When He Fell (11 page)

“There are no guarantees,” Sheila corrects. “We cannot hold a position open indefinitely. It’s simply not possible. We’re a business, Maddie.”

“I know.”

“Alwin’s terms are far more generous than those of most corporations.” Now she’s really sounding defensive. But who wants to give the bad news to the mother with the brain damaged kid?

“I know.” That’s only because most corporations’ terms are crap. “Thanks,” I say, and Sheila waffles on for a minute about if there is anything she can do. I’m getting tired of that phrase now. It sounds so insincere. She
knows
there’s nothing she can do. I feel like Spandex Man is the only one who meant what he said, but unfortunately there’s nothing he can do, either.

I end the call and sit there with my phone in my lap. I have three and a half weeks before I’m broke. And I don’t even know what Ben’s medical bills are going to cost. Even with good insurance coverage, we could be talking thousands of dollars. I swallow hard. I have about two thousand dollars in my checking account. There is another eight grand in savings that’s earmarked for Ben’s tuition for next year. But maybe I won’t need that money for Ben’s school. I have no idea if he’ll be able to return to Burgdorf soon, or ever.

I can’t stand to think about money any longer, so I close my computer and go to sit with Ben.

The room is quiet except for the consistent beep and whirr of the machines that measure his vitals. At least he is breathing on his own. I watch his chest rise and fall, his lips parted as he quietly exhales. His body is
working
. It is doing what it needs to do. I have to believe his brain has been healing itself in the four days since the accident. There are so many stories of how a body has coped, compensated, healed and fixed itself completely…

Of course I can’t actually think of any of those stories offhand. So far I have avoided the Internet’s undoubted wealth of information on TBIs. I don’t want to read the Wikipedia entries or search the message boards. I don’t want to join the Yahoo group and introduce myself:
Hi, I’m Maddie. My son Ben suffered a TBI four days ago and we’re just waiting to see if he comes out of his coma. So grateful to have found this group and its support…

God knows I could use some support. But I don’t want to hear other people’s stories and have them walk me through the next days and weeks and months, telling me how it is because they’ve been there. I don’t want to hear the sad stories, the tragedies, the ones whose children didn’t recover completely or even at all. I can’t handle all that information, and I don’t want to be part of that club. So I’ve avoided the Internet; I haven’t even read the brochures some of the staff have given me.
Coping with Traumatic Brain Injury. Your Child and the Intensive Care Unit.

I’m a coward, but at least I know how much I can stand.

Just after lunchtime something finally happens. Ben’s eyelids twitch. They don’t open or even flicker, just a little twitch. I would have missed it except some machine that is monitoring him gives a sudden, louder beep, and I looked up. A nurse comes in and checks the print-out from the machine. Then she looks closely at Ben and says to me, “He’s exhibiting some sign of consciousness.”

What?
I lean forward, even now waiting to see Ben open his eyes, smile at me, and say
Hi, Mom
. I don’t believe in miracles. I haven’t had any in my life. But I want one now.

“His eyelids are twitching,” she explains, and then I see it: tiny muscles beneath the lids moving and jerking.

“What does that mean?” I ask. I am whispering, and I don’t know why.

“It means he is starting to come out of the coma,” she says with a smile and I sink back against the chair, shaky with relief with what’s happening and fear for what’s next. Ben is finally waking up.

I watch him closely for the next six hours, and his eyelids continue to twitch intermittently. His hand jerks several times, wild, unrestrained movements that unnerve me but which the nurse assures me is normal in this phase of recovery. Dr. Velas comes in around dinnertime, smiling widely as she scans Ben’s notes.

“He’s waking up,” she proclaims cheerfully, then turns to me, serious once more. “When he opens his eyes, don’t expect him to recognize you. He’ll have trouble focusing on anything for some time. This is due both to the medication as well as the injury. It’s still going to be a long road ahead.”

I nod, accepting, but not really. Because I’m still, against all odds, against all sense, holding out for a miracle, for this to turn normal and recognizable and
good
.

A little after six the nurse on duty tells me I have a visitor. My heart lifts. Is it Juliet?
Lewis?

I am already smiling, half-standing, imagining him coming into the room, pulling me into a hug, telling me it’s going to be okay. Of course it’s going to be okay.

But it’s not Lewis. It’s his wife. He sent his
wife.
Shock and hurt blaze through me. Is this his unsubtle way of sending me a message? I swallow down the choking sense of disappointment and smile stiffly. “Hi, Joanna.”

I rise from Ben’s bedside and stand there awkwardly; I can’t shake her hand because she is holding a huge fruit basket, tied with a big yellow bow, which makes me unreasonably, unfairly furious. Does she actually think Ben is going to be able to eat a pound of black cherries?

“Hi, Maddie,” she says quietly. She glances towards Ben. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s starting to come out of the coma. But until he does, we won’t know how badly his brain is damaged.” I say this flatly, without emotion, even though I can feel it coursing through me. My hands clench into fists and I force my fingers to relax. I’m angry and I have no right to be.

Joanna sets the basket down on a side table. “Sorry,” she says as she gestures to it with an apologetic grimace. “You’re not meant to bring flowers to the hospital any more. The scents can aggravate patients, apparently. But I wanted to bring something.”

“No, it’s very thoughtful of you,” I say, and I am not quite able to inject sincerity into my tone. “Thank you.”

She stands there for a moment before I think to get one of the other chairs in the room. I navigate it through the maze of machines so it is adjacent to mine, and then we both sit.

“How are you managing?” she asks. She sits with her shoulders slightly hunched, her hands tucked between her legs.

“Managing is the right word, I suppose.” I study her covertly; this is the woman Lewis loves. I’ve met her before a couple of times, but she never made much of an impression. I never wondered about her; I tried to pretend she didn’t exist, because when Lewis and I were together with the boys, it felt like she didn’t exist. As if she didn’t matter.

She is tall and gangly, without much grace. Her clothes are clearly expensive, but they don’t hang on her well: jeans and a cashmere top, but the sleeves are too short, showing her bony wrists, and the jeans are too loose through the leg. When she crosses her legs they ride up so I can see a strip of bare leg and sock peeking over the edge of her ankle boot.

Looking at her now, I can’t help but wonder, meanly, why he’s with her when he could be with me. But maybe he doesn’t realize he could be with me.

We sit in silence for a moment, and then Joanna looks up. There is so much naked honesty in her face, I am taken aback. I’m used to hiding my feelings, but Joanna wears hers openly, unashamedly, or maybe she’s just not aware of how much she reveals. I almost feel embarrassed for her. Doesn’t she know you’re not supposed to do that?

“I’m so, so sorry,” she says, and her voice chokes as her eyes fill with tears.

“Thank you,” I say, although that doesn’t feel like the right response. But what is?

“Josh told me…” she begins, and then stops.

I tense, realization coursing through me. Josh must know something. Finally I can get some information about how and when Ben fell. “Josh told you?” I prompt, an edge of urgency to my voice. “Did he see Ben fall?”

She stares at me, her jaw slackening, a look of what can only be horror entering her eyes. She can’t hide
anything.
“What is it?” I demand and she licks her lips.

“I thought you… I thought Lewis would have said something…”

“I haven’t really talked to Lewis,” I say, because a few texts don’t count. He’s never even called me, which hurts. Considering the enormity of what has happened, couldn’t he have put any awkwardness he feels aside?

“No, it’s just…” She rubs a hand over her face, takes a deep breath. “Josh pushed Ben, Maddie,” she says, and for a few seconds I only blink stupidly.

Josh
pushed Ben? His best friend? Josh is
that
kid? The nameless kid Ben was arguing with, the kid whom Mrs. James suspended?

This is
Josh’s
fault?

“I’m so sorry,” she says and I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say, what to think. I want to grab Josh by his bony shoulders and shake him so hard his teeth rattle. “It was an accident,” Joanna adds in a whisper, an apology, an excuse, and while I know it’s true another part of me wants to start screaming and never stop. It was an
accident
that changed my son’s life forever.

“Mrs. James told me they were arguing,” I finally say numbly. “She didn’t mention Josh. Just that it was another student. And that they were arguing,” I repeat. My mind is spinning uselessly.

“Josh told me they weren’t arguing. He’s quite insistent about that. But he won’t say much else.” She grimaces, another apology.

“Have you asked him?” I ask, an edge to my voice.

“We’ve tried. But it’s hard for him… He’s been suspended…” She shakes her head, abject, a supplicant. “I’m not trying to make excuses.”

Yes, I think. You are. You are making excuse because what your son did might have been accident, but it is still terrible, and someone is to blame. Yet do I really want to blame Josh? He’s
nine.
He couldn’t have meant for Ben to hit his head, to become brain damaged. Even if they were arguing, even if he meant to push him, I know Josh couldn’t have foreseen the consequences. No child could have.

But it’s still his fault.

I swallow down the pointless anger, the kneejerk sense of blame. “Where were they?” I ask. I still want to know the details. “Were they fighting over turns on a swing or something?” Ben has always been a swing junkie; he can never get enough of the adrenalin rush. I was the same as a kid, always running for the swings on the playground. High in the air I could forget my life for a little bit. Forget the foster homes, the fact that no one in the world would miss me. Forget the mean girls who whispered about my secondhand clothes, the free lunches I was entitled to. The trouble was, you always had to come back down. Get off the swing.

But Ben and Josh would never fight over a swing. Josh is more of a slide man, and in any case he never insists on his rights. When Lewis and I have been together with them—and the memories of all those times still possess a bittersweet sting—we’d intervene to make sure Josh got his fair share, his equal turn.

“They were…they were on the rocks,” Joanna says and I stare at her in shock as the words seem to echo through the room.

“
What?
” Every Burgdorf parent knows the kids aren’t allowed on the rocks, the huge boulders that form nearly a sheer cliff side that is a boundary to one side of the playground. “But they’re not allowed to go on the rocks,” I say. “Ever.”

“I know.” Joanna bites her lip. “Josh said this was the first time they went up there. He said Ben wanted to.”

“
Ben
did?” Ben has always been a rule breaker, but the no-playing-on-the-rocks rule is a big one to break. Children can be threatened with suspension or even expulsion for flouting it, and I thought even Ben would have enough self-control, or at least enough self-preservation, to keep from risking that.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would Ben want to go on the rocks? And why would Josh push him from there?”

“Lewis thinks they were just horsing around.”

But Ben and Josh don’t really horse around. At least Josh doesn’t, and Ben accepts it. Mostly. Occasionally Ben tries to wrestle with him, but Josh usually just ducks away. And surely they wouldn’t have been fooling around on top of the rocks, in a place they knew was forbidden,
dangerous…

“No one told me they were on the rocks,” I say. I rise from my chair, agitated now, everything in me racing. Ben fell from the rocks, not a slide or a swing. He fell from a place where he never should have been. Where he should have been prevented from going. And nobody told me. Not Mrs. James. Not Juliet. Nobody ever told me where Ben was when he fell. The accident report said the play structure, but the accident report may have been wrong. May have been a lie.

This is why Juliet is avoiding me, I realize in a sickening rush. She must have known where he was. She must feel
guilty.

“I’m sorry,” Joanna says as she watches me pace. “I wish there was something we could do. I wish…” She draws a hitched breath. “I wish this had never happened.”

I whirl around. “
You
wish this had never happened?” I snarl, and I see something almost like anger flare in Joanna’s eyes before she looks away. Animosity crackles between us, surprising me. I have every reason not to like her, this woman who has everything I want. But what reason could she possibly have for not liking me? Nothing actually happened between Lewis and me. Nothing much, and there is no way she can know about it. Unless Lewis told her, a prospect that sickens me.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, but her words are meaningless. Everyone says them. Everyone, my whole life long, has said sorry. It hasn’t made any difference whatsoever. “I would understand,” she continues hesitantly, “if you’re angry at Josh. At us.”

“Of course I’m angry,” I say, but my voice is now weary. I’m too tired and heartsick and lonely to be angry for long. And I know I can’t blame Josh, a nine-year-old boy, for what happened. Yet I feel the need to blame someone, or at least to understand what really happened. Because I know I’m not getting the full story.