Tony tries again. “A nurse?”
It occurs to her to throw him off his line of questioning by simply saying, “A lawyer,” but she knows he’s curious about her connection to Nick and the wine has softened her usual guardedness. Besides, there is something about Tony’s open, affable manner that makes her think he can handle the truth.
So she nods in the direction of the hospital and says, “My son’s a patient at Shriners.”
“Oh,” Tony says softly. He shakes his head regretfully as Valerie wonders whether part of that regret is not over her answer, but his question, the fact that his light small talk has somehow derailed into somber terrain. “How’s he doing?”
Valerie smiles, doing her best to put him at ease, practicing for a conversation she knows she will have again and again in the months to come. “He’s hanging in there. He’s had two surgeries so far . . .” She pauses awkwardly, forcing another smile, unsure of what else to say.
Tony shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then leans over to rearrange a salt and pepper shaker on the table next to hers. “Dr. Russo’s his surgeon?”
“Yes,” she says, feeling somehow proud of this fact, as if their affiliation reflects on her parenting. Only the best for Charlie, she thinks.
Tony looks at her expectantly so she continues, offering more detail. “One surgery on his hand. And one on his cheek. This morning.” She reaches up to touch her face, feeling the first jolt of anxiety since she left Charlie nearly two hours ago. She glances down at her cell phone, faceup on the table, the ringer on high, wondering if she could have somehow missed a call from Jason. But the screen remains reassuringly blank, a scene of a two-lane highway winding under blue sky and fluffy white clouds, disappearing into the distance.
“Well, then you know by now—Dr. Russo is the best. You and your son have the best,” Tony says so passionately that Valerie wonders if he has firsthand experience with patients or their parents. He continues with reverence. “And he’s so modest. . . But the nurses who come here—they’ve all told me about his awards. . . the kids he’s saved . . . Did you hear about the little girl—the one in that plane crash up in Maine? Her dad was a hotshot TV executive? It was on the news—about two years ago?”
Valerie shakes her head, realizing that she will never again have the luxury of ignoring such a story.
“Yeah. It was one of those little single-engine numbers. They were flying to a wedding . . . the whole family . . . and the plane went down about a quarter of a mile off the runway, right after takeoff. Crashed into an embankment and everyone but that one little girl died right away from smoke inhalation and burns. The pilot, the parents, the little girl’s three older brothers. Tragic,” he says, looking mournful.
“And the little girl?” Valerie asks.
“Orphaned and alone. But she lived. She made it. ‘Miracle girl’ the nurses call her.”
“How bad were her burns?” Valerie asks, her leg jiggling nervously.
“Bad,” Tony says. “Real bad. Eighty percent of her body, something like that.”
She swallows as she contemplates eighty percent, how much worse it could have been for Charlie. “How long was she in the hospital?” she asks, her throat suddenly dry.
“Oh, jeez,” Tony says, shrugging. “A long, long time. Months and months. Maybe even a year.”
Valerie nods, feeling a wave of pure heartbreak at the thought of the accident, the unfathomable horror on that embankment. As she begins to imagine the flames engulfing the plane and all those people inside, she shuts her eyes to stop the images from coming.
“Are you okay?” Tony asks.
She looks up and sees him standing closer to her now, hands clasped, head bowed, looking strangely graceful for such a squat, burly man. “I shouldn’t have . . . It was insensitive.”
“It’s okay. We were very lucky in comparison,” Valerie says. She takes her last sip of wine, suddenly desperate to get back to the hospital, just as a cook from the back emerges with a to-go bag. “Lasagna and house salad?”
“Thanks,” Valerie says, reaching for her purse.
Tony holds up his hands and says, “No, no. Please. This one’s on the house. Just come back and see us, okay?”
Valerie starts to protest, but then nods her thanks and tells him she will.
***
“How is he?” she asks Jason as she walks through the door and finds Charlie in the same position she left him.
“Still sleeping. He even slept through his dressing change,” Jason says.
“Good,” she says—because he needs his rest and because every minute of sleep is a minute not in pain, although she sometimes thinks his nightmares are worse than anything else. She kicks off her shoes and puts on her slippers, part of her nightly ritual.
“So?” Jason says. “How was it?”