The Edge of Grace

by Christa Allan

  But only one of them went home with Mr. Jordan.

  23

  A box of facial tissues, a Bible, four or five nondescript chairs. All in a room with as much space as an elevator. A get in and get out kind of room whose bare and windowless walls suggested not much good news happened there. All of which served to explain why none of us sat when David and Max's friend, also their physician, Dr. Armstrong—a short man, not much taller than Julie—arrived.

  Max pointed to me, "David's sister," and Julie, "David's sister's friend," then rolled out questions as if he'd been winding them on a spool all day. "How is he? Can I . . . can we see him? How long will he have to stay? Will he—"

  "Slow down." Dr. Armstrong gently patted Max's arm. "Let me give you my doctor talk, and whatever I don't answer, you can ask."

  The three of us nodded as if he asked for our approval.

  "Excuse me." The doctor placed his hand on the chair next to where I stood. "I'm going to sit for a few minutes." He had one of those fifteen-to-twenty-year faces. He could have been in his forties or sixties, but right now he looked like he could use a long nap.

  "Okay, let's start at the top with the concussion. He lost consciousness; we're just not sure for how long because we don't know the time between the attack and Max finding him. The MRI showed swelling, which we expected, and a golf-ball sized hematoma, which should resolve itself." He went on to explain that David needed continued monitoring over the next few days for any signs of more serious symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, double vision, slurred speech. "If all he had was this concussion, we'd be talking severe headaches. I think the pain meds for his other injuries will help with those."

  Julie shifted beside me, and then asked Dr. Armstrong, "Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee?" She generously offered to be hostess because of her low tolerance for medical discussions. I've seen her dash out of a room where someone's talking about a child throwing up to avoid providing her own live demonstration.

  "Thank you. Yes. I would appreciate if you could locate a bottle of water. It doesn't even have to be cold."

  "Anyone else?" she asked as she squeezed past the doctor." No? Okay, I'll be back."

  The door closed and Dr. Armstrong continued. "Next, he had a severely displaced fracture of his right elbow." He shifted in the chair, made a cup with one hand, bent his arm and placed his cupped hand at the elbow. "Where those two long bones in your arm meet, there's a part that cups around the end, makes rotation possible. That bony part of your elbow."

  "How did that happen?" Max asked the question, but I don't think either one of us wanted to know the answer. At least not now.

  Dr. Armstrong took a breath, looked away for a moment, then focused on Max. "Some things we won't know for sure until David can tell us. This kind of fracture can happen indirectly, for instance, when somebody's attempting to break a fall. The tendency is to stretch the arm out straight, but the elbow locks, so if a person lands on the wrist, it results in this fracture. Or it can happen directly. An unexpected fall or being hit by a hard object."

  Max pulled out a chair, motioned for me to sit down, then moved another chair close to mine, and sat down himself.

  My eyes dripped, my nose dripped. Where were those stupid tissues? Dr. Armstrong sensed my distraction, reached across to a table, and extended the box. I took it with a "thank you" before telling myself to just listen and not think. To try to focus on the clinical part, so I could understand and ask questions.

  Dr. Armstrong continued and a few words broke through my self-induced fog . . . "tricep muscles" and "incision" and "plates and screws." We were still on David's elbow. How was I going to make it through the rest of his body?

  All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again.

  "We'll remove the stitches in ten to fourteen days, but he won't be able to lift anything for at least six weeks. The good news is we can start the range of motion exercises soon. Most patients, with physical therapy, recover their strength in around six months. To heal fully, a year. Even then, a full range of motion may not be possible."

  "Just me." Julie knocked as she opened the door. "Sorry for the delay. I went to the cafeteria." She handed Dr. Armstrong the bottled water. "I have a few calls to return. But I'll be right outside if anyone needs me, okay?"

  "One more major, then we'll go the minors." The doctor drank half the water, poured a little in his hand, and splashed his face. "Not very sophisticated, but it feels good."

  By the time he finished—and it seemed as if he never would—I felt like we'd stumbled onto the medical injuries aisle at Wal-Mart, and we were trying to load up our cart. Except it wasn't a cart. It was David with a fractured patella, that small bone in front of the knee joint where the thigh and shin bones met, that Walter pinned, and wired and sewed together. And a cast, knee brace, physical therapy, and one or two years later, removing the wires and pins.

  Julie slipped back in just in time for what Dr. Armstrong called "the performance."

  "You're going to see David today, but not for an extended time. By now, David's not the only person who needs rest. And I'd make that an order if I could . . ."

  He finished his water, pulled his chair closer, and leaned forward. "David came through long hours in surgery, but you're not going to see any of that. Those incisions are covered with bandages. But there are other effects of this attack that bandages won't cover. His torso is badly bruised, so much so that we fully expected internal injuries. But, so far, there's no evidence of any."

  Max pulled tissues from my box. He hadn't wiped his eyes for a while, but he'd become so pale, he was almost translucent. His hands shook as if his teeth were chattering, and he attempted to mimic the rhythm.

  Julie leaned over and stilled Max's hands when she held them in her own. A simple gesture that left me humbled and ashamed.

  Dr. Armstrong continued. "David's nose is broken and bruised, he has two black eyes, a cut on his upper lip, scratches on his forehead . . . his face is swollen . . . when you look at David, please try not to let him see himself in your reaction. He'll see himself soon enough."

  We were told David would be in the recovery room for another hour, so Max went home to change. Julie and I cruised through the gift shop, found a walking trail that circled the hospital, and finally migrated back to food.

  "How long have we been here? I feel like I need two showers."

  "We've been here long enough for a shift change. Long enough to not feel guilty that we're drinking coffee and eating a mediocre fudge brownie with a scoop of ice cream. And," she checked the time on her phone, "almost long enough for you to see your brother."

  I mashed the remains of my brownie into the ice cream. There's a better dessert here waiting to happen. Brownie beignet stuffed with ice cream? "What has Trey been telling the boys? If Ben thinks we're Christmas shopping, after being gone this long, he's going to wonder why fifty presents aren't sitting under the tree on Christmas morning."

  "Tell you the truth, I don't have a clue what he told them. We spend more time worrying about how not to worry them than they spend worrying. Who knows . . . maybe they're out somewhere shopping for us." She ate the last piece of her brownie. "Want the rest of my ice cream now that you made brownie soup with yours?"

  "Hey, that could be it!" I squealed, much louder than intended. "Are people still staring at us?" I shoveled through my purse to find paper and a pen. I kept my head down, and tried to stare up. Not comfortable and not working.

  "They were over it before you stuck your head in your minisuitcase of your pretending to be looking for something."

  "That was no pretend." I held up a pen and my checkbook.

  "You're writing me a check for saying 'brownie soup'?"

  "Only if the idea makes it big." I turned the checkbook over, folded the back away from the checks, and wrote myself notes on the blank sides. "When I can't find paper, I just use my checkbook as a jotter," I explained

 
"Well, now I understand how you drove Lori a few miles into crazy."

  I jerked my head up at Lori's name. "Good grief. We still haven't called her." I tapped my pen on the edge of the dessert plate. "And this would have been the perfect time to call."

  "We? There's no 'we.' She's your ex-almost-sister-in-law. And this is the perfect time? Why, because Max isn't here?" She swept her arm around the cafeteria. "Lot of space for phone calls."

  "Look, I just didn't want the situation with Max and Lori to be awkward, that's all." I wrote down an ingredient I didn't want to forget, then put everything back in my purse. "It's been a rough day. What's wrong with my wanting to protect their feelings?"

  "Um, let's see. Because it's not their feelings you're protecting. You haven't seen your brother in months. Talked to him maybe a handful of times. This awful thing happens to him, and you're forced to meet Max. You spend most of your time around him like Goldilocks, trying to get it 'just right.' You haven't been the Ice Queen, but you're not buckets of sunshine either. You're protecting you."

  "I keep saying this, and you don't seem to get it. It's different when it's your brother. I'm trying to figure out how this is all supposed to work with this man. Is this supposed to last forever? He could be gone in a month or a year. Somebody else could take his place."

  "And what if he's not gone? What if he stays? I'm your best friend, and every time I try to talk to you about it, you tell me 'not now'?"

  "I just didn't feel comfortable talking."

  "Y'know, that, my sweet friend, is a lesson to be learned from Jesus. He did his best work among the uncomfortable."

  24

  He's in the fifth bed on the right."

  What the receptionist at the desk didn't mention was that, in the post-recovery room, you don't actually see the beds. You see curtained areas on both sides of the room that looked like round green pods with legs. The privacy curtains prevented visitors from seeing people, but definitely not from hearing them. It reminded me of the dressing rooms in Macys when all you knew was the person in the room next to you "never could wear these blouses."

  "Four . . . five. This is it." Julie stopped, looked up and down the curtain. "Can't ever figure out where these things open and close."

  I watched Julie, momentarily suspending a conversation with God I'd started when we walked out of the elevator. If he is the God of do-overs, I need a second chance. I'm pathetic and weak, and Julie's probably right; I'm selfish. As much as I dreaded seeing David, I was relieved to not have to say much. The truth was, I didn't know if I could say what David wanted to hear. His body was battered. I didn't want to beat up his spirit. And if I already had, then I hoped God was the God of third chances.

  Max must have heard us because, like a magician, he stepped out from the curtains, his finger on his lips in the "shush" position. "He's asleep, but he'll open his eyes again. He's been doing that off and on since I've been here." Max lowered his voice and leaned closer. "The doctor wasn't exaggerating about how he looks. Come in now so you can ditch the shock on your faces before he wakes up."

  Julie read a text message, shook her head, and mumbled a few words that could have placed her on the Ladies' Altar Society "least wanted at a meeting" list. "Trey can't find the outdoor Christmas lights. Shocker. Probably because they're in the garage where they're supposed to be." She looked at the ceiling, "Lord, help me," and then at the two of us. "Okay, I'm going to call Mr. Hopelessly Dazed and Confused. Besides, you're the two people David most wants to see. Find me in the waiting room when you're finished."

  Julie provided my buffer all morning. I wondered if this might have been her way of telling me I was on my own. Once again, I braced myself for an inconceivable shock and as I slipped through the curtain, everything I thought I knew about hate and forgiveness and love slipped out.

  Shock, I knew about.

  After Hurricane Katrina, I learned when devastation happens far beyond anything we ever can imagine, our minds and our hearts can't process it all at once. Houses shoved off their foundations, a yellow truck perched between the stripped branches of an oak tree, a neighbor's shed in the middle of a kitchen. Roof rescues and food shortages and months without electricity. In those early days and weeks, numbness was our protection, perhaps even our sanity. As time passed, our brains fed us like infants ready to be weaned. Open wide, here's your grandmother's house after thirteen feet of water moved in for a week. Swallow it until your heart groans from the excess. Then another bite and another and another until the entire banquet of pain and loss were set out before us, and we were strong enough to choose for ourselves.

  And so as I stepped beyond the curtain, my brain allowed me to see the broken and bruised body, but my heart—my heart could not reconcile that wounded man, pale and still, with my brother. My brother, who took Ben to his first LSU football game, who lifted my husband out of his hospital bed and into a golf cart so even if Harrison couldn't play the game, he could enjoy the ride. My brother, who bought everything I needed to start a catering business, and said I could pay him back in meals—for the rest of his life.

  I wrapped one hand around the cold bedrail and gently placed my other over his fingers, being careful to avoid the back of his hand where the IV had been inserted. One minute, David. I need one minute before you open your eyes. Just one minute to let my rage and grief spill over the floodwalls so calmness can rise and fill their place.

  Max stood on the other side of the hospital bed unwinding earplugs from around an iPod. "When I went home to change, I picked up a few of David's gadgets. This," he held up the electric blue Nano, "and his Kindle. I don't know how long he'll be here, but I knew he'd go nuts without entertainment."

  "What about his laptop? He's a compulsive email checker." Kind of surprising Max would have left that behind. Maybe there were some things he didn't know about David.

  "I know. And that's exactly why I didn't bring it. Not that he can't check his email on his phone." He put one of the plugs in his ear, turned on the iPod, and added, "But knowing your brother, if his laptop's here, he'll try to start working."

  I didn't understand the problem with David being distracted by work, other than having only one hand for the keyboard. But Max wasn't asking my opinion and it didn't seem like David being between us would end with this hospital bed.

  Max fiddled with the iPod when David started to wake up. His head turned from side to side and when he opened his eyes, it was Max he saw first.

  And that's when it hit me.

  The realization that this was the first time I saw this David. With Max. As in David and Max. Foreign territory for me, and I didn't have a passport. I wasn't sure I wanted one. But I was sure I was exactly where I didn't want to be all those months ago when David called me.

  The same brain that floated me down the river of denial after tragedy, refused to allow me to board the ship as I witnessed the unmistakable tenderness in Max's eyes and the relief I heard, even in David's raspy voice when he said, "You came back."

  "I never left," said Max, his voice as tender as the hand he held against David's face.

  I felt like an intruder. Like the afternoon I knocked on Julie's backdoor as I opened it and walked into the kitchen to witness her and Trey quickly and awkwardly untangling themselves. I opened my mouth to eliminate any possibility of another affectionate exchange, but Max spoke before I could." David, Caryn's here."

  Dr. Armstrong couldn't have prepared me for this pain. A pain that slammed into me with the sudden shock of a stubbed toe against a coffee table when my brother radiated a smile from a swollen face covered by shades of purple and black. My eyes burned with tears as I stood on tiptoe and reached over the bedrail to attempt an awkward hug. I slipped my face next to his battered one and whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  25

  I didn't realize I slept on the drive home until the galumph of the tires jolted my head forward. The screeching and squeaking of the garage door opening invaded my dream and left unresol
ved the conversation between Zoe and Julie, who stood over the bed of someone I didn't know. I shook my head and tried to clear the remnants of memory. It must have been, in dream land, an intense discussion because my aching jaw meant I clenched my teeth for quite a while.

  Julie turned off the car, leaned against her forehead on her folded arms on top of the steering wheel. "How many days have we been gone?"

  "I know. I feel as if we've experienced a temporal rift— hurled through space and landed at some other place, some other time—and then found our way back." I yawned and stretched my legs out in front of me. "You must be exhausted. Even after my car nap, I'm tired. Hope I didn't snore."

  She opened her car door. "Not as much as Trey. At least you're good company for someone who's supposed to be asleep. You even answered some of my questions."

  "I don't even want to know." I said and started to haul my body out of the car.

  "No. Trust me. You don't."

  I detected enough of a smile in her voice to know she was teasing. As close as we were, some parts of my life I wanted to stay buried.

  "We're here," Julie chanted in her Poltergeist imitation as she opened the side door from the garage. The resiny pine scent of the Christmas tree we'd abandoned earlier that day greeted us.

  "I'm in the kitchen," Trey called out.

  Julie hung her purse on the doorknob and muttered, "It's after nine o'clock. He better not be fixing dinner." She sighed deeply.

  I sensed an "or else" but kept that to myself.

  We walked into a dark kitchen except for the lights from the bronze pendants hanging over the island where Trey stood measuring scoops of coffee into the brew filter. "Glad you're home. The boys are already asleep." He lifted his eyes, but kept counting. "Thought I'd make coffee, and then you can catch me up on David."