hapter 14. Day 44

Gordon? Was unstoppable.

"Check this out, Virge." He tried to balance on one leg, but found it was too much for his right thigh to handle and so he wobbled, alarmingly. "Argh! Stupid muscles. Obey me. Do my bidding."

"Give it time," said Jeff. He was seated at the far end of the room, surrounded by suitcases brought from the hotel, a device open on his lap. He looked like a man at peace with the world, as relaxed as Virgil had ever seen him. Virgil stood up.

"How about I go bring the car around to the front?"

Jeff nodded his thanks. Gordon reached out to stop him.

"Wait. Before you go. Before you leave this palace of tranquillity and happiness for the last time – here." He handed Virgil a small bag. Inside it was a tiny cube. "It's the latest music storage beast. A whatchamacallit."

"A Sixty-sixty Kraftskube! Wow, Gordon. I don't know what to say." Virgil was genuinely surprised and touched. "I've wanted one of these for ages. The sound is amazing."

"Go ahead. There's something on there that says everything I want to say to you. Try it."

"How do I - ?"

"Just press there, on the indent."

At once, the room was filled with the crystal clear sounds of a woman belting out a ballad; one that had plagued every molecule of Virgil's good taste since he was old enough to express an opinion.

"Did you ever know that you're my heee-ro? You're everything I would like to be…'

"Argh! Gordon! You – you asshole!"

Gordon was gone, hysterical, clutching his stomach as he fell back against the seat bench.

"I can fly higher than an eeeagle – "

"No! Shit! How do I turn it off?"

Gordon joined in, between his gurgles.

"For you are the wind beneath the sheets."

"Turn it off!"

"Here." Jeff got up and touched it at the base. The room fell silent, save for Gordon's cackles. "As for you – " Jeff thwapped the back of Gordon's head.

"Ow!" But Gordon was still grinning, still wiping his eyes. "Oh, that's an earworm for the ages."

"God!" Virgil turned to grump his way out, but Gordon caught at him.

"Sorry, sorry. Hehehe. No, wait, sorry. But it does work, and you did want one."

"Yeah. Okay." Two good points, but they'd have to be to trump that musical abomination. "Thanks."

"Here." Something else, thrust hurriedly into his hand, unwrapped. "Something I made in rehab. Fine motor stuff."

Curiously, Virgil looked down at what he held. It was a small boomerang, shaped in wood, painted green.

"'Cos you always came back." Gordon was speaking to the wall, apparently, because he wasn't looking at his brother. "Every morning. And when I pushed. You came back."

"Oh." Something caught in Virgil's throat. He closed his hand around the small wooden object.

Gordon nodded, and then, briefly, turned his eyes to his brother's. An ocean in those eyes, and no words to capture it.

As quickly as it came, the moment was gone.

"Oh, and can you smuggle one of these out?" Gordon picked up a cushion from the wall seat. "I really want a souvenir and these are kinda funky. And you know they'll frisk me. But you've got one of those honest faces."

Virgil looked to his father, but it seemed as though Jeff Tracy was Taking A Day Off and had abandoned his fatherly duties in honour of the fact that his once paralysed son was walking out of hospital. He simply shrugged at his middle child.

Sighing, Virgil picked up the cushion.

"I'll see you down there," he said, and walked out, without a single glance back. The room held too many savage memories for the more recent, happier ones to overcome. He would be very glad to never set foot in it again.

He farewelled Byron, with a rueful apology for the cushion (waved off: "You earned it," Byron said, hugging him). Then he headed down past the cafeteria, where he once sat with Scott so long ago. Scott was now back in Kansas, home on leave, waiting with Alan and Grandma to welcome their errant brother home.

Out through the automatic doors to the hot sidewalk. He needed to turn left to walk towards the garage, but for some reason he paused, and looked across the street to his old friend, the palm. It looked shabbier than ever, strips of its fronds hanging in dried disarray from its crown.

On a whim, he crossed the road and ducked beneath the demolition tape one last time. Something was building in him, but he wasn't sure what; something to do with the days of purgatory in the place across the street, with the little brother who began in such a terrible state and was now going to walk – or, if he stayed true to type, skip – out the front doors. Something to do with everything Virgil had thought and felt, every time he had held on when every part of him had wanted release.

He didn't know what it was, exactly. Until he looked down at the little boomerang, its shape sure, its edges smoothed, its sides so carefully painted in swirls of green; and then looked up, up to the third storey, to where Jeff Tracy stood at the window with his son, Gordon, arm on his shoulder. As he watched, Gordon lifted his hand and waved.

Virgil nodded.

"You've got two minutes," he said to himself.

Carefully turning his back to the hospital and standing out of sight on the far side of the palm tree, Virgil Tracy lowered his head to the stolen cushion and cried his heart out.

The End.