Comes the Blind Fury

“I–I don’t know,” Michelle stammered. “I feel sort of—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Numb, I guess. How did I get here?”

“Your father brought you,” June told her. “Jeff Benson came up and got him, then—”

Cal appeared in the doorway, and as Michelle’s eyes met her father’s, she knew something had changed. It was the way he looked at her, as if she had done something — something bad. But all she had done was have an accident. Could he be mad at her about that? “Daddy?” As she whispered the word, it seemed to echo in the room, and she saw her father step back slightly. But then he came toward her, took her wrist in his hand, counted her pulse, and tried to smile.

“How bad does it hurt?” he asked softly.

“If I lie still, it’s only sort of an ache,” Michelle replied. She wanted to reach up to him, put her arms around him, and be held by him. But she knew she couldn’t.

“Try not to move,” he instructed her. “Just lie perfectly still, and I’ll give you something for the pain.”

“What happened?” Michelle asked again. “How far did I fall?”

“Everything’s going to be fine, honey,” Cal told her, avoiding her questions.

Very gently, he eased the covers back and began examining Michelle carefully, his fingers moving slowly over her body, pausing every few inches, prodding, pressing. As he moved close to her left hip, Michelle suddenly cried out in pain. Instantly, Cal withdrew his hands.

“Get my bag, will you, darling?” He kept his eyes on Michelle as he spoke, and tried not let his voice betray the fears that were building inside him. June slipped from the room, and as he waited for her to return, Cal talked quietly to Michelle, trying to calm her fears, and his own as well.

“You gave us quite a scare. Do you remember what happened? Any of it?”

“I was coming home,” Michelle began. “I was coming up the trail, sort of running, I guess, and — and I must have slipped.”

His blue eyes clouded with worry, Cal watched Michelle intently. “But why were you coming home? Was the picnic over?”

“N-no …” Michelle faltered. “I–I just didn’t want to stay any longer. Some of the kids were teasing me.”

“Teasing you? Teasing you about what?”

About you, she wanted to cry out. About you and Mom not loving me anymore. But instead of speaking her thoughts, Michelle only shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t remember,” she whispered. “I don’t remember at all.” She closed her eyes and tried to force the sound of Susan Peterson’s mocking voice out of her mind. But it stayed there, crashing around in her brain, nearly as painful as the dull ache that permeated her body.

She opened her eyes as June came back into the room, and watched as her father took a vial out of his bag, filled a hypodermic needle from it, then swabbed her arm with alcohol.

“This won’t hurt,” he promised. He forced a grin. “At least, not next to what you’ve already been through.” He administered the injection, then straightened up. “Now, I want you to go to sleep. The shot will make the pain go away, but I want you to lie still, and try to sleep.”

“But I’ve already been sleeping,” Michelle protested.

“You’ve been unconscious,” Cal corrected her, a smile softening the worry lines that seemed etched into his face. “One hour unconscious doesn’t count as a nap. So take a nap.” Winking at her, he turned and started out of the room.

“Daddy?” Michelle’s voice, sharp in the sudden quiet of the room, stopped him. He turned back to her, his face questioning. Michelle gazed at him, pain clouding her eyes. “Daddy,” she said, her voice now little more than a whisper, “Do you love me very much?”

Cal stood silent for a moment, then went back to his daughter. He leaned over her, and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Of course I do, sweetheart. Why wouldn’t I?”

Michelle smiled at him gratefully. “No reason,” she said. “I just wondered.”

As Cal left the room, June came over and very carefully sat down on the edge of the bed. She took Michelle’s hand in her own. “We both love you very much,” she said. “Did something make you think we didn’t?”

Michelle shook her head, but her eyes, moist with tears now, remained fixed on June’s face, as though asking for something. June bent forward and kissed Michelle, her lips lingering on her daughter’s cheek.

“I’ll be all right, Mommy,” Michelle said suddenly. “Really, I will!”

“Of course you will, darling.” June stood up and tucked the covers over Michelle. “Is there anything I can get you?”

Michelle shook her head, then, a thought occurring to her, changed her mind. “My doll,” she said. “Could you get Mandy for me? She’s on the window seat.”

June picked up the doll, brought it to the bed, and placed it on the pillow next to Michelle. Though her face twisted in pain at the effort, Michelle turned Mandy around, tucked her under the covers, then lay back, the porcelain figure nestled like a baby against her shoulder. She closed her eyes.

June stood watching Michelle for a moment, then, thinking that her daughter had already fallen asleep, she tiptoed out of the room, easing the door dosed behind her.

Cal sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window, his unseeing eyes fixed on the horizon.

It was all going to happen again.

Only this time, the victim of his incompetence was not going to be a stranger, someone he barely knew. This time it was going to be his own daughter.

And this time, there were going to be no easy excuses, no salving of his conscience by telling himself that anybody could have made such a mistake.

Without realizing quite what he was doing, Cal got up and poured himself a tumbler of whiskey.

June came into the kitchen just as he had taken his first swallow of the liquor. For a moment she wasn’t sure he was aware of her presence. Then he spoke.

“It’s my fault.”

June knew instantly that he was thinking of Alan Hanley, and connecting his death to Michelle’s accident.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “What happened to Michelle was an accident, and though I know you don’t believe it, Alan Hanley’s death was an accident, too. You didn’t kill him, Cal, and you didn’t push Michelle off the bluff.”

It was as if he didn’t hear her. “I shouldn’t have brought her up.” His voice was dull, lifeless. “I should have left her on the beach until I could get a stretcher.”

She stared at him. “What are you talking about? Cal, what are you saying? She’s not that badly hurt!” She waited for an answer. When none was forthcoming, she began to feel the fear that had subsided as Michelle came out of her unconsciousness surge through her once more, clutching at her stomach, choking her. “Is she?” she demanded, her voice rising sharply.

“I don’t know.” Cal’s empty eyes met hers, then shifted to the bottle. He refilled the tumbler, then stared at it, as if realizing for the first time what he was drinking. “She shouldn’t be hurting as much as she is. She should be bruised, and she should be aching, but she shouldn’t have those sharp pains when she moves.”

“Is something broken?”

“Not as far as I can tell.”

“Then what’s causing the pain?”

Cal’s hand crashed down on the table. “I don’t know, damn it! I just don’t know!”

June reeled at his outburst, then, seeing that he was on the edge of some Kind of breakdown, forced herself to stay calm.

“What do you think?” she asked when she felt she could trust her voice.

His eyes took on a wildness that June had never seen before, and his hand began to quiver. “I don’t know. I don’t even want to guess. But there could be all kinds of damage, and it’ll all be my fault.”

“You can’t know that,” June objected. “You don’t even know that anything serious is wrong.”

It was as if he didn’t hear her. “I shouldn’t have moved her. I should have waited.”

He was about to pour some more whiskey into his glass when there was a rapping at the back door, and Sally Carstairs stuck her head in.

“May I come in?”