Picking Up The Pieces

[TogetherAgain]

<Shakes head> You two will never cease to amaze me, will you. I love how everyone is pulling together... All of the characterization, and EVERYTHING, feels so natural in this story... It's really very admirable. Poor Gonzo...

MORE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Ruahnna]

Chapter 7: Here’s Looking at You, Gonzo

Gonzo had awakened one morning with the eerie sense that someone—or something was looking at him. Since he had become a guest of the hospital, that feeling had more often than not been correct, but there was no brisk nurse smiling at him while she checked his pulse, no one leaving a tray of food and waking him to feed him. Slowly, and with sweat-popping effort, Gonzo turned his head ever-so-slightly toward the corner of his room and froze. His heart began to pound in his chest, and he turned away, frightened by the sight that met his eyes. That had been three days ago and that feeling had been every-present.
This morning, however, the male nurse who arrived to check his vitals and feed him lunch smiled at Gonzo as his eyes drifted toward the corner and the sight that had so shaken the little blue weirdo.
“Hey,” the young man said with the same cheery, matter-of-fact tone that all of the nurses seemed to use, a tone that Gonzo had taken to calling their “Sesame Street voice.” “Nice wheels.”
But after that first terrifying glance, Gonzo had refused to acknowledge the presence of the motorized wheelchair. He had begun to loathe the hospital bed and had even composed a song about the 37 individual indentations in the ceiling above his bed, but now the thought of leaving the familiarity of this setting seemed too scary to contemplate.
“Not mine,” Gonzo muttered churlishly, and the young man laughed.
“Not yet, maybe,” he said serenely. “But I know if you test drive her you’ll be hooked.”
Gonzo grunted.
“Come on over and kick the tires—check out the transmission,” Geoffrey wheedled, but Gonzo set his lips disapprovingly.
“Maybe some other time. I’m not really in a tire-kicking mood.” He kept his eyes focused grimly on the tray in front of him. “Ooh! Lime jello! My favorite! Where’d you go with that spoon?”
But Geoffrey had just tut-tutted at him.
“Trust me—the lime jello isn’t going anywhere.”
“That makes two of us,” Gonzo muttered.
“That’s what you think,” Geoffrey insisted. He pushed the tray back from Gonzo’s hospital bed, turned back the covers and swept Gonzo up as easily as if he weighed nothing at all. Gonzo had lost weight, to be sure, but he was still larger than a bread-box. Still, the nurse hefted him with no sign of distress.
“Don’t drop me,” Gonzo cried involuntarily. He didn’t really think Geoffrey would, but it made him feel better to complain about something. Just as the accident had done, Geoffrey was taking him toward his date with inevitability, and Gonzo railed against his sense of powerlessness.
“Oh,” said Geoffrey airily. “I haven’t dropped anyone in ages.”
Good timing, thought Gonzo. “You ought to do stand up,” the weirdo said with grudging admiration. “And I’ll do falling down,” he added, and laughed despite the harsh nature of the joke.
“What—get up in front of people and perform?” said the young man. His face betrayed his horror. “You must be crazy.”
“It’s been documented,” said Gonzo. “But really—seriously. You have a good sense of timing.”
“And….?” Geoffrey demanded.
“And you’re funny,” Gonzo said. Geoffrey smiled and sat Gonzo down in the mechanized wheelchair before bowing deeply from the waist.
“You are too kind, sir,” he said formally, ruining the gesture by sticking his tongue out. Despite himself, Gonzo felt like laughing. Then, remembering what he was about, Gonzo’s spirits plummeted again.
“I—I don’t want to do this today, Geoffrey,” he said quietly. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Nope—you can’t tomorrow,” the young man insisted. He was turning the chair toward the door.
“Why not? Are they recalling this model?” Gonzo felt a little panicky at the thought of leaving the room and tried to hide it with snide humor.
“Hmm umm,” said Geoffrey’s voice from behind his head. “But I’m off tomorrow and I don’t trust some of those nurses. Gertrude had a real lead foot—I know because I’ve followed her on the freeway, and you wouldn’t know it to look at her, but Karoline has been known to talk on her cell phone, apply mascara and drink a cup of coffee while she’s driving. If one of them took you out there’s no gurantee you’d come back in one piece. So it has to be today.”
“But, but—“ Gonzo began.
“Oh,” said Geoffrey. “You don’t have to make engine noises. The engine goes on its own.”
“Wait!” Gonzo said, half-laughing and half-terrified. “Wait, Geoffrey—I’m not quite ready for this.”
The wheelchair stopped its forward motion, then Gonzo heard the nurse’s almost silent footfalls coming around. He watched him come and kneel on the nondescript linoleum and look up into his eyes.
“It’s time,” Geoffrey said simply, and his voice was sad. “Doesn’t do any good to be scared.”
Gonzo hesitated, his eyes fixed anxiously on the kind eyes in front of him. “Can I at least get a blanket or something? These hospital robes are a little air-ish, if you know what I mean.”
Geoffrey gave him a look, obviously thinking he was stalling, but Gonzo gave a sortof lop-sided smile.
“Come on,” Gonzo pleaded. “I’m gonna scandalize the nurses station.”
Geoffrey just laughed. “They’d be thrilled,” he insisted, but he got a blanket. After a minute—decently tucked, almost excited and scared to death, Gonzo took his first ride in the wheelchair.

The construction had dislodged more than dust and the womenfolk. Every doorway had been widened to accommodate...whatever--whatever and his new wheels, and many thing had to be reaarranged--or at least restacked.
Kermit and Fozzie had been taken over the job of resettling the books in the two big bookshelves in the living room after observing the Penguin's attempts to sort books by color.
Both of them had dust rags and their work was punctuated with stray coughs.
"Hope Gonzo likes everything," Fozzie said optimistically. Kermit didn't answer. Lately, he was having a hard time coming up with answers.
A grunt eventually subbed in for words
“Hey fellas--need a hand? Cough, cough?" asked Rowlf. "Shouldn't that be Ruff, ruff?" asked Fozzie. "Wocka, wocka!"
Rowlf just sighed. Everybody tried to do dog humor, but almost no one ever got it right.
"A photo album," Kermit breathed softly
He wiped it off with his dust rag and revealed a less-than-professional quality picture of the muppets
By an unfortunate stroke of luck the album happened to open in mid air to one of Gonzo saying good-bye to yet another canon.
"That was Gertrude," said Rowlf, without thinking. "She sure packed a whallup!"
Page after page taunted them with its normalcy
"Oh, look!" said Fozzie. "That's the picnic we had that day at the park."
"Yeah," Kermit said softly. "When Gonzo's kite-flying escapade managed to hang him over those power wires."
Silence again. Laughing silence.
“Good thing you had the power company on beeper back then," said Rowlf. There was a general assent, two brown heads and one green one bobbing.
"What are we doing guys?" Kermit blurted out in spite of himself
Everyone knew the answer: they were avoiding. Avoiding fear, avoiding the unknown, avoiding especially the fear of the unknown.
Fear of the unknown, yes--but fear of the known as well.
How would he act? Moreover how would they act towards him? Of course they would treat him the same as always, but…words are easy, aren’t they? Actions take effort.
And Gonzo had been...so hard, and so hard to read. He had finally accepted visits at the hospital as inevitable, but it was difficult, often, to know what to say, what to talk about, where to look. And Gonzo’s humor, always odd, had become more dark as his outlook became more grim.
"I am more scared than I have ever been in my entire life" said the soft green figure with the arguable claim of leading the Muppets. “I mean, if we flop on stage, big deal, you know? There's always another show. But this...this is....”
He did not know what this was. That was part of the problem.
“Yeah,” said Rowlf, agreeing with his unspoken thoughts as well as his spoken one.
Fozzie, however, was not to be daunted.
“Well, I’m glad that Gonzo’s coming home.” He surveyed the comfortable chaos of the living room. “He’ll be a lot more comfortable here than in some smelly old hospital.”
As if on cue, a waft of foul-smelling smoke wafted up from the vicinity of Dr. Honeydew’s lab in the basement and Fozzie dared anyone to say anything.
As it was, there was nothing left to say nothing left to do but wait in the silence and fear, silence and fear that could still not be as severe as Gonzo’s experience of same. Kermit shifted awkwardly, then he and Rowlf spoke at once.
“Well, we’ll just—“
“We’ll just do the best we—“
Rizzo walked in and the silence became loud.
Fozzie was nose-deep in a bookcase, but he reacted to the sudden silence by looking up.
“Oh, hey Rizzo! When's Gonzo coming home?”
There was a momentary flicker of...something on Rizzo's face, but his expression remained neutral.
“Later this afternoon. We'll have plenty of warning because they're going to bring him in the van.”
“Good,” said Kermit automatically, just to have something to say.
After an uncomfortable silence, Rizzo started up the stairs
“And how are you, Rizzo?” he muttered to himself. “Fine!” he answered himself. “Thanks for askin’!”
Below, the three old friends were oblivious to the little rat’s distress. They were consumed with what was coming.
If the van came 100 years from then it would be too soon, said the voice in the minds of at least two in the room
Everyone nodded and Kermit had an uncomfortable flashbck to filiming "Muppets From Space." They had been going to rescue Gonzo then, too--but only from a soundstage.

 

[The Count]

Just finished... You're building something here to rival the Heart of Lisa's. Beautiful and dreadful at the same time. Can't wait for more when you can post it though.

*Hugs Rizzo plushy.

 

[redBoobergurl]

Ok, it is on my list of things to do for tomorrow to get caught up with this story, I realized it was one that I had missed along the lines and I just read chapter one and I realized I need to read the whole thing! So now I have something at the top of my list for my slow time at work tomorrow!

 

[The Count]

If your work allows you to log on to MC Beth.

 

[redBoobergurl]

Work allows MC, work does not allow Facebook or Myspace. It's weird, I don't ask questions.

 

[Ruahnna]

I just want to say--especially for you new readers (and bless ALL of you, new and, um, less new)--that even though Aaron and I take turns posting to this story, and while it might look like I wrote that last section, for instance, because it's under my avatar and name, I could not be writing this without my partner-in-crime, um, my, um, better--no, that's not right....without Lew Zealand and his...drat. SERIOUSLY, though--without Aaron, who is the true author of this story. (Wild applause, confetti everywhere.) This was his original idea--I'm just the one who types really fast and knows lots of big words. We'll keep plucking at it until we're done!

 

[redBoobergurl]

Whew, just read the whole thing.

Aaron, Catherine....wow. You guys have created something outstanding here, this is one of the best fics I've read in awhile. You've managed to tell a powerful story and yet everyone is in character, they've all reacted in the ways you would expect them to. The subtle touches of humor help lighten the mood every now and then and there really is a great deal of heart in this story. I really hope you have more soon because I am hooked.

 

[Aaron]

new chapter coming soon

 

[Ruahnna]

Chapter 8: Muppet on Wheels

Gonzo’s early attempts at modesty had prevented him from flashing his skivvies at the nurses station, saving their sensibilities from certain trauma. His concern for their modesty, however, was not equal to concern for their feelings. He had had no qualms about racing up and down the hallways like a lunatic in the mechanized wheelchair he had once been loathe to acknowledge. In fairness, these feats of derring-do has less to do with attempts to incite than with simple trial and error, but trial and error is a pretty effective—if Darwinian—teacher. By the time Gonzo came home, he was using the chair at least something like the makers intended—if the makers had been Acme Incorporated.
The welcoming party was a little overwhelming. Gonzo felt small, dwarfed not just in height but by the sheer weight of anxious concern he could read on every familiar face as he rumbled up to the new ramp.
Well—every adult face. Robin came forward with eagerness, but not anxiety, and gazed at the shiny contraption with awe.
"Gosh, Mr. Gonzo," said Robin. "How do you make that thing go?"
Anyone but Robin would have gotten a wiseacre replay, but even Gonzo's gut-churning fretfulness and churlishness could not make him mean to that bright-eyed little frog.
"Funny you should ask,” he said, falling back into the comfort of lecture mode. “Every chair is designed based on what the individual user can do. So to power the chair, you use whatever works."
"Good thing they aren't powered by brain waves," muttered Rizzo, deliberately loud enough for Gonzo to hear. Robin laughed, then covered his mouth and looked at Kermit uncertainly to see if he’d done something wrong.
But Gonzo hadn’t seemed to care. "Ha ha," said the furry blue whatever, then ignored Rizzo in an obvious fashion. In truth, Rizzo's glib snideness had given the welcome home a welcome sign of familiarity. Everyone else had been entirely too nice. Gonzo had never made the door before without encountering as least three insults and a "Watch it, Weirdo," and he kept wanted to look behind him to see if someone important were close behind him.
“So what do you use, Mr. Gonzo?” asked Robin.
Gonzo opened his mouth to reply and realized that he had the full attention of everyone. “Wow,” he said dryly. “This is a performance artist’s dream—a whole room full of people waiting to hear about my bodily functions.”
There was a nervous scuffling of feet and more than one averted glance. Gonzo felt powerful--and ashamed--but once again Rizzo came to the rescue.
"Wouldn't be the first time," said Rizzo. "Just try to stick with the A material, would you?"
"What? You mean stunts?" Gonzo said without thinking.
The crowd of welcomers fell immediately silent, horrified, but the silence did not last. "No stunts yet," Kermit said firmly, and smiled sheepishly. "We're still in the grace period with our new insurer!"
Fozzie might as well have written that joke, given the response, but it serve its purpose. The ice was broken—again--and everyone seemed to exhale. Gonzo felt a flash of guiltly gratefulness. Good ol' Kermit. He always new how to keep them all grounded.
Gonzo tried to follow suit. “Um, I can use my neck, and I can move my shoulders a little, Robin, so that’s how I tell the chair what to do. Come on up—want to ride in?”
“Oh!” Robin’s eyes were wide—well, wider than ususal. He looked uncertain. “Um, is it—will I hurt you?”
“No,” Gonzo said dryly. “I won’t feel a thing. Hop on.”
Robin did and, with a lurch, the chair moved forward. Rizzo hovered behind, watchful but not needed. The crowd turned and followed the blue and green passengers into the boarding house, effectively shutting Rizzo out of the welcoming fold. The little rat sighed, then trailed after everyone else.

Gonzo had looked upon the trip home with roughly equal parts anticipation and dread for what had seemed like forever. Being shown around somewhere where he had already lived for a long time was a strange and discombobulating experience, but the tour had to be taken. They were all eager--eager and anxious--to show him the things that they had done to the house. Some, like the elevator--which whined and moaned but Kermit insisted had elicited the inspector’s grudging approval—were obvious, but a lot of the changes were more subtle. Gonzo had worried for a long time in the hospital about the narrow doorways and the difficulty of crossing so many bumpy thresholds. After looking suspiciously for lack of forethought, he found instead so much care taken in the execution of the accessibility plans that he was simultaneously moved and indignant. Scooter and Floyd had taken particular pride in showing him the wheel-in shower.
“Just perfect for those group parties,” Floyd had quipped, but was immediately outdone when they encountered a group of penguins all preparing to use the shower as soon as it was vacated. Everything wasn’t perfect, and Gonzo felt himself noting with almost malicious pleasure the things which had yet to be done, but it was mostly to hide the treacly sense of sentimentality that kept trying to creep over him.
Piggy’s welcome had been anything but treacly. She had assessed him and the chair coolly for a moment. “It’s a shame they didn’t have the upholstery in your color,” she said in what she obviously intended as a sympathetic manner. “But Moi got you just the thing to keep your ride looking good.” She thrust out the package imperiously, and Gonzo wondered what she expected him to do—reach for it? Robin’s presence made the point moot, however, and he took the proffered package readily.
“Want me to open it?” Robin asked. Robin loved opening gifts.
“Sure thing,” Gonzo muttered, certain the irony would be lost on the small amphibian. Robin peeled away the wrapper to reveal some sort of duffle with the letters DIVA emblazoned on the side. Gonzo looked at it, then at her, not sure what to say.
Gonzo’s mute bafflement made Piggy sigh. “Oh for goodness sake,” she said. “Don’t you know what it is? They sell them all the time on DSN.”
“What’s DSN?” Floyd muttered to Scooter. “The Disney Channel?”
“Diva Shopping Network,” Scooter muttered out of the corner of his mouth, and Floyd nodded.
“So what it is, Miss Piggy?” asked Robin, whose agile little fingers had already unzipped the end so he could peer inside.
“It’s a Damage Incident Vehicle Accessory, silly,” she said. “People use it to change your flats and fix your air conditioner if you break down while you’re driving.”
“Oh.” It was hard to know what to say. “Um, thanks?” said Gonzo uncertainly. Deftly, Rizzo took the duffle and hooked it onto the back of the chair where packages could be stored. But the absurdity of the thing gave Gonzo just enough umph to make it through the rest of the tour.

The other muppets had gradually faded into the background. Rizzo had disappeared earlier to grab a snack, unnoticed and unmissed until now, when Kermit realized that it was just him--him and Gonzo--in the painfully tidy room that Gonzo had once occupied.
"So...," Kermit said nervously, clearing his throat. "Glad to have you back, Gonzo. This place just wasn't the same without you."
"It's not going to be the same with me," Gonzo said, surprised to hear the words actually leaving his mouth.
Kermit paused thoughtfully, absorbing the blow and the meaning of what Gonzo had said. "No," he said at last. "It won't be the same. Things change. Things always change, Gonzo. But some changes are good--"
"Not this one."
"--and some are inevitable," Kermit finished evenly, but the effort of maintaining such matter-of-factness was evident. He looked at Gonzo pleadingly, wanting to fix it and knowing there was no fixing this.
Gonzo looked away from the entreaty in those bulbous eyes, not able to summon any comfort for either of them. Kermit waited, but when it became obvious that there wasn't any more forthcoming from Gonzo he turned toward the door.
"We are glad you're home," he said at the door. "I’m glad you're home, Gonzo--glad you came back to us."
Gonzo felt the prick of tears in his eyes and clenched his jaw. He wanted to say, “Me, too,” and mean it, but that was beyond him now. The last thing he wanted to do was cry, and the urge to sob made him angry and full of rage. This explained what happened next.
"If there's anything you need...." Kermit half-turned at the door.
“I need my life back,” Gonzo said bitterly. Kermit slumped, but his eyes rested kindly on his friend’s defiant form.
“Can’t help you there, Gonzo,” Kermit said sadly.
“Nobody can,” the furry blue whatever muttered. Kermit waited again, but eventually moved again toward the door.
“Kermit—“
A quick intake of breath. “Yes, Gonzo?”
“Um, thanks. Ok. Thank everybody.”
“Sure thing.”
Gonzo waited until he heard Kermit’s light flippered tread disappear down the stairs, then he turned his chair and his face toward the window. What happened to his tears them was nobody’s business but his own.