Authors: Tess Stimson
‘This is Denise at Fletcher Allen Hospital,’ the woman said. ‘Is that Mrs Lockwood?’ Harriet chilled.
Not Charlie,
she begged instinctively.
Not again.
Their last trip to the ER, a week before Christmas, had frightened her so badly she hadn’t slept for a week afterwards. She didn’t think there was anything worse than watching your
child literally fighting for every breath. Florence’s diabetic lows she’d learned to cope with. A juice box, some glucose tablets, and she was usually fine. She had cross-country
practice today; knowing Florence, she’d probably forgotten to load up on carbs first and her sugar had dipped. Going on past experience, by the time Harriet reached the hospital, she’d
be up and about and itching to get back to her friends.
She loved all her children equally, of course, but if she had to choose, if she really
had
to choose, it was better that Florence had a crisis than Charlie.
Instantly, she felt guilty.
Only because Charlie is so much sicker,
she amended quickly. She could never actually
choose
between her children. She might not understand Florence
the way she understood the boys, but she’d loved her for fifteen years – loved her passionately – and nothing would ever change that.
She took a deep breath. ‘Harriet Lockwood here,’ she said, and waited.
Florence’s day hadn’t started well. It rarely did, since Mom insisted on eating breakfast with her (her mother was somehow convinced eating breakfast together would
stop her from getting pregnant or smoking or becoming a Republican or whatever it was her mother was so scared of) and then silently begrudged her every tiny morsel she put in her mouth. It
wasn’t Florence’s fault she was fat. Not everyone could be a perfect size zero like her mother.
They sat in silence at the breakfast table, since Dad had already left to take the boys to their school, and she chomped her way through her second bagel, watching her mother try hard not to
notice.
‘I thought I’d come and watch you run this afternoon,’ Mom said suddenly.
She looked up, alarmed. ‘It’s only a practice,’ she said. ‘Not a meet.’
‘I know. But it’s been ages since I came to cheer you on, and one of my suppliers cancelled on me, so I’ve got a couple of hours spare later.’ She smiled brightly.
‘I thought it would be nice if we spent some time together.’
Sometimes Florence wished her mother would just stop
trying.
It would be so much easier on both of them.
She ducked her head again, her ash-blonde hair tumbling across her face. It wasn’t that she didn’t like talking to her mother, exactly. As parents went, Mom was OK: she didn’t
stick her with tons of chores or demand to know where she was every minute of the day. But Mom was always worrying about her diabetes, checking up on her, asking her questions, making such a big
deal about it all, and sometimes she just wanted to
forget.
She never knew how to respond to Mom’s earnest attempts to be her friend. She never had. Mom always seemed to be looking
for something
more
from her, though she had no idea what that might be. So, as usual when she didn’t know what to say to her mother, she said nothing.
‘I don’t have to come if you don’t want me to,’ Mom said finally in a tone that made Florence squirm with guilt. ‘It was just an idea.’
‘I told you,’ she muttered, flushing. ‘There’s no point. It’s just a practice.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She stood and briskly started to stack the dishwasher. ‘Maybe I’ll go check out some land instead.’
Florence scowled.
Whatever.
Bad enough that she was stuck in this boring little town in this boring dead-end state without spending her weekends trapped in a stupid cabin a million
miles from anywhere. She still didn’t see why her parents couldn’t have stayed in London. At least then she might have had a
life.
Normally she’d have dumped her woes on her best friend Amy when she got to school and felt a whole lot better, but last week they’d fallen out over Matt Shaw (who Amy hadn’t
even noticed till Florence told her she liked him), and the cherry on the cake? Her period had just started. So she wasn’t exactly in the mood for algebra and Spanish, and even less in the
mood for a cross-country run. Which meant that when it came to it that afternoon, she found herself dawdling alone in a corner of the changing room, hanging back till everyone else had left.
She wasn’t much of a runner at the best of times. Or a swimmer, or a basketball player, or a skier. She took after Dad: she was built for comfort, not speed, as her grandmother had once
put it bluntly. There was no euphemism for ‘fat’ Florence hadn’t heard:
big-boned, statuesque, Amazonian.
Mom kept saying she’d grow into herself, whatever that
meant, but frankly, at five-foot-ten in her bare (size nine) feet, her breasts spilling from their D-cups, she’d grown quite enough already, thank you very much. Next to Mom, petite and
boyish and elegantly flat-chested, she felt like an elephant. Poor Mom. Three boys and one daughter, and it had to be the girl who was built like a quarterback.
She caught up with the rest of the class, already streaming across the playing fields to the woods at the rear of the school, and fell into a steady pace around the middle of the pack where no
one would notice her. She usually managed to just about hold her own. Vermont, liberal and hippy and green in every sense of the word, was a state where everyone was active and sporty, where no one
drove if they could cycle, or cycled if they could walk. She’d long since realized that if you couldn’t beat them you might as well join them, at least if you wanted to have friends, so
she’d picked the lesser of many evils and opted to make cross-country running her
thing,
so she could at least go at her own pace and stop for a rest if she had to.
Even she had to admit it was a beautiful day to be in the woods. The air was crisp and cold, the sky so bright a blue it hurt. Beneath the trees, purple and white crocuses spiked through
thinning patches of snow. She wasn’t puffing as much as usual, either, and for once she didn’t have a stitch. Maybe Mom was right; perhaps she
was
fitter than she thought.
‘Left,’ a male voice said behind her.
Automatically, Florence moved out of the runner’s way. Matt Shaw strode easily to the front of the field – he must’ve been late to class or he’d have headed the pack to
begin with – and she watched him casually fall into step beside Amy and Olivia, her heart twisting with misery. Florence was only too aware he didn’t even know she existed. But she
could dream.
She didn’t see the patch of ice until it was too late.
She’d tripped and fallen loads of times on cross-country runs. Everybody did; it went with the territory. If you didn’t want the rest of the team to think you were totally lame, you
just picked yourself up and kept going. Last year, Matt had fallen and actually broken his wrist, but he’d got up and kept running and never said anything about how much it had hurt till the
end of the cross-country meet, after their team had won. Half the girls in her class had a crush on him after that.
One moment she was running, and the next the ground had gone from under her. She landed hard and awkwardly on her butt, a sharp, stabbing pain radiating down her left leg. For a moment, as she
lay winded on the narrow path, she didn’t think she was hurt. Even when she pushed herself up on her elbows and looked down, and saw the blood spreading wetly between her thighs, she simply
assumed it was her period, that her pad had leaked:
Oh, God,
she panicked,
everyone – Matt – will see!
But almost immediately she realized that of course it couldn’t be that – the pain was far too intense, there was way too much blood. And then suddenly everything started to blur. It
was if she was at the bottom of a swimming pool, looking up through the water at a shimmer of white faces. Their mouths were moving, but all she heard was a distant rumble; she could only guess at
the words.
Tourniquet,
she thought she heard, and
broken glass
and then, frighteningly,
femoral artery.
Mrs Caisse, the cross-country coach, pulled the cord from her
tracksuit pants, and she watched, too shocked to speak, as her teacher struggled to tie it around Florence’s thigh. Something – yes, broken glass – had sliced straight through her
thick grey winter jogging bottoms; a bright geyser of crimson blood spurted from her leg, soaking her clothes and the ground and Mrs Caisse. She couldn’t quite believe she had so much blood
in her. So much blood coming
out
of her, and yet she was still alive.
She started to shiver, suddenly colder than she’d ever been in her life. Mrs Caisse told her she’d called 911, she just had to hang on in there, she was going to be fine. Florence
could tell by the fear in her eyes she was lying.
The other girls – and even some of the boys – were crying. Several of them had thrown up in the bushes. Amy and Matt were holding hands, and she felt a flash of irritation that her
drama had brought them together.
This is ridiculous,
she thought.
No one ever dies cross-country running.
And then:
I want my Mom.
And then nothing.
I didn’t mean it,
Harriet begged, her hands shaking on the wheel.
I didn’t mean to choose Florence, I didn’t mean it. Oh God, please let her be
all right.
She fought the impulse to jump the red light in front of her and cut across three lanes of traffic into the hospital forecourt. She’d never performed an illegal U-turn or gone more than
five miles over the speed limit in her life, but she’d just made the fifty-five minute journey back to Burlington in forty minutes and was beginning to regard red lights as decorative rather
than functional.
Change, goddammit!
The second she had a green light, she swung right. Not bothering to park, she simply abandoned the car at a forty-five-degree angle outside the ER, hammering frantically on the automatic glass
doors even as they were opening.
‘My daughter’s been in an accident!’ she cried, bursting into the lobby. ‘Florence Lockwood?’
‘Just a moment,’ the receptionist said calmly, reaching for her keyboard.
Harriet strained across the counter, trying to see the woman’s screen. ‘She goes to Rice High School. She was in some sort of cross-country accident—’
‘Florence Lockwood, yes. If you wouldn’t mind waiting, someone will be out to see you.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘Ma’am? Ma’am, if you’d just calm down—’
‘I need to be with her! For heaven’s sake, she’s only fifteen!’
‘Absolutely Someone will be right out.’
With a supreme effort, Harriet reined in her frustration, anxiously clipping and unclipping her hair from its plastic slide as she paced the lobby.
A serious accident,
the nurse had
said on the phone. What kind of serious accident could happen to your child on a cross-country run, for God’s sake? A broken ankle, yes, a twisted knee or sprained wrist. Concussion, even, if
she fell and hit her head on a rock. But none of those scenarios could be classified as a serious accident, could they? Why couldn’t they just
tell
her what had happened? Why all
this eggshell-treading circumspection? Unless she was . . . unless she was . . .
No. Don’t even go there.
‘Mrs Lockwood?’
She spun round as a nurse with tired eyes and a patient smile called her name. ‘Can I see Florence now?’ she demanded.
Harriet had no way of knowing it, but when she was anxious or upset, her cool English accent became even more clipped and patrician. To those who didn’t know her, it could be mistaken for
arrogance.
The nurse glanced at her clipboard. ‘Would you just mind confirming Florence’s date of birth for me?’
‘Two, three, ninety-eight. Now can—’
‘Thank you. If you’d like to come with me, Mrs Lockwood.’
She caught at the woman’s arm as she pushed open a pair of flapping plastic doors. ‘Please. Can you just tell me if she’s OK?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lockwood,’ the nurse said, gently freeing herself. ‘Doctor Murray will be with you in just a moment.’
The woman showed her into a small waiting room decorated in soft shades of taupe and teal. Harriet’s anxiety intensified. She’d been to the ER often enough to know they only took
relatives to private waiting rooms when it was bad. Very bad.
‘Oh God,’ Harriet gasped. Suddenly she couldn’t feel her legs. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘No, Mrs Lockwood, of course she’s not dead,’ the nurse said quickly.
‘But it’s bad?’
‘The doctor is with her now. He’ll be able to give you all the details as soon as he’s done. I really can’t tell you any more than that. I’m so sorry.’
Harriet nodded mutely as she sank onto the sofa. Her mind was whirling with so many what-ifs she was dizzy. She literally couldn’t focus – the bland pictures on the wall swam in and
out of her vision. By the time the doctor appeared less than five minutes later, she was on the verge of vomiting with fear.
‘Stephen Murray,’ he said, extending a bony wrist too long for his white coat. ‘Please, no need to get up.’
‘Can you just spit it out? I’m sorry, but no one has told me anything, and I don’t think I can stand it much longer.’
‘Of course. Well, the good news is that Florence is stable now.’
Harriet burst into tears.
Without missing a beat, the doctor handed her a box of tissues and perched on the arm of the sofa, displaying two inches of pale, hairy shin between his sock and the hem of his grey wool
trousers. ‘She’s a lucky girl, Mrs Lockwood. Given the nature of her injury, things could have been a great deal more serious. As it is, I’m afraid she’s still quite
traumatized—’
‘What
is
the nature of her injury?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘No one,’ Harriet said through gritted teeth, ‘has actually told me what happened.’