We Are Unprepared (14 page)

The doctor shook his head. “No, it will probably hurt for a while. You just have to be patient. Our bodies are very good at healing themselves if we give them the time and rest they need.”

I don't know what I was hoping for, but a little more alarm over the suffering I had just endured would have been validating. I was familiar with this Yankee tough-it-out approach to first aid from my childhood, and I didn't miss it one bit.

“Do you have someone you can call to come and get you?” the woman asked as she taped my toes.

And with that, a new wave of panic swept over me. I could probably get ahold of Pia, but whether she would come get me seemed an open question. There was almost two feet of fresh snow on the ground now, too, making it a logistical challenge. I had left the snowblower in our driveway, so I imagined a pissed-off Pia parking the car on the side of the road and walking along my skinny, plowed lane to the house. It hadn't occurred to me that she might actually be worried.

The female doctor rolled my wheelchair up to a flesh-colored rotary phone and I dialed Pia's cell. It rang three times before her voice-mail message came on. I don't know why I didn't leave a message, but the sound of her voice mail sent me into such a fury that I couldn't bear to. Either she was still out with her prepper friends, or she had returned to the disturbing driveway scene. Either way, she hadn't thought to leave her fucking cell phone on in the middle of a blizzard. I returned the receiver to the phone and looked up at the two nice people standing in front of me. Perhaps they were in a rush to get to their girlfriends' houses, too. My head still felt foggy with pain and pills.

“I don't really have anyone to call,” I said. “I recently moved here and my wife is unavailable. I don't know... I don't know what people do in this situation...when they need someone to come...but there isn't anyone.”

I knew how sad it all sounded, but I didn't have the will to pretend not to be melancholy. I didn't have anyone to call. My wife was too busy with her new obsessions to wonder where I'd been and, while I certainly had acquaintances in Isole, I didn't have any close friends. I didn't know what their lives were like and certainly didn't feel comfortable calling them and asking them to drive into a storm to get me.

My shoulders slumped. I opened my palms out on my thighs as if to surrender to these perfectly nice doctor-like people who had succeeded at making me feel like the most alone person on earth.

“We all need to get home fast, before there's too much snow,” the man said. “Libby and I are going west on sixteen, which doesn't do you any good, Ash.” I wondered how he knew my name and my address. He went on, “But my daughter lives right up the road from you, and she's on her way home from work now. I'll see if she can swing by here to give you a lift.”

I sat in my wheelchair while calls were made and someone's daughter was instructed to pick me up. The man and woman bustled around, turning off lights and returning medical instruments to drawers. It was called a hospital, but it filled a uniquely rural role that was more like urgent care. These doctors were here to tend to what could be fixed on-site and send the serious problems to Dartmouth or Burlington. They braved the snow as necessary, and the entire enterprise relied on their judgment and tire treads. It's a startling deficiency to someone unfamiliar with rural America, but you forget that with time. I was still alarmed by the idea as I sat helpless with my bright blue medical boot in my wheelchair.

It occurred to me that I hadn't been in a hospital or even seen a doctor in years. Weren't adults supposed to have things checked and measured now and then? It sounded right, but I hadn't gotten around to such maintenance. I grew up in a household that stressed the curative powers of fresh air and a stiff upper lip; if you weren't vomiting or registering a fatal temperature, you were going to school. I carried that toughness with me into adulthood and it had, thus far, served me well. But as I sat in that lonely closing hospital, I realized what a luxury it was just to
know
that people are available to care for you at any moment, even if you never avail yourself of their services.

Finally, a set of headlights appeared in the turnabout and the three of us exited the building, me hobbling in my air cast and holding a plastic bag of pills and pamphlets. The man and woman helped me to the passenger side of a sporty old Saab, then said their goodbyes and hustled to their cars. I felt like an unwanted child being passed around from one adult to the next. I had no choice but to trust that this new grown-up would make sure I got home safely.

“Hi, I'm Maggie,” my driver said.

The interior car light was on just long enough for me to know that I found Maggie very attractive. She had reddish long hair peeking out of a colorful knitted hat. My mind was still jumbled from the pain of the accident and the strangeness of the day, but she seemed familiar to me.

“I'm Ash,” I said, thinking I should make some gesture of gratitude, but not doing so.

Maggie pulled the car onto the empty road and followed the tire marks of whoever drove ahead of us. It was difficult to see where we were going, but she had the confidence of someone who had memorized the curves of that route. She turned the high beams on and then off again when it was clear that they were no use in the dense snowfall.

“I remember you, Ash,” she said. “You're the new guy from the town hall scuffle. So what did you do this time—wrestle a bear in the woods?”

Was that flirtatiousness? I couldn't tell, but I did my best to muster some charm.

“Close,” I said. “A snowblower attacked me. It was a menace to the neighborhood and it had to be put down—but not without a nasty fight. I'm disfigured now, but it's a small price to pay for future generations.”

She smiled and I felt pleased with myself.

Maggie took a cautious turn onto an even darker road and pulled her hat off. Then I remembered: she was the woman who'd carried the toddlers into the janitors' closet after the gunshots. I hadn't thought about her since then, but I remembered being impressed by her decisiveness. I also remembered how pretty she was. Maggie was probably in her early thirties, thin and sporty in that pink-cheeked unfussy way that outdoorsy New England girls are. It was a type that had always driven me wild, different from Pia's overpowering sexiness, but bursting with optimism and confidence.

“How far up the hill do you live, Ash?” Maggie asked.

She couldn't take her eyes from the snowy road, so I used the opportunity to take in her lightly freckled face and the long fingers that gripped the wheel. She was wearing snow pants and a cream-colored fisherman's sweater. They could have been men's clothes, the way they draped over her small chest and firm legs, and I didn't mind the mystery of that at all.

“About two miles up,” I said, wishing she'd slow down to stretch out the drive. “I remember you, too, you know, from the town hall.”

Maggie nodded and smiled a little.

“So what do you do?” I asked.

“I teach math at the high school,” she said, “and I coach the downhill ski team.”

I didn't know anyone who did things like that. Our friends from New York all worked in the arts or media or public relations. We talked knowingly over brunch about font trends. Maggie's was a world I knew nothing about.

She shrugged. “It's not as sexy as graphic design, but I really love it. And it gives me time to write.”

She's a writer!
Suddenly, I wanted to ask her a thousand questions, but I tried to stay cool. I wondered, too, how she knew so much about me.

“So this snow must be great news to a ski coach,” I said.

Maggie sighed. “This snow? No. This is more than we need. The visibility is too low and we can't keep up with the grooming. It feels weird to say, but this really is too much. This whole season, it's been too much or too little. Very strange.”

“Yeah, it is weird,” I said, looking out the window. There was no one else on the road at seven o'clock. I wondered how Maggie would get home after she dropped me off.

Anticipating my concern, she said, “We probably shouldn't be on the roads right now, but I live about a half mile up the hill from you, so this isn't out of my way.”

She looked down at my foot. “Do you have someone who can take care of you while you recover?”

“Um, yeah, my wife,” I said, remembering Pia. “She's there, so I will have some help.”

This was a hopeful lie, but it sounded nice to me.

“Good. You really shouldn't try to do too much with that cast.” Maggie was all business now. The flirtatious tone in her voice had vanished with the mention of Pia. “One minute it will feel like you can hop around on it no problem, and the next minute it will be throbbing. Just stay off it.”

She spoke like someone who had sustained a lot of injuries, which impressed me. I broke my arm when I fell off a jungle gym in fourth grade, but aside from that, my only injuries had been the long-term stresses of distance running in high school, which lacked the drama of ski collisions.

“I'm just up the way, in the little cape around the bend,” Maggie said. “It's me and my dog, Badger. He loves a snowstorm.”

She looked wistful about the idea of being snowed in with her dog. I imagined them snuggling in front of a crackling fire, Badger sleeping while she read a fat novel. I wished that I could join them instead of returning to my stinky, worm-infested house with my unpredictable wife.

This was it. The snow was still coming down heavily. Maybe this really was
the
big snowstorm, and Pia and I would be trapped together for days. Did we have enough food? Probably not. Neither of us had bothered to think that piece through, which meant that we'd be eating canned soup and whatever else we could find. We had enough wine. I knew that Pia would have been diligent about the wine. We were about to be trapped together, arguing about August or avoiding the subject altogether, and fearing what the storm might portend. This drop-off could be my last interaction with the civilized world, I thought to myself. Worse, it could be my last interaction with Maggie.

My foot started to throb and I reached down to itch a portion of my shin that was now encased and unreachable. Damn, it hurt. Suddenly, it was all too much. I felt the hot tears burn in my eyes first. I looked out my window to the right, working hard to quietly halt a wellspring of sadness, but it was too late. I let out a burst of sound—a cry that I tried to mask as a cough, which just made it sound tortured and strange. I could feel Maggie looking at me. There was no going back now. I put my face in my hands and took five seconds to collect myself before wiping my eyes and looking up.

“I'm so sorry,” I said, trying to sound more baffled than apologetic. “It must be these drugs. I feel crazy. I'm just not myself. This is embarrassing.”

I had cried more in those past two weeks than in the previous five years combined.

Maggie was unflappable, “Ash, I get it. This is a lot.”

She pulled gently up to the edge of my impassable driveway and stopped the car. We both sat there for a moment.

I didn't want to get out of the car, not only because I liked Maggie, but also because the logistical question of how exactly I would get to my house was too humiliating to consider. Would Maggie help drag me past the overturned snowblower, along the plowed path and up the front steps to my wife? The last piece was the scariest because it was becoming more and more difficult to anticipate the mood I might find Pia in.

“It's just snow,” Maggie said after a silence. “It seems so scary right now—because of the superstorm predictions—but it melts. It's nature's most temporary creation. That's what I tell my kids at school. It's temporary.”

I appreciated her effort, but I wasn't afraid of the snow. I was afraid of the aloneness...the aloneness of finding myself mauled by a snowblower with no one to call, and the aloneness of being left unwanted at an empty hospital and the aloneness of being stuck inside my own house with someone I understood less and less each day. But the snow was our captor, so I guess, in a way, I was scared of the snow.

I looked at Maggie and smiled. There was nothing at all left to say. I was married and it was snowing so hard that we couldn't see the hood of her car. I needed to get out.

“Thank you,” I said. “Please be safe getting home. Maybe I'll see you after the snow.”

“I hope so,” Maggie said.

As I reached for the handle, the door swung away, revealing Pia standing before me. She was shivering in long johns, oversize boots and a parka. She had a relieved look on her face that seemed only half-genuine.

“Are you okay?” she shrieked and leaned into the car to hug me, noticing the cast.

I was startled and embarrassed.

“Thank you
so much
for getting him home,” Pia said to Maggie.

She was working to pull my much larger body out to lean on her, which I knew would never work. Everything about the situation felt awkward and needed to end fast. I steadied myself in the snow and smiled again at Maggie. Pia slammed the door without another word and we waited in silence as the car drove away.

“So what the hell happened?” Pia said. She was referring to the accident, but maybe also to the pretty woman who had driven me home.

I started hobbling along the narrow path and ignored her questioning. The snowblower peeked out from under a mound of snow to our left. Despite my throbbing foot, it felt like a very long time ago that I had been run over. Since then, I had dramatically increased the number of people I could count as Isole acquaintances and developed an intense crush on the woman up the road. She lives
just over the hill
, I thought to myself, so torturously close.

It took nearly five minutes for Pia and me to drag my gimpy body back to our house and, although I was relieved to sit, I found no comfort in my arrival. The wet worm smell was creeping into the kitchen and our breakfast dishes were still stacked in the sink. Pia hadn't washed a dish in weeks. She hadn't eaten a proper meal in about that time either, so it was mostly just small plates littered with toast crumbs, coffee mugs and glassware of every size stamped with the dried remains of red wine. I noticed that she was growing thinner, which made her large eyes and full lips bulge disturbingly.