Handle With Care Read online

  I could have gone back into the school and asked them to call 911, but there was nothing an EMT could do for you that I didn't know how to do myself. So I rummaged in the back of the van and found an old People magazine. Using it as an immobilizer, I wrapped an Ace bandage around your upper arm. I winged a prayer that you wouldn't have to be casted - casts made bone density drop, and each place a cast ended was a new weak point for a future break. You could get away with a Wee Walker boot or an Aircast or a splint most of the time - except for hip fractures, and vertebrae, and femurs. Those breaks were the ones that made you go still and quiet, like now. Those breaks were the ones that had me driving straight to the ER, because I was too scared to handle them on my own.

  At the hospital, I pulled into a handicapped spot and carried you into triage. 'My daughter has osteogenesis imperfecta,' I told the nurse. 'She's broken her arm.'

  The woman pursed her lips. 'How about you do the diagnosis after you get a medical degree?'

  'Trudy, is there a problem?' A doctor who looked too young to even be shaving was suddenly standing in front of us, peering down at you. 'Did I hear you say OI?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'I think it's her humerus.'

  'I'll take care of this one,' the doctor said. 'I'm Dr Dewitt. Do you want to put her in a wheelchair--'

  'We're good,' I said, and I hoisted you higher in my arms. As he led us down the hall to Radiology, I gave him your medical history. He stopped me only once - to sweet-talk the technician into giving up a room quickly. 'Okay,' the doctor said, leaning over you on the X-ray table, his hand on your forearm. 'I'm just going to move this the tiniest bit . . .'

  'No,' I said, stepping forward. 'You can move the machine, can't you?'

  'Well,' Dr Dewitt said, nonplussed. 'We don't usually.'

  'But you can?'

  He looked at me again and then made adjustments to the equipment, draping the heavy lead vest over your chest. I moved to the rear of the room so the film could be taken. 'Good job, Willow. Now just one more of your lower arm,' the doctor said.

  'No,' I said.

  The doctor looked up, exasperated. 'With all due respect, Mrs O'Keefe, I really need to do my job.'

  But I was doing mine, too. When you broke, I tried to limit the number of X-rays that were done; sometimes I had them skipped altogether if they weren't going to change the outcome of the treatment. 'We already know she's got a break,' I reasoned. 'Do you think it's displaced?'

  The doctor's eyes widened as I spoke his own language to him. 'No.'

  'Then you don't really have to X-ray the tibia and fibula, do you?'

  'Well,' Dr Dewitt admitted. 'That depends.'

  'Do you have any idea how many X-rays my daughter will have to get in the course of her lifetime?' I asked.

  He folded his arms. 'You win. We really don't need to X-ray the lower arm.'

  While we waited for the film to develop, I rubbed your back. Slowly, you were returning from wherever it was that you went when you had a break. You were fidgeting more, whimpering. Shivering, which only made you hurt more.

  I stuck my head out of the room to ask a technician if she had a blanket I might wrap around you and found Dr Dewitt approaching with your X-rays. 'Willow's cold,' I said, and he whipped off his white coat and settled it over your shoulders as soon as he stepped into the room. 'The good news,' he said, 'is that Willow's other break is healing nicely.'

  What other break?

  I didn't realize I'd said it aloud until the doctor pointed to a spot on your upper arm. It was hard to see - the collagen defect left your bones milky - but sure enough, there was the ridge of callus that suggested a healing fracture.

  I felt a stab of guilt. When had you hurt yourself, and how could I not have known?

  'Looks like it's about two weeks old,' Dr Dewitt mused, and just like that, I remembered: one night, when I carried you to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I had nearly dropped you. Although you'd insisted you were fine, you had only been lying for my sake.

  'I am amazed to report, Willow, that you've broken one of the bones that's hardest to break in the human body - your shoulder blade.' He pointed to the second image on the light board, to a crack clear down the middle of the scapula. 'It moves around so much, it's hardly ever fractured on impact.'

  'So what do we do?' I asked.

  'Well, she's already in a spica cast . . . Short of mummification, the best thing is probably going to be a sling. It's going to hurt for a few days - but the alternative seems like cruel and unusual punishment.' He bandaged your arm up against your chest, like the broken wing of a bird. 'That too tight?'

  You looked up at him. 'I broke my clavicle once. It hurt more. Did you know that clavicle means "little key" - not just because it looks like one but because it connects all the other bones in the chest?'

  Dr Dewitt's jaw dropped. 'Are you some kind of Doogie Howser prodigy?'

  'She reads a lot,' I said, smiling.

  'Scapula, sternum, and xiphoid,' you added. 'I can spell them, too.'

  'Damn,' the doctor said softly, and then he blushed. 'I mean, darn.' His gaze met mine over your head. 'She's the first OI patient I've had. It must be pretty wild.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Wild.'

  'Well, Willow, if you want to come work here as an ortho resident, there's a white coat with your name on it.' He nodded at me. 'And if you ever need someone to talk to . . .' He took a business card out of his breast pocket.

  I tucked it into my back pocket, embarrassed. This probably wasn't goodwill as much as it was preservation for Willow - the doctor had evidence of my own incompetence, two breaks up there in black and white. I pretended to be busy rummaging for something in my purse, but really, I was just waiting for him to leave. I heard him offer you a lollipop, say good-bye.

  How could I claim to know what was best for you, what you deserved, when at any moment I might be thrown a curveball - and learn that I hadn't protected you as well as I should have? Was I considering this lawsuit because of you, or to atone for all the things I'd done wrong up to this point?

  Like wishing for a baby. Each month when I'd realized that Sean and I had again not conceived, I used to strip and stand in the shower with the water streaming down my face, praying to God; praying to get pregnant, no matter what.

  I hoisted you into my arms - my left hip, since it was your right shoulder that had broken - and walked out of the examination room. The doctor's card was burning a hole in my back pocket. I was so distracted, in fact, that I nearly ran over a little girl who was walking in the door of the hospital just as we were walking out. 'Oh, honey, I'm sorry,' I said, and backed up. She was about your age, and she held on to her mother's hand. She wore a pink tutu and mud boots with frog faces on the toes. Her head was completely bald.

  You did the one thing you hated most when it happened to you: you stared.

  The little girl stared back.

  You'd learned early on that strangers would stare at a girl in a wheelchair. I'd taught you to smile at them, to say hello, so that they'd realize you were a person and not just some curiosity of nature. Amelia was your fiercest protector - if she saw a kid gawking at you, she'd walk right up and tell him that was what would happen if he didn't clean his room or eat his vegetables. Once or twice, she'd made a child burst into tears, and I almost didn't reprimand her because it made you smile and sit up straighter in your wheelchair, instead of trying to be invisible.

  But this was different; this was an equal match.

  I squeezed your waist. 'Willow,' I chided.

  The girl's mother looked up at me. A thousand words passed between us, although neither of us spoke. She nodded at me, and I nodded back.

  You and I walked out of the hospital into a late spring day that smelled of cinnamon and asphalt. You squinted, tried to raise your arm to shield your eyes, and remembered that it was bound tight against your body. 'That girl, Mommy,' you said. 'Why did she look like that?'

  'Because she's sick, and that's what ha