Now, in the hospital room, I acted as if I just then came awake, and for a while I strove to be more my former self with Mrs. O’Toole. But as I pretended a lighter mood than the one in which I was still submerged, a worry grew in me: that Mr. Yoshioka might be in danger. Lucas Drackman, Fiona Cassidy, Mr. Smaller, and my father were still free, on the run or gone to ground. If they saw a police press conference on TV or read the newspapers, they might become aware that Mr. Yoshioka and the Manzanar posse had been instrumental in fingering them for the authorities. Most likely, my father would choose to run, to hide, to slip into another life, but I could too easily imagine the other three being driven by a thirst for revenge.
84
Friday began with news that I hadn’t realized Mom and Grandpa were hoping to receive. My doctors determined that incontinence would not be a condition of my disability. Although my legs were paralyzed, I should be able to pee and move my bowels unassisted. As a first test of this conclusion, a nurse removed my urinary catheter and the collection bottle attached to it, and I was encouraged for the next couple of hours to drink a goodly amount of water.
Finally I felt the urge. To spare me the embarrassment of being attended in this matter by a stranger, Grandpa Teddy carried me into the adjoining bathroom and put me on the toilet.
“Just us guys,” he said when my mother tried to follow, and he closed the door.
After sitting there for a moment, I said, “What now?”
“Now you give it a try.”
“A try?”
“Like always. You’ve been doing it more than ten years, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? I don’t think you’ve been faking it all this time.”
I strained a little but then stopped. “Well …”
He couldn’t conceal his worry. “Well what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know, son?”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“How does it feel?”
“Funny,” I said.
He stared down at me for a long moment, so tall and imposing, a bullfrog to my tadpole. Then his eyes went wide and he made them bug out a little, and he said, “Do you mean funny weird or funny ha-ha?”
I started to giggle, as I suppose he knew I might.
“I’m only asking for a definition,” Grandpa said. “Funny weird, like maybe a flock of birds might come flying out your whizzer? Or funny ha-ha because I look so silly standing here like a pee-pee coach?”
The giggles wouldn’t stop, but the pee started.
Afterward, he held me up at the sink. I washed my hands and pulled a paper towel from a dispenser and dried them. Then he gently lifted me into both of his arms, cradling me, and kissed my forehead. “As long as a man can pee, Jonah, he can take on anything the world throws at him.” He carried me back to my bed, beside which my mother stood smiling even as she cried.
85
Tuesday, eight days after the events at the bank, the doctors and therapist decided that I could go home on Thursday, which was a great way to begin the morning. The nurses and orderlies and everyone had been very kind to me, but I was nonetheless sick of the hospital. None of the gang that took down the Colt-Thompson armored transport had been apprehended, nor had the stolen truck or the third guard been found, but I reasoned that if a bank wasn’t safe, neither was a hospital.
Later that afternoon, I was staring at some stupid afternoon movie on TV, with the sound off, worrying about Mr. Yoshioka, when Mom came in from the hall. “Jonah, there’s someone very special here to see you. You might not want to visit, but you should, even if it’s hard.” I asked who, and she said, “It’s every bit as much about him, sweetie, as it is about you.”
“Malcolm?” I asked.
She nodded. “You can be strong for him, can’t you?”
“I’m scared.”
“No reason to be. He’s worried about you. Aren’t you worried about him?”