like arteries,” she said. “You call the ambulance. Let me take care of this.” Before Brenda could protest, Mabel had pushed her out of the bathroom and shut the door. Alone with Josh, she unwrapped the towel from his right wrist, twisted it into a thick rope, then placed a bar of soap on the inner side of his right forearm. Looping the towel rope around the arm to cover the bar, she twisted it tight. As the makeshift tourniquet pressed down on the artery, the blood suddenly stopped flowing.
“Hold that,” she commanded Josh, her tone leaving no room for argument. As he grasped the towel with his still-bleeding left hand, she grabbed the belt from a robe that was hanging inside the bathroom door and made a second tourniquet to stem the flow of blood from the boy’s left wrist. “There,” she said as she finished. “Now you just hold still a minute while I take a look at this.”
Turning on the water, she rinsed the blood away from the wounds on Josh’s right wrist, and felt a wave of relief. At least he’d cut across, and the bones of his forearm had prevented him from cutting too deeply. Just a nick, really. “Where’s the adhesive tape?” she demanded, and Josh mutely nodded toward the medicine cabinet.
As she began taping up the wound on his right wrist, the door opened and Brenda, her face almost as pale as Josh’s, wriggled into the cramped space. “They’ll be here in five minutes. Is — Is it bad?”
Mabel Hardwick kept working as she talked. “Not so bad as it could be. Looks a lot worse than it is. When they get here, you go with him in the ambulance, and I’ll stay with the baby and start cleaning up.” Looking up for the first time, she saw the shock and panic that seemed about to overcome Brenda. “Don’t you even think of falling apart, Brenda MacCallum. Lots worse than this has happened to me, and nobody ever saw me getting ready to faint. Now you go throw some water on your face, and get your purse!”
The sharp words cut through the fear that had gripped Brenda. They set her in motion, automatically doing precisely as Mabel Hardwick had commanded. By the time the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, Brenda was ready, her wits gathered around her once more. The medics insisted that Josh lie on a gurney, despite his objections. As Brenda followed them down the stairs to the waiting ambulance, she called back to Mabel.
“Call the cafe, will you, Mabel? Tell Max I won’t be back today.” Not waiting for a reply, she ducked into the ambulance and crouched by the stretcher as one of the medics slammed the door. As the ambulance screeched out of the parking lot, its siren wailing, she gazed down into Josh’s pale face.
“What happened, honey? What on earth were you doing?”
Josh looked back at her for a moment, then his eyes shifted away. “I just wanted to get out of the way, that’s all,” he said, his voice barely audible.
For the first time since she’d seen Josh standing in his room, his wrists spurting blood, she realized that his cuts had not been some kind of terrible accident.
Her son, her wonderful, brilliant, ten-year-old son, had tried to kill himself.
The half hour Brenda spent in the small waiting area at the front of the emergency room of the county clinic seemed like an eternity. She’d called the cafe herself, and been relieved when Annette had answered the phone rather than Max. Annette had assured her that Mabel Hardwick had already called, and told her she wasn’t to worry about anything. Max had even said she shouldn’t come in tomorrow if she didn’t want to. He was planning to send a pie down to Josh. He was working on it right now, and putting in twice as many pecans as usual.” ’Course he had to say something about having to ‘bribe the little shit,’ just so he can keep some decent help around the place, but that’s just Max,” Annette finished. “Now don’t you worry about a thing. Soon’s I get off, I’m coming over to your place and fix dinner. And no arguments, okay?” Then, even precluding Brenda’s thank-you, she hung up.
Briefly, Brenda considered trying to contact Buck MacCallum, but quickly gave up the idea. She’d long ago decided that trying to collect child support from him was a fruitless endeavor. In truth, for the last couple of years she hadn’t even been sure where he was living. Feeling desperate, she found herself dialing her parents, waiting apprehensively at the empty sound of ringing at the other end. They had moved away from Eden five years ago, when her father had decided it was time to go into business for himself and sold his house, over her mother’s objections, to buy a bait shop on the Gulf coast in Texas. Finally, her mother answered. She listened to Brenda’s fragmented story in silence, then said that she’d always known there was something wrong with Josh; this wasn’t anything Brenda shouldn’t have been expecting.
“Thanks, Mom,” Brenda said coldly. “Sorry I bothered you.” Hanging up the phone, she shook her head. She shouldn’t have been surprised, really. One of the reasons she’d married Buck in the first place was simply to get away from her parents. It was, she reflected, as if the heat of the desert had baked the humanity right out of them.
And then, as she paced nervously around the waiting room, she began turning her own thoughts over in her mind. Was that why Josh had done it? Did he think she didn’t care? She’d been so careful always to make sure Josh knew how much she loved him, how proud she was of him.
But what else could it have been?
Children his age didn’t try to kill themselves, did they?
Of course not! They didn’t even think about such things.
But Josh had.
She was startled from her thoughts by a woman’s voice. A nurse was telling her she could see her son now.
He was sitting up in bed, his face still deathly white, and he looked even younger than his ten years. A doctor stood by the bed. As Brenda came into the room, he gave her an encouraging smile.
“This little guy may have made a terrible mess, but if he was really trying to hurt himself, he didn’t do a very good job of it. Three stitches in each wrist, and the bandages are mostly for show. I could easily have made do with Band-Aids.” He grinned down at Josh and tousled his hair. “Next time you want to come to the hospital, just walk in the door, okay?”
He started toward the door, pausing only to ask Brenda to drop by his office after she’d visited with Josh. Then he was gone, and Brenda was alone with her son. Suddenly she realized she didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to him. She simply stood still, heart pounding, looking at him. At last his eyes met hers.
“A-Are you really mad at me, Mom?” he asked, his frightened whisper bringing tears to her eyes. Immediately she knew what to do. She went to him, put her arms around him and held him close.
“Mad at you? How could I be mad at you? You’re the best son anyone could ever have. I’m just sorry I was so hard on you today. It’s just … Oh, honey, I guess it’s just that sometimes I’m not a very good mother.”
Josh sniffled, and his arms went around her neck, holding on as if he was afraid to let her go. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” he said. “I just — I just thought maybe if I wasn’t around anymore, it would be easier for you. I don’t have any friends, and I don’t do good enough in school, and it seems like all I ever do is let people down.”
His words tore at Brenda’s heart. Her eyes flooded with tears, and she held him even closer. “No, darling,” she murmured. “It’s not like that at all. I love you, and I’m proud of you, and I don’t think I could stand it if anything ever happened to you. So we’ll just have to make things right for you, okay?”
For a long time mother and son clung together. At last Brenda eased Josh back onto his pillows. “Ill be back,” she promised. “I just have to go talk to the doctor for a minute, but then I’ll be right back. All right?”
Josh nodded and managed a weak smile, then closed his eyes. Brenda lingered for a moment, watching him, feasting her eyes on his now peaceful face. But as she slipped out of the room, all her worries and fears closed in on her again.
How would she make good on her promise?
How could she make things right for Josh, when she could barely even feed and clothe him?
But there had to be a way. There had to be.
4
“I hope you didn’t misunderstand me a few minutes ago,” Richard Hasborough said. Josh MacCallum’s medical records were spread out on the doctor’s desk. “Please sit down, Mrs. MacCallum.” With a nod, he indicated a chair on the other side of his desk, then turned to scan the folder before him. When he looked up, the
