Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,85

cap you have to wear—the mortarboard—cover it?”

“But then you have to toss them in the air at the end,” Rowan says.

Sheila tilts her head again. “May I?” she asks, reaching for Rowan’s hair.

Rowan nods yes.

Sheila fingers Rowan’s hair and inspects the bald spot again. “You could cut your hair,” she suggests. “Do one of those short, spiky things. Your hair is thick enough. Then just wear the bald spot as part of the new cut. There’s no way you can really hide it. I was thinking you could do some sort of comb-over, but that would be worse in the end.”

Rowan runs her fingers through the ends of her hair. “I’ve always had long hair,” she says.

“Have you?” her mother asks.

“Since twelve, anyway.”

“Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“Do you know how to cut hair?” Rowan asks Sheila.

“I don’t,” Sheila says. “But I can find someone who does.”

“They’ll come here?”

“I’ll arrange it that way, if the nurses will let me.”

Webster, baffled, can only watch. He knows this is surface, that there will be pitfalls ahead, perhaps an entire crater. Odd how females bond over crises in appearance. With guys, it would be sports.

Sheila, having checked that the haircut would be all right with the nurses, arranges for a hairdresser to come to Rowan’s room that afternoon. Webster steps outside the door when the hairdresser arrives, and he’s pretty sure that Rowan doesn’t even notice his absence. He watches for a moment. The nurses have put Rowan in a wheelchair and covered her with sheets. Sheila sits on the bed and observes as the hairdresser fingers Rowan’s hair. She asks if Rowan is sure she wants to do this and nods when Rowan bravely says yes. Sheila explains what she has in mind. Webster, watching the tableau, thinks: She might have been a good mother after all.

After the physical therapy and the visit by Gina and Tommy (Webster and Sheila hear giggling from the room as they stand in the hallway), Rowan reports that the little physical therapy they gave her was brutal and that she has a lot of work to do on the shoulder. Because the nurses have encouraged Rowan to walk as much as possible, Webster strolls with Rowan along the corridors. Once he takes her outside to see the summer evening. Rowan sucks in the fresh air. From Webster’s vantage point, the spiky hair doesn’t hide the bald spot, but it makes it less noticeable. Webster asks Rowan what she thought of Sheila, but Rowan is less forthcoming than Webster hoped. He doesn’t know if Rowan wants to keep her feelings about her mother to herself, or if she herself can’t quite sort out this new development in her life.

“The nurse told me that the medics paralyzed me for the ride in the helicopter. Did you do that?”

“No,” he says. “The airlift medics do that.”

“The nurse said that she’s known patients who recover from the original injury, but stay paralyzed.”

Fucking nurse. “I’ve heard that, too,” Webster says. “But I don’t know of anyone that’s happened to.”

“But you knew this when they paralyzed me,” she says.

“I did. I didn’t like it, but it’s standard procedure with a head injury prior to an airlift.”

“So you must have been scared,” Rowan says.

“I was terrified.”

She hugs him with her good arm. “I’m sorry,” she says.

When Webster arrives the next morning, he finds that Sheila has beaten him to it. She is sitting close to Rowan in the chair, and the two are talking. Rowan’s eyes express wonderment and awe, and he can hear her giggle through the glass. Because he doesn’t want to interrupt the pair, he meanders through the hallways, checking back every twenty minutes.

The second time he peers in, they are still talking.

The third time he nears the room, he can see that Rowan is laughing. Webster wonders if Sheila is telling her stories about what Rowan was like when she was a baby.

The fourth time he walks by, their heads are closer together, and each is serious. He walks into the room.

Both Sheila and Rowan look at him as if surprised to see him. Sheila sits back in her chair. Rowan says nothing.

“Did I interrupt something?” Webster asks.

Rowan shrugs.

“Anybody want anything from the vending machine?” Webster, in desperation, asks.

Rowan and Sheila shake their heads.

“OK. I’m going for coffee,” he announces.

He gives them fifteen minutes. When he reenters the room, Rowan is crying.

Fuck.

Sheila turns to him and makes a downward motion with her hands, as if to say, Don’t get