The Night of the Bat
Copyright© 2026 by Heel
Chapter 5
The first days passed badly.
Pain ruled everything.
The enormous plaster cast kept the girl almost completely immobilized from the lower ribs downward, forcing her to remain flat on her back for hours at a time beneath the white blankets while rainstorms came and went outside the tall bedroom windows, each day blending into the next inside the dim heavy silence of the house.
The fractures in her leg hurt constantly.
The broken vertebrae hurt worse.
Even tiny movements sent sharp flashes of pain through her lower back, and several times during the first nights Edgar woke to hear muffled crying from the guest room down the hall, soft exhausted sounds quickly hidden whenever she realized someone was approaching.
Martin returned daily during the beginning.
Each visit carried the same warnings.
“No twisting.”
“No sitting upright yet.”
“Watch the swelling.”
“Watch for numbness.”
The doctor remained irritated with Edgar, though underneath the irritation lived relief that the girl still had movement in her feet and no worsening neurological signs.
“She got lucky,” Martin said quietly one evening while checking circulation in the exposed toes protruding from the cast. “A harder blow and she might never have walked again.”
Edgar said nothing after that.
But the sentence remained with him.
A harder blow.
At night he sometimes stood alone in the kitchen staring at the spot where she had fallen, remembering the feeling of the bat striking her body, and each time the memory returned he experienced again that sick collapsing sensation in his stomach, the realization of how easily panic had transformed him into someone he did not recognize.
Yet upstairs, gradually, something strange began happening.
The girl stopped looking at him with fear all the time.
At first their conversations were cautious and awkward, separated by long silences and embarrassment.
He brought her food.
Adjusted pillows.
Helped her drink water.
Changed the ice packs Martin insisted they use to reduce swelling around the spine and hip.
The practical intimacy of caring for another person slowly erased some invisible barrier between them.
On the fourth day she finally told him her name.
“Clara.”
He had been helping her shift slightly onto one side so fresh sheets could be pulled beneath her back, a difficult painful process requiring careful coordination because the cast locked nearly her entire lower body rigid.
“Clara,” he repeated quietly.
She watched him for a moment.
“You keep calling me ‘kid.’”
Edgar almost smiled for the first time all week.
“You are a kid.”
“I’m twenty.”
“That still counts.”
A faint smile appeared briefly on her face too.
It changed her completely.
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