Handle With Care Read online

  'I win.'

  'You always win.'

  I laughed at you. 'That's because you always throw scissors.'

  'Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors,' you said. You were, in general, full of information no one else knew or cared about, because you read all the time, or surfed the Net, or listened to shows on the History Channel that put me to sleep. It freaked people out, to come across a five-year-old who knew that toilets flush in the key of E-flat or that the oldest word in the English language is town, but Mom said that lots of kids with OI were early readers with advanced verbal skills. I figured it was like a muscle: your brain got used more than the rest of your body, which was always breaking down; no wonder you sounded like a little Einstein.

  'Do I have everything?' Mom asked, but she was talking to herself. For the bazillionth time she ran through a checklist. 'The letter,' she said, and then she turned to me. 'Amelia, we need the doctor's note.'

  It was a letter from Dr Rosenblad, saying the obvious: that you had OI, that you were treated by him at Children's Hospital - in case of emergency, which was actually pretty amusing since your breaks were one emergency after another. It was in the glove compartment of the van, next to the registration and the owner's manual from Toyota, plus a torn map of Massachusetts, a Jiffy Lube receipt, and a piece of gum that had lost its wrapper and grown furry. I'd done the inventory once when my mother was paying for gas.

  'If it's in the van, why can't you just get it when we drive to the airport?'

  'Because I'll forget,' Mom said as Dad walked in.

  'We're locked and loaded,' he said. 'What do you say, Willow? Should we go visit Mickey?'

  You gave him a huge grin, as if Mickey Mouse was real and not just some teenage girl wearing a big plastic head for her summer job. 'Mickey Mouse's birthday is November eighteenth,' you announced as he helped you crawl down from the chair. 'Amelia beat me at Rock Paper Scissors.'

  'That's because you always throw scissors,' Dad said.

  Mom frowned over her list one last time. 'Sean, did you pack the Motrin?'

  'Two bottles.'

  'And the camera?'

  'Shoot, I took it out and left it on the dresser upstairs--' He turned to me. 'Sweetie, can you grab it while I put Willow in the car?'

  I nodded and ran upstairs. When I came down, camera in hand, Mom was standing alone in the kitchen turning in a slow circle, as if she didn't know what to do without Willow by her side. She shut off the lights and locked the front door, and I bounded over to the van. I handed the camera to Dad and buckled myself in beside your car seat, and let myself admit that, as dorky as it was to be twelve years old and excited about Disney World, I was. I was thinking about sunshine and Disney songs and monorails, and not at all about the letter from Dr Rosenblad.

  Which means that everything that happened was my fault.

  We didn't even make it to the stupid teacups. By the time our flight landed and we got to the hotel, it was late afternoon. We drove to the theme park and had just walked onto Main Street, U.S.A. - Cinderella's Castle in full view - when the perfect storm hit. You said you were hungry, and we turned into an old-time ice-cream parlor. Dad stood in line holding your hand while Mom brought napkins over to the table where I was sitting. 'Look,' I said, pointing out Goofy pumping the hand of a screaming toddler. At exactly the same moment that Mom let one napkin flutter to the ground and Dad let go of your hand to take out his wallet, you hurried to the window to see what I wanted to show you, and you slipped on the tiny paper square.

  We all watched it in slow motion, the way your legs simply gave out from underneath you, so that you sat down hard on your bottom. You looked up at us, and the whites of your eyes flashed blue, the way they always do when you break.

  It was almost like the people at Disney World had been expecting this to happen. No sooner had Mom told the man scooping ice cream that you'd broken your leg than two men from their medical facility came with a stretcher. With Mom giving orders, the way she always does around doctors, they managed to get you onto it. You weren't crying, but then, you hardly ever did when you broke something. Once, I had fractured my pinkie playing tetherball at school and I couldn't stop freaking out when it turned bright red and blew up like a balloon, but you didn't even cry the time you broke your arm right through the skin.

  'Doesn't it hurt?' I whispered, as they lifted up the stretcher so that it suddenly grew wheels.

  You were biting your lower lip, and you nodded.

  There was an ambulance waiting for us when we got to the Disney World gate. I took one last look at Main Street, U.S.A., at the top of the metal cone that housed Space Mountain, at the kids who were running in instead of going out, and then I crawled into the car that someone had arranged so Dad and I could follow you and Mom to the hospital.

  It was weird, going to an emergency room that wasn't our usual one. Everyone at our local hospital knew you, and the doctors all listened to what Mom told them. Here, though, nobody was paying any attention to her. They said this could be not one but two femur fractures, and that might mean internal bleeding. Mom went into the examination room with you for the X-ray, which left Dad and me sitting on green plastic chairs in a waiting room. 'I'm sorry, Meel,' he said, and I just shrugged. 'Maybe it'll be an easy one, and we can go back to the park tomorrow.' There had been a man in a black suit at Disney World who told my father that we would be comped, whatever that meant, if we wanted to return another day.

  It was Saturday night, and the people coming into the emergency room were much more interesting than the TV program that was playing. There were two kids who looked like they were old enough to be in college, both bleeding from the same spot on their foreheads and laughing every time they looked at each other. There was an old man wearing sequined pants and holding the right side of his stomach, and a girl who spoke only Spanish and was carrying screaming twin babies.

  Suddenly, Mom burst out of the double doors to the right, with a nurse running after her and another woman in a skinny pin-striped skirt and red high heels. 'The letter,' she cried. 'Sean, what did you do with it?'

  'What letter?' Dad asked, but I already knew what she was talking about, and just like that, I thought I might throw up.

  'Mrs O'Keefe,' the woman said, 'please. Let's do this somewhere more private.'

  She touched Mom's arm, and - well, the only way I can really describe it is that Mom just folded in half. We were led to a room with a tattered red couch and a little oval table and fake flowers in a vase. There was a picture on the wall of two pandas, and I stared at it while the woman in the skinny skirt - she said her name was Donna Roman, and she was from the Department of Children and Families - talked to our parents. 'Dr Rice contacted us because he has some concerns about the injuries to Willow,' she said. 'Bowing in her arm and X-rays indicate that this wasn't her first break?'

  'Willow's got osteogenesis imperfecta,' Dad said.

  'I already told her,' Mom said. 'She didn't listen.'

  'Without a physician's statement, we have to look into this further. It's just protocol, to protect children--'

  'I'd like to protect my child,' Mom said, her voice sharp as a razor. 'I'd like you to let me get back in there so I can do just that.'

  'Dr Rice is an expert--'

  'If he was an expert, then he'd know I was telling the truth,' Mom shot back.

  'From what I understand, Dr Rice is trying to reach your daughter's physician,' Donna Roman said. 'But since it's Saturday night, he's having trouble making contact. So in the meantime, I'd like to get you to sign releases that will allow us to do a full examination on Willow - a full bone scan and neurological exam - and in the meantime, we can talk a little bit.'

  'The last thing Willow needs is more testing--'Mom said.

  'Look, Ms. Roman,' Dad interrupted. 'I'm a police officer. You can't really believe I'd lie to you?'

  'I've already spoken to your wife, Mr O'Keefe, and I'm going to want to speak to you, too . . . but first I'd like