Almost Lost by Beatrice Sparks Read Free Book Online

you to the hospital?”
    â€œNo, I wouldn’t allow it. I let her help me get off my clothes, everything but my shorts. I know she’s a nurse and everything and has probably seen more male privates than most anybody, but I felt my privates were especially private, especially from my mom. For some stupid reason that seemed really, important to me at the time, like that would be in some way infringing on the secret parts of my newfound brotherhood. I know that sounds dumb. But dumb at the time seemed, to me, smart. Does that make sense?”
    â€œIt makes complete sense, but we’ll talk about that later.”
    â€œWell, Mom finally got me into the shower with me clinging to my shorts like they were my lifeline, and she got almost as wet as I did as she gently sponged away the gore.
    â€œShe was trying to hold back her worries, but I stood firm. No way was I going to the hospital like a wimp after all I’d gone through to get into the gang. She helped me dry off and brought me some clean shorts and left for a minute while I put them on. I had to sit on the toilet, and it was quite a struggle to get into them because Mom was probably right when she said I had two or three fractured ribs and maybe a bruised spleen or kidney and who knew what else. Through the door her voice sounded wet as she pleaded for me to let her call an ambulance because she was much more concerned about internalwounds than external ones, but I wouldn’t change my mind. At the time and place I felt I couldn’t.
    â€œMom wrapped my rib cage with heavy tape, which about killed me off, and again checked my eyes to see if one pupil was more dilated than the other, and nine hundred million other things. Then she gave me a pain pill and warned me to very carefully watch my bowel movements, because if they ever looked black and tarry, that would be a sign of internal bleeding. I felt nauseated. No way was I going to check my you-know-what for you-know-what, internal bleeding or not. As I started to drift off into dim, delicious, delirious drug dreams, I heard Mom on the phone telling someone at the hospital that she’d have to take a few days off because her son had been in an accident. An accident? Me? Two worthiness experiences in one day. At least that’s how I saw it at the time.
    â€œFor three days Mom made me stay home to recuperate. I was so mad and hurt that I thought I would explode. There was no way my namby-pamby mom and little sister could possibly conceive what I was going through. Nothing I did or said seemed sane to them. Grandma Gordon came to stay over the weekend, and she bugged me even worse. She talked and lectured and preached incessantly about changing my attitude, giving optimism and courtesy and prayer a chance, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
    â€œShe made me so nervous that I literally had to fight myself to keep from smashing her. For a moment that made me feel lonely because I wondered what had become of the sweet, innocent, loving, little boy who had once almost worshiped her. How could she and Mom and Dorie and Dana all have changed so much, become such plastic, gutless wonders, sounaware of what was really going on out there in the black, bloody, cannibalistic world that was just outside their door waiting to get them too?”
    â€œAt that time did your thinking seem right and sound and theirs seem completely off center and ridiculous?”
    â€œTotally.”
    â€œThat just proves again that people can be absolutely and completely wrong and still be sincere, doesn’t it?”
    â€œThat was me exactly. I had allowed, probably even encouraged, hate and hostility to grow inside me like some mutated evil zucchini until it had not only taken over my mind and my heart, but my body and my soul and was now branching out to try to take over everyone that came close to me. I got so paranoid about that happening that I wouldn’t let any one of my family get too close to