“But her head?”
“We stitched a gash along her crown. She has a concussion, but the swelling has stabilized, which is a positive sign. It’s a waiting game at this point, Mrs. Teague. She’s being moved to a room in the pediatric ICU. Once she’s settled, a nurse will come get you.”
“That’s all you can tell me? ‘Let’s wait to see if she’ll wake up’? Can’t you do anything?”
“He’s a doctor, not a magician, Allison.” Darren’s voice was scratchy.
Wearing a grimace, the doctor inclined his head and backed out of the waiting room.
The short fuse to a bomb ignited. Allison faced off with Darren. “This is your fault.”
“How do you figure that? You attacked me first thing this morning and started the stupid fight.”
“You aren’t the same man I married. I don’t know who you are.” The truth exploded and left a barren crater.
“I’m dealing with my issues—”
“Issues? You have more than ‘issues,’ and you are most definitely not dealing with them.” Allison’s voice was both mocking and filled with despair. “I’ve tried to help you—I’ve made myself sick trying to help you—but you don’t see or care. Libby and Ryan are scared of you. So am I sometimes. Sophie is the only one … and look what you’ve done.”
Allison made a noise and ran out of the room.
Harper was left behind to bridge the gap. “It was an accident, Darren. Allison is hurting and needs to blame someone.” Harper had been there and done that.
Sinking down in a chair, he didn’t respond. Feeling awkward and like she was betraying Allison somehow, Harper patted his shoulder, not sure what else to offer that wasn’t a lie. If Sophie didn’t wake up, things wouldn’t be fine.
She slipped away to find Allison. The bathroom was dimly lit, the smell of bleach stark in the small space. Harper peeked under the stalls. One of Allison’s tennis shoes was untied.
“It’s me.” Even though Harper kept her voice low, it echoed against the cold white tile.
“Is he gone?”
“He’s not going to leave Sophie, and it’s not fair to ask him to.”
A pause. “I don’t think I can be in the same room with him.”
A sense of helplessness came over Harper. Words didn’t assemble themselves into advice to live by. Wisdom wasn’t bequeathed to a person as a consolation prize for enduring tragedy.
“It was an accident.” Harper settled for a fact.
“If we hadn’t been fighting…”
We. She blamed herself as much as Darren. “People fight. It’s not a crime.”
The sound of toilet paper unspooling was followed by the sound of a nose blowing. The toilet flushed and the door swung open. Allison had a wild, panicked look in her eyes, but when Harper reached to touch her she jerked away.
“I failed him. And her. Everyone.” While the declaration might qualify as melodramatic from another woman, Allison believed the harsh assessment the way she believed the sky was blue—an undeniable truth.
Grief and worry and depression could close the curtains on the good in life. Wrapped in her personal tragedy for months on end, Allison’s reality had been skewed. Her failure to fix Darren had preyed on her mind and soul. She was smart, capable, and because she’d never failed, the magnitude and depth of their life spiraling out of control was like a natural disaster in paradise.
“You haven’t failed anyone. And this is not your fault.” This time when Harper reached for Allison’s hand, the other woman didn’t snatch it away. “You can’t fix everything. Not everything can be fixed. Sometimes a new normal has to be found.”
In the silence, hope broke ground in Harper’s chest.
“I’m leaving him.” Allison’s words ricocheted like bullets off the tile.
“Allison, no,” Harper said more to herself than as an entreaty.
“I can’t do it anymore. The kids need to play and not worry about what kind of mood Darren will wake up in.” A sob escaped even though her eyes were dry. “Maybe it makes me selfish or a terrible wife or a horrible person. I don’t care anymore. I’m so tired. I need peace.”
The exhaustion weighing Allison’s shoulders and aging her a decade wasn’t physical. Or at least not mostly physical. It was mental and emotional and went soul deep.
What was the right thing to do? Did right and wrong even exist in this situation? It all blurred together. “When is spring break for the kids?”
“Next week.”
“How about I take Libby and Ryan back to Nags Head? You can concentrate on Sophie. And Darren.”
Allison’s head popped up and her hand tightened around Harper’s. “What about Gail?”
“Mom will love it. I’ll have her grab some extra canvases and the kids can paint with her. It’ll be like art camp. We’ll go to the beach and the dock to fish. It’ll be…” “Fun” was probably overstating it considering the situation. “A distraction.”
“That would be amazing. Thank you.”
Harper slipped an arm around Allison’s shoulders. “Let’s go see if Sophie is settled and ready for visitors.”
They walked side by side to the waiting room. Darren was gone. Harper grabbed the first nurse she could find and got directions to Sophie’s room. Darren was already by her side, holding the hand that wasn’t in a cast, his forehead resting on the back of her delicate fingers.
Lines and wires connected Sophie to machines that beeped and hummed and clicked around her. Her face was almost as white as the bandage wrapped around her head. A tube was under her nose, but she wasn’t on a ventilator. Her leg was in a sling and raised off the bed, her left hand in a blue cast from her fingers to her elbow. She looked like a little shake would wake her right up, but it wouldn’t. She was Sleeping Beauty.
Allison shuffled to the other side of Sophie’s bed. Harper stayed in the doorway, telling herself the room was stuffed with equipment and small, but her leaden feet didn’t move for selfish reasons.
Imagining Ben in Sophie’s place made her stomach heave and an acidic burn of coffee creep up her throat. Yet through the stew, a sliver of thankfulness rose. It wasn’t Ben; he was safe. She pressed her cheek into the cool metal of the doorframe.
Allison brushed her hand over Sophie’s face. “I suppose they had to shave her head. She’s going to hate that when she wakes up.”
“If she wakes up,” Darren rumbled.
“Shut your mouth,” Allison ground out between her teeth, quietly but with a bite.
Darren rose and ambled out of the room. He stood in the hallway, looking down one side of the hall and then the other, obviously disoriented. “I need air.”
Harper watched him disappear around the corner before entering Sophie’s room and laying her hand on Allison’s shoulder. “I’m going to make some calls and meet the kids at the house. I’ll get them packed and bring them by here on our way out of town. Is that okay?”
Allison didn’t look away from Sophie’s face or stop stroking her cheek. “There’s a key under the red flowerpot. I’m going to sleep here as long as she needs me.”
“I’ll bring you a bag, too.”
Allison nodded and Harper backed into the hallway. On the sidewalk outside the hospital, Harper closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the early afternoon sun. The hospital seemed to exist on a different space-time plane. The brightness chased away the chill that had settled near her bones and around her heart and had nothing to do with temperature.
Darren sat on a bench set under a crepe myrtle that was beginning to leaf out. She joined him.
“She hates me.” Darren’s voice was devoid of emotion.
Harper didn’t believe for a millisecond that losing Allison wouldn’t devastate him. “She’s as upset with herself as she is with you about the accident.”
“Is she leaving me?” Darren turned his gaze on her.
“She’ll be staying here with Sophie.”
“And afterward?”
“I don’t know.” What Allison declared in the shadow of an emotional tsunami wouldn’t necessarily come to pass. “I’m going to pick up Libby and Ryan and bring them back to Nags Head for spring break. I’ll try to make things easier for them.”