whimpering on the way to the hospital, fluid coming from her nostrils and one ear. Worry was written on the paramedic’s face. This was not a good sign.
The door opens, causing my heart to lurch into my throat. It is horrific, waiting for news. It’s all I can do not to burst out of this room, to run down the halls, searching until I find my child. I need to know that she’s going to be okay, that someday all this will be just a story to tell.
Greg peeks his head around the door. My heart sinks. I’m glad he’s here, and also terrified it’s not the doctor, or anyone with news. His face is blank and as white as a ghost. “She was climbing,” I say. “And she lost her grip.”
His expression registers what I’m saying. I can see the wheels turning. He’s wondering where in the hell I was and how I could have let this happen. But he won’t say it. He doesn’t have to. “I was making dinner.”
“She didn’t slip,” Naomi says. “The screws were loose. I told her to be careful…we tried to tighten them.”
“Tighten them? With what?”
“A stick.”
Greg looks up from the floor, over at me, and then at our daughter. “Do you mean bolts, Naomi?”
She shrugs. Greg rattles off questions, one after another. Questions neither Naomi nor I can answer. Finally, I hold my hand up. “That’s enough. This isn’t the time or the place for interrogations.”
He starts for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To see what’s going on.”
“They said the doctor would come as soon as he could.”
He huffs. “Well, I’m not just going to sit here.”
“Greg—” I walk over and lean against the door. “Come on,” I whisper. I try to embrace him. He pulls away. “It’s okay. Calm down.”
But my husband doesn’t calm down. He does exactly what I’d been contemplating. He rushes into the hall and demands answers.
Not long after Greg returns, escorted by a nurse and a security guard, a doctor appears and delivers the news. Blair has a basilar skull fracture. She is leaking cerebrospinal fluid from both ears and one nostril. She fractured her tibial plateau on the growth plate, and her left arm is broken.
They will monitor her for several days to see if the CSF clears up on its own, otherwise surgery will be required. Just hearing the words “brain surgery” causes me to grip the elbow rest. The room spins. I am going to be sick.
The doctor goes on to explain how the surgery might work and our options, involving a synthetic graft using a piece of her own tissue, taken from either fat or muscle. If her brain continues to swell, he has not ruled out placing a lumbar drain in her lower back to decrease intracranial pressure. The tibial fracture will require surgical repair as well.
Later, after Blair is moved from the ER to a room, and Naomi has gotten the chance to see her sister, Greg takes her to stay the night with Dana in case things take a turn for the worse during the night.
When he returns, he looks weary. His shoulders slouch, and he doesn’t readily make eye contact when he hands over a bag of takeout. I set it aside. The smell makes me nauseous. I can’t even think of food. He plops down on the fold-out sofa beside me. “The bolts were removed from the swing set on purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. It wasn’t an accident Blair fell. Someone did this on purpose.”
I rest my face in my hands. A knock at the door causes me to look up. Alex texted earlier, asking if I could talk. I texted back saying I was in the hospital with Blair and nothing more. He’s the last person I expect to see standing there. Clearly, my husband too. He doesn’t say it, but his body tenses, and his jaw twitches, and all the signs are there. When you've been with a person as long as I’ve been with Greg, you don’t have to look hard. Outside, he’s calm and mostly collected. Inside, he’s fuming.
He treads carefully, Alex does. Walking into the room as though on a tightrope. “I’m sorry to barge in like this.” He glances at Blair lying motionless and then at the monitors that display her vital signs. “How is she?”
I give a small shrug. “Okay, I guess.”
“I just wanted to let you know they picked Mooney up two days ago for public intoxication.”
“What