The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,119
nervous stink of my own sweat filled the front seat. The metallic taste of panic filled in my mouth. I wanted Momma. All the way home, I felt the memory of his limp weight in my arms.
The sky had dimmed to twilight by the time we pulled into the backyard. Wallace jogged out of the stable to help us. He and I carried Adam in, his feet dragging between us at each step up to the porch. Wallace glanced at me over Adam’s head. I saw the question on his face. He thought I was crazy to be bringing Adam home.
“It’s just the dope they gave him for the pain,” I said.
Wallace was no fool. I’m sure he smelled my fear. He shook his head, then bent over, gently picked Adam up, and carried him down the hall in his arms like a child. I followed close, supporting Adam’s head. Wallace paused in the kitchen. I pointed to the hall and told him which bedroom. Wallace eased sideways down the hall.
Adam came to consciousness on the way in, knew he was at home, and asked for food. But he was out again before we had him settled on the bed and rolled over on his side.
After Wallace left the bedroom, I took off Adam’s pants and put some shorts on him—I had not bothered with underwear in the hospital. He looked less yellow now. Was the sleepiness from the head injury or the drugs they gave him for surgery?
I brought fresh bandages and a basin of hot water into the bedroom. Carefully holding his head, I unwrapped the swaths of gauze. A smaller, square bandage centered on the back of his head. A faint blue line started at his crown, just past his hairline, and disappeared under the bandage. Slowly, I peeled the square bandage off. Centered in a blue-green bruise the width of a tablespoon was a cut about an inch and a half, a check mark with nine crude black stitches on the long part of it, five on the short end. I picked up the bedside lamp and held it over his head. The clean edges of the cut were pink, not red, already a scar as much as a wound. Very little swelling. His head remained smooth and rounded there, no dent in the bone.
I ran my hand gently over the back of his head. He moaned softly. His baldness and the intent behind the blue line that divided the crown of his head into a neat rectangle were as disturbing as the injury. I washed his head—the blue came off with a gentle scrubbing—and rebandaged the cut. I didn’t swathe his whole head, just wrapped it once in a clean white strip of sheet and tied it at the side.
I rolled two towels up into tubes and lay them on the bed behind him. Then I carefully rolled him onto them, one to support his neck and the other for the top of his head. The cut on his shaved chest, just to the left of his breastbone, formed the wide, shallow U-curve of a horseshoe. Fifteen stitches, and the same pink scarring, but the bruising around it gleamed darker and larger. The same blue line paralleled the length of his breastbone. Two perpendicular lines crossed it just above the U.
The cleanness and size of his injuries were a relief. The blue lines unnerved me. The map of someone else’s work on my husband’s body. Cuts to remove the essence of him. Washing the blue lines from his chest, I knew with an iron conviction he would be gone if they had operated on him. He didn’t need surgery.
But I wasn’t certain what he did need.
I left him there on his back, chest unbandaged, and dashed into the kitchen. I poured myself a whiskey, straight, and took it back to the bedroom. The burn in my throat and belly helped steady my hands. I rebandaged Adam’s chest, rolled him onto his side, and covered him up. He slept peacefully.
Bertie brought the girls home, sniffing on her way in so I knew she had caught the scent of the whiskey. I tried to act as if nothing was wrong, but felt completely transparent. Bertie, the girls, and I walked single-file down the hall and stood crammed in the doorway. I pressed my finger to my lips, as if it were possible to disturb him. Sarah grinned up at me, her happy-Cheshire-cat grin.