Last night I was in the bathroom when my phone vibrated, but I picked up the call - no one I know calls after midnight.

I could only catch garbled questions directed toward someone else.”Hello? …hello?” Finally - “Hi, this is Officer so-and-so, and I’mhere with your friend. He’s conscious, but we’re taking him to thehospital.”

The four minutes it took for the car to pick us up, and the 20 it took to get there were interminable.

We rushed through the double doors to a crowd of police.

Trauma room one.

We hadn’t been there when they cut his jeans up the seam, when theysliced his binder off so he could breathe. When they braced his neckand inserted the IV.

His clothes lay in a hurried pile on the floor, and his body lay in athin white sheet and snowflake-covered hospital gown. I dropped myjacket when I saw him, rushing to his side.

His swollen face was caked in blood as the police and nurses asked himquestion after question after question after question. He kept his eyesclosed, and hardly spoke.

We hadn’t been there when they held him down and beat him, and took hiswallet - the only possession he still had left from Miami, and with ithis IDs and access to the bank account where he had been saving up fortop surgery. Three times in the last month, other people in the shelterhad taken his watch, his school books, his ipod.

His cheek and temple were cris-crossed with the pattern from the metalgrate they had smashed his head against over and over again.

When the nurses left us alone, he asked quietly, raising a tentativehand up to his lip, “How’s my face? I still got all my teeth?”

“Yeah, man, you still got your boyish good looks.”

“I look rugged now, huh?”

“Yeah, fuckin tough.”

Seven hours of shes and hers and thatta girls later, we walked out into the early morning.

And now that we’re home, the real work begins. We’ve been up all night,but he can’t sleep. Do we send him back to the shelter tonight so hewon’t lose his place, or do we keep him here and hold him?

Was it his small frame or the curve of his hips that made him a target?

How many nights do we take the bus back with him and walk him to hisdoor? How long until a sudden sneeze or a slamming door will no longerjar him back to being grabbed from behind? How long do we let him cry?Or do we try make him laugh?

How long can I cry for the pain he’s in and the fact that he’s alive both at the same time?

How long, Oh Lord?

How long?

I’ve come to understand that Forever doesn’t just happen, it has to be earned. And not only that, I don’t have an unlimited supply of Forever because nurturing and tending serious relationships takes time and energy and I have a limited supply of both. That realization has been very humbling. I have a huge capacity to love multiple people, but a very finite ability to tend multiple committed relationships.

So, yes, I’ve come to a new understanding with Forever. I believe it is possible to make lifelong commitments but saying the words, making the promise, is not nearly enough. It takes hard work, patience, communication and dedication, and more than a little optimism and hope. But I don’t mind taking those steps every day, because I believe the journey is worth the effort.

It was about that time that I jumped up, and yelled ‘MOUSE’ in a higher voice that I would have previously thought I was capable of.

So awesome. We had a mouse. Perhaps more than one. Perhaps many meeces. What was a guy to do?

I did what anyone would do in that situation. I ran downstairs to my workshop, grabbed one of my airsoft guns, loaded it as quickly as possible. Then I began the hunt.

I hope you’ll take a minute to realize the absurdity of what I did, as you only need to think of me in my underwear (bow chikka wow wow), holding an airsoft handgun and running around the house screaming “I’m coming for you, Meeces!!!”.