Title: Speaking Again
Warnings: mugging, trauma, discussions of trauma and violence... I'd say PG-14 in general.
Summary: Chris gets mugged. But somehow, he seems to have lost his voice too. Can his friends get him to talk again?
Length: 5,450 words!
Notes: Third person point of view (two characters), present tense. Genre is drama.
Speaking Again
It’s about midnight as Felix heads back to his apartment. He’d thought it was much later. The restaurant had closed down hours ago, and they (minus Chris, who had mysteriously been missing) had all gone to Tony’s house, where they had proceeded to hang out and goof around for another hour. Felix had thought about crashing at Tony’s place, but he likes his own bed too much for that. Tony’s couch is possibly the most uncomfortable surface in the world. Well, the second-most uncomfortable. The most uncomfortable would be the ground, which – whoa, someone’s sprawled on right now.
Felix approaches the someone cautiously. He’s just a block away from his apartment, which isn’t exactly in the best neighborhood. He should probably just go on his way. This person could be dangerous. He or she is probably some bum or addict or both. But he can tell that the person is hurt. He can see blood pooling around the figure. It looks like someone just tossed aside him or her like trash. It’s a he, Felix discovers and he makes his way toward the figure. Something about him seems familiar. His clothes are a bit too fine for a bum, and wait a minute, that jacket…? A leaden ball settles in his stomach. It can’t be…
Felix is pretty much in front of the man now. He crouches down slowly. The man makes no response. Asleep, or unconscious. At least he’s breathing.
Felix doesn’t want to look more closely, but he’s never been a coward, so he forces himself to peer into the man’s face. The sick jolt in his stomach confirms his fear. That face – and that jacket – are familiar.
“Chris…” Felix breathes in dismay.
He carefully takes his friend by the shoulders and lifts his torso up enough so that he’s reclining against the wall of the nearest building. Chris’s head lolls forward and he looks dead, his face eerily skeletal in the harsh lighting of the streetlamp. Felix gently examines Chris, his panic fading a little as he gets a better look. It’s bad, yes, but not as bad as he feared. The blood is mostly from a cut on the back of Chris’s head, matting his dark hair together, and from what looks like a broken nose. It looks like someone beat up his friend pretty bad.
Felix clenches his fists. Who would do this to Chris? No wonder he hadn’t met up with them tonight. While he, Tony, and Linda were devouring their burgers and playing Wii bowling, someone was beating Chris up! And probably mugging him, Felix notes, realizing that Chris has nothing on him except for his tattered clothes.
Just as Felix is deciding whether to call the police first or the hospital, Chris groans and his eyelids flutter open. He looks up blearily, blinking as he attempts to focus. Felix hovers in front of him, unsure what to do.
“Hey, buddy,” he says after a moment of silence. Chris’s eyes swivel towards him and Felix is relieved to detect a glimmer of recognition in them. “You okay?”
It’s a stupid question, but Chris nods after a slight hesitation. Felix stays frozen for a bit longer, wishing that there was a manual on “What To Do When Your Friend Gets Mugged.” It’s probably good that there isn’t one.
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” Felix says eventually. He should’ve done that when he first saw someone hurt on the ground. Stupid. “You could have a concussion, and you probably should get that nose checked. And then I’m going to call the police. You – you were mugged, right?”
Chris nods, eyes suspiciously shiny. Felix ignores it, but not out of courtesy – something is starting to worry him. Chris hasn’t spoken a word since he woke up. That’s not normal, especially for Chris.
“Um,” Felix says tentatively, “This is silly, but – could you just – say something? Tell me what happened, or, if that’s too… traumatic… Just… talk to me?”
Chris just stares at Felix for a moment. He opens his mouth, but soon closes it again and resumes staring. Felix can’t read the expression on his face.
“Okay, okay, that’s fine,” Felix mutters aloud to break the silence. “We can wait. I’ll just, uh – make those calls. Concussion, that’s probably what it is. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.”
Chris stays silent. Felix makes the calls and tries not to worry.
The ride to the hospital is silent. Chris still doesn’t say a thing, which leads to some confusion when Felix attempts to answer the questions the paramedics ask. Eventually Chris is whisked away into the hospital room, and Felix is stuck outside waiting and worrying. To pass the time, he sends text messages to Tony and Linda. It’s late and he doesn’t want to wake them up, and he isn’t sure how serious this is. But he knows they’d want to know what’s going on. Especially Linda. God, they had only broken up a few months ago. Chris could have been going to her place if they hadn’t… he might’ve not been mugged… but it was stupid to think of the what ifs and could have beens.
Eventually the doctor comes out of the room. Felix stands up and wipes his sweaty palms against his jeans. As no one in Chris’s family is here or lives anywhere near, Felix is his next-of-kin. The doctor sees him and walks over. Her face is expressionless. Felix wishes doctors could come out with either bright smiles or heavy frowns, and then you’d known right when they opened the door whether the news was good or not.
“Your friend was lucky,” Dr. Grosbard (according to her nametag) says when she reaches him. “His head injury was very shallow, but I would still keep watch over him for a few hours. Make sure he doesn’t drink any alcohol or caffeine, and if he wants to sleep, wake him up every few hours to check on him. His nose wasn’t broken, just bloody. And besides a few bruises, that is the extent of his injuries.”
Felix allows himself to slump in relief for just a moment, before another concern makes him stand up straight again. “Has he… said anything?” Felix ventures cautiously.
Dr. Grosbard gives him a slightly surprised look. “No,” she says. “I had assumed he was mute.”
“Definitely not,” Felix mutters, remembering those painful moments when Chris would start (loudly) singing along to *NSYNC whenever they came on the radio. And his general talkative persona, which now appears completely gone.
“Well, nothing’s physically wrong with him that would stop him from speaking,” Dr. Grosbard says. “It could be the trauma. You might want to get him in touch with a therapist.”
She hands him some sort of business card, mentions a few other things, has him sign some forms, and then she’s ushering him out of the hospital, Chris by his side. Felix is starting to feel like he’s in just as much shock as Chris probably is.
But at least he can talk.
The next morning Felix calls Tony and Linda over to his apartment to talk to them. Chris had gone back to his place about an hour ago, still without saying a word, despite Felix’s best efforts. Felix figures it’s time he got Tony and Linda up to speed on the situation. Hopefully they would have some idea what to do.
Presently, the doorbell rings. Felix opens the door to find Tony and Linda. He steps aside and ushers them in.
“We got here as fast as we could,” Tony says as he takes off his jacket. “Where’s Chris?”
“Yeah, is he okay?” Linda adds. Her eyes are wide and worried. “You said he got… mugged?”
“Chris is back at his place. And yeah, he got mugged, at least that’s what I’m assuming. His wallet is gone, no cell phone…”
“Dude, what has he told you?” Tony asks.
Felix sighs. “That’s the thing. He hasn’t spoken at all since I found him.”
Tony and Linda exchange concerned glances. “W-what’s wrong with him?” Linda asks tremulously.
“I don’t know,” Felix replies, beckoning his friends over to his couch. He sits down and puts his head in his hands. “I’m worried about him.”
Linda puts her hand on his shoulder comfortingly. Felix isn’t sure if she’s trying to comfort him or herself. “Let’s just give it a while,” she suggests. “We’ll all be there for him, and – and in no time he’ll be talking again, and as annoying as ever.”
“Yeah, man,” Tony adds, sitting down beside Felix and rather awkwardly patting his other shoulder. “Maybe he just didn’t feel like talking to you. I know sometimes I don’t.”
Felix can’t help but crack a smile at that. “Maybe,” he says, and hopes.
Two days later, Chris still hasn’t spoken. The four of them are sitting at a booth at Mama’s Diner, trying to keep the group afloat. Felix isn’t really sure what they’re talking about, just that they’re all talking (well, everyone but Chris is) and sort of ignoring Chris because they don’t know what to do.
“My point exactly!” Tony says in response to whatever Linda just said. Felix wonders if any of them know what their point is.
Felix glances over at Chris. He’s quiet (of course) and withdrawn, slowly ripping his napkin into small pieces.
“Chris,” Felix says quietly. Chris looks up in surprise, and Felix realizes just how much they’ve been ignoring him. He also realizes that he doesn’t know what he was going to say. “Uh… are you going to eat all of those?” He points at Chris’s fries.
Chris smiles slightly, shakes his head, and pushes his plate over to Felix. Felix nods in thanks. He can do this no-talking thing.
It does make conversation difficult, though. But he’s going to try, for the sake of Chris and the group. Chris has obviously been through something extremely traumatizing, and has been… traumatized… by it. He needs someone to talk to. Um, someone to talk to him?
“How’ve you been holding up?” Felix asks. Chris shrugs. Felix ploughs onward. “It must be scary. Getting mugged, I mean. Maybe you should… talk to someone.”
Chris just looks at him, and Felix can’t decipher the look in his eyes. He’s never been that good at reading people, and when they won’t say anything, that makes it even harder.
“Dr. Grosbard gave me this.” Felix hands the business card to Chris. “It has a therapist she recommended you see. I think you should give it a try.”
Chris takes the card, but barely looks at it as he puts it in his jacket. He then gets up to leave, tossing some bills on the table and waving goodbye to everyone. Tony and Linda (who had quieted down, watching Felix’s sad attempt to talk to Chris) wave back. Felix just sighs.
When Chris is gone, Linda turns to Felix. “That was a good thing you did there,” she says. Tony nods in agreement.
“He didn’t even look at the card,” Felix says bitterly. “How are we supposed to help him if he won’t help himself?”
By the second week, Felix is starting to think that they’re the ones who should be in therapy. On the surface, Chris seems fine – calm, cool, and collected. His persona isn’t so much “I’m too traumatized to talk” as “I’ve given up speaking for a while.” But Felix isn’t the only one to notice how often Chris flinches now, and the dark, haunted look that comes into his eyes when he thinks no one is watching him.
Dealing with this new version of Chris is hard on all of them. Felix has been friends with Chris since childhood. Linda had dated him for almost a year. Tony was his college roommate. They all know him so well, but none of them have any idea what to do. Talking to a therapist about this would feel really good right now.
He, Tony, and Linda are all sitting on Tony’s couch, staring at the TV but not really watching it. Chris is still at work. Felix wonders how he can work as a lawyer when he won’t talk.
A few more minutes go by. They all avoid looking at each other. Felix wonders if he can ask Chris for the therapist’s card back. Suddenly, the sound cuts off and Felix looks up to see that Tony’s muted the TV. Felix and Linda turn questioning eyes on Tony, who sighs.
“Guys, we need to talk about this,” he says in his deep voice.
None of them have to ask what “this” is.
“It’s killing the group,” Tony says. “And I’m starting to think that’s more our fault than Chris’s.”
Felix nods. “It’s just… it’s hard,” he says. “We can’t talk to Chris anymore, not really.”
“I’ve been trying to learn sign language,” Tony says. “He won’t write anything down, but maybe he’ll do sign language. I think –”
“Chris doesn’t even know sign language!” Linda interrupts, green eyes flashing. “And we shouldn’t cater to him anyway. Maybe when he realizes how hard it is not to talk he’ll start talking again!”
“I’m not catering to him,” Tony insists. “It’s just – he’s been through a horrible ideal, and now is the time for him to have our full support and love, not us trying to trick him into talking!”
Felix takes a deep breath and prepares to ask the question they’ve all been skirting around. “Guys… what do you think happened to Chris?”
They’re quiet for a while. Eventually, Tony says quietly, “You said he was mugged.”
“Yeah,” Felix sighs. “But – well, most people don’t turn mute when they’re mugged.”
“Do you think – I mean, I guess I figured they threatened him or something, told him not to talk, so he got scared and just… stopped talking,” Linda says.
“But the way he flinches any time anyone comes near him – I mean, I found him all beat up and cowering. His – his clothes were torn, too.”
Linda’s sharp intake of breath is the only sound in the room. She gnaws on her thumbnail as she asks, “You don’t think – he was –”
“Guys don’t get raped,” Tony interrupts, loudly and scornfully. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Actually –” Felix begins, but Linda cuts him off.
“Felix! This is Chris we’re talking about. He can’t’ve – he would’ve told us. Or… that can’t have happened to him.”
Felix sighs. “It was just a thought,” he mutters. “I don’t really think he was… y’know. But I just – I wish he’d tell us what happened. Why he’s so scared to say anything.”
“Maybe he isn’t scared,” Tony says, but he must know that none of them believe that.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Felix says. “Only then can things get back to normal.”
Linda looks up from where she had been staring at the ground. “I – I think I made some progress last Tuesday,” she says.
Felix looks at her questioningly. Why are we just hearing about this now? he wants to ask, but instead, he simply says, “Oh?”
Linda nods. “Chris brought me to one of his therapy sessions.”
Linda is sitting by herself at the coffee shop when Chris sits down in the other chair. She looks up in surprise. She hasn’t seen much of Chris lately, especially just the two of them, alone – she thinks that their friends have been purposely keeping them apart, afraid that they’ll relapse or something. (Would that really be the worst thing?) And then, after the… mugging or… whatever it was, none of them have seen that much of Chris.
“Hey,” she says, and takes a stab at a warm smile.
Chris nods hello, and then slides a business card over to Linda. She picks it up. The paper is worn and obviously thumbed over often. “Dr. Maria Prachett, M.D. – Psychiatrist,” it reads. Linda raises an eyebrow.
“Is this for me?” she asks in confusion. She’s not that messed up, is she?
But Chris shakes his head, and points to himself. Linda smiles. “Oh, you’re going to make an appointment? Good. Do you want me to make it for you?” She shouldn’t help him in this no-talking thing, she knows. But if it’s to arrange an appointment for him, than that’s okay. The good outweighs the bad.
Chris nods, and then points to her, and him, and her, and him, over and over. Then he gives her an expectant look.
It takes her a while to figure out what he’s asking. Sometimes the weirdness of her formerly talkative ex trying to communicate like a child – worse than a child – throws her off from actually trying to figure out what he’s saying. But, eventually – “You want me to come with you?”
Chris nods. Linda can’t suppress the warm feeling that rises up in her chest. “Of course I will,” she says.
The next day, a Tuesday, she waits with Chris outside the office of Maria Prachett (Dr. Prachett). She isn’t really sure how this is going to work. Does Chris want her to do the talking for him, or is he actually going to talk? She’s heard about the patients that psychologists have, the difficult cases, the ones that won’t talk the whole session. But they usually open up after a few sessions, right? Chris deciding to see a therapist at all is a good sign. She’s just here for moral support.
The receptionist stops typing for a moment and looks at the two of them. “Dr. Prachett can see you now,” she says.
Linda stands up with a deep breath. She turns to Chris, who looks at her with wide, slightly panicked eyes. She gently takes his hand. “Come on.”
Chris visibily swallows, and closes his eyes for a long moment. She wonders if they’ll be watery when he opens them. No, they’re hard and determined and they make her remember why she loved this man. And also how much it hurt that they didn’t work out.
She turns to face Dr. Prachett’s office. It’s time to deal with Chris’s issues, not hers. “Let’s go,” she says.
Maria Prachett is a small, mousy woman of about 30. She wears a simple blouse and a pencil skirt, and pink glasses with pink lipstick. Linda doesn’t really like her.
After the introductions are out of the way, they all are sitting down, Dr. Prachett behind her desk and Linda and Chris on the couch in front of her. There’s silence for a while, and then Dr. Prachett says, “So. Chris. You haven’t been feeling like talking lately, I’ve been told?”
Linda wonders who told her. How do these people get the information on their clients? It’s a little creepy.
Chris nods.
“Well we’ll just have to find a way around that until you’re ready to talk,” Dr. Prachett says gently. “But I want you to know that anything you say in here is completely confidential. You don’t need to be afraid to say anything in here.” She glances at Linda. Is she supposed to show her support too? Well, that’s why she’s here, right?
“Yeah,” Linda says inanely. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Chris just nods. Linda stifles a sigh. Dr. Prachett’s expression is inscrutable.
“For now, let’s just try some yes or no questions,” she says. “How’s that sound?”
Chris nods. And they go on from there.
An hour later, Linda walks with Chris to his car. Chris is silent behind her. She wonders what he’s thinking. They hadn’t talked about anything very important in the session (although Linda had been impressed with how much Dr. Prachett could cover with only yes/no questions). Linda knows it’s good for Chris to see someone professional about this, but… what if he never makes any progress? If Dr. Prachett won’t push him, they could spend years nattering on about stupid yes/no things while he still doesn’t talk.
What Chris needs is a friend, someone to push him even if it’s hard. Linda thinks she’s tough enough to do that. She hopes Chris is tough enough to handle it. He’s not broken. She’s wondered, sometimes, like when he flinched away from Dr. Prachett’s handshake. But no, he’s not broken, not irreparably. She can fix him. And he’ll let her.
No one says anything for a moment after Linda’s story. Felix thinks they’re all absorbing it, trying to figure out what it means. Chris went to therapy – that’s good. He still didn’t say anything – that’s nothing new. But Linda’s determination to fix him single-handedly?
“He trusts me,” she’d insisted. “If nothing else works, I can help him talk again.”
She had sounded so sure. Felix can’t help feeling a little bitter. He’s known Chris for longer, but Chris didn’t ask him to come to the therapy session. He asked his ex, who made him miserable when they were together. He allowed the person who he would logically want to appear least vulnerable to see him at possibly his most vulnerable. Linda says they didn’t talk about anything important in the session, but still.
But Felix is being petty. He should be happy that Chris seems to be coming out of his shell. Maybe he’s ready to learn how to talk again. And if Linda’s the one who can help him with that, so be it.
Felix will be there for his friend if (when?) things go wrong.
“Chris asked me to come to the next therapy session with him,” Linda says. “I think he’s really making progress. He might be ready to tell someone what happened to him soon.”
The way she says someone makes it sound like me.
“Great!” Tony says. “I have to admit, I’m curious. If they have some mugger going around somehow intimidating his victims into not speaking, I want to know about it.”
Felix nods in agreement. He’s been so wrapped up in Chris’s problems that he hasn’t really thought about any danger to himself. Maybe he should buy a book called “How Not To Get Mugged.” It probably exists.
“Well, it’s getting late,” Linda says, with a glance at her watch. “I should get going.”
“Bye.”
“Stay safe.”
Felix stays for an hour after Linda is gone. He and Tony watch TV and go back to avoiding talking about anything important. Felix thinks about Linda, and Chris, and therapy and muteness and talking.
When did his life turn into such a mess?
It’s been six weeks since the mugging, and Linda has been with Chris to all four of his therapy sessions. And she’s about to burst with frustration. Dr. Prachett never pushes Chris at all. When she had finally run out of yes/no questions, they had just sat there in silence for maybe twenty minutes. Linda really wants to know what they’re teaching in Therapy Class or whatever it’s called these days. Don’t do anything, and maybe something good will happen?
Linda’s been pushy, though. And she’s made more progress than any M.D. She started calling Chris about a week ago, in a ploy to get him to answer the phone and talk. He never answered the phone, so Linda switched to texting. For the longest time, nothing. Chris seemed reluctant to communicate in any way, whether it was speaking or writing.
But last night, she had sent him a cryptic text – ive decided that blue pineapples would be a rly good gag gift for tony – and he had responded with, ?
Linda had squealed out loud when she’d seen that question mark. That was the most response he’d ever given. See? Progress.
Linda has her theories. The whole incident is so shrouded in mystery that all of them have thought of everything. But she tends to go with the muggers having guns and threatening Chris not to speak about them or write about them or something. And she believes that Chris is starting to realize that the muggers won’t come after him if he says anything, or writes anything. Even a question mark.
Linda calls Felix to share the news. She’s already told Tony. She and Tony have been friends for a while, but she’s only known Felix for about a year or two, when she got involved with Chris.
“Hey, Felix!” she greets him when he answers, unable to contain the excitement in her voice. “Guess what?”
“Did Chris talk?”
Is she that predictable? Well, that has been her crusade these past few weeks. Felix and Tony seem fine to let Chris disappear into silence. But she won’t let him, and neither will Chris, or he wouldn’t keep going to these therapy sessions. To sit there and not talk. But anyways.
“No,” Linda sighs. “But he’s on his way. He responded to one of my texts. I made some stupid comment, and he sent me a question mark.”
“Wow, a question mark,” Felix says sarcastically. “Today a question mark, tomorrow a full rendition of *NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye.’”
“Uh, yeah,” Linda says, a bit thrown off. “That’s the hope.”
“Well, you go get ‘em, tiger,” Felix says. “You’ve known him for a third of the time I have, after all.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry.” Felix sounds tired. Maybe he’s drunk. That would make this conversation make a bit more sense. “I’m glad Chris responded to your text. Maybe he’s getting better.”
“I’ve got my fingers crossed,” Linda says, belatedly crossing her fingers.
Felix chuckles half-heartedly. “Keep at it,” he says.
“I will.”
Felix hangs up, and Linda sits on her couch for a moment, thinking. That was a weird conversation. It was almost like Felix was – jealous – of her. Because she got Chris to respond to something? Well, if Felix tried to talk to Chris, maybe he’d make some progress, too.
Mystified, Linda shakes her head. Whatever. She has more important things to worry about. She picks up her phone and texts Chris back.
It’s Felix’s turn to take care of Chris today. After awkwardly avoiding him for the first few weeks, the three of them – Felix, Tony, and Linda – got a kind of schedule going. Linda’s days are Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Tony has Monday and Friday. Felix has Wednesday and Sunday. On their days, they are always ready to do something with Chris, or just keep him company if he wants them. It’s a fine line between being supportive and coddling, but then again they have Linda to keep Chris in line.
She got him to respond to a text. A text. Why hadn’t Felix thought of that? He and Chris used to text all the time.
Anyways. Today he is going to go bowling with Chris. He gets to the bowling alley and looks around until he sees the tall silhouette of his friend, already lacing up his bowling shoes.
“Hey,” Felix says when he joins Chris. Chris smiles in greeting.
“Are you ready to lose?” Felix asks. Chris laughs, and Felix smiles at the sound. That’s one of the only times he gets to hear Chris’s voice now. And to think, it used to annoy him sometimes. He’s gotten used to a quiet Chris, and there’s some good in a quiet Chris, but it’s times like this when he realizes how much he misses his friend. And not just his voice – the closeness they used to have between them. When had Chris began to feel like he had more to share with Linda than with Felix?
“So I heard Linda’s still on her crusade to get you to talk,” Felix comments in what is hopefully a casual manner. Chris shrugs.
“No one’s going to hurt you if you talk,” Felix says. He stands in front of Chris, waits until Chris looks at him. Chris’s eyes are wet.
“We all miss you,” Felix says. “The real you. The you that would sing along to *NSYNC songs and embarrass all of us. The you that could talk for hours about the most random topics.”
Chris sniffs and looks away.
“I know you’ve been seeing that therapist with Linda,” Felix continues. “And I’m proud of you for doing that. But I want you to know that… well, I’ll always be here for you, man. You can talk to me. You’re my best friend.”
Chris blinks away a tear, and Felix feels a prickling in his own eyes. He feels like this confession goes against being a man, but he’s willing to sacrifice a bit of his manliness if it helps Chris. Chris, who raises shining eyes to Felix. Felix doesn’t need him to speak to understand the gratitude in those eyes. And when Chris stands up to hug him (in a manly, pat-on-the-back way), Felix feels his resentment and jealousy toward Linda slip away.
He goes on to beat Chris, 129 to 47, in the bowling game.
It’s been three months since the incident when Linda gets a text from Chris on her phone. It reads: I need to see u. She stares at it in surprise for a moment. Chris had been slowly getting more confident and frequent with his texts, but this is the longest one he’s ever sent. Then the meaning of the message gets through to her. He needs to see her. What happened? Is he okay?
Coming, she sends in reply, and quickly gets her keys and jacket and heads out the door. Chris needs her, and he sent her a text message to tell her. She won’t let him down.
He opens the door immediately after she rings the doorbell. He’s wearing the tattered jacket that he was mugged in, and jeans are slung low on his hips. He looks absolutely delicious, but she’s soon focused on the look in his eyes. He looks a little wild, a little apprehensive, like he’s about to take a crazy risk. Linda hopes it’s a good one.
He beckons her inside, and shuts the door after her. Linda looks around the house. It hasn’t changed much from when she last saw it, before they broke up. Same flatscreen TV, same maroon rug, same stainless steel kitchen appliances. Everything is in its place… except, wait – Chris’s wallet is lying on the glass table in front of the TV. His wallet?
“You got your wallet back?” she gasps, turning to Chris for confirmation. He nods, biting his lip.
“How – they didn’t come back, did they? Put a – a threatening note in there or something? Don’t worry, you can tell me if they did.”
God, that would be awful. All their progress, gone. But Chris shakes his head. He walks over to the wallet, opens it, shows to her that it’s empty. That was what she was expecting. What she’s wondering is how he got –
“You – did you go back there? To the place where you got mugged?”
She thinks it’s a crazy hope, something that would never happen, but Chris nods with a big smile. When Dr. Prachett had mentioned revisiting the scene of the crime, Linda had seen the fear in Chris’s eyes. She had never thought he’d actually do it.
“Did you go alone?” she asks, eyes wide. Chris shakes his head.
“Tony?” she guesses. Chris shakes his head again.
“Felix?” Chris nods. Linda smiles.
“I’m so proud of you, baby,” she whispers, the endearment slipping out before she can stop it. She winces slightly, but Chris just grins wider.
He walks until he’s standing in front of her, and slowly takes her hands. She looks at him in surprise. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens, closes.
Come on, she thinks. You can do it.
“Linda,” he says, his voice raspy and unused and the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard. “I – I think I’m ready to talk again.”
He stares at her with radiant eyes, and she feels light and floaty, a balloon filled with happiness. She’s not sure what it was – Dr. Prachett, revisiting the scene of the mugging, Felix, Tony, her and her texts – but Chris is fixed. Finally, finally fixed, or at least definitely on the way. Later tonight, they are going to blast some *NSYNC and belt it out together. They are going to call up Felix and Tony and get together and talk and talk. Maybe they’ll talk about what happened to Chris, why it made him so silent. But mostly they’ll just enjoy having Chris back.
But for now, Linda throws her arms around Chris and kisses him. She drinks in every noise that he makes. She feels his arms encircle her, and it feels like coming home.
“Welcome back,” she whispers to Chris.
“It’s good to be back,” he replies softly.
It is, Linda thinks. It really is.
This is a 10 out of 10! A really great story! It is extremely well written. Absolutely exquisite how you develop the plot and characters. You mentioned a prequel or sequel, both of which would work, but this is a masterpiece that stands alone. GREAT!!!
ReplyDeleteThis was a really good narrative. Always moving forward and always interesting. Very realistic in the way that they all tried to help but were unsure what to do and were often sidetracked by their own issues. "They all know him so well, but none of them have any idea what to do." "It’s time to deal with Chris’s issues, not hers." I agree with John - this stands alone well, without a prequel or sequel. Not knowing what actually happened helps keep the focus on the friends relationship and the healing process. Great job!
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