It was weeks before I heard from him again. We got word that he lived, but that was it ... everybody knew he was likely to lose the leg, if he even survived. So it was kind of a minor miracle when I got an email out of the blue from Dylan later that spring.
Dylan didn’t know it, but his emails had been a lifeline for me. I guess nobody knew it. I’d isolated myself, intentionally, after losing friends to injuries and death, and then losing even more friends to pure savagery. By that time I was taking notes, and keeping pictures, and documenting. Just in case.
I was grateful he was able to leave before things got bad.
Before that, I’d never felt so helpless, but since then, I’d had it in spades. When I got called back into the Army, during the trial, and especially now, I hated it that I was helpless to do anything for Carrie.
I wanted to reach out, I wanted to fold her in my arms and protect her. I wanted to tell her it was going to be fine, even if it was a lie. But it was obvious I couldn’t do anything. No one responded when I spoke, and it was clear enough my body was just lying there on the table wired and tubed up. The nurses were preparing to shave my head. Brain surgery? Christ, I hoped not.
The accident happened so quickly, I still can’t get my mind around it. Why didn’t he stop? He looked to have been driving about ninety as he blew through the light. Was he on the phone having an argument? Drunk? Just not paying attention? Are his kids at home wondering where GR8 DAD went?
I walked toward Carrie, looked her in the eye. She looked ... lost ... as if her feet had been yanked out from underneath her. With my left hand, I reached out, touched her arm gently.
She jerked a little, her eyes searching around the room.
“Don’t torture yourself.”
I jerked at the voice, and spun around.
My sister-in-law, Sarah, stood next to the door. Oddly, she wasn’t wearing her normal black. Instead, she had on a red dress with white polka dots, with a chain belt. The belt was fastened with a glittery heart. Very unlike her. Sarah leaned toward black, leather and spikes under normal circumstances.
“Sarah? I didn’t hear the door.”
“Of course you didn’t. I walked right through it.”
Somehow I found this very distressing.
“I guess it would be silly to ask how you are?”
She shrugged. “They’re prepping me for surgery too. I was trying to comfort Jessica, though that would be pointless even if this wasn’t a dream. But she couldn’t hear me.”
“A dream?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What else could it be?”
She had a good point. But this didn’t feel like any dream I’d ever had. This had all the sharp edges of reality. “Yeah, I guess. Seems real, though. I just wish I could do something for Carrie.”
Sarah walked over and stood next to me, scrutinizing Carrie. “Me, too. She looks awful. I’ve never seen her like this.”
One of the doctors walked over to Carrie. “Mrs. Sherman ... we’re going to take him up to the OR now.”
Sarah said, “He should call her Doctor Sherman, not Mrs.”
I cocked an eyebrow at Sarah. On the one hand, I agreed. On the other, it didn’t really seem like a time to quibble over titles.
The social worker, whatever her name was, spoke in a calming voice, “Carrie, we’ll have to go out to the waiting room. We need to take care of some paperwork, and then I’ll take you and Jessica up to the surgery waiting area. Okay?”
Carrie looked like she was in her own world, as if she couldn’t hear them. As if she were more of a ghost than I was. After a noticeable delay, she said, “Okay.”
I wanted to take her my arms and comfort her. Anything.
A moment later, I watched as they wheeled my body out of the trauma unit. I’d catch up with it later. For now I was staying with Carrie.
Nothing to play with (Carrie)
Jessica was starting to fall apart.
I could see it in her eyes. She sat next to me as I finished the insurance paperwork, her hands shifting and twisting in her lap, her eyes looking glazed. The triage nurse spoke with the woman at the desk who was taking our paperwork, then looked up at us.
“We need to do a full exam of both of you as well.”
I froze and glanced over at Jessica.
“Can it wait? Our sister and my husband, they’re going into surgery.”
The nurse sighed. “You can wait, though I don’t recommend it. But your sister here isn’t eighteen, and unless you get her parents to insist otherwise, she needs to be examined now. I understand your worry. But neither of them will be out of surgery for ... probably many hours. You need to take care of yourselves as well.”
I took a breath then nodded. “All right.”
“Come this way then.”
I stood, taking Jessica’s arm and steering her toward the exam room. She complied, but with little energy. I think the accident was starting to sink in.
Oddly, it reminded me of an incident that happened a lifetime ago. Dad had finished off his year as Ambassador to Russia, and the whole family moved to the townhouse in San Francisco. Except for Julia, who was in college in Boston. We’d spent very little time in the San Francisco house over the years, just the occasional holiday, and the house needed a lot of work. For weeks, contractors were around the place, repairing plumbing and walls and who knows what else. Besides the disruption to our lives, having the workers in and out of the house was stressing our mother out to no end. And the one place we didn’t want to be when my mother was stressed was anywhere near her.
I was
