The cold water Ben splashed on his face soaked the collar of his golf shirt. He pressed his fingers into his forehead until his face ached. He looked too damned normal in the mirror. Shattering the glass would work—his face would look as fractured as he felt.
What if Maddy didn’t wake up?
What if they charged him? Found him guilty?
For God’s sake, driving to endanger was a criminal offense. He’d be facing anything from probation to jail time. At the very least, he’d have to report it to the bar, and God knew he had enough enemies there.
What if he lost his fucking job?
When he returned to the table, Olivia and Kath wore matching maternal looks of concern, though Olivia’s face managed to infuse impatience into the caring. She held out the sheaf of papers. “Are you okay? Do you think you can finish?”
He couldn’t determine if she was being sarcastic or solicitous, but he took the high road and chose solicitous.
Postcoma Outlook: Difficulties can be expected with memory, fatigue, anger, judgment, concentration, disinhibition, dizziness, seizures, and depression.
Taking care of yourself: Signs of stress: inability to sleep, nightmares, poor self-care, poor appetite, guilt or self-blaming, feelings of loneliness and worthlessness, excessive use of alcohol and/or medication.
This he didn’t care about. He skipped the rest of the sympathy until he got to:
Family Members, what you can do: Read to get information, don’t hold vigil 24-7, and be prepared for a marathon, not a sprint . . . Remember, patients may hear what you say while in coma . . . Expect they may strike out when they wake up . . . Take comfort that 99% eventually get out of agitated state . . . Family burnout is common. Reduce stimulation. Physical touch can be upsetting. Test the waters. Don’t talk down.
Signs of Improvement: Following simple commands. Localized response . . . Agitated and confused . . . Higher-level responses: The patient may seem more like herself . . . However, there may be personality changes.
“Are you okay?” Kath asked.
Ben tapped his fingers on the report. “I’m fine.”
Olivia nodded. “You have to make plans. Get the house ready for when Maddy comes home. It’s paramount to create the right environment.”
“You might think it’s too early, but it’s important for so many reasons.” Kath put her hand lightly on his forearm. “For the kids—for everyone—we have to believe in her coming home. Create a positive atmosphere. I don’t care if it sounds hokey. It might work, and it sure won’t hurt. Do it for the kids, if nothing else.”
“Right. Got it. Positive. The right environment. Okay. We should.” Contrary to Olivia’s findings, stress wasn’t inducing agitation in Ben, but rather a narcotized feel of total collapse. Falling asleep at the table seemed possible. He shuffled ahead a few pages.
How does TBI affect sexual functioning?
The following changes in sexuality can happen after TBI: Decreased Desire: Many have less desire or interest in sex. Increased Desire: Some find their sexual desire increases after TBI and may want to have sex more often than usual. Others may have difficulty controlling their sexual behavior. They might make sexual advances in unsuitable situations or make unsuitable comments of a sexual nature.
He closed the report.
Olivia leaned forward, pressing her breasts on the tabletop. “Are you listening, Ben?”
“Of course. Let me take in all this information, and I’ll come up with a plan.”
“We. I think we should come up with a plan. I’ve spoken to Anne. To Jake. We all need to help.”
A fatigue headache built steam. The medical words had blurred into word soup. “I said I’ll take care of it, Olivia.”
“Like you took care of Maddy?”
His jaw tightened. “You want to go there?”
Kath switched to holding Olivia’s arm. “Leave it be. Okay?”
Ben watched her hand tighten. “Okay?” Kath repeated, her voice toughening.
“Fine.” Olivia looked disgusted.
“Ben?” Kath asked.
“Right. Got it.” He stood and walked out.
• • •
Once home, Ben threw himself on the couch. His eyes burned from sweat and lack of sleep. He got up and wandered from hot room to hot room. Finally, he poured a glass of cold water and brought it into the dining room.
They rarely ate in there. Dust covered the top of the table, except where Ben dropped daily piles of mail and magazines. He swept it all aside and placed the sweaty glass on the wood. Seeing the ring of moisture forming, he lifted it, wiped it with his arm, and put a weeks-old Atlantic underneath.
Sitting, staring at nothing, he took small swallows of water while rubbing his tight chest. The collection of fifteen years of marriage surrounded him. Charcoal-black china with three blood-red circles lined up straight in the buffet, waiting for a special occasion. Maddy had found the pattern so exciting she’d almost killed him when she leapt on him to tell him she’d found the perfect plates.
Framed photos stared at him. Emma holding Gracie, who held infant Caleb. Ben’s arms enveloping a hugely pregnant Maddy from behind, her smile crinkling her puffy face. Ben’s father appeared stiff yet quietly happy, standing with Emma at her recent eighth-grade graduation.
Where was his family going to end up?
Maddy’s grandmother wearing fox furs around her neck, proud and sophisticated—probably years younger than Ben’s present age, but looking older than he thought he and Maddy appeared.
Cobalt-blue wedding goblets glinted from a glass shelf—the cups they’d used for their first sip as a married couple. A Jewish tradition. The glasses were not so much expensive as precious, and thus behind glass, taken out each anniversary. Last year Gracie spent an hour getting the room just right for them. Candles. The table cleared of clutter. Two pressed white napkins.
What the hell am I supposed to do, God?
Ben walked to the cabinet, opened the door, and took out the deep-blue glasses, leaving two clean circles in the dust. He carried them to the table. The faceted crystal shimmered in the sun. He lifted the glasses high and tapped them together. Music. Glass music, Gracie called it the last time he and Maddy toasted.
He clinked them again and again. He clinked them until the music was no longer sweet. He clinked them until the glasses ground against each other. He slammed them harder and harder until finally he threw one against the wall and watched it shatter.
CHAPTER 15
Emma
Emma perched at the edge of her mother’s hospital bed, reading aloud from The Family Nobody Wanted, one of her favorite childhood books. An old-fashioned sketch of happy parents holding up a happy baby illustrated the cover. When her mom gave Emma the small worn paperback years before, Emma remembered turning it over to read the large brown letters on the back cover. They had very little money—but a great deal of love to share. The story was about parents who’d adopted children others had rejected.
Exactly the kind of book her mom adored: happy misery.
Emma was almost at her favorite part, where the mother, desperate to feed the family, opened a can of rattlesnake meat she’d previously kept on the shelf as decoration. She cleared her throat and began reading.
“Rattlesnake is supposed to taste like a cross between chicken and tuna fish,” she read. “Any resemblance ours might once have had to either certainly had been lost in the long passage of years since it had been canned. It turned out to be something closer to cotton strings in a curdled cream sauce. We ate it because, after all, it had calories.”
As always, Emma loved the description—imagining strings in sauce.
“The minister dropped by that night for a visit. When he went to the kitchen for a drink of water, he reached for the can, which was back in its usual place on the window shelf.
“ ‘When are you two going to eat this rattle—’ he began, and then broke off in surprise when the can came up light in his hand. He turned it over and stare
d. Carl had reamed it open from the bottom, washed it out, and replaced it on the shelf . . .”
As she read on, through the part where the minister laid ten dollars on the sink, Emma’s throat clogged. That family was so lucky. Would her father ever think to wash out a can because her mother thought it was pretty? More likely, he’d yell at her because it was spreading germs, or because tin cans were ruining the environment.
Emma studied her mother’s eyelids. She put a finger to one cheek and then the other, touching the slack muscles. Was it her imagination, or was her mother becoming faker-looking every day? Like a rubber doll.
“I have to go now, Mommy.” Antiseptic and medical odors filled the area, smells her mother would despise. Reaching into her jeans pocket, she slid out a tiny plastic travel jar she’d bought at CVS. She scooped out a bit of almond-perfumed cream, one her mother used to moisturize her hands. Not the one Emma had borrowed—she’d already tried that one.
I love the smell, but it never lasts, her mother said when she used this one. Still, it’s so good while I’m putting it on. Emma took her mother’s hand and rubbed the lotion in, the short-lived scent sweetening the air around them.
“Smells good, right, Mom? Tomorrow I’m going to bring something different. I don’t know what—I’ll go to Sephora, okay?”
What could wake her mother? Strong sexy perfume like Aunt Vanessa wore? Something soothing and familiar, same as the cozy sun-warmed fragrances her mother chose? Perhaps the known would remind her mother of life and draw her back like a Gypsy spell. Romanian, like on Grandpa Benedikte’s side. Maybe something new would penetrate. Emma wished Nurse Bernadette were there, instead of Nurse Angela, so she could ask.
She took gentle hold of her mother’s thinning wrist. “Wake up, Mom. School is starting soon. Gracie wants you to take her shopping. Daddy will be terrible at the mall, and I can’t drive. We need you.”
• • •
Emma rushed upstairs to her bedroom after supper. No one had said a word during the entire meal—they just watched television as they ate their Mrs. Budd’s Chicken Pot Pie. Three days before, her father had carried the portable TV from the guest room to the kitchen. Now it played during every meal. Her mother would hate that. Mealtime television was only allowed when her mother had been so tired that she’d brought pizza in and they ate it in the living room. Or the time they had ice cream for supper.
Or once in a while just because she’d been mad that Daddy hadn’t shown up.
Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam, please make Mommy wake up.
Emma drifted along with Rihanna, trying to not-feel. When she opened her eyes, Gracie stood in front of the bed.
“You’re supposed to knock,” Emma yelled.
“I did. You didn’t hear me. Daddy wants you downstairs. Now.”
“Is he mad?” Emma asked.
“I don’t think so. But maybe. He said he wants to talk to us.”
Emma got a sick feeling in her stomach. “Did he look upset?”
“He said Mommy was the same,” Gracie answered.
Emma and Gracie walked downstairs. Caleb sat on the floor by the television, twisting an ancient Rubik’s Cube he’d latched on to after finding it in their mother’s desk last week. Or was it longer ago? She knew it was after.
Time had a new meaning—before and after. When she’d looked at a calendar that morning, it didn’t seem possible it was only two weeks since the accident. It seemed like forever.
“We need to talk about when Mommy wakes up,” her father said after she and Gracie settled side by side on the couch.
“She woke up?” Gracie’s giant grin split her face in half. “Mommy’s awake?”
“No, no,” her father said, fast. “I’m sorry, kids. I didn’t mean to raise your hopes so high. But she could be coming up a little at a time. Maybe. That’s what the doctor says. So we can hope. We can be positive. Kath says being positive is important.”
“Hope?” Emma said. Kath and Olivia must have drugged her father or something, but still, weird as it was, hearing her father talking about being positive lifted her spirits an inch. She almost laughed, wanting to joke with him as she might have a year ago. Hey, Dad—why don’t we wear matching prayer bracelets?
“Not just hope, honey. Her eyes fluttered. She responds a little more to pain.”
“Pain!” Caleb bit at the edge of his thumb. “Why are they making her hurt?”
“It’s just tiny tests, Caleb. A little tiny prick. Like this.” Her father leaned forward and pinched Caleb on his knee. “Just to test her response.”
“What’s response?” Caleb asked.
“It’s how much her body, um, shows it knows that it got pinched.”
“How does she show it?” Gracie asked.
Her father leaned back in the soft chair and closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and slapped his hands on his knees. “They have a special, safe way of measuring it, but—”
“How?” Gracie asked.
“Let me finish, Gracie. I want to talk about—”
“Just tell her, Dad.” Emma also wanted to know. How did they measure her mother’s pain?
“I think it’s the nerve endings or something.” He stopped speaking.
Emma stared at him just as intently as her sister and brother. Tell us!
“Actually, in truth, I don’t have a clue. But it’s okay—I promise.” He looked at Gracie. “Cross my heart.” Her father made the sign Emma was used to seeing from her sister and Grandma Frances.
“When did the doctor tell you all this?” Emma was suspicious of this rush of happy talk.
Her father stared at each of them in turn. “This is what he’s been telling me all along. And today I asked about her pain response—and it’s getting better. And yes, that really is a good thing. Ask Grandma; she was there when he said it.”
Gracie nodded. Emma guessed that her sister’s little computer brain had decided if Grandma thought it was good, it was good.
“Listen, guys.” Her father’s voice had switched gears. He sounded less worshipful-prayer father and more deal-maker dad. “I’m asking you to be as wise—that means truly smart, Caleb—as possible. Grandma and Grandpa and I talked about something important today. Something for Mommy.”
“What?” Emma sat up straight, alert.
“When Mommy is, um, better, when she wakes up, she won’t be all the way better right away—after she wakes up, she’s going to go through stages. Like the hospital counselor told us. Do you remember?”
“Like a butterfly?” Gracie suggested. “How it changes from a caterpillar?”
“Sort of—but in her head, not just in her body. So she’ll talk slower and not understand everything for a while. Some things she’ll have to learn again.”
“Like what?” Caleb crossed his legs and rocked on his butt.
“We won’t know until it happens—but things like reading. Or how to tie her shoe.”
“I can help, right?” Caleb asked.
“Sure, buddy.”
“How long?” Gracie asked.
“I’m not sure. No one knows until it happens.”
“But what if she never wakes up?” Caleb asked.
“She’s going to wake up.” Emma squeezed her brother’s arm.
Her father put up his hand, signaling them to stop. “Listen. When Mommy wakes up, she’s going to need plenty of help and lots of love, and we have to treat her special. One way is going to be making sure she doesn’t have to worry. It’s very, very, very important. Do you understand?” His voice raised just enough so that Emma knew they were meant to nod—even Caleb got the message.
“When she comes home, we’re not going to talk about the details of the accident,” her father continued. “Otherwise she’d get upset.”
“You mean how you went too fast?” Caleb asked.
“None of the details need to be . . . shared with Mommy right away. I mean that it doesn’t matter how it happened. The important
thing is that she gets well.”
“We’re lying about it?” Gracie’s forehead wrinkled until she looked like Grandma Frances.
Her father tapped his foot against the table. “We’re not lying. We’re just making the beginning easier for Mommy.”
“How?” Gracie asked.
“By explaining the important part, how it was raining and there was a car too close to us that tried to pass. We have to keep it simple.”
Her father looked at Emma, appearing grateful when she didn’t say anything.
“She’s going to have to get used to a lot of things that will be difficult for her,” he continued. “And she’ll need all her energy for getting better.”
“Are we ever going to tell her?” Gracie fingered her cross.
“We’ll see, cupcake. If the right time comes, we’ll tell her everything.”
“How will we know when it’s the right time?” she asked.
“Because I’ll tell you,” her father said.
Right. Because you’re so wise, smart, and know how to handle family matters so well. Emma thought she should say something—speak up for her mother, for truth, for doing the right thing. Still, how would her mother feel coming home to the news that it might be Daddy’s fault? That without Grandpa Benedikte he might be in jail right now? That’s what she heard Aunt Vanessa say. Her aunt was probably exaggerating like always, but it was true that they were deciding whether to charge him with driving to endanger. They were investigating. Emma wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but she knew it had to be very bad. And that he could be in lots of trouble.
He drove too fast. Like a maniac. End of story. Maybe Grandpa Benedikte’s lawyer will get him off, but he’ll always be guilty to me.
Last time she was at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, she’d heard Grandpa Jake say that. They thought she was upstairs, but she’d been right in the next room, listening to them.
Does it really matter in the end? Grandma’s words were so teary it was hard to understand everything. Isn’t what is, is? Let’s just get her better. Now she’ll need Ben more than ever.
What was Emma’s responsibility here? Weighing one bad option after another left her queasy and in need of someone who wasn’t insane, crying, or angry.
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