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Dallas is dead.
Dallas is dead, and Johnny is dead.
“Glory, look at the kid!” That's Two-Bit. His voice sounds warped and shrill, and it's so jarring to Darry that he feels like he may as well have gotten shot, too. He turns his head abruptly towards where Two-Bit was pointing, and he watches as his youngest brother turns an awful shade of gray as his eyes start to roll into the back of his head.
Dallas is dead, Johnny is dead, and Ponyboy has just collapsed, his limbs spilling out on the pavement.
Immediately, Darry rushes to the ground with him, trying to ignore the way Steve spits venom towards the cops. It’s just all too much and way too fast.
“Don’t you touch him! He’s our’s--” he cries as the cops pick up Dally’s body, as if he’s a sack of flour rather than a human being. “He’s our’s--!”
“Easy, man, easy,” Two-Bit says, pulling Steve back by the shoulders. The cop’s are more than indifferent, they just haul off Dally’s body without a thought in the world. They’ll bury him in a cheap grave and they’ll pretend he never existed. Darry would have time to fight for his body later, but there’s nothing he can do now.
Swinging his focus back to Ponyboy, Darry grips his little brother’s arms tightly. “Pony? Hey, come on!”
There’s no sign of life, no hint that his brother is still breathing, and for a moment, Darry fears that Ponyboy might have gone and died on him, too. “Ponyboy!”
Sodapop, who is weeping on and off, rushes to pick Ponyboy's head off the ground. He puts a hand to where the blood seeps out the side of his head, shaking his head sadly. “That Soc kicked the hell out of him,” Soda mumbles, wiping at his face. “Gosh, Darry, he's bleeding like crazy.” He takes another deep breath, then looks up with wide eyes, waiting for Darry to do something. In fact, they're all looking at him with desperate, pleading looks. Johnny's death was devastating in the sense that out of all of them, Johnny was the one who deserves something better. Dally was much different-- to be honest, Darry was convinced Dally could never die. It all feels so heavy; Darry can understand why they want someone else to carry it.
“What do we do?” Soda asks frantically.
“Hey, wake up, kiddo,” Darry requests timidly. He gently taps Pony’s face a few times. “Wake up!”
When nothing but a weak groan escapes Ponyboy, Darry feels himself start to panic, which he really can’t afford to do at the moment. He looked pretty bad when he walked into the house earlier, but this was a whole other level of bad. Darry can’t tell if he’s passed out from whatever illness he’s clearly got, the kick to the head, or just the shock of bearing witness to more death. So, even though he’d much rather just take him home and take care of him there, this might be a little bit out of his control.
“Come on, now,” Darry murmurs, trying to stay calm and strong despite the obvious tremble in his voice. “We'll take him to the hospital.” His voice breaks a little bit at the end, though he refuses to let himself cry, not over this.
Soda goes ghost-white. “You really think we ought to?”
“There ain't nothing else we can do.”
He looks up to see Two-Bit nodding solemnly, patting Steve on the back and pulling him away from the scene. With Soda's help, Darry takes Ponyboy in his arms, holding him close. He tries to keep his head up high, but it doesn’t work as well as it used to, especially when he has to hold onto Ponyboy to get some semblance of stability, even though he can't even say how stable Ponyboy is.
With their faces so close together, Darry can feel how warm his little brother is. Who knows how long he'd been sick for-- he very well could have caught something after the Socs tried to drown him. Darry can feel labored breaths coming from Ponyboy and tries to focus on that so he doesn’t spiral. The walk back to their house is silent, slow. Steve's got a fury in his eyes that only seems to dissipate when Soda very gently puts his arm around him, whispering comforting words that Darry's not sure he really believes. There's an acute heaviness in the air, the weight of many different ghosts suffocating Darry to the point where he feels his legs start to give-way. He swallows the lump in his throat and strengthens his grip on Pony. He's never going to let anything happen to Pony again.
“You want us to come?” Two-Bit asks solemnly as they approach their house.
“Up to you,” Darrry replies.
“I ain't going home,” Steve states as he walks back into the house, voice thick with angry tears. It's his way of saying that he doesn't want to be alone right now.
Two-Bit turns to Soda, who stands lost in the driveway. “I’ll stay with him. You two call if you need anything.” He walks into the house slowly, making some sort of whimper before going silent again. It’s all such a hazy dream to all of them.
Soda breaks free from his silence and opens up the door to their Ford before moving around the other side to hop in the front seat. As Darry lays him down gently in the back seat, Pony lets out a weak groan and opens beady eyes up to Darry. He's clearly feverish, and Darry's not sure he even knows he's there until he reaches for Darry's sleeve.
“Darry?”
Darry pushes back the hair falling in front of his burning forehead. “You're alright, little buddy.”
“My head,” he says, wincing hard. He goes to put a hand to where the blood was still seeping, but Darry stops him.
“Don't touch it, Pone,” Darry commands, taking his hand and holding it against his chest. “We're gonna patch you up, alright? We’re on our way now.”
“We've gotta go get Dally,” Ponyboy replies, not really hearing anything Darry was saying. He makes an attempt to sit up that is interrupted by Darry's hands on his shoulders. “He's waiting for us.”
Darry swallows, hard. “We'll get him, kiddo, we will. Stay still.”
“He couldn't take it,” Ponyboy continues, but lays down on command. “He loved him too much.”
“It's okay,” Darry insists softly. There’s blood everywhere now, covering the entire left side of Pony’s sweatshirt, leaving a stain on his collar.
Ponyboy's eyes open once more. “I don't wanna lose anyone else, Darry.”
Darry feels his own chest tighten uncomfortably. “Ain't nothing we can do about it now, honey.” It hurts to see Ponyboy so fragile, so distraught. But Darry won't allow himself to wallow in grief. It isn't a time for mourning the loss of innocence, no matter how painful that may be. Ponyboy passes out cold again. He closes the car door and gets behind the wheel.
Soda makes a whimpering noise, and when Darry looks away from the road, he sees that Soda is weeping quietly. His whole face is red.
“Sodapop,” Darry murmurs softly. He channels his mother's voice as best he can, and cups the back of Soda's neck. “Hey, it's alright, kiddo.”
“Oh, no it ain’t, and you know it,” Sodapop mutters in a hoarse voice.
“We got through it once, we can do it again,” Darry assures him.
Soda looks at him wearily, like he doesn’t really believe him, but doesn’t say anything else for a real long time. When they arrive at the hospital, Darry has half a mind to wonder about Johnny. Dark eyed, dark haired Johnny, who always looked at you like you were a word away from smacking him across the face. Darry knew Johnny was probably a little scared of him, but Johnny was scared of most things, so he didn't really take it too personally. And that hole that his parents had left in his heart had only ripped open wider with the sudden loss of both Johnny and Dally, and he doesn't even have the time to try to haphazardly patch that hole until further notice because his baby brother is burning up in his arms.
As he carries the kid into the emergency room, Darry thinks that if he had to live through losing people he loved again just to lose Ponyboy too, he would throw Soda in the car and never come back to this stupid town. He's too exhausted to acknowledge how that would never make the aching fade.
After sitting in the waiting room for awhile, Ponyboy half-awake and delirious sitting between the older two, the nurses set him up in a room only a floor above Johnny's body. The nurse actually asks them if they'd like to see him before he gets taken away. Soda looks more than hesitant. Darry eventually answers no for both of them. That's not really the last memory of Johnny he wants to have. He knows he didn't really have a choice, but identifying his parents bodies after the accident was decidedly the worst day of his life. He had never felt so sick to his stomach. Ponyboy asked if he could come see them before the funeral-- he later told Soda he wanted to make sure he never forgot their faces for himself. But Darry wouldn't let him, he knew better. He could never get the image of their mangled bodies out of his head, even when he tried his damndest to see anything else when he thought about them. Darry doesn't really dream anymore, but on the rare occasion he does, that's all he is able to see. So, to save even just a little heartbreak, they don't.
The nurse tells them that they'll monitor Ponyboy for the night, and if things seem to get better, he can go tomorrow. Darry hopes that is the case because, one, he doesn't want Ponyboy to have to be in this hospital anymore than he already has this week, and two, they can't exactly afford an entire hospital stay.
The doctor asks them a whole bunch of questions. Was he sick before today? Darry can only guess he was. He's been looking off since returning from Windrixville. How'd he get the head injury? Soda tells him about the kick to the head during the rumble in the least violent way he can.
"He'll be alright in a few days. He really just needs some rest," the doctor assures them in a tired, quiet voice. "Sleeping on a cement floor for four days and a severe lack of food is the perfect recipe for exhaustion. He's running a pretty impressive fever, but it will go down in the next few days. It's only a virus, that's not my biggest concern."
"What about his head?" Darry asks while squeezing Soda's shoulder.
The doctor nods. "Minor concussion-- it could have been much worse, based on what you told me."
"There sure was a lot of blood," Soda murmurs in a timid voice.
"Head wounds often look a lot more gruesome than they really are," the doctor says. "As long as his fever goes down by tomorrow morning, he should be alright to go home. He should be fully recovered in about a week. Well, physically recovered."
Darry's eyebrows furrow. "What do you mean?"
He sighs. “Well, the concussion could make him a bit disoriented for a few weeks, but he's also in some pretty extreme shock. A kick in the head and a week of bad sleep would make anyone delirious, but tonight's events--” that's one way of putting it, Darry thinks-- “haven't helped. I wouldn't be surprised if this became a lingering issue.”
“A lingering issue?”
“This has been a very overwhelming last few weeks for a boy his age. He may not process it as quickly as he normally might, and the concussion certainly won’t help,” the doctor points out to them. He gestures towards the room. “I know you boys want to go see him, but I suggest going home. You both look beat.”
“We ain’t leaving him,” Darry says matter-of-factly.
“Son, having both of you end up in your own hospital bed isn’t going to help your brother. He hardly knows what’s going on. We’ll take care of him, you can come back bright and early in the morning.”
“I appreciate that, sir, but I ain’t leaving my baby brother here with a bunch of strangers,” Darry insists, crossing his arms across his chest. “He’s my responsibility.”
“Well, alright. He’s been asking for you boys anyway. I just hope you heed my advice at some point.” With that, he takes off down the hallway to his next patient.
The diagnosis is pretty simple, which makes Darry feel million times lighter than he has all day, which is almost funny to him because how shitty does your life have to be that your only source of relief all day is being told your brother is simply super sick and injured, but not dying? Darry doesn't think he'll ever forget this feeling, the way the world falls off of its axis like a house of cards, with everything suddenly crashing into each other.
There’s a nurse tending to the bandage on his head when they walk in, and she looks at them kindly before putting her supplies down.
“Don’t look so scared,” she says with a light smile. It fades quickly when she says, “You boys were friends with Johnny Cade?”
“Yeah,” Soda answers in an equally quiet voice. “He was our buddy.”
She pulls out a book from her apron pocket. She steps towards them carefully and holds it out to them. “Johnny left this for your brother. He told me to make sure he got it. I’ll leave you boys for now.”
Darry takes it from her slowly before she walks out of the room, like it’s a bomb. Gone with the Wind. He probably would have stared at the cover for hours if he didn't hear Ponyboy's voice saying, “Darry?” He looks up to see Ponyboy looking at him, eyes a little wild with the fever, but mostly curious. There is something very sad about his expression, and it's a horrible, terrible kind of sadness that no fourteen-year-old should wear.
“Hey, little buddy,” Darry says gently, setting the book down on the side table. "You're alright."
“Where's Johnny?” Ponyboy asks him quietly. His voice sounds raspy, weak and barely there, but Darry hears every single word he says.
That's all it takes for Darry's eyes to sting.
Ponyboy blinks and swallows roughly. He seems to sense he’s said something wrong, but he doesn’t know what it is. Tears are starting to well up in his eyes too, but he seems determined not to show any weakness, even in the state he was in.
Darry sits down in the chair next to the bed. "Don't worry about that right now. You feeling okay?"
"I want to talk to Johnny," Pony insists, his eyes phasing into the fever. "Where's Johnny?"
"Hey, Pony, it's alright," Soda says, swooping in, donning his gentlest voice. He sits on the edge of the hospital bed. "You've been through a lot tonight. Just relax."
"Johnny. Johnny didn't mean to kill him," Pony cries. His breath starts coming faster and faster. "He didn't mean it. He didn't--"
"Shh, shh, kid," Soda interrupts soothingly. He rubs his hand over his hair trying desperately to comfort Ponyboy. "It's gonna be okay, Pone. Why don't you go back to sleep now?"
"No-- Johnny--" he shakes his head fiercely, struggling to speak. He keeps crying and shaking his head, and Darry can tell Soda is becoming desperate to calm him down. "Johnny!"
"It's all gonna be okay, little buddy," Darry soothes, putting his hand on Pony's shoulder. "Just go back to sleep."
But his brother continues to fight against them and cry and shake his head violently like some sort of animal in pain. Darry wonders childishly if the grief must be so unbearable that it's causing him to lose his mind. When he eventually succumbs to exhaustion, Soda looks like he’s about to pass out himself.
“Do you think we did something, you know, in a past life?” Soda asks him, not taking his eyes off of Ponyboy. “Something that makes us have such rotten luck in this life?”
“I don’t believe in that kind of stuff,” Darry replies. “But if I did, good Lord, we must have done something real bad.”
Darry paces the hallway. It’s real early in the morning. There is only so much of Ponyboy’s gut-wrenching cries for all the people they’ve lost he can take before he’d lose his own mind. When he reenters the hospital room, Ponyboy has fallen asleep again. Sodapop lays next to him, awake, one arm across the younger brother’s chest and the other keeping his head propped up. Soda watches Pony breathe silently, almost like he’s afraid he’ll stop if he looks away.
“He was asking for Mom,” Soda tells him in a sad voice.
“I know.” Darry sits down in the plastic chair. “I could hear him down the hall.”
“He kept saying “mama.” Over and over again,” he continues. “He hasn’t called her that since he was real little.”
“I remember,” Darry replies, nodding. He gives a weak half-smile. “You two sure do look alike sometimes. Especially when he’s sleeping.”
“Bet you’re real sorry you didn’t inherit the same good looks, huh?” Soda jokes with a deep sigh.
“I think my looks are just fine,” Darry shrugs with a smirk. After thinking for another moment, the smirk drops. “You two look like Mom.”
They never really talked about their parents anymore. The wound was still too fresh, even eight months out. And even if it wasn’t too painful, when would they have the time between school and jobs? No, it just wasn’t worth the emotional hassle. But here they are now, in the white purgatory of the hospital room, with no choice but to look back at their ghosts.
“He was her favorite. She did a real good job of pretending he wasn’t, but that was her baby. Her Ponyboy. Can’t say I really blame her. I knew he’d be my best friend the second he was born. I think Mom knew it, too.” Soda smiles fondly. “You think about her?”
“Always,” Darry responds immediately. “Ain’t a thing that I do without thinking ‘bout what she’d think about it.”
“What do you think she’d say right now?” Soda inquiries in an innocent voice.
Darry runs a hand down his face. “She’d probably tell us to go to bed.”
“Do you think he’s gonna be alright?”
“To be honest, Soda, you know him better than me,” Darry reminds him. “What do you think?”
Soda closes his eyes and gently taps Pony’s cheek. “I don’t know. Probably not for a while. He’s sensitive like that.”
Darry nods, feeling like all the wind has been knocked out of him. The doctor comes in about once an hour, checking his fever, pushing fluids, trying to get him out of here. Darry knows he's trying to help-- they can't exactly afford to stay more than one night-- but it kind of feels like he's rushing them out. Then again, all Darry wants to do is take him home. He's worried, terrified. He knows Pony will pull through, but that knowledge doesn’t ease the fear in the least. They've already lost so many. Who's to say they wouldn't lose more?
Ponyboy stirs again. “Soda?”
He asks for Soda the most, since he loves Soda the most. Darry can't shake the jealousy, even if Soda beat out everyone, including their parents. Soda's presence calms the youngest, helps him sleep easier, lets him live easier. Pony always calls for Soda first, even if Darry's there with him.
“Yeah,” Sodapop answers gently. “Go back to sleep, kiddo.”
“Where am I?” Ponyboy slurs sleepily.
“The hospital,” Soda tells him. “Now go back to sleep.”
Ponyboy frowns in confusion. He doesn't seem to understand. Or maybe he does, but it doesn't make any sense to him. He tries to push himself up, but Soda pushes him gently back down. “Can I see Johnny?” Ponyboy demands in a quiet voice.
"Lay down," Darry commands calmly, putting a large hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry about all that right now."
“I don't want him to be alone,” Pony pleads with Soda as tears start to swell in his eyes again. “I don't want to be alone. Please, Sodapop.”
"There's nothing we can do right now, alright?" Soda assures him.
Pony sniffles a bit, but he lays back down, his breathing slowing and becoming steady until he falls back to sleep. Darry and Soda look at each other for a long moment, both of their hearts pounding, hoping he’ll be alright, willing him to be alright. It's like a bizarre nightmare world that Darry can't seem to wake up from.
If something could go wrong, it does. Darry doesn't even bother to wonder if it's ever going to end.
They bring Ponyboy home that evening, with the promise that he'll have an extra week of bed rest and plenty of medicine to help him recover properly. His fever stays low enough to keep Darry from going insane, but it's high enough to keep him asleep most of the time. And Ponyboy still hasn't eaten a thing, claiming everything is baloney and he doesn't want any of it. Darry isn't sure where that's coming from, but it's driving Soda crazy that he won't eat. Darry stopped fighting it, but he can hear Soda gently attempting to get him to eat some oyster crackers from the bedroom.
“Come on, Pony, it ain't baloney, I promise,” Soda pleads.
“I don't like it,” Ponyboy mumbles back. “I don't want it.”
Darry sighs as he walks in and leans on the doorway. It's like arguing with a brick wall.
“Oh, come on, buddy, you haven't eaten anything in two days,” Soda says sternly. “You need it.”
“I'm not hungry,” Pony whispers. Darry puts a hand over Pony's forehead and sighs in relief. It seems like the fever is finally breaking, although he is still very much ill. Maybe the medication will be able to fix that.
“Why don't you go lay down on the couch for a while?” Darry suggests to Soda carefully, casually.
“No,” Soda replies immediately. “No way.”
“You look like death warmed over. Can you do it for me, please? So I don't have to worry about both of you?” When Soda gives him a childish scowl, Darry tries again with, “I'll make sure he eats something, okay? Just for an hour.”
Soda gives in. “Fine. For an hour.”
An hour turns into three, and although Darry knows he’ll be pissed when he wakes up, it at least gives him some peace of mind to know that he’s resting. In an attempt to find some comfortable solution to keeping watch over Ponyboy, he manages to squeeze their armchair into the bedroom right next to the bed, carefully watching over the youngest brother, who has fallen asleep again. He pushes his bleached hair away from his sweaty forehead. This is not the life Darry imagined, for him or for any of them. Sure, they’d always been poor and probably always would be, but when their parents were alive, there was at least someone to fight for them. To show them a path to take. Now, Darry just feels lost, standing at a crossroads with no direction. In another life, he’d be in college right now, Soda would be graduating high school, and Pony would just be some normal kid with normal kid problems. Instead, here they are, in their house being suffocated by grief and pain. All three of them.
“I'm sorry,” he whispers, brushing away another stray strand of his brother's hair. It's hard for him not to think that this is his fault. Everything he touches ends up destroyed anyway. Everything he loves. Every single day of the past year has brought nothing but misery, because he can never seem to keep himself and his family together. How could he let this happen to his own baby brother? But no matter how hard he tries, no matter how hard he fights, no matter how much he hurts or loses, everything just keeps falling apart around him.
Ponyboy stirs before opening up his hazy green eyes. “Are you mad at me?”
Darry shakes his head. “No, baby, I'm not mad at you.”
“But I messed up,” Ponyboy insists. He starts to cry again, curling up into the blanket, as though trying to protect himself against whatever hurt he may feel.
“It wasn't your fault,” Darry reassures him. “Somethings are just out of our control.”
He seems to register this a little better than anything else they've said to him the last few days, nodding slowly and wiping away the tears rolling down his face. “Okay,” he whispers quietly, almost too soft to hear. He fades back into sleep pretty soon after.
“You said an hour,” Soda murmurs sleepily from the doorway.
Darry turns to look at him. “Lost track of time.”
“Uh-huh. When are you gonna sleep?”
“When I can manage it,” he mutters vaguely.
Soda shakes his head. He comes into the room and sits on the edge of the bed. “You know,” he begins gently, reaching out to brush a loose lock of hair off of Pony's clammy forehead. “We'll figure things out. We always do.”
“Who said we wouldn't?” Darry responds dryly, but the tension stays stuck in the air.
Soda shakes his head with a smirk. “You think you're so hard to read, but you're really not. You're my big brother, you know? I've been following you around my whole life, wanting to be just like you. I know you. And even when Mom and Dad were here, you always tried to shield us from the bad stuff so we wouldn't worry. Well, now I worry anyway. So let me carry some of that worry with you, before it gets too heavy.”
Darry swallows thickly. He nods. “Alright.”
“Good.” Soda smiles softly at him. “Now, go sleep.”