They were in the same practice, she knew, and she tried to summon a picture of Dr. Murray. A hazy picture formed in her head of a man who was slightly shorter than Jeff with a steel-gray mustache and kind eyes.
The beeper the nurse wore around her neck suddenly went off. She glanced at it, then turned to Jeff. “If you don’t need me, Dr. Bradford, I’ve got another patient to check on.”
“Thank you,” he said. When she left, he reached for Claire’s broken arm, lifted it and wiggled her fingers. For not being her treating physician, he was doing a fairly good impression of it.
“How are the children?” she asked when he turned his attention to her ankle.
“Just fine. I spoke with Holly a few moments ago and she said they had rested most of the afternoon, even Owen. She’s making popcorn and when I get home we’re going to watch a movie.”
Claire felt that absurd urge to cry again. In that moment, she wanted to be cuddled up in her comfortable family room with her children eating popcorn and watching a dumb kids’ show more than she remembered wanting anything in her life.
“You don’t need to worry about them,” Jeff said in that stern, listen-to-me-I’m-a-doctor voice of his. “You should be focusing on yourself.”
She didn’t know how to do that very well and probably never had.
“That car. The one that drove us off the road. Did the police ever find them?”
Ruth and Jeff exchanged looks and Claire thought she saw her mother give a slight shake of her head. “Don’t worry about that now,” Ruth said quickly.
“What does that mean?”
They were definitely keeping something from her, but she didn’t have the energy to push. Claire really wished she could remember more than those few moments just before the crash and then that terrible moment of flying toward the water.
And Riley McKnight. Good grief. Why would she remember Riley?
Fragments of memory teased at her mind. A quiet voice soothing her, a cold hand smoothing her hair away from her face. Had Riley really been there or was she just mixing things up after seeing him first at her store and then later at the Spring Fling?
“How long will I have to stay here?” she asked Jeff.
“That’s for Dr. Murray to decide. If you were my patient, I would probably keep you two or three more days post-op to get you through the worst of the pain and to make sure we don’t see any complications from that head trauma.”
“I can’t stay here four days! The store!”
“You’re going to be away from String Fever for more than four days, Claire.” Her mother’s tone was brisk. “At least three or four weeks. But don’t worry, Evaline is taking care of things for you.”
“Dr. Murray will go over this all with you, but you’re going to have a difficult recovery,” Jeff warned. “One ankle is broken, the other is sprained and you’ve got a broken ulna to boot. Mobility’s going to be your biggest issue because you won’t be able to use crutches very well at first due to your arm, or at least until the right sprained ankle heals a little. You’re going to need help, Claire.”
“Don’t you worry,” her mother said, squeezing her arm. “I’ll move into the house with you and take care of everything. We can move you into that guest room you’ve got downstairs and I’ll take your room.”
She looked between the two of them and didn’t know how to respond. The pain medication Brooke had given in her IV was beginning to take effect. Blessed oblivion lurked just on the edge of her consciousness, enticing her to just close her eyes.
“You rest now, poor thing,” Ruth said. “That’s the very best thing for you. Am I right, Jeff?”
“Absolutely.” Her ex-husband brushed his streaky blond hair from his face, his face twisted into that unnatural botulism-toxin placidity.
Normally she would fight sleep with every ounce of strength she possessed, but right now even battling mystical water creatures in her medication-twisted nightmares was more appealing than contemplating the idea of having her mother living with her for the next few weeks.
She would worry about that later. As long as her children were safe, she could cope with anything.
Five
Hospital sleep was the worst. As she expected, her dreams were tortured and disjointed. Every time she seemed to drift off, the nurses would come in to make her move her arms and legs, to give her more meds, to check her vital signs.
When she awoke to pale morning sunlight streaming through the gap in the blinds that hadn’t been fully closed, she was blessedly alone and only in moderate pain.
She gazed at that beam of sunlight and even though she wanted to stay there in the quiet peace of morning, she made herself revisit the accident. Something teased at her, some discordant note she couldn’t quite place. Her mother wasn’t telling her something and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what.