Handle With Care Read online

  The next morning I spent five hours on the phone with the insurance company. Ambulance trips were not covered by our policy; however, the hospital in Florida would not discharge anyone in a spica cast unless he or she was traveling by ambulance. It was a catch-22, but I was the only one who could see it, and it led to a conversation that felt like theater of the absurd. 'Let me get this straight,' I said to the fourth supervisor I'd spoken with that day. 'You're telling me I didn't have to take the ambulance; therefore you won't cover the cost.'

  'That's correct, ma'am.'

  On the couch, you were propped up on pillows, drawing stripes on your cast with markers. 'Can you tell me what the alternative was?' I asked.

  'Apparently you could have kept the patient in the hospital.'

  'You do understand this cast is going to stay on for months. Are you suggesting I keep my daughter hospitalized for that long?'

  'No, ma'am. Just until transportation could be arranged.'

  'But the only transportation the hospital would allow us to leave in was an ambulance!' I said. By now your leg looked like a candy cane. 'Would your policy have covered the additional stay?'

  'No, ma'am. The maximum number of nights allowed for injuries like these is--'

  'Yeah, we've been through that.' I sighed.

  'It seems to me,' the supervisor said tartly, 'that given the option of paying for additional nights in the hospital or an unauthorized ambulance trip, you don't have much to complain about.'

  I felt my cheeks flame. 'Well, it seems to me that you are an enormous ass!' I yelled, and I slammed down the phone. I turned around and saw you, marker trailing out of your hand, precariously close to the fabric of the couch cushions. You were twisted like a pretzel, your lower half in the cast still facing forward, your head leaning back over your shoulder so that you could see out the window.

  'Swear jar,' you murmured. You had a canning jar that you'd covered with iridescent gift wrap, and every time Sean swore in front of you, you netted a quarter. Just this month alone, you were up to forty-two dollars - you'd kept count the whole way home from Florida. I took a quarter out of my pocket and put it into the jar on the table nearby, but you weren't looking; your attention was still focused outside, on a frozen pond at the edge of the lawn, where Amelia was skating.

  Your sister had been ice skating since, well, since she was your age. She and Piper's daughter, Emma, took lessons together twice a week, and there was nothing you wanted more than to copy your sister. Skating, however, happened to be a sport you'd never, ever be allowed to try. Once, you'd broken your arm when you were pretending to skate on one foot across the kitchen linoleum in your socks.

  'Between my foul language and your dad's, you're going to have enough cold, hard cash to buy a plane ticket out of here pretty soon,' I joked, trying to distract you. 'Where to? Vegas?'

  You turned away from the window and looked at me. 'That would be dumb,' you said. 'I can't play Blackjack till I'm twenty-one.'

  Sean had taught you how. Also Hearts, Texas Hold 'Em, and Five-Card Stud. I'd been horrified, until I realized that playing Go Fish for hours at a time might officially qualify as torture. 'So the Caribbean, then?'

  As if you would ever travel unimpeded, as if you would ever take a vacation without thinking about this last one. 'I was thinking of buying some books. Like Dr Seuss stuff.'

  You read at a sixth-grade level, even though your peers were still sounding out the alphabet. It was one of the few perks of OI: when you had to be immobile, you'd pore over books, or get on the Internet. In fact, when Amelia wanted to rile you, she called you Wikipedia. 'Dr Seuss?' I said. 'Really?'

  'They're not for me. I thought we could ship them to that hospital in Florida. The only thing they had to read was Where's Spot? and that gets really old after the fifth or sixth time.'

  That left me speechless. All I wanted to do was forget about that stupid hospital, to curse the insurance nightmare it had led to and the fact that you would be stuck in the four-month hell of a spica cast - and there you were, already past the pity party. Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn't mean you ever took the opportunity to do so. In fact, sometimes I was sure that the reason people stared at you with your crutches and wheelchair had nothing to do with your disabilities, and everything to do with the fact that you had abilities they only dreamed of.

  The phone rang again - for the briefest of seconds I fantasized that it was the CEO of the health insurance company, calling to personally apologize. But it was Piper, checking in. 'Is this a good time?'

  'Not really,' I said. 'Why don't you call back in a few months?'

  'Is she in a lot of pain? Did you call Rosenblad?' Piper asked. 'Where's Sean?'

  'Yes, no, and I hope earning enough to cover the credit card bills for the vacation we didn't get to have.'

  'Well, listen, I'll pick up Amelia for skating tomorrow, when I take Emma. One less thing for you to worry about.'

  Worry about it? I hadn't even known Amelia had practice. It wasn't just on the bottom of the totem pole; it wasn't even on the totem pole.

  'What else do you need?' Piper asked. 'Groceries? Gas? Johnny Depp?'

  'I was going to say Xanax . . . but now I might take door number three.'

  'It figures. You're married to a guy who looks like Brad Pitt - with a better body - and you go for the long-haired artsy type.'

  'Grass is always greener, I guess.' Absently I watched you reach for the old laptop computer beside you and try to balance it on your lap. It kept toppling over, because of the angle of your cast, so I grabbed a throw pillow and set it on your lap as a table. 'Unfortunately, right now, my side of the fence is looking pretty grim,' I told her.

  'Oops, I've got to go. Apparently, my patient's crowning.'

  'If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one--'

  Piper laughed. 'Charlotte,' she said. 'Try taking down the fence.'

  I hung up. You were typing feverishly with two fingers. 'What are you doing?'

  'Setting up a Gmail account for Amelia's goldfish,' you said.

  'I highly doubt he needs one . . .'

  'That's why he asked me to do this, instead of you . . .'

  Take down the fence. 'Willow,' I announced, 'shut down the laptop. You and I are going skating.'

  'You're kidding.'

  'Nope.'

  'But you said--'

  'Willow, do you want to argue, or do you want to skate?' You beamed, a smile the likes of which I had not seen on you since before we left for Florida. I pulled on a sweater and my boots, then brought my winter coat in from the mudroom to cover your upper half. I wound blankets around your legs and hoisted you onto my hip. Without the cast, you were elfin, slight. With it, you weighed fifty-three pounds.

  The one thing a spica cast was good for - practically made for - was balancing you on my hip. You leaned away from me a little bit, but I could still wrap one arm around you and maneuver us through the foyer and down the front steps.

  When Amelia saw us coming, tortoise-slow, navigating hummocks of snow and patches of black ice, she stopped spinning. 'I'm going skating,' you sang, and Amelia's eyes flew to mine.

  'You heard her.'

  'You're taking her skating. Aren't you the one who wanted Dad to fill in the skating pond? You called it cruel and unusual punishment for Willow.'

  'I'm taking down the fence,' I said.

  'What fence?'

  I wrapped the blankets underneath your bottom and gently set you down on the ice. 'Amelia,' I said, 'this is the part where I need your help. I want you to watch her - don't take your eyes off her - while I go grab my skates.'

  I sprinted back to the house, stopping only at the threshold to make sure that Amelia was still staring at you, just like I'd left her. My skates were buried in a boot bin in the mudroom - I couldn't tell you the last time I'd used them. The laces knotted them together like lovers; I slung them over my shoulder and then hoisted the computer desk chair with its rollin