Shattered Lives Read Free Page B

given all that had happened to them.
                  Brett had watched Stephen struggle with his father, and Stephen had only been missing one night.  But his father had spent time doting on Michael who was abducted with Stephen.  The difference was that Michael had suffered, and suffered badly. 
                  Stephen had confided in Brett and Tim that he thought his dad was ashamed of him for not putting up a fight and that maybe his dad liked Michael more because of all the abuse he suffered. 
                  “Not putting up a fight?” Tim had asked quietly as they sat in the sun room at the end of the hall, their favorite place to sit and talk.  “Doesn’t he realize that you couldn’t have put up a fight . . . that you would’ve gotten killed?”
                  Stephen had shrugged.
                  “Didn’t Randy’s dad talk to him?” Brett had asked.
                  Stephen had shrugged again and said, “Jeremy told them, but I think my dad thinks I’m gay and that I wanted all this shit to happen to me.”
                  “You’re not gay, Stephen,” Tim had said.  “None of us wanted this to happen to us.  We had no choice .  You didn’t have a choice.”
                  “I don’t think he believes that.”
                  And so the conversation went.  Mike was uncomfortable with Stephen’s dad’s attention and just wanted to be left alone.  Mike had even told Brett that he was afraid of losing Stephen’s friendship, and when Brett had mentioned that, Stephen just shook his head and wept some more. So, that left Brett worrying about meeting his parents and what might be in store for him. 
    The other guys seemed to do okay with their parents, guys like Ian and Patrick.  But he had watched his friends, and he had worried.  All of the other boys had gone home, except for Tim, Mike, Stephen and Johnny. Brett worried that Johnny might not ever make it home because he had heard doctors and nurses talk about him in hushed tones.  Johnny’s parents hadn’t shown up yet either.
    Brett woke up tired.  A fairly typical morning after a fairly typical night for him as far as sleeping went.  He kept his eyes closed, and he lay still listening to the sounds of the hospital.  He had learned to listen well and to use his sense of smell to his best advantage.  Captivity and the constant threat of being whipped or branded would do that. 
    He had learned to know the guards by their smell and the sounds of their shoes and the distance between their steps.  Their faces were permanently etched in his brain, and it would take a million years to forget them and what had happened to him. 
    In this same way even after just the one day and one night he’d been in the hospital, Brett knew the sounds the different aides and nurses made, as well as the smell of their shampoo and their deodorant. 
                  His shoulder ached.  The bullet had come from a .38 and left a jagged and quarter-sized hole, dark like molasses against his white complexion, and he was still heavily bandaged and in a sling.  It had entered his left shoulder, exited out his armpit and lodged in his tricep.  He had spent a couple of hours in surgery the morning before and that same afternoon had his first physical therapy session, which hurt like hell. 
    He took the medicine that would prevent any infection and one that reduced inflammation, but he had refused any pain medication.   Brett refused because he didn’t want to be out of it or loopy as he and the rest of the boys described the sensation. 
    Twenty-two months ago, he was taken late in the afternoon after school as he peddled a bike to a pick-up basketball game at the middle school five blocks away.  Like all the other boys, they had drugged him, and he hated the zombie-like feeling.  
    He and the other boys were given two pills to