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"We should have left earlier," Richie repeats, just to get on his nerves. “We’d have avoided all the bozzos stuck in traffic."
You’re a bozzo, Carmy thinks.
"I thought you didn't want to go?" he mutters, trying to see the road despite the sleet and the annoying lights everywhere.
Damn Christmas decorations, it's too early for that, he thinks. He's not sure he can manage the holiday season without Michael, and the thought is like a gut punch all of a sudden. It's not like they were even close or anything this last decade. Carmy hasn’t come home for Thanksgiving last year, or the year before. He was too busy killing himself at work in New York while Michael was actually killing himself here.
He shudders and grips the steering wheel, knuckles whitening. It's too cold in that piece of shit Richie calls a car, and their breath makes little white puffs as they argue.
"I was invited," Richie remarks. He fiddles with the radio and all that comes out of it is static and bad news about traffic.
"You don't want to go,” Carmy decides. “You just don't want to be alone." It's mean, but he feels like a live wire, ready to spark a fire.
"It's not like you want to either."
True, but Carmy doesn't say it. He'd rather stay in his shitty flat and sleep in front of the tv, dreaming about another life, with glorious food and no problems whatsoever.
"At least you still have a family that wants you for dinner," Richie grumbles.
He turns his head and looks out the window, putting an end to the conversation.
Carmy squints and concentrates on the road ahead. Traffic is starting to clear, but it's actually snowing now, and the car's wipers are shitty, like the rest of it. Like the whole evening. Like his life so far.
"I hope you won't stay cranky like that all night," Richie says, "because I refuse to be your emotional punching ball."
That’s rich coming from him, Carmy thinks. He’s the one hitching a ride to another family’s Thanksgiving dinner, all because his ex won’t give him the time of day anymore.
He opens his mouth to snap at him, but then Richie's phone starts ringing and suddenly there are lights on their left, too bright, too close. He swerves on the wet road but there is no way he can avoid the other car. We're going to be late, he thinks, and his head hits the door, then the dashboard.
*
"Carmy?"
It smells like gas. There is something wet on his face. Richie really hopes those two facts are not related. He tries to wipe his eyes but his arms are pinned.
"Cousin?"
He blinks and looks at the sky, black and white and broken. The windshield exploded. It's snowing inside. His car is fucked.
There is no way he can get out on his own, not with the way his whole body is throbbing and lights are dancing in front of his eyes. He blinks again.
He groans and manages to free his left arm. The right one is stuck against the door. He can't remember if it's a good sign not to feel anything. Maybe he broke his spine. That sends a jolt of adrenaline through his whole body, and yeah, he can feel that. He can feel too much actually.
The radio is stuck on static and he can't reach his phone. There is a loud buzz and he’s not sure if it's in his head or an actual sound. Damn fucker who ran them over didn't even stop to check if they were still alive, damn it.
Someone, he thinks, trying to calm down, someone must have seen something. Someone will call for help. His phone rings again, it's probably Sugar, and Richie can imagine her annoyed messages getting angrier and angrier.
He turns his head to the left, wincing when it hurts the crick in neck. Carmy's unmoving, unconscious, his face covered in blood. He looks peaceful, Richie thinks distantly. He looks dead, the little voice in his head says.
Fear grips him, suddenly stronger than pain or shock. He frees himself from the seat belt with a groan and extends a shaky hand, trying to feel for a pulse. He can't remember where you're supposed to look for it exactly and his fingers slip on the slick blood. Warm, which means he's alive, he hopes.
He never finds Carmy's pulse, his fingers are too cold for that. Clumsy. His hands were made to punch and grip, not to caress and reassure. But he can see the soft exhale when Carmy breathes, white puffs in the cold night. Snow falls on his face and melts into pink droplets.
"Carmen?" he asks again, and his voice sounds like a plea.
I hope you didn't scramble that brain of yours any more than it already was, he thinks. He hates it when Carmy gets all manic on them, but he can't deny the culinary genius that runs through him, and it’d be a shame to lose it to a stupid hit-and-run driver who couldn’t handle his liquor.
Sirens and blinking lights are getting closer now, blinding and deafening, and suddenly they're all around the broken car. They become the cold and immobile center of a whirlwind of action. Richie grips Carmy's hand. "I'll deny this ever happened," he tells him.
"Sir, can you move your legs? Sir!"
Richie can't remember the last time someone called him sir. Maybe the judge at the hearing with his ex wife. He's not even sure.
The paramedic babbles, asks for his name, shouts information to the firefighters working on the car. They should focus on Carmy, he thinks, not him.
"Do your fucking job," he grumbles to no one in particular.
The paramedic grins at him and shines a light in his eyes. He swears. More questions, shouted orders, then they slap a collar on his neck like a fucking sick dog and he has to let go of Carmy's hand as they take him out of the car. He tells himself that he allows them to take him away. But he could fight and kick and escape. If he wanted to.
And then, from where he sits in the back of the ambulance, he can see them working on the car, cutting off the hinges of the driver's door. The car is totaled. The door is bent inward, and Carmy still hasn't moved.
Next thing he knows, the door is gone with an awful screech of metal, and Carmy is taken away from the carcass of his car. Richie wants to check on him, but he's pushed back into a sketcher, and the sneaky paramedic straps him to the board. He grits his teeth. He lost his phone. They're going to be late and Sugar will be pissed.
*
At the hospital, Richie is ready to assault someone if that means they'll tell him about Carmy. He thinks it's probably the adrenaline talking, and it just unlocked some distant memory of having to always protect little Carmen, or else he’d be told off. He hates it, but he can't help it.
They check him — no concussion, no fracture — and they finally take the fucking collar off.
"Thank fuck for that," he mumbles, rubbing his aching neck, getting off the medical bed the instant they're not looking, discharge papers be damned.
He knows where to go, he can hear Carmy hollering something about overdose and death and he sounds broken and lost. He barges into the box, disregarding the obfuscated, "Sir, you can't be here!" from the nurse.
He pushes her away, not too gently, and he grabs Carmy's face. They wiped all the blood away, but his hair is a mess and his eyes are huge and full of pain and confusion. He just talks to him, his voice rough and slightly too loud to his own ears, but he doesn't stop, and he doesn't let go.
"You're not Michael,” he says, “you're not an addict, you're a shithead, yes, but not an addict and there is no way I'll let you do the same mistakes your brother did, no way, you hear me."
Carmy blinks, sluggishly. He's quiet now. Listening. Looking like a wet dog.
"Don't you cry on me, cuz," Richie warns.
But he doesn't let go and he still doesn't step aside. His eyes fall on Carmy's hand in his lap, and they widen in shock.
"Take the damn morphine, Carm," he says through gritted teeth. "Let them fix that mess. That’s next level, even for you.”
He really hopes it looks worse than it is, mangled flesh still bleeding all over the bed and Carmy's pants.
*
"In the end he caved. They dosed him and he let the doctors fix his hand."
Carmy hears Richie tell the story, and it feels like it happened to someone else. He's loopy from pain meds, sitting on Sugar's couch. It might swallow him whole if he lays back a little too far.
"And it's not broken?" Sugar asks, a hint of worry in her voice.
Carmy lost the ability to worry back at the hospital, so he lets her do that in his place.
"They said it’s just badly bruised and he's got like a thousand stitches."
Carmy wiggles his fingers just to check if he still can. The pain is grounding, comforting. There is a thick bandage around his palm, and he wonders how he's going to work with that. Maybe he'll just tear it down, as soon as they're not watching.
"And what did they say about his thick head?"
Carmy can hear that Sugar is shaken but she's trying to hide it. He mumbles something that is meant to be reassuring but falls flat because words fail him. He can't see straight. There is football on TV, and food on the table. He feels queasy.
"Concussion, they said. He's got worse."
"What day is it?" Carmy hears himself say, his mouth sluggish like it's full of cotton.
"It's Thanksgiving, bud."
Richie's hand on his shoulder prevents him from getting up and the room spins a little as he falls back into the couch.
"We opened, despite everyone groaning about having to come in today of all days. We did well considering. Some dude came in dressed as a giant turkey," Richie quickly says.
It's enough to mollify him. They opened. All is good. Sugar's mad. Dinner's ruined.
"M sorry about your car," he mumbles.
"Can't drive it anyway." Richie shrugs.
Chatter. The clink of cutlery. The quiet buzz of TV. Carmy can hear his own thoughts clinking and swirling inside his head. He shudders.
Is that what Michael felt? What he was looking for? The feeling of being a stranger in his own body, locked on the outside, looking in. Pain is muted, the whole world is muted. In a sense he gets it. Wasn't it what he was trying to do in New York? Tiring his body so much that he couldn't think straight anymore.
Someone sits down on the couch next to him. It dips a little. His breath hitches. He knows it can't be, but for a half second, he pretends Michael is sitting next to him, close enough to touch him. Real, alive. Smiling at the game. Munching on Sugar's food, enjoying it but criticizing anyway. He doesn't turn his head to see who it is.
"Vikings won," Pete says.
The illusion shatters. Michael is still dead and the game is just a rerun. Sugar switches the channel.
"Hey, I was watching that!" Richie protests, his mouth full of half cold turkey.
Carmy sighs. His head hurts a little bit less now, the pressure lessens as the present rights itself. He presses the heel of his hand against his eye. The right one, the left is puffy and he doesn't want to mess with the stitches to his eyebrow.
He's wearing one of Pete's shirts, and it occurs to him he can't remember the drive from the hospital.
"Did we take the L?" he asks.
His voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Richie starts guffawing, like it's the best joke he heard all night, and it doesn't answer Carmy's question. Those memory lapses should be concerning, but he can't seem to care.
Sugar puts a plate on his lap and shoves a fork into his valid hand. He's clumsy and uncoordinated, but he takes a bite and it might be the best pecan pie he has tasted in years. It brings him half to tears. The hint of cinnamon tastes like home and fond memories.
"Michael's recipe," Sugar confirms with a warm smile.
Carmy eats and smiles too, as he pretends Michael is sitting with them. Just for a little while, at least until the pain meds wear off.