The Year of the Lucy

by Anne McCaffrey

‘What TV show does that come from?’ Steve wanted to know, and there was an odd quaver in his voice.

  Mirelle took his hand and dragged him into the kitchen where she poured a stiff shot of bourbon for each of them.

  They had barely finished dressing when they heard the ambulance siren. Nick had thrown open the front door and Tonia was jumping up and down in excitement when they got downstairs again.

  ‘Right down to the studio, sirs,’ Nick said, directing the two attendants.

  ‘Thanks, son.’

  ‘Did you tangle with a mountain lion, boy?’ the second man asked as he saw the scratches on Roman’s face that Mirelle somehow hadn’t noticed yet.

  ‘I tangled, period,’ Roman agreed with a wry grin.

  ‘Don’t want to jar that arm, feller, so you just use your other hand to keep it steady, and we’ll just lift you over here. There now.’ They had deftly completed the maneuver before Roman could tense up.

  ‘Only room for one of you two in the back, so flip a coin,’ one of the attendants told Steve and Mirelle.

  ‘You go with him, Steve,’ Mirelle suggested, thinking that would be better for Roman’s morale. Steve hesitated so briefly Mirelle was sure she was the only one who noticed. Then he smiled encouragingly down at his son on the stretcher.

  ‘Us men, huh?’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘I’ll go right to Emergency?’ Mirelle asked the ambulance men.

  ‘That’s right, lady, and watch the roads. They’re dangerously slippery.’

  ‘I will,’ Mirelle said and watched the party leave the house.

  She turned to Dad Martin then, who had a comforting arm about Nick and Tonia.

  ‘I’ll call as soon as we know what’s what. I’m terribly sorry that this should’ve happened on top of everything else.’

  ‘We should have checked with you first, before we made our plans to drop in on such a busy weekend,’ Dad Martin said graciously. ‘But we old folks get a notion and just pack up and go, come what may.’

  ‘That’s the way it should be, Dad. But we do so little work in the community and the church that . . . well, you do understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mirelle, I do,’ he said earnestly and then patted her hand. ‘You’ve got a fine boy in Roman. Go on now. He’ll want you as much as his father.’

  ‘Be good, you two,’ Mirelle fixed Nick and Tonia with a stern glare.

  ‘Promise!’ they chimed.

  It wasn’t until Mirelle was driving cautiously onto the main road that she realised Dad Martin had used ‘Mirelle’ for the first time.

  17

  WILL MARTIN MET them at the Emergency entrance and, after a cursory examination, sent Roman up to X-ray.

  ‘Good job of first aid, Mirelle,’ he commented. ‘Has he had anything to eat today?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘He did have a slug of bourbon,’ Steve reminded her.

  ‘He was so cold when he got in,’ Mirelle added.

  ‘Won’t hurt. I’ll give him a general. Between the broken arm, stitches and shock, I think it’ll be smarter. You better go make the admissions department happy and sign away a second mortgage.’

  Mirelle fumbled in her wallet for the hospitalisation card.

  ‘How long will he be in?’

  ‘Day or two,’ said the doctor with a shrug and walked off to the nurses’ station.

  While waiting for the X-rays to be processed, Mirelle and Steve stayed with Roman, saw him comfortable in a hospital room on the adult side, Roman announced with pleasure. Martin had ordered a pre-operative shot and Roman was shortly euphoric.

  ‘The coffee shop’s open,’ said the floor nurse hospitably when the operating-room orderly had arrived to wheel Roman’s bed away.

  ‘Momma?’ called Roman, craning his head around to see her.

  ‘Yes, Ro?’ Mirelle went quickly to his side.

  ‘You’ll be here when I wake up?’ His eyes could barely focus on her.

  ‘Right here,’ she assured him.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he mumbled, relaxing again.

  ‘Neither of us had any breakfast, Steve. Let’s go eat.’

  ‘Any idea how long it’ll take?’ Steve asked the floor nurse.

  She shrugged. ‘Not long, but I’ll page you when he’s brought down. Ordinarily he’d be sent to the recovery room for a while but as today’s Sunday, he’ll come down to his room instead. Your husband looks green, Mrs. Martin. You’d better feed him,’ she added over her shoulder as she walked away.

  Mirelle looked at Steve and agreed.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘She needn’t have said that.’ Steve swallowed hard. ‘Hell, to think that the kid walked down the hill . . . Oh, God, Mirelle, with a broken arm and that leg wide open.’

  Mirelle stared at her trembling husband. She pulled him into the elevator and punched the coffee shop floor.

  ‘You’re over-reacting badly, Steve. And it’s not just Roman. Does it have anything to do with Ralph?’ she asked very gently.

  His horrified look was all the answer she needed. She steered him into the coffee shop and ordered quickly from the waitress standing at the counter. The woman nodded and gestured towards the empty tables. Mirelle guided Steve to a secluded one by a window.

  ‘You always look that way whenever Ralph’s wound is mentioned. Now I know that Ralph couldn’t have been so badly wounded, in spite of your mother’s tale. So what is the real story?’

  Steve took the arrival of coffee as an excuse to delay his answer. He sipped half a cup before he began to talk, but the intensity of that tightly controlled voice startled Mirelle. She’d never seen him this way.

  ‘I’d always wanted a paper route, too, but my mother wouldn’t let me have one. She was afraid of what might happen!’ Steve’s fist came down on the table in frustrated emphasis. ‘She was always afraid of this happening, or that occurring. And she damned near killed both her sons with her fears.’

  ‘She thought she was doing the right thing, Steve,’ Mirelle said softly, wondering why she was defending her mother-in-law. But Steve sounded so vicious, so totally unlike himself.

  ‘She was. Only she did it the wrong way.’ Steve shrugged helplessly. ‘And there were both of us, unprotected when we needed protection the most and not enough sense to know how to get it.’

  ‘But, Steve, you must have got over it. You were decorated.’

  Steve made an impatient, vulgar noise. ‘So I carried a mortar up a cliff that couldn’t have been scaled and pinned some krauts down . . . in full view of a general, as it happened.’ He looked at Mirelle and covered her hands with his. ‘But I wasn’t the only guy doing unusual things, and I’d been in combat a long time by then. I’d learned, the hard way, all the things Roman can do now.

  ‘I never told you about breaking my arm, did I? In basic training.’ He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat and his eyes looked out at some far-distant point. ‘Yeah, I broke my arm and sat there, crying like a baby for my mother! I sat there for nearly four hours until it dawned on me that Mother was not going to come help me this time. We were on maneuvers and for all I know I’d be sitting there yet, but I had the good luck to be “captured” by the “enemy”. And when the medic asked me how long it’d been broken, I was so ashamed that I lied, and said I’d knocked myself out when I fell and only just come to before I got captured.’ There was deep disgust and bitterness in his face when he looked at Mirelle. ‘No, I could never have done what Roman did this morning: got up in the freezing cold and walked myself home.’

  ‘And Ralph?’ Mirelle asked gently.

  Steve let out a sour laugh. ‘Ralph got a flesh wound, a lousy little flesh wound in the arm. But he sat down and waited, too. For Mother to come succour her little boy. And damned near died of frostbite and pneumonia. He could have walked two miles to the nearest town – we’d occupied it and it was French anyhow – and got help. But he lay there, among the dead, waiting until he was damned near a corpse, too.
’

  Mirelle couldn’t think of anything to say to ease Steve’s bitterness or reassure him. She’d often thought that Ralph’s injury must have been minor, just as she’d known that Marian Martin had over-protected her children, but she hadn’t realised how seriously the woman’s attitude had handicapped her sons. It accounted for Steve’s attitude toward injuries of any kind and the self-sufficiency that he’d insisted all three of his children develop. The latter was almost a mania with him.

  The waitress appeared with the coffee pitcher and a sympathetic smile, and the second cups of coffee took up more time.

  ‘I’ll bet she forgot to call us,’ Steve said finally, anxiously glancing at his watch. ‘Let’s get back to his room.’ He paid the check and they went.

  ‘He’s not down yet,’ the nurse told them.

  ‘But it’s over an hour,’ Steve said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, really,’ she reassured them, and continued briskly on her rounds.

  They waited another fifteen anxious minutes before Roman was wheeled in. Will Martin, still in his surgical gown, entered right behind him.

  ‘Nasty breaks, but they should heal well,’ Will said.

  ‘They?’ Steve asked.

  ‘Sure, broke both bones in the forearm. I’m a little concerned about that open shin wound. It was mighty cold out there this morning. So I think we’ll keep him here at least two days.’ Then Will caught sight of Steve’s expression. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Steve. I’m not anticipating trouble, but I’m a cautious bugger.’

  ‘How soon before Roman’s conscious?’ Mirelle asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s been round once, but I’ve ordered sedation, so he won’t be with us much today.’

  ‘I’ll stick around a little while,’ Mirelle said, throwing her coat over the chair.

  ‘I’ll get on home to Mom and Dad,’ Steve said.

  Responsibility flooded back to Mirelle. ‘Oh, Lord, Steve, and there’s no dinner meat defrosted. Nothing ready.’

  ‘I’ll take everyone out to eat,’ Steve reassured her.

  ‘Please tell them how sorry I am that their visit’s been spoiled.’

  ‘Hon, this isn’t your fault,’ Steve said gently.

  Will Martin snorted and, waving a hand in farewell, left the room. Steve kissed her, looked down at the still form of his son, and then resolutely he bent and kissed Roman’s cheek. He left without a backward glance.

  Mirelle yanked the one upholstered chair into a position where she could watch Roman’s face and composed herself to wait.

  Roman woke a half-hour later, long enough to satisfy himself that his mother was where she’d promised she’d be, and then he dropped off to sleep again. Mirelle waited another hour, thinking that he might not remember his first awakening and believe that she had neglected him. She was about to phone Steve to pick her up when Sylvia Esterhazy peered around the door.

  ‘Up yet?’ she asked, her face anxious.

  ‘Not totally,’ Mirelle said in a soft voice.

  Sylvia looked down at the sleeping boy.

  ‘I called your house to thank you for the evening and Steve told me the gay tidings. Imagine that! Walking himself home! Steve’s very proud of him. So I decided that his bravery merited a reward, and brought him some reading matter.’ Sylvia handed Mirelle a bundle in drugstore wrapping.

  ‘Comic books? Did you buy out the store?’

  ‘One each of every title in stock,’ Sylvia said with a laugh. ‘I also came to take you home because hell hath broke loose there, or I misread the omens.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mir,’ and Sylvia was suddenly serious. ‘But Steve sounded as if he were choking on every word he said and he twice covered the phone to speak to someone. Then he asked me if I could pick you up.’

  Mirelle looked worriedly from her son to her friend, biting her lip indecisively.

  ‘It’s too much. It’s just too much,’ she muttered resentfully. ‘I can only take so much!’

  ‘From the look of him,’ said Sylvia as if Mirelle had not spoken, ‘I’d say that he was going to make this an all-day affair. Probably easier on him. Have the nurse call you when he does wake. Or he can. He’s got his own phone.’

  ‘It’s not so much not wanting to leave Roman as it is not wanting to go home,’ Mirelle said candidly, looking away from Sylvia’s sympathetic eyes.

  Roman stirred and murmured, the fingers of his uninjured hand picking at the spread. He tried to lift his right arm and the awareness of weight roused him.

  ‘Mom? Mom, I’m thirsty.’ Groggily he focused his eyes. ‘My arm’s so heavy. I can’t lift it.’ His complaint was almost incoherent.

  Mirelle looked up to ask Sylvia to get the nurse but the door was already closing behind her.

  ‘Mrs. Esterhazy’s gone for something, Roman. D’you remember you’re in the hospital?’

  ‘Hospital? Why? I’m never sick.’ He tried to sit up and then sagged back down against the pillows as memory returned. ‘I really did break my arm?’

  ‘Both bones, compound fracture,’ Mirelle assured him, trying to keep her voice light.

  ‘How many stitches did I get?’ Roman was awake to important details.

  ‘Lord, I forgot to ask Will. You can when he comes in to see you tomorrow. He wants you to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, just to make sure the shin is okay.’

  ‘Is this a private room?’

  ‘Yes,’ and Mirelle grinned at his awed reaction.

  ‘My own phone, too?’ for he’d spotted that now. ‘Is that my john? Or, gee, Mom, do I gotta ask a nurse for a bedpan?’ His voice had dropped to an outraged whisper.

  Mirelle had not thought of that aspect of this experience. Roman had a particular need for privacy which she had always respected.

  ‘Honey, they’re quite used to helping young men with such problems. And you’ll find that you don’t want to walk on that leg.’

  ‘But, gee, Mom, when a fella’s gotta . . . Oh, Mom,’ and Roman was quite upset.

  ‘Then ask for the male orderly. There’s always one on the men’s surgical ward. ‘I’m sure of it.’ Mirelle just hoped that she was right for the relief it gave Roman.

  ‘Can I call my friends?’

  ‘You’re here to rest, and you may find yourself sleepy most of the day . . . He’s awake,’ she told the nurse who swung in the door, followed by Sylvia.

  ‘Ginger ale, Coke or orange juice, Mr. Martin?’ asked the nurse, who Mirelle now realised was young and pretty enough to demoralise Roman.

  ‘Ginger ale, please. And, Mom, ask her . . .’ Roman made the last four words into a stage whisper.

  ‘Ask her what? Oh, yes, there is a male orderly on this floor, isn’t there?’

  The nurse glanced swiftly at the boy and then at the mother and assured her that this was so, with only the faintest tug of a smile on her face before she left.

  Sylvia deposited the bundle of comic books on the bed.

  ‘Rewards for your exceptional valor,’ she said and, as if unaware of his impaired dexterity, opened the package with a flourish.

  ‘Oh, gee, thanks, Mrs. Esterhazy. Say, how’d you know that I got hurt?’

  ‘Snowbird,’ Sylvia replied, winking. ‘I’m taking your mother home now.’

  ‘Mom,’ began Roman anxiously, ‘you and Dad aren’t mad at me for . . . I mean, things are kinda screwed up anyhow, with Grandmother getting so hysterical and all, and I sure didn’t make things any better, did I?’

  ‘Robert Marion Martin, there isn’t anything for us to be mad at you for. Why, your father’s so proud of you . . . oh, be quiet and read. One of us will be in to see you tonight,’ she said, hugging swiftly and kissing him fiercely for his bravery and his perception.

  ‘Read every word now,’ called Sylvia in farewell, and the door closed on his repeated thanks to her. ‘That’s a wonderful kid, Mirelle.’

  ‘He’s worth nine of his goddamned grandmother.’

  ‘I
like you better angry than despairing.’

  There was considerable ice under the snow and Sylvia drove slowly, without her customary verve. Mirelle was glad that Sylvia appreciated the value of silence: her presence was reassurance enough. Sylvia gave her a jaunty up-and-at-’em grin when she let Mirelle off at her drive.

  The first thing Mirelle noticed was the absence of her in-laws’ car. As she climbed the snowy steps to the front door, she wondered if they had all gone out to dinner in the one car but, as she opened the front door to the excited welcome of Nick and Tonia, she realised that the Martins had left.

  ‘How’s Roman?’ ‘How many stitches?’ ‘When can we see him?’

  Steve came out of the kitchen with a drink in one hand and a big fork in the other.

  ‘Steak,’ he announced. ‘Stiff one?’ he asked, holding up his own glass inquiringly.

  ‘Very!’ She began to shed her coat and boots.

  ‘Nick, set the table! Tonia, get glasses from the dishwasher and help your brother,’ Steve said in a tone of command from the kitchen. He returned with Mirelle’s drink which he handed her before he went back to his cooking. Mirelle followed to see him peering in at the broiler.

  ‘It’ll take a little longer,’ he said, ‘but it will be dark on the outside, and good and rare on the inside, just the way you like it. Make a salad for me, will you?’

  ‘There’s some left over from last night.’

  ‘Fine. How’s Roman?’

  ‘Coping rather well with hospital routine once he found out that there was a male orderly on the floor.’

  Steve stared at her a moment, mystified, and then laughed.

  ‘Sylvia had brought him half the comics in town so he is well supplied . . . at least for today,’ Mirelle continued.

  ‘Sylvia has the right idea. Was he sick or anything from the anesthesia?’

  ‘No. Only worried about upsetting everyone.’

  ‘Goddam,’ was Steve’s vehement exclamation and, when Mirelle swung around, she saw him sucking a finger, burned on the hot rack. ‘When those Cub Scouts come selling hot pads, buy a dozen, will you, Mirelle? I can’t find one without holes.’

  Mirelle shrugged, too relieved that he was not going to expand on his parents’ premature departure to question him. There had been a storm in the house: that was all too apparent in Nick’s ready cooperation and Tonia’s unusual compliance. But Mirelle had no energy to absorb any more emotional shocks and was grateful for the omission.