Oh, God.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Jack, as calmly as she could. He nodded, crying. She raced into the house to call 999, her fingers trembling as she punched the numbers. “This is Grace House. My daughter’s had a terrible fall. She’s breathing, but not conscious,” she told the voice on the other end, then let the receiver drop.
She grabbed a clean tea towel to stanch the blood, wrapped ice in another one, and pounded back, willing her damaged leg not to collapse.
She sank onto the grass next to Eden.
“Eden, honey, it’s Mummy. I’m going to put something on your head that will make it better, okay? Can you hear me, Eden?”
Still no response. Jack’s breath was coming in hiccuping sobs. He’d left the edge of the blanket where she’d deposited him and crawled closer. He was stroking Eden’s hand, kneeling in a puddle of blood. Holly tried to move him back, but he clung to Eden even tighter, so she gave up.
Carefully, she wiped the blood away from Eden’s head, assessing the swelling and the source. The cut was so deep she could see bone. She placed the towel with ice on the large bump that was developing and held it there with one hand. With the index finger and thumb of her other hand, she carefully pried up Eden’s eyelid. The pupil contracted. She did the same with the other eye, uttered a short, silent prayer of thanks when the same thing happened.
“Is Eden dead?”
“What? No, honey.” She took a few precious seconds to reach out and wrap her free arm around Jack. “She’s hurt, badly hurt, but she’s alive,” she said, hugging him and not letting herself think beyond that. “You know what I bet she’d like? If you talked to her. I need to try and find out where else she’s hurt, so maybe you could tell her a story while I do that, okay?” She gave him a final squeeze, then let him go.
“Can she hear me?” he asked doubtfully.
“Of course she can,” Holly said. She turned her attention back to Eden. She didn’t want to move Eden’s neck—she didn’t have anything to brace it with—so she contented herself with feeling along the length of her limbs. Eden’s left arm was twisted at an odd angle, clearly broken. Holly tickled her toes—Eden never would keep her shoes on—and at the reflexive curl away, relief flooded her so hard she gasped.
Jack had been whispering to Eden, but at Holly’s exhalation he stopped, eyes wide and frightened.
“It’s all right,” she told him. “It’s good—she can feel her feet, can move her toes. See?” She did it again, and again Eden’s toes curled. “If . . . if everything else is okay, it means she’ll most likely be able to walk.”
“Not like me?” There was something in his voice, a pain that cut at her even now.
“You do walk, Jack, you know that.”
He didn’t reply.
There were sirens in the distance. It seemed as if she had called for help hours ago, although she knew it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. To Jack, she said, “The ambulance is almost here, love.”
He leaned forward, his ear almost brushing Eden’s lips. He stayed in that position for a minute, then straightened. “She doesn’t want to go,” he said.
“Go where?”
“To hospital. She doesn’t want to. She wants to stay here with us. At Grace House.”
“How do you know that?”
He looked at her as if she were crazy. “She told me.”
“Well, she has to,” she said, ignoring his last sentence. “I can’t help her here—she needs doctors.”
“You’re a doctor.”
“Yes, but not a people doctor. I can’t do much more than this,” she said, nodding at the ice she still held against Eden’s head. “Eden, sweetheart,” she said, leaning closer. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to go with you and get you help.” She brushed her lips over Eden’s forehead.
The sirens were closer. In a moment, Holly could see them—an ambulance and, lumbering behind, a police car. Everything blurred after that—the way they took Eden’s vital signs, looking somber, the way they carefully maneuvered her onto the stretcher, her face as white as the sheet beneath her.
There was no one to stay with Jack, and he wasn’t allowed in the ambulance. Instead the responding officer offered to follow behind in his car. He turned to Jack. “Shall we use the sirens, then?” Jack had looked down at the ground. He hated sirens.
“Jack.” Under the guise of a hug, Holly helped him to his feet. “I need to stay with Eden,” she said as he clung to her. “I’ll see you in a little bit. You’ll be all right?”
He nodded.
“That’s my boy.” And then she was in the ambulance speeding away. She couldn’t see Jack, couldn’t watch his slow progress to the police car. Instead she grasped Eden’s hand, felt it cold and limp in hers. Put every ounce of her being into willing the words Don’t die into Eden’s head.
She didn’t realize she was speaking aloud until the EMT put a hand on her shoulder, making her jump. “She’s stable. For now. We’re about half an hour out.”
“Right,” she said grimly. She knew from experience that stable wasn’t enough.
* * *
She stayed with Eden as they brought her through the emergency doors. She held her hand right up until they got her to the OR. And then they made her let go.
She filled out the forms they pushed at her. Hesitated a little too long at the line asking for Eden’s father’s information before firmly writing, Deceased. She called her mother, who didn’t answer, so she left a message, asking Jane to come. She checked on Jack, made sure the officer could stay with him. And then she waited. A lifetime seemed to pass before anyone came to talk with her. The world had descended into gray again before the doctor called her name.
Eden was stable. That word again. There was swelling, but they wouldn’t know more until some time had passed. Multiple stitches to close the scalp wound, some bruising, but nothing like they’d expected to see in an accident of this magnitude.
“Amazing, really,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “She’s still being examined. But you should be able to see her in an hour or so.”
“What about her arm? The left one? It looked broken to me.”
The doctor frowned. “There’s evidence of a former fracture there, but nothing new. I take it she’s an active child?”
“Former fracture?” she’d said, confused. She’d been about to ask more when the doctor’s phone buzzed. Before she could speak, he was already turning away.
She found Jack in the cafeteria. The policeman who’d come to the house was next to him, drinking tea.
“Here she is,” he said to Jack. “I told you she’d be back soon. How’s the little girl?”
“She’s stable,” Holly said with a quick glance at Jack, who hadn’t looked up. She sank onto the cafeteria seat. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she was exhausted.
“Brave laddie you have,” the policeman said, nodding to Jack. “Although he doesn’t care for sirens. He made that plain.”
“No,” Holly said. “Neither of us do.”
“Not a good place for him to be then,” the policeman said, jerking his chin toward the outside, where another ambulance wailed its arrival. “There’s no one you can leave him with?”
Holly shook her head. “I put a call in to my mother, but . . .”
The policeman, it turned out, had a teenage niece who babysat. “I can ring her and see if she can fill in for a few hours, if you like. And run you home in the meantime to get your things.”
“That would be amazing, thank you.” She realized she didn’t even know his name. “Officer . . .”
“Beale. Come along then.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ll fetch the car and meet you out front. I’ll give Mallory a call along the way.”
“Let me tell the nurses,” Holly said. “Come on, Jack. We’re going home.”