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dad’s in there!”
    Another explosion blasted from inside the trailer. Another
propane tank. That’s when I realized and accepted that the father I never
really knew I’d never know because he was gone. He’d been gone for a long time,
but his body had followed the rest of him.
    “No, son.” Neil stopped pulling me away but kept his hold on
me. “He’s not in there anymore.”
     
     
    E.R. VISITS HAD been a pastime of
mine for as long as I could remember. I was about as comfortable in a hospital
bed as I was in my own bed. Since my own bed was nothing but ash and soot, I
suppose the hospital bed was even more appealing than it had been before. The
fire department had shown up a few minutes before Neil got me into his truck
and booked it for the hospital. He was the second person that night to suggest
an E.R. visit, and since I was too exhausted and in shock to argue with him, I
went with it.
    The nurse had fixed up my hand, and the doctor stopped in a
few minutes later to pump me full of pain meds. He’d seen me plenty of times
growing up. My dad had threatened him when he’d recommended I take the summer
off from bull riding after I broke my leg. The doc was a decent guy who seemed
that much more decent as the drugs worked their way into my system. I guessed
he’d given them to me more for the mental than the physical pain.
    The benefit to having perfected repressing stuff was being
able to do it again. My dad had just been barbecued inside our “home,” and I
still hadn’t cried a single tear. I hadn’t broken down, punched a hole in a
wall, or dropped to my knees. I didn’t face it; I couldn’t yet. So I repressed
it. I didn’t think about what tomorrow would bring, and I didn’t think about
what the day after that would. I focused on my bandaged hand, still pulsing
with pain, the hospital bed I was curled on which, for all I knew, might be the
last mattress my body felt for a long while, and the antiseptic smell
surrounding me. Those were the realities I obscured real reality with. Those
were the things I centered my attention on when my father’s funeral needed to
be planned.
    I was close to passing out in a drug-induced haze when the curtains
whooshed open and a figure slipped inside. “Garth? Oh my god . . .” A
sniffling, bleary-eyed person approached.
    “Hey, Joze. What are you doing here?” Talking hurt, thanks
to the fire singing my throat.
    “Neil called Jesse, then Jesse called me . . . He and Rowen
are on their way. They were leaving when I was talking to him.” She approached
the foot of the bed slowly. “I’m so sorry, Garth. And, wow, that sounded as
pathetic and petty as I always thought it would.”
    “It’s okay. I get it. You’re sorry, I’m sorry, the whole
fucking world’s sorry. But it doesn’t fix anything. Sorry doesn’t bring Clay
back. Sorry doesn’t stop that fire from starting. Sorry doesn’t get me to that
trailer before the fire started. And sorry sure as shit doesn’t make me feel any
better.”
    I wasn’t mad at Josie. I knew there wasn’t much else to
offer than an I’m sorry when tragedy struck. I’d already heard it a few
dozen times in less than an hour, and I’d hit critical mass. If I never heard
another I’m sorry again, I’d be good.
    Instead of saying something back, Josie came around the side
of the bed and crawled in next to me. Her body fit around mine as her arm
wrapped around me, holding me close. It was an odd embrace, a foreign one for
me, but it felt so exactly what I needed right then that I melted right into
her. Screw the drugs.
    “Neil told me what happened. About how you were trying to
get inside.” Her hand wrapped around the wrist of my bandaged hand and gave it
a gentle squeeze. “I always knew you’d be one of those people who’d charge into
a burning building to save a person. I always knew you were a superhero in
hiding.”
    Josie liked to see the good in everyone, and she’d never let
go of the idea that some was