Tensing, I squeezed the hand brakes with all my strength. It caused the bike to skid, then wobble, then crash right into the front of the sofa.
I went down hard and felt the pavement burn the side of my leg all the way to my thigh. My hip took the brunt of the fall, and it hurt so badly I cried out, squeezing my lids shut as hot tears stung my eyes.
A moment later I heard my neighbor, Mrs. Duncan, exclaim, “Oh, my goodness! Maddie, darling!” followed by a quick shuffle of feet. I focused on the pavement and the cluster of shoes hurrying toward me, while I tried to get my bearings. Then there were hands pulling at the bike and at my arms. It all muddled with the pain searing my leg and thigh.
Belatedly, I realized that the bike was still on top of me, and I was gritting my teeth hard against the pain. “Let go of the bike, sweetie,” a male voice said. “Come on…that’s it. Let it go.”
I unclasped my hands and the bike was lifted off of me. I was crying too hard to do much else. “Oh, dear! I should get your mother!” Mrs. Duncan said, hurrying away.
Meanwhile, the two delivery guys helped me up. One was talking low and gentle, but I couldn’t focus on anything but the shock of the crash and the pain that radiated up and down my leg. I couldn’t seem to stop sobbing. Deep down I knew it wasn’t all about the fall.
“Wes,” one of the men said, “get the first aid kit from the truck.”
I was handed off, and the guy named Wes disappeared into the cab. “Here, honey,” the first guy said. “Let’s sit you down on this, okay?” I saw him motion toward Mrs. Duncan’s new sofa, which had ended up in the middle of the street.
I took a few shuddering breaths and limped over to the couch, where the guy helping me eased me carefully onto the plastic covering before he bent down to inspect my leg. “Can I roll this up?” he asked, pointing to the cuff of my jeans.
I swallowed a sob and nodded. He rolled up the pant leg, and I hissed as it brushed against my raw skin. He whistled and shook his head, his body partially hiding the wound from my sight.
“Is it…is it bad?” I blubbered.
He lifted his chin. “Yeah,” he said gravely, and then the corners of his mouth quirked and with a wink he added, “But I don’t think it’s fatal.” All of the sudden, even though I was having a total meltdown, I laughed. Then I was half-laughing and half-crying, and I couldn’t seem to settle on one over the other.
Mrs. Duncan returned, wringing her gnarled hands. “Your mother’s not feeling so well, herself,” she said, her eyes avoiding mine. Her meaning was clear. All the laughter died in my throat.
The other delivery guy came back then with a small white box, and he was sifting through it with a frown on his face. “I don’t think any of these bandages are big enough.”
Mrs. Duncan hooked one of her fingers onto the box to pull it toward her. “Oh, that won’t do!” she said. “Come along inside, Wesley. I’ve got everything we need to patch her up, but you’ll have to move those chairs out of the way so I can get to the powder room.”
After they’d headed inside Mrs. Duncan’s house, the guy who was helping me got up and went to the back of his truck. He took out a couple of orange cones and put them in the street behind and in front of the truck so that anyone who drove by wouldn’t get too close. Then he came back to me and pulled out a bandanna from his back pocket. He used it to dab at my bleeding leg. “What else hurts?” he asked me.
Everything hurt—I jumped every time he touched my skin with the cloth. Still, I held up my elbow. I couldn’t really see it, but I knew it’d gotten scraped up, too.
“Yikes,” he said. “When you go down, you really go down, girl.”
I wiped at my cheeks. He seemed really nice. But after glancing up to look at him, I took note of his deathdate, and my chest tightened. Dropping my gaze I said, “I’m okay. Thanks.”
“Do any bones hurt?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Really sorry about that, Maddie,” he said kindly. “If your bike’s wrecked, we’ll pay to have it fixed.”
I glanced at my ride. It looked a little scratched up, but otherwise it seemed fine. “I think it’s okay.”
The delivery guy put the bandanna in my hand. “Here,” he said. “You can probably do a better job of that than me.”
“Thanks.” I continued to avoid his gaze.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Puzzled, I looked up again. He had a big, square head, with short-cropped gray hair and deep-set eyes. Now that he mentioned it, he did look kind of familiar. I squinted at him but couldn’t place how I knew him.
He stuck out his hand, and I put my good palm in his. He shook it gently and said, “Rick Kane. I came to see you about a year ago.”
Vaguely, I remembered someone who looked a little like him coming to see me the previous September. It’d been right around the anniversary of my dad’s death, which is always a tough time at my house—so I couldn’t quite remember the exact details—but his deathdate stood out for me now, which was why I was trying to avoid his gaze.
“It’s okay,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s still the same, right? I’ve only got about five weeks left.”
I nodded. “I’m really sorry.”
He smiled in a way that seemed sad but still genuine. “Don’t be, kiddo. We all gotta go sometime.”
I looked back at my lap, wishing Mrs. Duncan and the other guy would come back out.
“You know,” he said, “you’ve really helped me.”
I squeezed the bandanna. The heel of my palm was scraped up, too.
“I mean, at first I was a wreck. You tell a guy he’s only got about a year left to live, and it’ll pretty much tear him up inside. But then I got over it, and I realized I had a whole year to get ready. Most people, they have no idea when they wake up in the morning that it’ll be their last day, but I know the exact date, and because of that, I’ve been taking care of things.”