He became very still. Even though more than a year had passed since then, Annie just couldn’t leave it alone. He hadn’t shoved her—he had grabbed her arm to stop her from hitting him, and then she’d lost her balance! What did she expect, anyway, acting so self-righteous? It was just after they had gotten into the biggest argument ever about her pregnancy, when Neal had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted her to have an abortion. She had become so angry she’d started to take a swing at him, and when he grabbed her arm to stop her, she slipped and fell against the wall, bumping her shoulder, but it was nothing serious.
“I didn’t shove you ‘against’ anything, Annie.”
“Yes you did.”
“No I didn’t, and you know it.”
Annie glared at Neal, her eyes watery.
“Anybody else probably would have shoved you, the way you acted that night. You think I’m so terrible for wanting an abortion, but...” Neal motioned around the room. “...is this how you want your kid to grow up? Living in a dump, with a father who’s a college dropout?”
“You don’t care about our child, Neal—all you care about is yourself. You can finish your degree as soon as Natasha’s old enough to go to kindergarten and I can start working again. A few years won’t make any difference.”
Neal rolled his eyes. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“You don’t know what’s important in life, Neal.” Annie started to say something else, then gave a long sigh. “I refuse to argue about this anymore—there’s no point in it. But you never should have shoved me, Neal. Never. There’s no excuse for it. You could have killed our child.”
“Our child is alive and well, in case you hadn’t noticed. You ‘could’ have burned the whole apartment building down today with your cooking accident, but that didn’t happen, did it? A million terrible things ‘could’ happen every day, but they don’t.” Neal over looked at the crib. “Not usually, anyway.”
Annie glanced at the crib, then shook her head as if she could no longer deal with him. “You’re losing it, Neal, if you think Natasha could actually climb out of her crib and put that trophy on the floor.”
“That baby is responsible,” Neal said firmly, though now he was beginning to question his grasp of reality. He groped for some sort of proof. “Look, how do you explain that blood on her forehead? You saw it. You wiped it away.”
Annie motioned to the wall. “There’s blood all over everything. Your foot slung it all over the room.” She sadly shook her head again. “I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation. I think after we take you to a regular hospital, we should take you to another kind of hosp—”
“Screw you,” Neal spat. He looked away.
Neither Neal or Annie spoke for a couple of minutes.
Annie finally broke the silence. “You have to wash out your foot.”
Neal didn’t respond. He stared at the makeshift bandage—the towel made his foot look like it had swollen up as big as a cantaloupe.
“You could get an infection,” Annie went on. “That trophy’s not clean, and—”
“Shut up, Annie,” Neal said flatly.
Annie was quiet only for a few seconds. “I’m sorry your hurt yourself, Neal, but I don’t see why you’re acting like such a baby about it.”
“I’m not acting like a baby.”
Natasha started to cry.
Annie gave another weary sigh and went over to the crib. She picked up Natasha and patted her on the back, rocking her from side to side. “There, there thweetie. Go back to sleep.”
Neal glared at both of them. Natasha continued to cry, her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn’t a hungry cry—even Neal had learned to recognize that particular sound. It was a cry of irritation, of disturbance. At that moment, Neal realized how much a baby—all babies—could affect what went on around them. Their crying almost always caused some kind of reaction in the environment, even if their mothers weren’t around.
As Natasha started to quiet down, Annie said, “Neal, you have to wash out your foot. Then I’ll take you to the emergency room.”
Neal watched her for a moment, then pushed himself up off the floor and limped into the bathroom.
* * *
“Well, Mr. Becker, I have some good news. No foreign matter appears to be left in the wound.”
The young doctor was holding some x-rays in his hand. He had just come back into the curtained-off section of the emergency room where Neal had been sitting the past two hours, mostly alone. The nurses had made Annie and the baby stay in the waiting room, which was just fine with Neal.
“Let’s have another look at it,” the doctor said. He gingerly took hold of Neal’s ankle and raised it, inspecting the hole again. The man was no more than thirty years old, probably an intern. But he seemed to know what he was doing.
“All things considered,” the doctor said, after a moment of peering and gentle squeezing, “it’s a pretty clean wound. No need for any stitches—you’ll just have to keep it bandaged up for a while.” He let Neal’s foot back down. “What do you do? Work or go to school?”
Neal hesitated. “I’m in the flower business.”
“Uh-huh. But what do you do, exactly?”
“Well...I’m the delivery manager. I schedule all the, you know, deliveries that have to be made.”
“Uh-huh,” the doctor said again. His facial expression told Neal that he knew it was a lie, but that he didn’t really care. “The reason I’m asking is that you’ll need to stay off your foot for a few days. There’s already considerable swelling, and I have a feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better.”
Neal only nodded, sorry that he had lied. But the thought of telling this young and successful doctor that he was nothing but a lowly flower delivery boy was too much for his ego to bear. Some day he would be a doctor—or something equally impressive—too.
“So, it won’t be a problem?” the doctor said.
Neal was so lost in his own thoughts he had forgotten the flow of the conversation. “What won’t be a problem?”
“Staying off your foot.”
A typical day of driving the Snell delivery van flashed through Neal’s mind—all the trips in and out of high rise apartment buildings, up and down stairs, across huge parking lots...
“It won’t be a problem,” Neal lied.
“Good.” The doctor began to explain how to clean the wound, change the bandage, and so on, but Neal only half-listened. He was worrying about how he would get through the next few days without the Snells discovering that he was practically disabled. If they knew, they wouldn’t let him drive the van—he would have to take time off without pay. If he tried to take sick time so soon after being hired, he would probably lose his job. Of course, losing the job at Snell’s wouldn’t be anything to cry over, but at least he got paid. And God knew he and Annie needed the money.
“Also,” the doctor said, after he had finished explaining the procedures, “I should warn you, there is a good chance you could develop an infection.”
“Infection?” Neal said, suddenly attentive again.
“Yes. Puncture wounds like this are particularly infection-prone. We don’t know what kind of foreign matter might have been on the end of that trophy you stepped on, bacteria or whatever. You’ve had a recent tetanus shot, so I’m not worried about that. But you could develop some other infection. If your foot really starts to swell or turns red or feels hot to the touch, you need to come back and we’ll put you on some antibiotics. Also, if you see any red streaks moving up your leg, you need to come back here immediately. That would indicate a very serious infection.”
Neal nodded, feeling a little uneasy, and looked down at his foot. It was already so swollen if felt like he had a golf ball sown into the bottom of it.
“Can’t you just give me some antibiotics right now, so an infection won’t even have a chance to get started?”