Read Online Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova - Free Book Online Page A

my voice say your name. You got ants in your pants?”
    â€œNo, sir,” says Joe.
    â€œWe’re all going to wait right here until everyone is perfectly still.”
    Joe squeezes every muscle he can find, trying to transform his entire body into an inanimate object, imagining himself as a wooden plank. He holds his breath. Sweat drips off the tip of Joe’s nose like a leaking faucet. He resists the urge to mop his face with his gloved hand. That tag is still pissing him off. He promises himself the satisfaction of annihilating it later. A phlegmy tickle rakes the back of his throat, begging him to cough. He swallows several times until his mouth goes dry, but it won’t go down. He will not cough. Joe knows discipline.
    But there’s a mightier urge to move building deep inside him, emanating from an elusive, nonspecific origin, denying him a target to aim at. He’s not a plank. He’s a rubber balloon, blown to thin capacity and not tied off, and someone else, someone with a sick sense of humor, is pinching the neck, threatening to let go.
    His shoulders shrug again. What the fuck . Sergeant Ferolito is standing before the formation, his feet wide and arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes staring Joe down. It feels as if the eyes of every officer are on Joe, even though Joe knows the only officers actually looking at him are Sergeant Ferolito and the guy directly behind Joe.
    He can’t imagine what’s causing these bizarre muscle spasms. He hasn’t been lifting weights or furniture or exerting himself in any way out of the ordinary. He mostly stands on his feet, sits in his cruiser, sits in the living room chair, or sleeps.
    Maybe he didn’t do anything to cause it. Joe sometimes gets spasms in his toes, especially the two next to his big toe. Without warning or instigation, they’ll pinch together in an unnatural, rigid position, out of line from the rest of his foot, and stay there in a gnarled pose, impervious to any attempt at relaxing them, for several agonizing minutes. But these shrugsfeel more like hiccups than toe cramps. Sudden, involuntary, exaggerated bursts of movement. Shoulder hiccups. He’s never heard of such a thing. And what’s up with his antsy feet?
    Maybe he’s getting too old for this shit. He’s one of the oldest officers here. He’s forty-three and feels every year of it lately. Never a slender man to begin with, Joe’s probably carrying an extra twenty pounds around his middle, his protruding gut the likely cause of his chronically aching back. He makes unattractive old-man noises, grunting and groaning when he gets out of bed in the morning and whenever he goes to stand after sitting for too long. He’d like to think he could still do twenty consecutive pull-ups and beat JJ in an arm wrestle, but he wouldn’t put money on it.
    Most of the guys here are in their twenties or thirties. This job is for the young. But Tommy isn’t having a problem. Jonesie and Quaranto are older. Who is he kidding? This can’t be about age or strength. He’s being ordered to keep the fuck still, not to do twenty pull-ups. Then what is it?
    He shrugs.
    â€œJesus Christ, OB,” someone mutters.
    The acoustics in this cavernous hangar are awful, distorting pitch and amplitude, causing every sound to echo, but he’s pretty sure that was Tommy. This has to stop. Joe tries to take a deep breath through his mouth, but his chest is a concrete wall, his lungs a couple of bricks. He’s breathing like a panicked gerbil. Sweat is pouring off his nose. His head is baking beneath his helmet. That fuckin’ tag.
    He shrugs.
    Joe declares war on himself. He clenches his hands so hard that he can actually feel the length of his veins straining in his forearms. He clamps his jaw, flexes his ass and his quads, tightens his stomach, and envisions a fifty-pound sandbag sitting atop each shoulder. His heart races, his head is