Secret Prayer

The next morning, Tate and Gage went out early to meet up with a nice family of five for a day out in nature. Tate decided to stay back with the mom and the younger and middle kid, while the teen, Gage, and the dad went onto the trails on bikes. It was the first time that Gage had been out of his normal dress clothes on his mission other than for bed, because he didn't want to ruin them if he fell.

They were riding along a trail that was definitely not for beginners, which was great for Gage because he missed being able to ride like this. It was going well too until the teenage son made a sudden stop because of a fallen tree branch. Gage swerved to one side to avoid hitting him, and Gage sailed off the bike, hitting his knee hard on a branch that tore up the skin from his knee down to his calf. The bike tumbled down after him, landing half on top of Gage as he twisted his knee going down the incline.

Gage sat for a moment in the dirt, a little dazed from the fall. Gage waited until they came back around to the lower part of the trail, slowly moving the bike and himself that way to meet up with them so they could head back to where Tate and the rest of the family were. Gage's knee was now covered in blood, and he tried what he could to stop some of the bleeding while he waited for them.

Tate jumped up when he saw Gage limping along the side of the bike, taking in the sight of the blood and the open wound. "I thought you were good at this?"

"I am, but accidents happen," Gage replied and came to sit down.

The family brought out their first aid kit and got him cleaned up as well as they could and the wound wrapped before they fed the two missionaries and took them back to the city. Gage used some of the money his family had sent him to have Tate go down to a drugstore to pick up some supplies and ibuprofen. He did a better clean up job there, prying as much wood and rocks out of the wound as possible before pouring alcohol over it and wrapping it with an ace bandage so he could ice it for a while.

A few days later, though, it wasn't doing much better. In fact, it was doing far worse. The skin around the wound was red and irritated, and the knee was swollen. When Gage went to get up to get showered, he let out a cry and fell back onto his bed.

"That doesn't look good," Tate pointed out. "Maybe we should call the Mission President."

Gage reluctantly agreed. The Mission President came out with one of their doctors to take a look at it. They agreed it looked infected, and let the doctor work on him for a bit to try and fix things. He drained the pus out of the wound, much to Gage's dismay because it hurt worse than anything he had ever experienced. Tate could hear muffled screaming coming from their room.

The doctor cleaned up the wound again for him and wrapped it before having him ice it again. The doctor was certain that with some neosporin on the wound and Tylenol to bring the fever down, Gage would be fine. Tate didn't look entirely convinced of that, but he knew better than to argue with them.

Gage did everything he was told to do, including cleaning it a few more times, but as the days went on, he wasn't getting better. Gage was already a very pale man, but the pallor of his skin had taken on a sickly tone, and he was sweating all of the time. They were still going on walks to talk to people, but Tate made Gage take far more breaks now and get off his feet.

They were doing just that, sitting on a bench on campus, while Jarek was making his way home from one of his classes. He spotted them on the bench and gave a friendly wave as he approached, pulling his earbuds out of his ears when he got close enough to talk. Gage tried to give him a smile as he walked up to them, but it came out pained rather than warm.

"Are you okay?" Jarek asked as he saw the grimace that Gage tried to pass off as a smile.

"I'm fine," Gage tried to say while Tate replied to Jarek's question with, "No, he's not."

Gage looked up at Tate, who was staring at him as if to challenge him to try and lie again. He could hear his grandma in his head reminding him that a lie by omission is still a lie, so he let out a sigh and motioned to his leg. "I hurt it while biking. It's not horrible, but it's swollen and hurts."

"Can you make it to my house? I should probably take a look at it," Jarek said.

Gage looked in the direction that Jarek's house was, calculating in his head whether he could handle it. He finally gave a nod of his head and let Tate help him get standing again before he limped along after them, pushing through the pain as best he could to get to their destination. They got to the house and Jarek helped them inside and got Gage seated before gently rolling his pants-leg up.

Gage's knee was swollen and bruised, and Jarek could see that the tissue around the cut was definitely infected by how red and warm to the touch it was. The wound itself was turning a yellowish color again under the blood from it. Gage let out a hiss when the fabric of his pants brushed against the wound.

"This needs medical attention," Jarek said, looking incredibly concerned. "Want to accompany me to the emergency room? You can tell me all about your church along the way..."

Gage looked over at Tate with concern on his face. "We...don't have the Mission President's permission...Their doctor already said it would be fine if I just kept it clean and took breaks."

Tate looked over at Jarek, his expression hard, but it was clear he was mad at the situation. The way he looked at Jarek said it was important for him to listen to what he was saying. "Yes, we don't have his permission, but we can't actually stop you if you insist on taking him to the ER or calling 911. As a possible convert, you have more power here than we do."

Jarek looked concernedly at Gage. "Look, I believe very strongly in consent, but if you keep listening to the mission president you could die from this injury. It appears to be infected and you're going to need some time overnight in the ER at a minimum. I wouldn't be surprised if this also requires physical therapy once it's all said and done. It's your call. I'm more than willing to take the blame on this so you don't get into trouble, but I won't do it by overriding your wishes."

Gage looked between Tate and Jarek for a moment, seeing the concerned looks on their faces, and the fight seemed to go out of him. Finally, he nodded his head. "Alright, ER it is. I trust your judgment."

"Do you have a car?" Tate asked. "Or do we need an uber? We can't make him walk all the way there."

Jarek got his phone out of his pocket. "I'll get an Uber. It's faster than an ambulance," he said as he ordered up a rideshare on his phone.

Tate gave a nod of his head, and once the ride got there, they both helped Gage get out to the car. Tate took the front seat, leaving Gage and Jarek in the back seat together. Gage winced at the tight fit with his leg like this, feeling pain where the wound was, while his knee felt like it was on fire. Jarek told him to turn so his back was against the door and put his leg up on Jarek's lap and then he confirmed with the driver that he was to take them to the nearest hospital.

The driver took them right to the entrance of the emergency room where Tate went to get a wheelchair so they could get Gage into the waiting room and checked in. Luckily, he did have his wallet which included his insurance card with him. Tate and Jarek came into the room with him once they got Gage into one. The nurse brought in a hospital gown and asked Gage to take off his shoes, shirt, and pants before getting into the gown.

Jarek had been considering on the trip over here whether he needed to stay here all night but the ER was notorious for wasting at least 6 hours waiting on test results and such, so he called off work for the night. He told his boss he'd pick up an extra night later in the week to try to make up for the missed money.

Once the nurse left, Gage stripped down to his black boxer briefs, neatly folding his clothing before putting it on the counter to wait for later and slipped the gown on before laying down on the bed. Jarek got a good look at his muscled chest and back. Gage's skin was pale and smooth, with a little smattering of blonde chest hair that seemed to be little more than peach fuzz. It wasn't entirely unblemished skin though. He had moles scattered across his back and chest, and old scars that came from dirt biking that had faded to a pale color that was just a little discolored from his original skin tone.

Jarek had considered looking away and letting him have his modesty, but there was something wicked in looking, so he smirked and watched. Gage made eye contact with Jarek as he sat down on the bed, realizing he'd been watching him. He pulled the blanket up over himself as he took that in, surprised that he was mostly embarrassed as opposed to upset or angry. Embarrassed because not only had he fantasized about that very thing before, though without the injury and ER room, but he was also reacting to it. Jarek could see Gage's cheeks flush red as he adjusted the blanket.

They didn't have to wait long for someone to set up an IV and draw labs, which was standard practice in ERs everywhere. Jarek knew they would be waiting at least two hours for the results of those labs, however. Meanwhile, the nurse asked Gage some questions about his injury and how it had come about; his pain levels; and allergies.

Gage explained about the accident, and the small amount of first aid they did at the site but that he'd had to wait to really clean it out later. He told her he was allergic to latex and ampicillin, but okay with other antibiotics. He also explained what the doctor had done earlier and answered all of her questions.

When the doctor came in, he looked over the wound and felt around the knee before telling them he wanted to get an x-ray and MRI on the knee to make sure that he hadn't done any really bad damage to it. He said he would come back once that was done so they could deal with the infection, but he had the nurses start him on a high dose of antibiotics and something for the pain.

They took him off to imaging not long after, and when he came back, the nurse came back in to start numbing his knee up. She had a bunch of little syringes filled with lidocaine. She was sticking the needles all around the wound, while Gage laid his head back and closed his eyes tight to try to distract himself from how much it hurt. It was hard for both Jarek and Tate because they were both coming to care a lot about Gage. Gage did a good job of being brave about it, but Jarek winced as he watched the way Gage's eyebrows would twitch from the pain.

Once his leg was sufficiently numbed, the doctor came back in with a bunch of instruments to cut away infected tissue and get it completely cleaned out and drained. The doctor found some thin and jagged pieces of wood deep in the wounds, which Gage hadn't found before, likely because they embedded so far down. That would be enough to keep them from being able to stop the infection from spreading once it started.

Gage had relaxed now despite the work the doctor was doing, partly because it was numb and partly because he was a little out of it thanks to the medications. The doctor told them that he wanted to keep Gage for at least a night, if not a few nights, in the hospital to make sure the antibiotics were working and it didn't go completely septic.

"Septic?" Gage asked him through the haze in his head.

The doctor nodded his head. "If you had left this a few more days, we might have been looking at the possibility of you losing the entire leg, at least from the knee down. There's no infection in the bone yet, which is good, but this could easily have killed you."

Tate was shaking his head while Gage just stared at the doctor like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Of course, Jarek had said as much earlier, but hearing it from the doctor made it sink in harder. He thanked the doctor as the man stitched up the cleaned up wound and applied antibiotic ointment to it before wrapping it in gauze and an ace bandage.

"I've never stayed overnight in a hospital..." Gage said once the doctor left with samples from the wound to culture so they could get him the right mix of antibiotics.

Jarek looked stricken at that admission and stepped out of the hospital to make a few calls. When he returned, Tate was getting ready to leave. "I cleared my schedule for the evening but I have a class starting at 11 tomorrow that I can't miss. Can you come back for a shift before then?" Jarek asked Tate.

"Yeah, I can," Tate replied. "I'll go first thing to the Mission President to tell him what's going on. We're not allowed to go around without our companion, but I'll fight to make sure they don't reassign Gage to someone else."

Jarek nodded and fished his phone charger out of his bag, already figuring out how he was going to get some sleep that night.

It was only once Tate had left that Gage looked over at where Jarek was settling in the chair. "I'd hate to be the reason you're exhausted for your class tomorrow. And don't you also work nights?"

Jarek looked up from his phone, "I switched nights with a coworker. I'll get less in tips on his shift but that's okay. These rooms aren't the best to sleep in, but this reclining chair can make a decent bed for a night or two and the class I can't miss has a pretty forgiving professor."

Gage nodded his head slowly as he took that in, looking over Jarek like he was seeing him for the first time. The way Jarek spoke made it sound like he had left the Catholic church. His family has always made it sound like good people truly only existed in the church, yet Tate was part of the church and seen as a troublemaker, and Jarek was someone who the church would call lost and sinful, and both of them were doing what they could to help him.

"Are you an atheist?" Gage asked.

Jarek gave that a few minutes of thought. "I'd say I'm agnostic, mostly. I still believe in something, just not whatever the churches are peddling."

Gage looked down at his bandaged leg as he considered that. "My family has always taught me that outsiders, non-LDS people, were dangerous and it's better to stay away from them unless we are leading them to the church. I don't think I've necessarily believed them my entire life, but now I'm sitting in a hospital around 1,500 miles from home and the one person who has been the kindest doesn't fit into their mold at all. It's...I don't know, it makes me wonder how much of that is that they believe it's true and how much of it is that they are afraid of what non-believers might leave me thinking about...And maybe they weren't completely wrong because I feel like everything about my faith has been flipped on its head."

Jarek looked a little upset by that. "I'm sorry, Gage. I never meant to spark a crisis of faith for you."

"No, I don't want you to feel bad about that," Gage hurried to say. "I mean, I was already having issues as it was. I didn't even want to come on this mission, but it's expected and you get looked down on if you don't. My brother has been on my mind the entire time I've been here. He wasn't doing well when I left, and I've been trying to come to terms with the fact that I know I'm gay but I've never dared to say it out loud, at least until now, with you here. So it's not just you. It's a culmination of things that I'm having trouble ignoring, and you just happen to be one of the factors."

Gage looked over at Jarek again then. "It's hard to ignore the gay part when I'm around you though..."

Jarek looked surprised. "Why is that? I've tried to be respectful of your views..."

"I know, you've been very kind and thoughtful of both of us. And that just makes you more attractive, honestly. You're already a beautiful man as it is, but the more I get to know you, the more I like." Then it seemed to occur to Gage through his exhaustion and the medication that maybe he was upsetting Jarek or making him uncomfortable, so he laid his head back and closed his eyes. "Sorry, ignore my ramblings. This isn't something I should make you deal with."

Jarek smiled and blushed slightly. "I like you too, Gage. You're not oversharing, I promise. I just don't want to be responsible for you questioning your faith, if you understand my meaning."

Gage didn't open his eyes; he just nodded his head to show he understood. "It's not you that made me question it. My brother came out as bisexual and dating a man, and my parents and older sister lost their shit. I think Addison and I took it the best, but Craig has been so depressed and down ever since everything went down. He's basically not left alone if he tries to go out without some sort of chaperone to watch him, and he's an adult. It makes me wonder what's so wrong with loving someone..."

Jarek nodded, then realized Gage couldn't hear that. "That must be difficult. My very Catholic family basically disowned me when I refused to ignore half of myself. It was even worse to them than me ignoring the "purity pledge" they made us all take in Sunday School."

"We had something like that too," Gage replied and looked down at his CTR ring that he rarely took off. It was in the shape of a shield with the letters "CTR" which meant "Choose the Right" in the middle of the shield. "I've mostly kept to it, though I've fooled around with girlfriends before. I thought if I made myself do the things guys my age should be trying then it would click somehow. Like, I'd just start liking women if I just tried it. It never worked though, so we never got very far."

"I'm sorry you went through that," Jarek said quietly, touching Gage's hand in sympathy.

Gage gave him a sad smile and turned his hand over so Jarek was touching his palm. "When I go home, it will be all about going to BYU and finding a wife, and I'm starting to not want to go home, to be honest."

"I can understand that," Jarek commiserated. "I don't feel like I can ever go home again either."

"Where was home for you?" Gage asked.

"Dallas, Texas," Jarek said kind of shortly, looking inwardly for a bit before shaking himself out of it and smiling a dazzling smile at Gage. "But I got better."

"I hope I can get better too, but I don't know where to start," Gage admitted. "I admire your strength and ability to just...be yourself."

Jarek seemed startled by this. "I wasn't given a choice, honestly. My family wanted me to do what your family wants your brother to do, and that wasn't a choice for me. So I left. I graduated high school early and took the next bus I could, going as far away as I

could afford with no plan except to get as far from them as possible."

Gage frowned at that, considering what he had said. "There's always a choice, though. The choice to do what my brother and I have been doing, going with what they want, the choice to run, or the choice to just die. I've considered that last one a lot to be honest. Still, you survived that and seem to be thriving, and you don't let anyone put you down for it."

"It took a lot to get where I am, but I believe in you," Jarek said.

Gage didn't reply to that, not knowing what to say other than that he wasn't sure he believed in himself, but he was saved from having to do anything by the nurse coming in to check his vitals. They moved him into a room outside of the ER where Jarek could settle down on the couch for a bit with his phone plugged in, and his overnight nurse introduced herself. Gage's leg was starting to feel things again, which was made worse since the doctor cut away infected tissue, and he asked the nurse if they could do anything for the pain.

"Let me go get you a pain med dose," she replied with a smile and left the room.

Gage looked out the window in his room while they waited, seeing the lights of Chicago twinkling on the different buildings and homes with the night sky as a backdrop. Dark clouds covered some of the stars, but not all of them. It would probably rain soon and that calmed Gage a little bit. He loved rainy nights, especially when he could watch the rain hitting the windows. Of course, this wasn't the most relaxing place to hunker down for a rainstorm but it would have to do.