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A thick sweet smell, not unlike a warm day, arouses Johnny from sleep. His surroundings are complex to his senses– dark and quiet, taffy smelling and grotesquely still. It’s silent, it’s macabre; it is as though Death looms with a Get Well Soon card and sweets beside his bed. The smell is propol; acidic and tangy, which soaks into the gauze that dresses his skin, wrapping around his shoulders and torso, unfortunately not with anaesthetising properties but merely to curb the influence of infection. His body is cold. The thin sheet does little to protect from the midnight air.
“Hello..?” he calls out, to only shadows, for he gets no answer and is left to chatter his teeth. His voice is hoarse and it cracks painfully. He begins to remember how he has turned up here. A gunshot, that’s right. Right through the body, that’s got to do some damage. Johnny doesn’t know much about medicine, he knows what his brother Nicholas taught him (‘ Wash yer hands, and wipe yer tools, don’t sleep if you knock yer head’,) but his knowledge ends there. He does however come to the incredible conclusion that accessorising yourself with a bullet wound does not improve one’s health.
He sits with his thoughts as he wakes. He thinks that he does not know a lot. He doesn’t know why a man would shoot him. Didn’t he know who he was? He doesn’t know how his sheets are made, or his gauze for that matter. Surely the weaving must take ten years. He doesn’t know why he can’t feel his toes. Or his calves, or his thighs, or his groin.
Pardon?
“Oi!” he screams, flailing his arms. He cries out in agonising pain as electric pain surges through his spine. His head pounds. The air is far too sickly smelling. He can’t see anything in the dim light of his oil lamp. “Oi, Why can’t I– What’s happenin’?”
Then, he feels something familiar, incredibly so, and his heart skips a nervous beat as he feels his abdomen move. He cries harder knowing he can’t even stop himself from soiling his sheets. “Nurse?! Where’s my fuckin’ nurse!”
It takes two hours for the nurse to show. Johnny passes out as soon as he can to spare himself the shame and depravity of it all. But by God! If reporters were nurses, wait times would halve! The papers have his face and name plastered across their front pages by morn; Kentucky’s superstar goes down in savage shooting! At least his loved ones would see, and they would show. Though embarrassed he would have some kind of consolation. Unfortunately, though, it seems as though Johnny’s luck has run dry. He receives no visitors for a week. The gold-digging women that hung off him like handbags had vamosed as soon as he was downed. He spent most of that time trying to sleep, trying to read, trying to do anything. He’d been fitted with a catheter and fluids at least. The doctor had broken the news that he would no longer walk, let alone ride. Johnny had attempted to contest this statement but the man was stern and final. He read, or attempted to, some of Keats's poems, looking for meanings, similies and metaphors like verses and prayer, but found little solace in British English. He struggled to romanticise anything about his current situation.
But it appears British English would follow him regardless, for on his eighth day Diego Brando walks into his ward, clicking on his annoyingly polished black riding boots down the hall. He carries a box in one arm, his hair flicked over his shoulders, in his brown breeches and a tight black vest. Johnny can’t pretend he’s not surprised. It’s total silence aside from the clack of his heel on the tile as he approaches Johnny’s bed. He gazes at the bedside drawer, where Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ rests, dog-eared to only the seventh page, and a glass of water condensates from age.
“You read?” Diego queries in an accusatory tone, wandering over and picking up the book. Johnny scowls at his rival.
“I can,” he murmurs. His voice is hoarse from screaming. Diego assesses the book before putting it back gently and adding his cream-coloured box to the table.
“French pastries. Dreary food is unbecoming of those kissed by fame,” he says offhandedly, before sitting next to Johnny’s bed and pulling his gloves off. “I shan’t like to see you starve. It is an awful feeling.”
Johnny does little more than stare, eyes sad, at Diego. He doesn’t yet know how to feel about him being there. Diego folds his gloves and rests his elbow on the chair, placing his cheek in his palm and eating up Johnny in a stony stare. “Do you speak? Or just read. You weren’t shot in the mouth, I shouldn’t think, though it’s hard to tell. Have you always looked this unsightly?”
Johnny’s bottom lip twitches. “Shut pan, Brando,” he whispers. Diego flashes him a wink.
“Oh, alright. I’ll pity you.”
“Yer mighty cruel.”
“Normalcy is good for healing. Makes it seem as though, perhaps, nothing has happened at all.”
“But it has,” Johnny mutters. “By God, it has happened. I’ll never walk. I’ll never ride.”
Diego falters at that. “Come again?”
“Body’s numb all to pieces.”
Johnny watches as Diego blinks once, then twice, then stands and wraps his arms around his body. “Never?”
“Never.”
“But you must,” Diego stammers, pacing and shaking his head. Johnny begins to cry again. Diego jumps at the sound of a prickling wail and traces a thumb under his eyes, shaking his head again. “Look, time– time will give us a cure. Or an aide. Please, please trust that.” He tries to sound convincing, but Johnny doesn’t cease his crying. He doesn’t believe it. “You will, I promise you, I promise. Please.”
Johnny scrunches his eyebrows as he tries to breathe. “No– one–,” he huffs out.
“Yes? No one what, Johnny?”
“No one c-came,” he swallows, cheeks red and nose running. Diego takes his handkerchief out and dabs gently at his face. “No one v-visited. Yer the first.” He doesn’t stop weeping, and Diego pauses, his fingertips at the corner of Johnny’s mouth.
“...I’m sorry.”
Johnny sniffs. “I’m glad,” he says after a brief pause. Diego raises his brow.
“That… no one came?”
“That you did.”
Diego sits in stunned shock atop Silver Bullet, his heart skipping beats and his body furiously cold as he tries to make out a blue and grey splotch in the distance. Surely not. It couldn’t be. He’d said, sure as anything, he’d never ride again. So why could he see Johnny Joestar at the starting grounds for the Steel Ball Run race?
His hands shake as he rides over, walking slowly, feeling as though he may be sick. He stands a respectable distance so as not to spook his mare.
“Johnny?” he calls. Johnny turns his head, and his eyes widen.
“Diego!” he yelps, surprised. Diego stares.
“You’re… you’re participating?”
“Sure am,” he nods, patting Slow Dancer’s flank.
“How? How on earth… Can you walk?”
Johnny grimaces. “Ah, haven’t figured that one out yet. But I can ride no problem! Few tweaks here ‘n there and I’m right as rain.”
Diego is shell-shocked. “How?” he asks again.
Johnny smiles. “A smart man told me once, “time heals”. I ain’t believe a word he says, but, well, he’s usually right,” he shrugs. Diego can’t stop the tears that well in his eyes, of pride and relief and nerves. He scowls and turns before they fall.
“We shall see who wins.”
“Sure will. Hey,” Johnny extends his palm, and they shake hands. “Thank you, you know. For bein’ there.”
Diego gives a downturned smile. “Of course, Johnny.”