For This Life Only Read Online Free Page A

rumpled dark hair. He touched my foot, but hesitantly, as if it might break. “Welcome back, Jacob.” His voice was thick, almost foreign sounding, and he looked away almost immediately.
    â€œWhat . . .” But making that small sound felt like swallowing razor blades with the sharp edges up, and my eyes watered more fiercely at the pain.
    My mom clucked at me in distress. “You shouldn’t try to talk.” She held a small plastic cup with a straw to my mouth, and I took a cautious sip, the water offering a passing moment of cold relief in my throat. “They just took the breathing tube out this morning. And you’re still on oxygen.”
    Breathing tube. “What . . . happened?” I could feel thescrape of plastic in my nose and see the flaps of tape on my cheek, probably where the oxygen line was attached.
    â€œDo you remember the accident?” my mom asked, squeezing my hand tighter.
    At first, I couldn’t remember anything but the darkness, a pitch-black nothingness from which I’d emerged. But then pieces came back slowly, then fell into place.
    â€œEli. The Jeep. He came to get me.” It was like remembering a dream from years ago. “The bridge.”
    I struggled to sit up, only to find that the entire left side of my body wouldn’t move.
    â€œEasy,” the unknown voice said to my left, out of my range of sight. “We’ve spent a lot of time putting you back together.”
    With effort and a growing weight of dread in my stomach, I turned my head carefully.
    A man in scrubs and a white coat was on the left side of my bed, scrawling notes in a chart. But that wasn’t the worst part.
    My left arm was four times its normal size with bandages, and now that I was looking at it, I could feel the throbbing and sizzle of nerves that felt frayed. And my left leg, beneath the blankets, appeared to be equally swollen and lumpy with bandages.
    He set the clipboard down on my bed and flipped a penlight on to shine in my eye, peeling back an eyelidthat wouldn’t respond to my commands. “Your left eye is swollen shut, but as soon as the inflammation goes down, your sight should be fine. Dr. Sheffield, the neurologist, will be down a little later.”
    â€œMy arm,” I managed.
    The doctor turned off the penlight and retrieved his clipboard. “Open fracture of the olecranon process. We’ve set it surgically.” He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “With rehab and time, you’ll have eighty to ninety percent of normal motion back.”
    That’s not enough, a panicked voice shouted in my head.
    But I had to ask. “Baseball?”
    â€œSure, someday,” he said, already lost in whatever notes he was writing down.
    My dad cleared his throat. “Jacob is left-handed. He is . . . he was a pitcher.”
    The doctor hesitated, which told me everything I didn’t want to know. “I think you should concentrate on healing for now.”
    Nausea swirled over me like fog, and I dropped my head back on the pillows. No more pitching? No more baseball? Not ever?
    The doctor frowned down at me, as if I’d insulted him. “You weren’t wearing a seat belt. You’re incredibly lucky to be alive, young man.” Then, as if he feared that wasn’t enough to impress me, he pointed his pen at me. “Youdied en route to the hospital. More than once. Took a few tries to keep your heart going. You’re lucky someone found you when they did.”
    I died? The bed seemed to tilt under me like I was falling, though I knew I was lying down.
    â€œIt’s a miracle,” my mom said, trying to smile through her tears. “God was watching over you.”
    I tried to remember. Dying seemed like it should be one of those things that stuck with you. But between now and the accident—seeing Eli spin away from me—all I had was that inky, suffocating blackness. More than