Freak the Mighty

At first the hospital won’t let Max visit Freak, but he walks all the way there anyway, then sits outside in back, flying Freak’s ornithopter until he gets chased away by a guy mowing the lawn. He walks around to the front, where Gwen finds him and says Freak wants to see him.

Freak isn’t in the research wing; he’s in Intensive Care, hooked up to tubes and telemetry gear. His physician, Dr. Spivak, doesn’t want him to have visitors, but Freak pressured her and she relented. Freak now has a tracheotomy, a hole punched through the front of his throat to let more air into his lungs. Already Freak has figured out how to use it to play the theme from Star Trek. Privately, he tells Max that tonight is when he’ll receive his new robot body.

Freak points to a book. Max opens it: It’s all blank pages. Freak tells him to write down their adventures in the book. Freak won’t be able to do it because he’ll be busy learning how to control his new body. Max complains that he’s no good as a writer, but Freak insists he can do it: “Just tell the story of Freak the Mighty, no big deal” (151).

Freak has a coughing spell and the staff sends Max out. He waits outside the IC unit with Gwen until Gram arrives and takes him home. That night at dinner, Grim comments about how much pain Gwen is in, and Max replies that it’s Freak who’s having the operation. They “just look at each other like they can’t believe I’m so dumb” (152). 

At dawn the next morning, Max sneaks out of the house and jogs the several miles to the hospital. He shows up at the ICU just as nurses are coming out; some are crying; one tells a staffer to contact Dr. Spivak.

Panicked, Max rushes past everyone, kicking at anyone in his way, and runs toward the medical research wing, where he believes Freak must be. Frantic, he breaks the glass on the doors and runs inside. A second set of doors is metal, and he kicks at them until hospital police grab him. After some struggle, they pull him to the floor and cuff him.

Dr. Spivak arrives and takes responsibility for Max. His hand is cut, so she takes him aside and bandages it. Max accuses her of lying to Freak about getting a new body. Dr. Spivak doesn’t understand, so Max explains about Freak’s periodic visits to the research wing. Dr. Spivak says, “Well, that explains it” (156), and she tells Max that Kevin knew his fate all along, that there was no robot body for him, and that he made up the story to give himself hope.

The hospital doesn’t press charges against Max. Grim takes him home; on the way, he offers to talk about it, but Max says to just leave him alone. Grim says, “You got it” (157). 

For many days, Max hides in his basement. He misses Freak’s funeral and Gwen moving out from a home she no longer could bear.

Glumly, Max returns to school in the fall, but he hates it, especially all the sympathy, “as if it was me who died” (159). Blade one day approaches him and offers his sympathies, but Max yells at him and they become enemies again, “which is just the way I like it” (159).

On the street, Max bumps into Loretta, who wears a neck brace and still smells of liquor. She informs Max that Gwen moved to California, where she met and fell in love with a guy named Rick, and that this is “good news.”

Freak goes home, pulls out the blank book, and begins writing about the adventures of Freak the Mighty. Months later, he finishes the book. “And now that I’ve written a book who knows, I might even read a few. No big deal” (160).