Those We Love Most (2 page)

The sky was cobalt and cloudless as Maura headed out the door for the short walk to the elementary school. She was keenly aware of the scent of newly mown lawns and mulched flower beds, the summery lift of the breeze off Lake Michigan, as if all of her senses were heightened. A suburban serenity pervaded the neatly manicured yards of her neighborhood, and yet inside she felt unbound and provocative, the polar opposite of her surroundings.

Maura handed Sarah a lime green plastic sippy cup of juice, lifting her into the stroller as she called to James and Ryan to put on their backpacks. She bent to click the leash onto Rascal’s collar and stood up as James shot one leg over his bike and coasted out the garage and down the driveway, straight-legged on the pedals, helmet unbuckled and cocked to one side. Maura opened her mouth to admonish him and then closed it with a half smile. Today was not a day for nagging.

Inside she felt alive, glorious, and this bright mood and a sense of giddiness lent her a visual hyperawareness. She noted the cracks in the sidewalk where the tree root had split the cement, the bright red of a child’s ball left on the grass, the way the morning sun cut sideways through the fence slats. Everything was in bas-relief. She reminded Ryan about the snack in his backpack pocket and then called ahead to James to slow down as his legs pumped wildly, propelling the bike up the sidewalk toward the elementary school. There was no response from James, and in her complete absorption, her mind replaying the events of the previous day, she let him ride on; he was too far ahead now.

Maura paused with the stroller as Rascal lifted his leg to pee against one of the giant oaks lining the shaded street. They were only three blocks away from the school now, and down the road she could see the traffic thicken around the brick building, a column of kids and multicolored backpacks bulging by the crossing guard in his neon orange vest. One week of school left. The high school was already out, and the elementary classes were down to half days, almost a waste of time in her mind. She was ready for a break in the routine, eager to loosen the reins on schedules and deadlines and the morning craziness of making breakfast and packing lunches while dressing Sarah for the walk. Some mornings her husband, Pete, was a help, other times it was easier to do it herself, even as she careened around the kitchen on overdrive.

Maura felt the vibration of the text in the pocket of her jeans and involuntarily smiled as she fished out her phone to check the screen. She stopped and stood for a moment, focusing on the display, her pulse quickening as she brought the letters into focus, and she smiled, a warmth spreading through her. Maura paused, gathering her thoughts for a clever response and waved absentmindedly at James, who was calling her name from up ahead. She began to type.

She heard the brakes before she saw the car: a sickening squeal, like a high-pitched whine, as tires slid on the pavement up ahead and then the sound of metal colliding. In an instant a stab of panic and fear exploded in her chest as she began running, instinctively, pushing the stroller aside, dropping the dog’s leash and abandoning Ryan wordlessly.

Maura was sprinting now, screaming words that she would not remember later, primal and senseless. Every part of her was focused on getting to her eldest son. She hurtled forward on the sidewalk with a surge of adrenaline, and yet it all still felt like slow motion, as if her arms and legs were weighted. In the seconds before she got to James, she registered an eerie quiet, and then the scene was before her at once in a slash of vivid color and sounds.

In the tangle of bumper and bike, the bent front wheel and broken spokes protruded from the undercarriage of the car. And then she saw James, off to the left of the vehicle. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before she dove toward him on the road. She dropped to one knee next to his immobile body, afraid to touch, unsure of what to touch, as blood pooled onto the asphalt, soaking her jeans and then her hands. Why was there blood trickling out of his ear?

She was dimly aware of other figures around her now: a boy, older than James, moaning and muttering, perhaps the driver of the car, but Maura couldn’t think about that now. Someone had a cell phone out, a woman urged her not to move her son, to wait for the ambulance. There was an adult restraining Ryan and Sarah, both of them crying and calling for her, and she looked up blindly to reassure them and yelled something about it being OK. Rascal was barking in the arms of someone she didn’t recognize.

Don’t think about them now
, she told herself. Don’t let the outside in. Everything on the periphery shrunk down to background noise. She had to focus on James. She was talking to him, cooing, reassuring him with her voice even though there was no reaction. He was so still, so quiet. And there was all that blood, thick and dark, darker than she would have expected, and her mind inexplicably conjured up the iron scent of beets or root vegetables. She had never seen so much blood.

And now there it was, finally, faint at first but growing in volume, the siren’s wail.
That was good, fast
, Maura thought numbly. And then everything else, the warm feeling of the day, the sequence and the clarity of its events, coalesced into one horrible, terrifying blur.

When Roger first got to the hospital, directly from O’Hare airport, he took a moment in the lobby to compose himself before riding the elevator up to the ICU floor. Almost ten years earlier he had walked through those same sliding glass entry doors with a bouquet and a silver Mylar
IT’S A BOY
balloon to see his daughter Maura and meet his first grandchild.

Two years ago he had actually been the one to drive James here to have his arm x-rayed after he fell off the monkey bars. Maura had met them in the ER once she’d settled newborn Sarah with Margaret. She had been scared but purposeful. He remembered how impressed he’d been at his daughter’s competency and focus then. She’d calmed her son, joked about how many people would sign his cast and what color would look best with his baseball uniform.

Maura had asked the doctors pointed questions, getting them to explain their medical jargon and then repeating what they said to James in a mother’s words. But that had merely been a broken arm.

Now he was here under such unimaginable circumstances, and Roger blinked a moment in the fluorescent lights, taking in the institutional lobby with its forest green paint and maroon upholstery. A man in a corner chair was sedately holding a wad of gauze around his hand, and Roger could see rusty bloodstains on the front of his shirt. Two African American women were reading magazines, one older, with her purse clasped firmly on her lap. Behind the nurses’ station, farther down the hall, people in brightly patterned hospital tunics with stethoscope necklaces moved purposefully around the desk, holding charts and paperwork.

“Touch and go” were the words Margaret had used to describe James’s condition on the phone, her voice clipped and agonized. There was internal bleeding and a severe head injury. They had operated immediately, while Roger was still scrambling to get to the Tampa airport, Julia going well above the speed limit, dodging in and out of lanes to make the next flight.

James was sedated now; a “medically induced coma” they called it, and the surgeons had done all that they could for the moment. Brain injuries were so individual, they explained, the outcomes too unpredictable to offer any sort of accurate prognosis. So much depended on exactly where the person was injured and how severely. Age and level of intelligence could be factors in recovery too, they said. There were so many unknowns, Margaret had told him. But overall it was not good.

What happened next was up to James and whatever willpower was left in that little, broken body. The car, with the son of one of Maura’s neighbors driving, had apparently struck him at a relatively slow speed. But it was the way that James had been hit, the angle of the impact, that had ruptured and bruised organs and the fact that he’d flown through the air and landed on his head. Roger hadn’t thought until this moment about whether or not he’d been wearing his bike helmet, but the question flitted through his mind as he stood at the ground floor elevator bank. It wouldn’t change the outcome now, he thought glumly. He exhaled, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the button for the fourth floor.

Roger set down his bag and briefcase and removed his blazer, feeling like a traveling salesman as he watched the floors click by in red digits. God, how the hell did anyone mentally gird themselves for something like this? You imagined it, experienced it occasionally with people your own age, but was anyone ever prepared to visit a critically injured grandson’s hospital room?

He stepped out of the elevator and saw Margaret almost immediately, positioned by the ICU curtain down the hall. He met her eyes and saw something veiled and pleading in them, but then there was relief, a subtle unburdening played across her features relaxing her brows. He could tell instantly how upset she was from the tight coil of her body, but he knew that Margaret would refrain from showing Maura her raw fear. She would need to remain ramrod strong for her daughter, for all of them. That was her calling card. Signature Margaret. The artificial lighting in the ICU corridor gave a jaundiced hue to Roger’s partially tanned forearms. He was aware of the smells of the hallway, antiseptic and ammonia mingled with what he imagined was the sweaty smell of human fear.

“Hi.” Roger set his bag gratefully at his feet in the hallway and moved toward Margaret, arms outstretched. She placed both hands on his upper arms, rose on her toes, and offered her cheek, as she always did in public, something he’d grown accustomed to over the years. He felt a softening, a slump of her shoulders as one rogue sob escaped, and he drew her closer. Something about her vulnerability, her neediness of him, made Roger squeeze harder, and they stayed that way for a few moments until she pulled away to study him. She dabbed the wetness in her eyes, collected herself, and then assessed him, as if checking for damages.

“You OK?” Roger asked her softly, and Margaret nodded, looking inside the room toward the corner, where his daughter was leaning over the bed, obscuring the view.

“Hi, honey,” Roger boomed, more brightly than he felt and too loudly for the circumstances.

“Daddy!” Maura jumped up and rose from the bed, out through the curtain and into her father’s arms in one almost continuous motion. As they hugged, she began to cry, convulsively, her shoulders shaking, and he patted her back as if she were still a small girl.

“Oh, Dad.” She lifted her head off his chest, and swirling across her face like a tempest, he saw terror and guilt, grief and pain. Roger recalled suddenly how easy it had been to comfort her when she was young. The wrongs and injustices in her life had been trifles then, bloodied knees and bruised hearts. He had thought, when they’d sent her out into the world, that they had prepared her for life. How did anyone prepare his or her child for this? he wondered.

“It’ll be OK, honey, it’s OK.” In the absence of knowing what to say, Roger continued hugging and patting her in a reflexive response.

His eyes strayed through the wide opening in the curtain to study James on the bed behind Maura, and his first thought was how pale and small his grandson appeared, lying so immobile. There were tubes seemingly everywhere, and bruises and cuts on his arms and other parts of his body that were visible above the sheet. His scalp had been shaved on one side and a giant angry seam of scabbed skin ran across the one hemisphere, with what looked like oversize staples holding it all together. James’s head swelled oddly outward like a balloon on one side, giving his face a lopsided look, and both of his eyes were bruised and blackened. A machine behind him made a
whoosh
ing sound, and Roger realized with a jolt that it was breathing for James, keeping time in exact intervals as his small rib cage rose and fell in a rhythmic shudder. Roger released Maura and moved to the bed, drawn by the fragility of his grandson, the sight of a life suspended in the balance so graphically.

“I’m here, James,” he said thinly. “I’m here.” He didn’t know where to touch, what to touch; every inch of James seemed broken somehow or under siege.

“I’m sorry,” said Maura. “About your business meeting. That all of this … pulled you away, I mean.” She let out the last part in an almost inaudible voice. Now, standing apart from her, he took in her appearance. Her thick, dark hair was limp and unwashed, her blue eyes red rimmed. There was a smear of blood on her inner wrist, and Roger realized that the pressed jeans and clean cotton shirt she was wearing now had probably been brought to the hospital for her by Margaret or her husband, Pete. Whatever she’d had on at the time had most likely been covered with blood, he thought grimly. She looked defeated, determined, and terrified.

“Come, sit, Maura,” Roger said, taking her arm and guiding her back into the padded chair next to James. “Have you had anything to eat?”

Maura looked up at him numbly, as if she hadn’t understood the question. She nodded and reached for James’s hand in the bed.

“I’ve been trying,” said Margaret authoritatively. “She’s managed a few bites.” Roger nodded. He looked up as his son-in-law entered the small room with cups of coffee in a cardboard holder, and Pete’s eyes met Roger’s with a noticeable relief. He handed a Styrofoam cup to Margaret and then to Maura and turned to offer the third to Roger.

“Roger! Thank God, welcome. Coffee? I can get another one downstairs.”

Roger shook his head and held up his hand.

“Take it, Roger,” urged Pete. “You’ve been traveling.”