“Don't you dare imply that my son was drunk!” Tom Chapman roared at him, as his wife began to cry again beside him. Their anger was a buffer against the inconsolable grief they were feeling. “That's slander. The blood test showed that he was nowhere near legally drunk, not even close to it. I know my boy. He doesn't drink, or if he does, rarely, and very little, and certainly not if he's driving.” But he wouldn't be doing anything anymore, and suddenly Tom Chapman's anger began to fade as he began to realize what had happened. He wanted to blame someone, to hurt someone as much as he was hurting. He wanted it to be the other driver's fault, not his son's …but much more than that, he wanted it never to have happened. Why had they gone to Carmel? Why had they left him alone, and trusted him? He was only a boy after all … a child …and now look what had happened. His eyes welled up with tears again, and he turned to his wife with a look of desperation. For a moment, the brief burst of rage had helped assuage the pain, but now it hit him again full force, and when he took his wife in his arms in the emergency room, they were both crying, and the issue of blame no longer seemed important.
A photographer took their picture as they sat in a corner of the emergency room. They looked confused at the flash of light. So much had already happened to them, it was just one more incomprehensible moment. And when they realized that the press had photographed them, they were understandably outraged by the intrusion. In the midst of their grief, they were being subjected to indignity as well, and Tom Chapman looked as though he were going to physically assault the man who had taken their picture, but of course he didn't. He was in great distress, but he was a reasonable person. But it was then that they understood that their agony was going to become a news event because of who the other driver had been. It was news, something hot, something to tantalize people with. Was it the Senator's wife's fault, or was she a very lucky innocent victim? Was it the Chapman boy's fault? Was he drunk? Irresponsible? Merely young? Or was there some malfeasance on the part of Laura Hutchinson? Were any or all of them into drugs? The fact that a seventeen-year-old boy had died, his parents' lives had been shattered, another child had been crippled, and a third nearly killed was merely more fodder for the press, or better yet for the tabloids.
The Chapmans looked devastated as they left the hospital, but the most devastating of all had been seeing Phillip. Mary Chapman knew she would never forget the horror of that moment, of seeing him broken and pale, so deathly still as they stared at him and cried, and bent to kiss him. Tom sobbed openly, and Mary bent over him and gently touched his face with her hands, and then kissed him. All she could think of was the first moment she had seen him, seventeen years before, when she had held him in her arms, and been overwhelmed by the sheer joy of being his mother. She knew she would always be, time could never take that from her, but death had taken Phillip from her. She would never see him laugh again, or run across the lawn, slam the front door, or tell her a joke. He would never surprise her again, with one of his harmless pranks, or his sweet surprises. He would never bring her flowers. She would never see him grow old. She would see him forever as he was now, heartbreakingly still, his soul gone on to another place. For all their love for him, and his for them, in one swift unexpected moment, Phillip had left them.
It made the next photographer's attack on them as they left even more repulsive. But seeing what was happening, Tom Chapman vowed to see that Phillip wasn't blamed for this disaster. If need be, he would clear his son's name. He didn't want Phillip's memory sullied by innuendo, or used to protect the Senator's wife, or the Senator's seat in the next election. Tom Chapman felt certain that his son was not to blame, and he was not going to allow anyone to say anything different. He said as much to his wife, as they drove away, but she seemed not to hear him. All she could think of was Phillip's face when she had kissed him.
The night seemed interminable to all of them, as Page sat with Trygve. Both girls were still in surgery then, and Trygve and Page were beginning to feel as though they had been there forever.
“I keep thinking about the options,” Page said quietly as the sun came up over Marin, and she tried to view it as a hopeful sign. It was another gorgeous spring day, but she no longer felt excited by the warm weather. In her heart, winter had come, with ice and snow, and all its desolation.
“I keep thinking about what Dr. Hammerman said …she might end up brain damaged, or severely affected in some way, physically or mentally. How would we ever begin to deal with that? How do you live with something like that?” she said absentmindedly, talking almost as much to herself as to him, and suddenly she remembered Bjorn, and felt awful. “I'm sorry, Trygve … I wasn't thinking.”
“It's all right. I understand what you must be going through. Or at least I can guess at it … I feel a little bit that way about Chloe's legs, and I remember what it was like when they told us Bjorn had Down syndrome.” He was being honest with her, they were both trying to understand what adjustments might lie ahead.
She looked over at him. His hair was as rumpled as hers, and he had worn jeans and an old plaid shirt, bare feet and an ancient pair of sneakers. She looked down at her gardening sweater then, and remembered that she hadn't bothered to comb her hair. She didn't really care, and it made her smile to realize what they looked like. “We're a sight, the two of us.” She grinned. “Actually, you look better than I do. I ran out of the house so fast, I'm surprised I remembered to get dressed at all.”