- - - - - -
The next time Jason woke up, he felt it was nearing evening; sunlight no longer came through the window, and the needle was no longer in his arm. And Mrs. Coleman had also stayed away. Three for three, as Jonathan would say.
“Jon?” he reached out with his mind.
“Jase? Where are you?”
Jason swung his feet to the ground and held onto the side of the cot for a moment, expecting to be shaky, but he was fine.
On the closest counter, fresh boxers, a pair of his sweat pants, and a Cascade Academy t-shirt Jonathan had given him were in spread out, next to the white noise generator he used at Mr. Ellison’s house. The only familiar person-smell in the room was Mrs. Coleman’s, so she must have gotten his stuff for him. For an instant Jason felt an acute stab of guilt; but it wasn’t his fault she was in Cascade in the first place.
Under the sweatpants were socks and his slippers; she’d been thorough.
Jason quickly got dressed, then surveyed the space for other stuff that might have been brought; nothing except the boxers he’d been wearing, and Mr. Ellison’s sheets and blanket. His original clothes and shoes, and the jacket he’d probably destroyed, were missing.
He wrapped everything that wasn’t the hospital’s up in the blanket, then took it into the hall with him, feeling a little silly. A nurse-type woman walked past and smiled at him, not seeming at all bothered to see him standing there. “Elevators are that way,” she said. “Your family said to tell you ‘Fifth floor.”
Family? Fear flooded him. But, no, they wouldn’t have called his family… and if his mom and dad had come, ‘Fifth floor’ wasn’t the sort of thing they’d say.
It wasn’t until he opened the door to what he knew to be Jonathan’s room, saw Jonathan reclining in a hospital bed, left leg in a brace on top of the sheets… saw Jonathan turn in surprise… that something - some block in his brain - lifted. He’d completely forgotten why he was there, why Jonathan was there, that he was pissed as hell at Jonathan… had forgotten that Jonathan had been doing stupid, dangerous things simply because he couldn’t handle the bits of Jason’s brain that leaked out sometimes.
He took a step back and leaned against the doorframe, hugging his bundled belongings to his chest.
“Get over here,” Jonathan said, but Jason shook his head.
“I’m serious. Don’t just stand there halfway in the hallway.”
“See ya,” Jason said, starting to push off the door frame, but then Jonathan was trying to get off the bed, and the pain that caused hit Jason so hard he almost dropped his stuff as he clutched at the wall for balance.
“Stay STILL!” he hissed.
‘Yeah, I get that,” said Jonathan. “We need to work this out. Please.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Jason, “since you said please.”
He pulled over a plastic chair and sat facing Jonathan. “Grounds rules,” he said. “Don’t do shit like this again. No more drinking just to block me out. I can’t stand it.”
He felt Jonathan trying to construct a lie, something about not knowing it bothered Jason. “Don’t bullshit me,” Jason said. “Rule number two. You can’t lie to me. All it does is make me mad. Like I’ve said before, I won’t hold your thoughts against you, but I ask you, as a friend, don’t make this harder.”
“I spin things,” said Jonathan. “You don’t, but I do. I spin things all the time.”
“Fine, whatever,” said Jason.
“Is there a rule three?” Jonathan asked.
“Not really,” said Jason. “Just, we need to figure out what’s going on between us. Really figure it out. Take it to Dr. Blair and Officer Jim. They might know how to break it. Or maybe we can just undo what we did, that made this mind-share thing happen.”
Saying that last bit out loud hurt, almost as much as Jonathan’s fall into the stream had hurt. More than the barbed wire for sure.
“God, Jase,” said Jonathan. “Don’t give up on me, okay? Not now, at least.”
And Jason realized that Jonathan had been blocking… somehow blocking… a heck of a lot. Pain, embarrassment, despair… especially despair…
“You’ll be okay for fall soccer!” Jason exclaimed.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Jonathan, shutting his eyes, making his face as neutral as he could. “And the camps I need to go to, if I want to play in college even for Rainier, are this summer. But why should I bother, if this is just going to keep on happening?”
“Can’t they operate?”
“By the time the swelling goes down enough to do anything, it’s really too late.”
“A doctor said this?”
Jonathan, eyes still closed, face still blank, nodded.
“Then let’s stop the swelling,” said Jason. He rose and moved to get as close to Jonathan’s left knee as possible. Brace on or off? Leaving it on would probably be better both for Jonathan’s comfort and, as Jonathan would say, ‘plausible deniability’ later. He placed his hands on both sides of the brace…
VERY interesting. Under a layer of mostly-water, Jonathan’s kneecap was out of place, the ligaments that were responsible for its stability missing in action. Ah, there they were, inches away. “There are a bunch of things going on,” he said. “It’s a lot like last night in that stream, and all those people coming to see what was going on. There are parts trying genuinely to be helpful, but having no idea what they’re doing. And parts just getting in the way. And parts trying to heal things, but they’re actually the most dangerous, because things aren’t in the right place right now, and there’s nothing your body can do by itself to get ‘em there. So someone else has to move them, which is what surgery is for. So what I have to do is - first, get the healing to stop…”
He pressed, and pressed, and thought, “wait, wait, trust me, wait….” And something in Jonathan paused…
“And now for all the fluid - some is to help with pain, and some with healing, and some just comes…. I’m going to leave just a little, to help pillow things… Let me calm the nerves while I’m at it…”
It really wasn’t hard, he knew Jonathan’s systems so well by now.
The brace was noticeably looser under his hands now, so he leaned back a little and looked up. Jonathan was - well, a mess, really. Hands over his face, starting to breath hard, trying not to cry.
“It’s okay,” said Jason. “But, I think maybe the answer isn’t us getting farther apart, I think it’s us working closer together.”
Jonathan lowered his hands, face again neutral. “That’s going to be really hard for me,” he said.
“See, honestly! You can do it!” said Jason.
- - - - - -
The nurse who came in a little while later checked the brace and tightened it. “Did you fiddle with the straps?” she asked. “Well, don’t.”
Two dinners appeared; Jason ate all of his and half of Jonathan’s. Later, Jonathan’s dad came, with playing cards, Jonathan’s laptop, a few text books, and Jason’s cell phone.
Looking at Jonathan’s knee where the brace left it exposed, he said, “This doesn’t look at all like how your mother described it. I mean, it’s clearly not what a knee is supposed to look like, but it’s not nearly as puffy.”
“No, you’re right, the inflammation has really gone down,” said Jonathan. “Bodies are amazing things.”
“Right…” Mr. Coleman looked from Jonathan to Jason and back again. “I’ve got to go to Jonathan’s school, try to smooth things over yet again. Apparently there was a bottle of booze found on the other side of the stream Jonathan was rock-jumping in.”
“There are bottles of booze all over campus,” said Jonathan.
“Let’s hope so,” said Mr. Coleman.
- - - - - -
The cell phone, it seemed, had mostly been brought so that people could call through to Jonathan - yes, he was fine there without an adult overnight; yes, he had all his homework; no, his knee didn’t hurt too badly, he’d even switched from opioids to Tylenol.
Jason, though, did get one call, from Ms. Wang - yes, he was also okay, yes, the scrapes on his hands (which somehow she’d seen? Just how busy had he been, in that time between collapsing in the ER and waking up in that room with Mrs. Coleman watching him?) were fine, no, Mr. Ellison wasn’t going to kick him out, but maybe he was going to upgrade the security system and face it inward. Yes, he was good at spending the night in Jonathan’s room.
- - - - - -
The next morning, they were both woken by an orderly who kicked Jason out of his chair and into the hallway so that Jonathan could prepped for an MRI. Being a wall away from the white noise generator was hard; but fortunately it only took a few moments, then Jonathan was rolled away in a wheelchair, left leg outstretched.
Jason ducked back in the room, then ate most of both breakfasts which arrived shortly after.
An hour later Jonathan was back, along with a bunch of medical people, both adult Colemans, and Dr. Blair. It seemed Jonathan was a medical oddity, and immediate surgery wasn’t just possible but necessary, as both inflammation and healing had stalled out. So the hospital’s lead orthopedic surgeon had cleared his mid-day schedule, and they were good to go.
Had Jonathan eaten anything that morning? No? Good.
Did Jason and Jonathan need a moment alone before surgery? Um, no, they were good.
Then Jonathan was carted off again and Jason found himself being hustled into a waiting room along with Jonathan’s parents and, more surprisingly, Dr. Blair, who plugged Jason’s white noise generator - that thing got around - into the nearest wall socket, then sat next to him.
“Nothing personal, Dr. Blair, but why are you here?” Jason asked.
“I’m here to watch you, make sure you don’t do anything… unexpected,” said Dr. Blair.
Oh. OH. He looked at his palms. “I guess I went a little crazy the other night,” he said.
“You walked eight miles, straight line, in the dark.”
“Not absolutely in a straight line.”
“I can show you a map. Jim and I went looking yesterday for where you crossed highways. By the way, Jim says you’re shit at covering tracks.”
“Didn’t try. Anyway, I’m sure Jim has done the same thing, lots of times.”
“No he hasn’t. Jason, what it is you have going with Jonathan - we all agree, it’s not healthy. Not safe. We want you to move back to the camp.”
For some reason, this was way more funny than upsetting. “If I’d been at the camp I’d still be walking and probably eating tree bark by now.”
Mrs. Coleman, from across the room, called, “He has a point.”
Several rooms away, he felt Jonathan slowly fade out of consciousness. It was a horrible, sickening feeling, and Jason closed his eyes. Part of him did want to get up, find Jonathan, stand over him until… until… but, instead, he calmed his breathing and said, “They just knocked him out. Sorry.”
“You good?” called Mr. Coleman.
“Yeah,” he said, then turned back to Dr. Blair. “Jonathan and I talked a lot about this last night. He’s going back to school ASAP. I’m going to go with him, carry his stuff, keep him from doing anything he shouldn’t. ‘Broadly defined,’ he says. I’ll work on my own stuff while he does all his advanced-level classes. And I’ll supervise his healing and learn the whole process inside-out in realtime.”
“What?”
How had they not figured it out? “I did it,” he said. “I made it so his knee could be operated on today. I almost had it all worked out, how his knee could heal without surgery, weeks ago, but it required him to stay still and that just wasn’t going to happen. Plus it was right after he pulled me out of Dawson, so I was in terrible shape. But I’m stronger now, and he’s a lot more desperate and inclined to behave himself.
“Plus, us being apart just doesn’t work. We pick up too much of each other, and it distracts us from what we’re actually trying to do. It’s worse for him than for me because he’s not used so much input, and because he’s trying to do a lot more than me.”
“Cascade Academy won’t agree.”
“Jonathan just got his SAT scores back. He the highest scores of any CA student EVER.”
“Well, the scoring’s been recalibrated, verbal scores are now 60 points higher than when I…”
“EVER,” repeated Jason. “They’ll let him stay, they’ll let me hang around. Maybe we’ll live in the dorms, maybe he’ll stay with me at Mr. Ellison’s, but we have to be together most of the time.
He paused. “I’m hoping the dorm works out. I’m friends with some of his friends there already, though Jonathan can’t believe it, because he’s such a prick sometimes. But not everyone there’s a genius.”
Mrs. Coleman snorted into her coffee. Mr. Coleman called over, “Let me know how we can help.”
Dr. Blair shook his head. “This is unknown territory. Be careful.”
“Thanks,” said Jason.
- - - - - -
And, gentle reader, I’m going to end my tales of Jonathan and Jason, and Blair’s work with young sentinels, here for now. I think Jonathan will play soccer again ☺ but becoming a surgeon as quickly as possible will be more important to him very soon, so that he and Jason can fix the world, one blown knee at a time.
All feedback welcomed.