Shattered Lives Read Online Free Page B

quietly.             
                  “Carol told me you barely ate your supper.  I can count every one of your ribs, Child,” she said poking a finger at his stomach, tickling him.
                  Brett danced out of the way but didn’t comment and just smiled up at her.  Truth was he didn’t have much of an appetite.  Twenty-two months of fast food menu items would do that.  He, like the other boys, came to the hospital malnourished and dehydrated.  Monique knew hospital food wasn’t the best in the world, but it was a damn sight better than any fast food restaurant.
    “You have to promise me you’ll eat some breakfast and take your vitamins, okay?”
    Brett blushed and nodded.
    Monique held onto his cheeks and gave him a most disapproving frown, before she softened and hugged him again. 
    “I need one more hug before I get going.  Where are you off to?  I don’t think anyone else is up yet.”
    By anyone else, she meant Tim and Mike.  Stephen had moved to a hotel nearby with his parents.
    Tim had been in captivity longer than Brett had been and had become Brett’s closest friend.  Besides Johnny that is.  But Johnny was on the second floor in intensive care fighting to make it.  He had been sick for about a week or so before the boys were freed- coughing, sweating, and weak.  He hadn’t gotten better, and Brett knew the doctors and nurses had been particularly worried about him.  They didn’t say too much, but Brett knew anyway.  It was in what they didn’t say that told him Johnny was in trouble. 
    Tim was a little taller than Brett, a little on the lanky side with longish blond hair.  In fact, he looked like the smart twin on Suite Life On Deck , a TV show Brett used to watch way back when.  Tim was the boys’ acknowledged leader, and Brett was Tim’s closest confidant and his right hand man.  Dark and brown-haired to Tim’s light complexion and blond hair.  A perfect compliment- not only in looks but in personality:  Tim the thinker, Brett the doer.
    The night before they were rescued, Tim had a date- The Cop - who liked to use his nightstick on the boys.  Once, Brett had been on the receiving end of the nightstick himself.  Tim had surgery and ended up with a half-dozen stitches, and Brett took on the role of helping Tim when he needed to use the toilet and even helped him with his Sitz bathes.
    Tim had requested that Mike room with him.   
    Mike had suffered the most of all of the boys because he wasn’t the one selected .  Mike just happened to have had the misfortune of being with Stephen when the two were abducted off the streets of Waukesha, Wisconsin.  Stephen was the boy they had targeted and wanted, while Mike would only be around for a couple of days for the guards to use before he was disposed of.  Besides the black eyes- one was swollen completely shut- he had two teeth missing and one other loosened.  Like Tim, he had about a half-dozen stitches, and Brett took care of him too. 
    Michael had suffered far beyond anything physical though.  He had developed a severe stutter on both hard and soft consonants, as well as on some vowels.  Stephen had told the doctor and Tim and Brett that Mike had never stuttered as long as he had known him, and they had been friends since elementary.  Brett and Tim had privately worried that Mike might never talk normally again.
                  “Brett, you’ve been such a help to Tim and Michael that we felt we needed to get you something to say ‘ Thank You ’,” Monique said motioning to Rodney and Dee to join them and snapping Brett out of his reverie.
                  Carol moved back behind the nurses’ station and took a Dick’s Sporting Goods bag and handed it to Brett.  Blushing, he took it, peeked inside and smiled, and pulled out a Chicago Bears t-shirt.
                  “We know you’re a Colts fan, Angel,” Monique said.
    “But