had heard. He was half-sprawled on the stairs, white and wild-eyed, clutching the banisters with one hand. His cane was far below him and there was something awful about the flung angle of it, earthquake, invasion, everyone fled—
Melissa got to him first, kneeling on the stairs beside him, hands on his arms to hold him down—“No, stay still. Don’t move yet. Tell me what happened.”
Her voice was brisk and unfazed as a nurse’s. Hugo was breathing fast through his nose. “Hugo,” I said, catching up, trying to squeeze in beside him. “Are you OK? Does anything—”
“Shh,” Melissa said. “Hugo. Look at me. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”
“It was nothing. My cane slipped.” His hands were shaking violently and his glasses were askew halfway down his nose. “Stupid. I thought I had the hang of it by now, got careless—”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m fine, really I—”
“What did you hit?”
“My backside, obviously. I bounced down a few stairs, I’m not sure how many— And my elbow, that’s actually the worst— Ouch.” He tried to move his elbow, grimaced in pain.
“Anywhere else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“A doctor,” I said, finally coming up with a contribution to the situation. “We need to call a, or an ambulance, we—”
“Wait,” Melissa said. Deftly, matter-of-factly, she ran her hands over Hugo, turn your head, bend your elbow, does that hurt? what about this? Her face was intent and detached, a stranger’s; her hands left smudges of flour like long-settled dust on his brown cords, his misshapen jumper. In the kitchen Chopin was still playing, the “Minute Waltz,” demented frenzy of trills and runs speeding on and on and I wanted savagely to make it shut up. Hugo’s breathing, fast and labored, was setting off some frantic alarm at the base of my brain. It took everything I had to stay there.
“All right,” Melissa said in the end, settling back on her haunches. “I’m almost positive you haven’t done anything serious. Your elbow’s not broken, or you’d never be able to move it like that. Do you want to go to the ER? Or shall we get the doctor on call to come have a look?”
“No,” Hugo said. He struggled to sit up straight. I grabbed his hand, much bigger than mine and so bony, skin sliding, he had lost weight and I hadn’t even noticed— “Honestly, I’m fine. Just a bit shaky. The last thing I need is more doctors. I just want to lie down for a bit.”
“I really think you should get checked out,” I said. “Just in case—”
His hand tightened in mine. With a flash of annoyance that was almost anger: “I’m an adult, Toby. If I don’t want to see a doctor, I won’t. Now help me stand up and get me my cane.”
He was shaking too hard for the cane. We got him upstairs and into bed, one of us on each side with our shoulders braced under his arms, Chopin whirling and looping crazily in the background, the three of us tangled into one big ungainly creature moving with infinite care, up! OK, up again! Once he was settled, Melissa and I brought him a cup of tea and started making tinned chicken soup and toast for dinner. None of us wanted the empanadas any more.
“He really didn’t do any damage, you know,” Melissa said, in the kitchen. “And it could have been just what he said: his cane slipped.”
It hadn’t been, and I didn’t want to talk about that. I was pretty shaky myself; my heart was racketing, my body didn’t believe the emergency was over. “How did you know? How to check him over?”
She stirred the pan of soup, caught a drop on her finger to taste. “I took a course, ages ago. My mother has falls sometimes.”
“Jesus,” I said. I wrapped my arms around her from behind and kissed the top of her head.
She took my hand off her waist, pressed it to her lips for a second and put it aside to reach for the herb shelf. The leftovers of that cool detachment still hung about her, and I wanted it gone; I wanted to take her to bed and strip it off with her clothes, burn it off like mist. “No, it’s good. You’d be surprised how many times it’s come in useful.”
“Still,” I said. I had heard enough over the years to know that I would never be able to meet Melissa’s mother without wanting to punch her