I looked around. Kelly had collapsed on the hot sidewalk against the building. Her knees were drawn up, her head was down so that the stringy dark hair fell over her face, the collar of the jacket stood up around her ears. Two women in shorts and halter tops crouched beside her. I hurried, as though to save her from them, although, of course, by then Kelly wasn’t the one who needed protecting.
I met Ron at the hospital. From the ambulance stretcher, in a flat high voice that almost seemed part of the siren, Kelly had told me how to reach him. I hadn’t wanted to; I hadn’t wanted him with us. By the time I made it through all the layers and synapses of the bureaucracy he worked in and heard his official voice on the other end of the line, I was furious. But I hadn’t missed anything; Kelly was still waiting in the emergency room, slumped in a chair. Ron did not sound especially alarmed; I told myself it was his training. He said he’d be there in fifteen minutes, and he was.
They had just taken Kelly to be examined when he got there. I was standing at the counter looking after her, feeling bereft; they wouldn’t let me go back behind the curtain with her, and she was too weak to ask for me. When the tall blond uniformed man strode by me, I didn’t try to speak to him, and no one else did, either. I doubt that Kelly asked for him, or gave permission, or even recognized him when he came. None of that was necessary. He was her husband. She was part of him. He had the right.
My father and I had been bound like that, too. If I’d asserted the right to be part of him, welcomed and treasured it, I could have been. Instead, I’d thought it was necessary for me to grow up, to separate. And so I’d lost him. Lost us both, I thought then, for without him I had no idea who I was.
I felt Ron’s presence approaching me before I opened my eyes and saw him. “She’s unconscious,” he said. “They don’t know yet what’s wrong. You don’t look very good yourself. Come and sit down.”
I didn’t let him touch me then, but I preceded him to a pair of orange plastic bucket chairs attached to a metal bar against the wall. We were then sitting squarely side-by-side, and the chairs didn’t move; I didn’t make the effort to face him. He was friendly and solemn, as befitted the occasion. He took my hand in both of his, swallowing it. “Brenda.” He made my name sound far more significant than I’d ever thought it was, and—despite myself, despite the circumstances, despite what I’d have mistakenly called my better judgment—something inside me stirred gratefully. “It’s nice to see you again after all these years. I’m sorry our reunion turned out to be like this. Kelly has talked a great deal about you over the past few months.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
“What happened?” Ron asked. He let go of my hand and it was cold. I put both hands in my pockets.
“She—collapsed,” I told him. The more I told him, the angrier I became, and the closer to the kind of emptying, wracking sobs I’d been so afraid of. Now I know there’s nothing to fear in being emptied; Kelly simply hadn’t taken it far enough. To the end, some part of her fought it. I don’t fight at all anymore.
“What do you mean? Tell me what happened. The details.” He was moving in, assuming command. It crossed my mind to resist him, but from the instant he’d walked into the room I’d felt exhausted.
“I dropped by to see her. I was in the neighborhood. When I got there she was sick. She asked me to take her out to lunch. So we—”
“Out?” His blond eyebrows rose and then furrowed disapprovingly. “Out of the house? With you?”
I mustered a little indignation. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s—unusual, that’s all. Go on.”
I told him the rest of what I knew. It seemed to take an enormous amount of time to say it all, though I wouldn’t have thought I had that much to say. I stumbled over words. There were long silences. Ron listened attentively. At one point he rested his hand on my shoulder in a comradely way, and I was too tired and disoriented to pull free.