Precious Gifts (24 page)

She tried to doze so she didn't throw up again, and a doctor came in and woke her up, asked her what had happened, and then examined her. They X-rayed her entire left side, and then he told her the bad news.

“Well, it could have been a lot worse,” he said philosophically. “He could have knocked you into the street, and you'd have been hit by a car, or hit your head on the sidewalk. You've got a broken ankle and a broken wrist. I think we can get by without pins. They're both clean breaks. We're going to put you out for a little while, and put casts on you. You should be okay in about five weeks. Do you live alone?” She nodded, feeling groggy from the shock and the pain. “Then I think we'll keep you here for a couple of days. You'll need to be on crutches, which will be hard with the wrist.” She had fallen hard to the pavement but she was right-handed, so she could still manage, and maybe even paint.

They took her up to the orthopedic OR shortly after, ran an IV into her arm, and gave her something to make her sleep, and when she woke up, she was in the recovery room and a nurse in blue pajamas was calling her name, and offering her ice chips.

“How do you feel?” the nurse asked her.

“Kind of woozy,” Véronique answered, trying to go back to sleep, but they wanted her to wake up, and the nurse said she could give her something for the pain when she was a little more awake, and then they would take her to a room. She had given them her insurance card in the ER when they asked for it, and they said she could have a private room.

They wheeled her into it two hours later, gave her pain medication, and she lay there feeling stupid and out of it. She kept thinking it must have been her fault, like the Ferrari in Rome, but she knew this was different. She didn't have a choice. The bicycle had hit her before she could even figure out what it was. And she wanted to finish Nikolai's painting, not lie around in a hospital, in pain. She wasn't fully awake until eight o'clock that night, and her wrist and ankle hurt like hell, but she didn't want to be all doped up. And she finally decided that she'd better call Timmie and let her know what happened. Her phone went straight to voice mail, which usually meant she was working, and Véronique didn't want to leave a message that she was in the hospital and worry her. And she didn't want to text, so she just let it go, and decided to call her in the morning.

They offered her more pain medication, and she slept for a few hours after that, and woke up at four in the morning in agony again. They helped her hobble to the bathroom, which was complicated and painful, and harder to manage than she'd expected with one foot and one hand. And she lay in bed afterward, exhausted by the effort, and realized that it was nine in the morning in London, and she could call Aidan. She waited another hour, trying to be brave, and finally got her cell phone out of her purse and called him. He sounded like he was in a busy place when he answered.

“Hi, darling. What are you up to? I'm at the train station, taking some pictures. Can I call you back?” he said cheerfully, and her voice was a croak when she said yes, and that stopped him. “You sound awful. Are you sick? Where are you?” She was trying not to cry then, but it hurt so damn much.

“I had this stupid accident,” she said, and her tongue felt three sizes too big in her mouth and like it had sandpaper on it, from the drugs.

“What kind of accident?” he said immediately, his mind racing back to the Ferrari.

“It's nothing…it was just so dumb…I didn't see it…I was hailing a cab at the art store, and a bicycle hit me. I never saw it coming.” She sounded vague and like she was having trouble talking, and he was instantly panicked.

“Are you okay? What happened?” But he already knew she wasn't okay from her voice.

“I broke my wrist and my ankle. But they're clean breaks so I'm fine. It could have been worse.” And then she didn't mean to, but she started crying. “It's nothing, but it just hurts so damn much….I'll be fine tomorrow.” He doubted that that would be the case from the way she sounded, and two broken bones sounded like a lot to him.

“Are you at home?”

“No. They kept me at the hospital.” He was less worried about her there, the way she sounded, but he didn't like her being alone.

“Did you call the girls?”

“Joy and Juliette left. They're in France and L.A. I called Timmie, but she's on voice mail, and I didn't want to scare her with a message that I'm in the hospital. I feel so stupid,” she said.

“You're not stupid, although you've come down a notch. It's a lot less classy than being hit by a Ferrari,” he teased her, and she laughed and felt better just hearing him. “I want you to call Timmie. Tell her to get her ass over there first thing in the morning.”

“I'll call her in the morning. I don't want to call her at four a.m.”

“Promise me you'll call her. And make them give you something to sleep. Call me when you wake up. Oh, and what hospital are you in?”

“Lenox Hill. I love you,” she said, so happy to talk to him.

“I love you, too. Now try and get some sleep.” She felt better after talking to him. Things didn't seem as out of control, and she took some more pain medication and slept for a few more hours, and tried Timmie again first thing in the morning. She was still on voice mail, and Véronique left her a message to call her without mentioning the accident, so as not to frighten her. Véronique always felt that she had to be strong for her kids, even though they were no longer children, and could have been helpful to her. But she almost never asked them for help. She couldn't remember the last time she had. She was determined to be self-sufficient and never burden them.

One of the nurses came in a little while later and showed her how to use the crutches, which was tricky since she couldn't use her hand easily, and she couldn't put weight on her left leg. She was exhausted and dizzy when she got back into bed. And Timmie still hadn't called her back, when Aidan called her in her room.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, deeply concerned about her, but she sounded better and less out of it than the night before.

“I'm okay. The stupid thing really hurts, and it's hard to do the crutches with a broken wrist, but I'll manage.” So far she couldn't even go to the bathroom alone, but she didn't tell him that. Standing on one foot, and trying to pull up her underwear with one hand was a juggling act, but she'd have to learn to do it. She made it seem funny when she described it to him, but in reality it wasn't.

“Did you speak to Timmie yet?” He sounded tense.

“No, she's probably busy. She'll see that I called, and she'll call me back.”

“For chrissake, will you call her and leave her a message that you're in the hospital? At least she'll come over and help you. Swear to me you'll call her.” They talked for a few minutes, and he promised to call in a few hours. She was exhausted, and still in considerable pain.

Timmie saw the two missed calls from her mother and got her message, but she'd been dealing with a crisis since the night before. One of her female clients had been badly beaten by her crack-addicted boyfriend. She'd called Timmie from the street, and Timmie had gone to meet her, taken her to the hospital herself and then called the police. And she'd gone to the shelter where they'd been staying, and got her children taken into foster care. It had taken her till that afternoon, and by then she had clients backed up at her office and rushed in to see them. She wanted to go back to the hospital to see her client, who was still in critical condition and hovering near death. And she had an important staff meeting at six o'clock, to talk about funding, and she had to be there for that. As head of her department, she had to run the meeting. It was one of those days when she felt torn in a hundred directions, and everything she had to do was crucial in some way. She knew she wouldn't have time to call her mother back that day, and sent her a text instead. “Too busy to call. Talk to you tomorrow. Big meeting tonight. Sorry.” There was no way to explain the rest by text, and she knew her mother would just want to chat and catch up.

When Véronique saw her text, she didn't want to bug her. There was nothing Timmie could do anyway, and if she had a big meeting that night, she couldn't come over, so there was no point bothering her.

Véronique dozed for a few hours, and then Aidan called again.

“Did she call?”

“She sent me a text. She's busy, and she has a big meeting tonight. I don't want to harass her. I'm okay here.” The crunch was going to be when they sent her home, and she hadn't figured that out yet. She had called Carmina and told her where she was, but Carmina couldn't stay with Véronique, she had children and no one to leave them with at night. She suggested that Véronique get a nurse, but she didn't want one. It was just her ankle and her wrist, she hadn't broken a leg or had open heart surgery, so she didn't want to make a fuss.

“I don't give a fuck about her big meeting. Tell her you're in the hospital,” he insisted. “This is what you have kids for. Otherwise why bother?” He had a point. And at his insistence, she finally sent Timmie a text.

“Had stupid accident yesterday. Broke left wrist and ankle. Talk to you soon, love, M.” She didn't want to beg for her attention, or pressure her, but at least she had the pertinent information.

This time Timmie responded fairly quickly. “Thank God only your left wrist. Totally swamped today. Will call you tomorrow, love T.” Timmie had groaned when she read her mother's text. That was all she needed right now, a complaining invalid to deal with. She'd been dealing with one major crisis after another all day, some of them life-threatening for her clients, and a broken wrist and ankle wasn't going to kill her mother. She wondered if she'd fallen down the stairs somewhere. But whatever it was, she couldn't deal with it right now.

When Aidan called again, Véronique told him, and he was livid. “What's wrong with her? And don't the others ever call you except if they want something? Whenever we're together, they call constantly, wanting your advice about something or your help.”

“There's no point calling Joy in L.A. or Juliette in France. They can't do anything to help me anyway. And I'm a grown-up, I'm supposed to be able to take care of myself.”

“Some job you're doing of it. One minute you're being run down by a Ferrari, the next by a bicycle. I can't leave you alone for five minutes. And I'm fucking furious at your daughter. With a broken ankle and wrist, she should have called. I don't care how busy she is, that's bullshit.”

Véronique wasn't thrilled with it either, but she was realistic. Timmie was not the nurturing kind to come over and nurse her mother. And she dealt with high-pressure situations at work. Juliette would have come immediately, but she was three thousand miles away. And upsetting her over the phone served no purpose. Véronique needed someone to help pull her underpants up, and help put her clothes on—she didn't need sympathy over the phone, although she loved talking to Aidan. But she was the nurturer in the family, her children never had been. They'd never been called on to do that, for her or anyone else, since none of them were married or had kids. They hadn't nursed their father either after the stroke.

“What are you going to do when you go home?” Aidan asked, sounding worried.

“I'll figure it out. I didn't lose an arm or a leg, and I'll only have the casts for five weeks.”

“Five weeks? What the hell are you going to do?”

“Hop around on one foot, and use my right hand.”

“Would Timmie stay with you? At least she could help you after work.”

“I can ask, but I doubt she'll do it. She's busy.” Aidan didn't comment, and she sounded tired after a while, and uncomfortable, and he told her to go to sleep.

She spent the rest of the day dozing and watching TV, and the doctor postponed sending her home the next day until she was steadier on her crutches. He thought another day would do it.

Aidan didn't call her that night, and neither did Timmie. And Véronique took a sleeping pill and didn't wake up until Timmie called her at seven o'clock the next morning. She was already in her office, and had been there since six. She couldn't sleep. Her client in the hospital had died at midnight, and the nursing staff had called her to let her know. She felt sick when they told her about it and she was ravaged when she called her mother, but sounded almost normal, just tired.

“Sorry I didn't call you, Mom. It was a zoo here yesterday. So how the hell did it happen?” She tried to focus on her mother's minor accident and not her client's tragic death the night before. Her client had been twenty-three years old and had three kids, whose lives would be ruined now, too, with their mother dead and father in jail. He had been arrested the day before, and would be charged with murder now, so he was gone. Their kids would remain in foster care or a state institution.

“I got hit by a bicycle messenger,” Véronique said, feeling stupid all over again.

“Christ, you're lucky he didn't kill you. I know this sounds awful, but I just can't come over today. There's too much going on here.” And she wanted to visit her dead client's kids in foster care. “Is Carmina taking care of you?” Timmie sounded faintly patronizing as she said it. The crises she dealt with were so much bigger and more dire.

Véronique sounded sheepish. “I'm at Lenox Hill, learning to use crutches.”

“Well, at least you're safe there. I'll come over tomorrow, I promise.” Timmie sounded relieved that she was in the hospital. She was safe and alive and didn't need her help to get around.

“I think I'm going home tomorrow,” Véronique answered.

“Good. I'll come over this weekend for sure.”

Véronique nodded, and was angry at herself when tears filled her eyes. Somehow she had thought that if Timmie knew she was in the hospital, she'd come over. But she was too busy. It made Véronique feel as though no one cared about her, as she lay in bed and stared out the window after they hung up. She wanted to go home now, even if she killed herself in her bathroom. Being in the hospital was worse.