And Then He Fell. Кейт Хьюит

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       3 MADDIE

      That night in the ER Ben experiences storming, which is a term I’d never heard before, but which Dr. Stein explains to me. Storming is, in layman’s terms, when a person’s vital signs go haywire; Ben’s temperature rises and then drops, his body seizes, his heart rate is all over the place. Dr. Stein tells me this happens in ‘roughly fifteen to thirty-three percent of all TBI cases’—TBI being traumatic brain injury. I am starting to know the acronyms, and I hate them all.

      When I ask Dr. Stein why this happens, he launches into a lengthy soliloquy on possible causes of storming. Maybe it’s ‘sympathetic’, and is part of the recovery process. Maybe it’s a reaction to the drugs he is receiving, or a change in dosage. Maybe it’s a neurological response to the initial trauma. Blah blah blah. I am desperate to understand, and yet this is a language I don’t speak. I want bottom lines and doctors don’t give those. They don’t deal in promises.

      I stand at the door and peer at Ben through the window; the sight of his body flailing in the bed, the machines beeping faster and louder, is beyond terrifying to me, but I am coping better now, or perhaps I am simply numb. Numb and utterly exhausted, living in this terrible stasis, and I have no idea what happens next.

      Lewis hasn’t called me back. I didn’t expect him to, but I am still disappointed.

      At ten o’clock that night I break down and call Juliet. I need to talk to someone.

      “Oh, Maddie,” she exclaims as soon as she answers the phone. “Is Ben going to be okay?”

      Shock slaps me in the face. She knows. Juliet knows about Ben. How? Why? And why didn’t she call? I swallow down my own question to answer hers.

      “I don’t know, Juliet. He’s in a medically-induced coma.”

      “Oh, no.” She let out a muffled sob and I feel an unreasonable dart of anger, because I haven’t permitted myself to shed any tears, but she can? She has that presumption?

      “How…how did you know?” I ask. And then I realize how little I know; I don’t even know how or where he fell. I’ve been too busy coping with the result to wonder about how it happened, or where, or why. And suddenly I feel like I need to know these things, that they might be important.

      “I…” Juliet hesitates. “I was on playground duty.”

      Burgdorf parents are required to volunteer for the school three hours a week; I usually end up stuffing envelopes or doing data entry after work, while Ben is in afterschool club. Juliet does the ‘fun’ things, the field trips and playground duty. She was there when Ben fell. Which means she knew about this for hours and hours, and yet she never even called me.

      “It happened on the playground?” I finally ask, and my voice sounds scratchy, hoarse. “Did you see him? How did he fall?” I blurt the questions, needing facts.

      “I didn’t see,” Juliet says quickly. “The kids were running all around, you know how it is. It all happened so fast…” She trails off, helplessly, and I close my eyes. Does it really matter if he fell off the slide or the swing? Or maybe it was the huge concrete climbing structure in Heckscher Playground in Central Park, where the kids often go for recess. Ben’s twisted his ankle or banged his knee on that thing more than once. Wherever he fell, it landed him here, fighting for his life.

      “I’m so, so sorry,” Juliet says. “They rushed him to the hospital. The paramedics were so good…”

      I can feel the sting of tears in my eyes, and I can’t believe that after everything that has happened, I am going to cry now. “You didn’t even call me,” I choke, and I am ashamed at how needy I sound. I’ve learned not to be needy, not to depend on anyone. A lifetime in foster care makes you an expert in self-sufficiency.

      “Oh Maddie, honey, of course I wanted to,” Juliet says, her voice breaking. “But I knew Mrs. James would contact you first and I didn’t want to barge in before she could tell you the details…”

      But she wasn’t there. You were. And you’re my friend. The protests lodge in my throat like stones.

      “…And then with the kids… Emma had ballet exams today…” She trails off, and I know she realizes her excuses are cringingly, shamefully lame. And I don’t understand why Juliet is failing me like this, because I’ve always considered her a good friend.

      I don’t have a lot of experience with friends of any kind, but I’ve known Juliet for ten years, since Ben and Emma were babies. For the last three years she has treated me to a ticket to the school’s annual charity gala, and made sure I sit at her table. She’s given me her castoff clothes even though they’re not my style at all. They’re still good quality. She’s had me over for Thanksgiving when they’re in the city and she knows I have nowhere to go. Why didn’t she call me when she knew my son was in the ER, in a coma?

      “He’s going to be okay, though,” she says, and her tone is deliberately upbeat. Maybe she’s trying to mimic Burgdorf’s environment of positivity, but I feel none of it now.

      “I have no idea,” I tell her flatly. “The doctor told me the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are critical.” I pause. “As to whether he lives or dies.”

      “Oh, Maddie…” Juliet’s voice is like the cry of a small animal, as if I’ve hurt her with this information, and suddenly I can’t take any more.

      “I have to go,” I say abruptly, and I hang up. I walk back from the little waiting room to the doors of Ben’s room—a journey I already feel I’ve made a thousand times—and peer in the window. Ben is still restless and agitated, his body jerking spasmodically as the doctors and nurses attempt to subdue him. I can’t bear to see him like this, and yet I can’t look away either. All I can do is wait.

      Wait and wonder, because as I replay the conversation with Juliet something doesn’t feel right. Juliet would call me. She’s the type of person who calls, who cares.

      Why didn’t she see how Ben fell? Why didn’t she give me any details at all?

      I can’t help Ben now, and so I focus on what happened. On finding out what happened. I call Juliet again. She answers after the fourth ring, her voice a little wary.

      “Maddie?”

      “I just want some details,” I burst out. “About how it happened. Was it on Heckscher Playground?”

      “Yes…you know that’s where they go for recess when it’s nice out.”

      “Where was he? On the climbing structure? Or the swings—”

      “I…I’m not sure.”

      “But if you were on duty,” I persist, trying to keep my voice reasonable, “you were looking. You must have some idea.”

      Juliet hesitates. I can hear her breathing, and for some reason it makes me angry. “On the climbing structure,” she СКАЧАТЬ