Handle With Care Read online

  'It hasn't been the right time . . .'

  You stuck your hand into the bag of letters. 'We're down to two-letter words,' you said. 'Daddy tried to do Oz, but that's a place and it's not allowed.'

  'There's never going to be a right time. Honey,' she said, turning to you, 'I'm really wiped out. Can I take a Scrabble rain check?' She walked into the kitchen.

  'I'll be right back,' I told you, and I followed her. 'I know I have no right to ask you this, but - I'd like you to be there when I tell her. I think it's important.'

  'Sean, I've had an awful day--'

  'And I am about to make it more awful. I know.' I looked down at her. 'Please.'

  Wordlessly, she walked back into the family room with me and sat down at the table. You turned, delighted. 'So you do want to play?'

  'Willow, your mom and I have some news for you.'

  'You're going to move back home for good? I knew it. At school Sapphire said that once her father moved out he fell in love with a dirty whore and now her parents aren't together anymore, but I said that you'd never do that.'

  'I told you so,' Charlotte said to me.

  'Wills, your mother and I . . . we're getting divorced.'

  She looked at each of us. 'Because of me?'

  'No,' Charlotte and I said in unison.

  'We both love you, and Amelia,' I said. 'But your mom and I can't be a couple anymore.'

  Charlotte walked toward the window, her back to me.

  'You're still going to see both of us. And live with both of us. We're going to do everything we can to make things easy for you, so not much has to change--'

  Your face was pinching up tighter and tighter as I spoke, becoming a flushed and angry pink. 'My goldfish,' you said. 'He can't live in two houses.'

  You had a betta that we'd gotten you last Christmas, the cheapest concession to a pet we could provide. To everyone's shock, it had lived longer than a week. 'We'll get you a second one,' I suggested.

  'But I don't want two goldfish!'

  'Willow--'

  'I hate you,' you shouted, starting to cry. 'I hate both of you!'

  You were out of your chair like a shot, running faster than I thought you could to the front door. 'Willow!' Charlotte called out. 'Be--'

  Careful.

  I heard the cry before I could reach the doorway. In your hurry to get away from me, from this news, you had not been cautious, and you were lying on the porch where you'd slipped. Your left femur was bent at a ninety-degree angle, breaking through the bloody surface of your thigh; the sclera of your eyes was an unholy blue. 'Mommy?' you said, and then your eyes rolled back in your head.

  'Willow!' Charlotte screamed, and she knelt down beside you. 'Call an ambulance,' she ordered, and then she bent closer to you and began to whisper.

  For a fraction of a second, as I looked at the two of you, I believed she was the better parent.

  Do not, if you can help it, break a bone on a Friday night. Even more important, do not break a femur the weekend of the annual convention of American orthopedic surgeons. Leaving Amelia home alone, Charlotte rode in the ambulance with you, and I followed in my truck. Although most of your serious breaks were handled by the orthopods in Omaha, this one was too severe to simply immobilize until they could assess it; we were headed to the local hospital, only to learn in the emergency room that the orthopedic surgeon called to consult was a resident.

  'A resident?' Charlotte had said. 'Look, no offense, but I'm not letting a resident rod my daughter's femur.'

  'I've done this kind of surgery before, Mrs O'Keefe,' the doctor said.

  'Not on a girl with OI,' Charlotte countered. 'And not on Willow.'

  He wanted to put a Fassier-Duval rod - one that would telescope as you grew - into your femur. It was the newest rod available, and it threaded into the epiphysis, whatever that was, which kept it from migrating, like the older rods used to. Most important, you wouldn't be in a spica cast, which was the postoperative care for femur rodding in the past - instead, you'd be in a functional brace, a long leg splint, for three weeks. Uncomfortable, especially during the summertime, but nowhere near as debilitating.

  I was stroking your forehead while this battle raged. You had regained consciousness, but you didn't speak, only stared straight ahead. It scared the crap out of me, but Charlotte said this happened a lot when it was a bad break; it had something to do with endorphins released by the body to self-medicate. And yet, you had started to shiver, as if you were in shock. I'd taken off my jacket to cover you when the thin hospital blanket didn't seem to work.

  Charlotte had badgered and argued; she had dropped names - and finally she got the guy to call his attending at the convention center in San Diego. It was mesmerizing to watch, like an orchestrated battle: the push, the retreat, the turn toward you before the next round. And it was, I realized, something your mother was very, very good at.

  The resident reappeared a few minutes later. 'Dr Yaeger can get on a red-eye and be here for a ten o'clock surgery tomorrow morning,' he said. 'That's the best we can do.'

  'She can't stay like this overnight,' I said.

  'We can give her morphine to sedate her.'

  They moved you onto a pediatric floor, where the murals of balloons and circus animals stood completely at odds with the shrieks of crying babies and the faces of shell-shocked parents wandering the halls. Charlotte watched over you while the orderlies slipped you from the stretcher to the bed - one sharp, hollow cry as your leg was moved - and gave instructions to the nurse (IV on your right side, because you were a lefty) when your morphine drip was set up.

  It was killing me, to watch you in pain. 'You were right,' I said to Charlotte. 'You wanted to put a rod in her leg and I said no.'

  Charlotte shook her head. 'You were right. She needed time to get up and run around to strengthen her muscles and bones, or this might have happened even sooner.'

  At that, you whimpered, and then you started to scratch. You raked at your arms, at your belly.

  'What's wrong?' Charlotte asked.

  'The bugs,' you said. 'They're all over me.'

  'Baby, there aren't any bugs,' I said, watching as she scraped her arms raw.

  'But it itches . . .'

  'How about we play a game?' Charlotte suggested. 'Poodle?' She reached up for your wrist and pulled it down to your side. 'Do you want to pick the word?'

  She was trying to distract you, and it worked. You nodded.

  'Can you poodle underwater?' Charlotte asked, and you shook your head. 'Can you poodle while you're asleep?'

  'No,' you said.

  She looked at me, nodding. 'Um, can you poodle with a friend?' I asked.

  You almost smiled. 'Absolutely not,' you said as your eyes started to drift shut.

  'Thank God,' I said. 'Maybe she'll sleep through now.'

  But, as if I'd cursed your chances, you suddenly jumped - an exaggerated full-body tremor that made you come right off the bed, and dislodged your leg. Immediately, you screamed.

  We had just managed to calm you down again when the same thing happened: as soon as you began to fall asleep, you startled as if you were falling off a cliff. Charlotte pushed the nurse's call button.

  'She's jumping,' Charlotte explained. 'It keeps happening.'

  'Morphine does that to some people,' the nurse said. 'The best thing you can do is try to keep her still.'

  'Can't we take her off it?'

  'If you do, she's going to be thrashing around a lot more than she already is,' the nurse replied.

  When she left the room, you jerked again, and a low, long moan rose from your throat. 'Help me,' Charlotte said, and she crawled onto the hospital bed, pinning down your upper body.

  'You're crushing me, Mom . . .'

  'I'm just going to help you stay good and still,' Charlotte said calmly.

  I followed her lead, gently laying myself across your lower body. You whimpered when I touched your left leg, which had the break. Charlotte and I both waited,