by Noe Dearden
*****
Charlotte sat on the crinkly paper of the exam table, shivering in the loose-fitted hospital smock. She couldn’t understand why she was so cold. Her fingers felt numb. She wondered if Emi was okay. She had seemed fine in the ambulance.
“We can give you a shot of Demerol to ease the pain,” the nurse said.
“No. I’m fine.”
Charlotte disliked injections. It wasn’t a fear of needles, but rather a general distaste for the process of pumping foreign substances into the bloodstream.
“If you change your mind, let me know,” the nurse said. “I’m going to step outside, but you stay here. We’re still waiting for your x-rays to come back.
The nurse left, leaving the door half open.
Charlotte sat perfectly still to avoid the stabbing pain along her collarbone. She didn’t want to look down at it, because it would only make the injury more real. The pain made her stomach flip and she wondered for a moment if she should accept the painkillers after all.
The thought did not hold much appeal.
Her mind wandered, and brought her to a memory of seven years ago. It rose to the surface of her mind with perfect clarity.
It had been summertime in Philadelphia, school was out, and Charlotte had come inside flushed and pleased from racing with friends up and down the city blocks on her bicycle. All the windows in the apartment had been left wide open, but it was still so hot, with the smell of city-summer in the air. She’d wanted a snack, gone to her mom’s room, stopped at the doorway. She saw something there that she shouldn’t have seen.
Even at the time, she’d known that she was witnessing a private moment. Mom had sat there on the bed, her attention focused on the practiced, sure-handed movement of her hands as she tied a blue elastic tourniquet effortlessly around her arm. Sunlight from the window had caught in her gossamer hair, and she looked ethereal in the light. She was flicking the barrel of a syringe. She was pulling back the plunger with one thumb.
That was the first time Charlotte had seen her mother do this, but not the last. The quiet beauty of that moment became quickly overwhelmed by the far less pleasant images that followed. Her mom passed out with the needle still hanging from her arm. The track mark wounds marching up and down her flesh. The whimpering, sweat-soaked monster her mother became when she didn’t get her fix.
Charlotte arose from her memory, knowing for certain that she didn’t want a shot of painkillers. Pills, maybe, but not injections. She just couldn’t stomach it.
There was a knock at the door and a middle-aged, balding man came into the room.
“Charlotte,” he said, referring to a manila folder. “I have your x-rays here.”
He put them up on the overhead light box.
“We don’t have your medical history on file, but it looks to me like you’ve broken your clavicle before,” he said. “Am I right?”
Charlotte nodded.
“And it looks like it was a pretty recent injury, too.”
She nodded again.
“How long ago was that?” he asked.
“A year ago.”
“Okay. Well, sometimes where a bone was broken before, it doesn’t quite knit together as strong as it was before. So you probably know this from last time you were injured, but I’ll go over it again. We’re going to put you in a sling. You’ll probably not want to move your arm too much for another three weeks or so, while you wait for your bone to heal. Then you can start some therapy to help with the stiffness. That sound okay to you?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I suggest acetaminophen to help with the pain,” he said, scribbling a note onto his clipboard. “Try to avoid ibuprofen. There are some who say it slows bone healing.”
He straightened up and smiled at her. “Unless you have any questions, I’m going to go talk to your parents. A nurse will come to help you into your clothes.”
He was on his way out again, but Charlotte said, “Wait.”
“Yes?” His hand was on the doorknob.
“Can you not tell my family that my collarbone was broken before?”
He looked a little perplexed. “Um…”
“Never mind,” Charlotte said quickly, embarrassed. “It’s okay.
She figured she could lie if they asked her about it. Tell them it was a sports injury. They didn’t have to know about what happened with Dom. She wasn’t ready to go there with them.
The doctor gave her a puzzled look, like he wanted to say something more, but then nodded. “It was nice meeting you, Charlotte. Take care,” he said brusquely, and left the room.