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SEAN
Itook Glen to his doctor's appointment. We had only come here twice before to make sure Glen was healing well after what Dad did to him. At least this time, it was a regular wellness visit.
“Shouldn’t be so bad today,” I said, more to myself than to Glen, as we walked down the hallway to his doctor's office.
“Mhm,” Glen agreed. “I wanna go in alone.”
For a hot second, I wanted to argue. Glen was my responsibility. But he was also sixteen and had the right to privacy.
“You’ll tell me if anything is wrong, though?”
“Yeah.”
Glen walked faster, entering the hospital and heading straight to the receptionist. How the hell did he get so tall? I could still remember Mom coming home with an infant, then me joining the Army when Glen was a toddler.
Back then, I had thought I’d get on my feet, build a life for myself, and come back to take care of my two baby brothers. And then the years just disappeared.
As Glen got called to the doctor’s office, I waited on the padded bench with a stack of magazines to distract me from the only thought that mattered—will Glen ever trust me?
After what felt like hours, Glen finally came out of the doctor's office, frowning.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"My doctor is a real asshole," Glen said.
“Want to switch doctors for the next visit?” I asked.
“What, a year from now?” He pulled out a paper from his pocket. “I need it signed now if I want to spar. What’s the point of doing MMA if I can’t practice the moves?”
I read the form, but it was all the usual medical gibberish. “Why didn’t he sign it?”
Glen shrugged. “Do you think Vera can find someone who’d sign it?”
I snorted. “Yeah, some doctor working for the mafia.”
He rolled his eyes at me, took the paper, then walked back out to the parking lot.
The stupid form wasn’t important, though. The sparring was what Glen really wanted to do, and the medical exam didn’t go well enough to allow it. So, what the hell was up?
I hopped into my car, and as soon as Glen was in, asked him, “I need to know why exactly your doctor thinks you’re not ready for sports.”
“It’s nothing,” Glen answered.
It wasn’t nothing. How the hell could I figure out the best thing to do for Glen if I had no idea what was going on with his health?
“I’d offer to spar with you,” I said, “But you need to start with someone closer to your level. I just started showing Vera a few moves, so maybe you two can practice together, but I need to know why your doctor thinks it’s too soon.”
“It's not too soon,” Glen said. “I just lied back when I ended up in the hospital. They think it’s worse than it really is.”
Lied? It’s not as if those x-rays could’ve been faked, so he had definitely had broken ribs. There was that concussion, though.
“Why would you lie about that?”
Glen took the longest minute to answer. “I wanted to make sure they don’t send me back to Dad.”
That made a weird sense, even though the ribs should’ve been plenty to do the job, as long as we had someone outside of Dad’s friend group to witness the damage. But I had run all the way to the Army when I got the chance. No reason Glen wouldn’t run all the way to a severe concussion.
“Tell you what, I’ll let Vera make the call. If she thinks you’re ready for sparring, you can spar with her. Your medical records will follow you around to all doctors, so I don’t see how we can fix it officially.”
