Family Ties (16 page)

A woman came over to ask if she could help her, and Annie said she was there to see Kate Marshall. Annie looked like a visitor from another planet with her sleek blond hair, fashionable high-heeled boots, and new black coat. She wanted to run right out the door, but she stood her ground as she waited for Kate, and a few minutes later her niece came through a back door where the private rooms were. She was wearing a miniskirt, red turtleneck sweater, and combat boots with her short blue-black dyed hair. But even dressed like that, Annie thought she looked much too good for this place.

“What are you doing here?” Katie asked her in a whisper. She looked nervous that Annie had come.

“I wanted to see where you work.” The two women looked deep into each other’s eyes, and finally Katie looked away first. She knew she couldn’t convince Annie that this was acceptable instead of school, but she thought she shouldn’t have to defend it either. She had made a decision that felt right to her. “Are you okay?” Annie asked her gently, and Katie nodded, and then she smiled, and looked happier than she did a minute before.

“I’m having fun. They’re teaching me a lot. I want to learn how to do tattoos, just so I know what it takes and how the designs work on skin.” Annie refrained from saying “Why?”

Annie only stayed for a few minutes, and Katie didn’t tell her co-workers who she was. It made her feel like a child to have her aunt check up on her, and she was no longer a child as far as she was concerned. She was an adult. She looked visibly embarrassed to have Annie there, so once she had looked around, Annie left.

Annie wanted to cry as she drove away in a cab. She couldn’t get the image of those people out of her head. They had bolts and pierces everywhere. They looked like a scary lot to her. She had one more job site to visit before she went back to her office, and then home at the end of the day.

The construction site was another one of her trouble spots right now, and she was fiercely upset when she saw that one of the workmen had left a hose on earlier in the day, and in the freezing weather, the water had turned to ice on the ground. It was an invitation to accidents and another headache she didn’t need. She pointed it out to the foreman, and the contractor who was there too, and then, still thinking about Katie and her new job, Annie stepped over the construction debris and hurried out of the site and back toward the street. It was getting late. Her mind was so full of Katie that she didn’t see the last patch of ice she had complained about, and suddenly her high-heeled boots flew into the air, and she came down hard on one foot with a sharp yelp. One of the construction workers had seen her fall and rushed to help her. He picked her up, dusted her off, and steadied her on her feet. But the moment he did, she winced, her stomach flipped over, and she thought she was going to faint from the pain. Someone got her a folding chair, and the pain in her ankle was excruciating.

“Are you okay?” the foreman asked her with a worried look. It was exactly what she had just warned them about. What she hadn’t expected was that the accident waiting to happen was her. She had been totally distracted and distraught since her visit to Katie at the tattoo parlor, and she hadn’t looked where she was going in her rush to leave and get back to the office. And it was one of the very rare times she had worn high heels to a construction site. She hadn’t planned to visit any of them that day and changed her mind once she got to work.

Several of the men had gathered around her by then, and she tried standing up again, but she couldn’t. She was seriously annoyed at herself. She had been visiting construction sites for twenty years and had never injured herself. The high-heeled boots that day had been a big mistake.

“I think it may be broken,” Annie said, wincing, as she tried to stand up. She could put no weight on it at all.

“You’d better go to the hospital,” the foreman advised her. “It may only be a bad sprain. But either way, you should get an X-ray so you know, and you can get a cast on it if you need to.” That was all she needed now. With everything she had to do these days, she didn’t want to have to hobble around on crutches or in a cast.

“Maybe I’ll just go home and put some ice on it,” she said as she tried to limp off the site, but in the end it took two men to get her to a cab. And a third one was carrying her briefcase and purse. “Thanks, I’m sorry to be such a pain in the neck.”

“You’re not. But get yourself to the ER,” the foreman insisted. She nodded, pretending to agree with him, but once in the cab, she gave the driver her office address. She was sure she’d be fine when she got home and took her boots off, but for now it hurt like hell. And when she got to her office, she couldn’t get out of the cab. The driver turned to look at her as she struggled.

“Looks like you got hurt pretty bad,” the driver said sympathetically. “What happened?”

“I fell on some ice,” she said, trying to use the door as a prop, but she couldn’t put her injured foot on the ground without wanting to scream.

“Lucky you didn’t hit your head,” the driver commented, and it was obvious she was going nowhere. She couldn’t move. “Why don’t you let me take you to a hospital? Maybe it’s broken.” She was beginning to think it was, and was furious over the bad luck that it had happened. She slid back onto the seat and asked him to take her to the NYU Medical Center emergency room. She felt stupid going there, but she couldn’t take a single step either. She needed crutches at the very least.

The driver took her to NYU Medical Center, and left her in the cab when he went inside to get an attendant. A woman in blue pajamas came back out with him, pushing a wheelchair, as Annie sat helplessly at the edge of the seat. She couldn’t walk.

“What do we have here?” the ER tech asked pleasantly.

“I think I may have broken my ankle. I fell on some ice.” Annie was pale and looked like she was in a lot of pain. The nurse helped her into the wheelchair, Annie handed the driver another ten dollars, and he wished her luck. She felt sick from the pain, and she wanted to cry, more about Katie than her hurt foot. She hated her working at a tattoo parlor, and the place looked awful. It was all she could think of as the woman in blue scrubs wheeled her to the registration window in the ER, and Annie handed the clerk her insurance card. She filled out the form, they put a plastic bracelet on her arm with her name and birth date on it, and then they parked her in the wheelchair, handed her an ice pack, and told her to wait.

“How long?” Annie asked, looking around the crowded waiting room. She wasn’t sure if it was by triage or order of arrival, but either way it could take hours. There were at least fifty people there, most of them injured or sick.

“Couple of hours,” the woman said honestly. “Maybe less, maybe more. It depends how serious the cases ahead of you are.”

“Maybe I should just go home,” Annie said, looking discouraged. It had been a totally rotten day, two days, and now this.

“You really shouldn’t go home if it’s broken,” the woman advised her. “You don’t want to be back here at four in the morning with an ankle like a football, screaming in pain. You might as well get an X-ray now that you’re here, and check it out.” It seemed like sensible advice, and Annie decided to wait. She had nothing else to do at home. She hadn’t even been able to get to her office and bring plans home. And she couldn’t have worked anyway, with the acute pain she was in. She was still feeling sick and hoped she wouldn’t throw up. She was amazed by how a small thing could make you feel so awful. The pain was excruciating as she propped up her leg in the wheelchair. She sat there with her eyes closed for a while, trying to tolerate the pain, and then the woman in the chair next to her started to cough. She sounded really sick, so as discreetly as she could, Annie wheeled herself away. She didn’t want to catch a disease here on top of it. The ankle was bad enough. She wheeled herself into a quiet corner, where no one was sitting yet, and watched as paramedics brought a man in on a body board with a suspected broken neck. He’d been in a car accident. And a man with a heart attack came in immediately after. If they were using a triage system, she realized she might be there forever, while the more severe cases were treated before her. It was five-thirty by then, and liable to be a long night. She looked around, and it seemed as though they had dumped an entire airport in the waiting room for the ER.

She closed her eyes again, trying to breathe into the pain, and a moment later someone jostled her wheelchair, then apologized profusely as she opened her eyes. It was a tall, dark-haired man with an inflatable splint on his arm. He looked vaguely familiar as she closed her eyes again. One of her boots was tucked into the wheelchair, and her naked foot had swollen to twice its size since she got there, and it was starting to look badly bruised. She didn’t know if that meant it was broken or not. She dozed in the chair for a while, but the discomfort in her ankle kept her just this side of consciousness, and she finally opened her eyes. The man in the inflatable splint was sitting in a chair next to her and looked grim. The splint was on his left arm, and he’d been using his cell phone with his right hand and canceling appointments. He sounded like a busy man. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and running shoes, and she heard him tell someone on the phone that he had hurt himself playing squash. He was good looking and looked very fit. He seemed like he was in a lot of pain when he talked. They sat next to each other for a long time without speaking. She was in too much pain to be social, and she wanted to cry. She was feeling acutely sorry for herself as she sat there.

The seven o’clock news was coming on the waiting-room TV, and when it began, they announced that their anchor Tom Jefferson wouldn’t be on the air that night. He had sustained an injury playing squash and was at the hospital at that very moment. Annie was watching it, not paying much attention, and then realized who he was. She turned to him with a surprised expression, and he looked mildly embarrassed.

“That’s you?” He nodded. “Shit luck about your arm,” she said, and he smiled.

“Looks like you too. It must really hurt. I’ve been watching it swell while we sat here.” Her ankle got bigger and bluer by the minute.

She nodded agreement, and then sat back in the wheelchair with a sigh. She tried to wiggle her toes once in a while, to see if she could, but now it hurt too much. She had seen Tom Jefferson do the same thing with his fingers, trying to assess the extent of the damage, and if it was sprained or broken.

“I think we may be here all night,” Annie said when the news was over. Problems in Korea and the Middle East seemed a lot less important to her right now than her ankle. “What about you? Can’t you pull rank?”

“I don’t think so. I think the three heart attacks, the broken neck, and the gunshot wound take precedence over air time. I’d be afraid to ask.” She nodded. He had a point, and he was certainly discreet. They were both completely focused on their respective injuries, and she felt as though they were shipwrecked together on a desert island. And no one seemed to know they were there, or care.

She texted Katie eventually that she’d be home late, but she didn’t say why. She didn’t want to worry her. So she was alone at the emergency room, sitting next to a total stranger with a broken arm.

“I got shot in the arm once,” he said after a while, “covering a story in Uganda. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this actually hurts more.” He was looking sorry for himself too.

“Are you showing off?” she asked with a grin. “I broke a rib falling out of bed once, as a kid, and my ankle hurts more. I’ve never been shot. So you win.” He laughed when she said it, and she noticed that he had a nice smile. It was hardly surprising, since he was something of a star on TV.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. How’d you do it?” Tom asked her, looking concerned.

“On a patch of ice at a construction site. I’d just told them to clean it up before there was an accident, and then I slipped.”

“You’re a construction worker?” he asked with a mischievous look. At least talking to him was passing the time. They had nothing else to do as they sat and waited.

“More or less. I have my own hard hat,” although she hadn’t been wearing it. And the cab driver was right. She was lucky she hadn’t hit her head. “I’m an architect,” she said, and he looked impressed. He had guessed her to be in fashion or maybe publishing. She was well dressed, well spoken, and seemed bright.

“That must be fun,” he commented, trying to distract them both.

“Sometimes. When I’m not breaking my neck on a site.”

“Does that happen to you often?” he teased her.

“First time.”

“First time I’ve had a sports injury too. I spent ten years doing dangerous assignments in the Middle East. I was bureau chief in Lebanon for two years. I survived two bombings. And I break my arm playing squash. How pathetic.” More than anything he felt stupid. And then he looked at her, as she sat slumped in the wheelchair with her foot out. It was turning bluer by the minute from the bruising, and it was huge. “Are you hungry?” he asked her.

“No. I feel sick,” she said honestly. She didn’t know him, and would never see him again, she didn’t have to put up a good front for him. She felt ghastly. And he had seen her cry once or twice. He thought it was from the pain, but it was about Katie. She couldn’t get the vision of the tattoo parlor out of her head. And there was nothing she could do to change Katie’s mind.

“I was thinking of ordering a pizza,” he confessed, feeling slightly embarrassed for being hungry at a time like this. “I’m starving.” He had a healthy appetite, and he was a big man.

“That must be a guy thing. You might as well. We’ll probably be here for hours.” He smiled sheepishly when she said it, called a number on his cell phone, ordered the pizza, and then sent several texts. She wondered if he had a girlfriend or a wife, and if a woman would show up to be with him. He looked about forty-five, with dark hair, just beginning to gray at the temples.

His pizza arrived an hour later, and they were still waiting. He had ordered everything on it but anchovies, and he offered her a piece, but she couldn’t eat. He nearly finished it himself, in spite of the injured arm. When he stood up to throw his pizza box away, she could see that he was even taller than she’d guessed. But she was more impressed by how pleasant and unassuming he was. He wasn’t asking for any kind of special attention and was waiting patiently for his turn. He offered to get her a glass of water or some coffee from the machine when he got back, but she declined.