Rusty’s jeans were tight. Using my thumb and forefinger, I wriggled the phone free and when I turned it on, the screen glowed bright with text messages. Rusty was a popular guy.
Dude, Crusty Crab after work? texted someone named Luke.
Ken said, Got it. Stay cool.
While Laurie, clearly a girlfriend from all the emoticons that followed her text, wrote: Movie? Ninja Turtles? J (♥
Sadly, beer and the movies would have to wait. Praying that Rusty’s phone wasn’t password protected, I bypassed the messages, swiped the screen and breathed a sigh of relief when the phone icon appeared.
My finger was poised over the screen when someone said, ‘I’ve called nine-one-one.’ A man wearing well-worn jeans and a denim jacket over a stained T-shirt was sliding down the bank behind me. ‘He’s gotta be hurt bad, a fall like that.’
‘He’s knocked out,’ I said, laying Rusty’s phone aside. ‘And he’s got a pretty bad cut on his head.’
‘Jackass went sailing by me like a bat outta hell.’
‘You saw the accident?’
The farmer nodded. ‘Didn’t look like no accident to me, ma’am. Asshole swerved sudden-like, run him off the road on purpose.’
I sat back on my heels, breathing deeply, taking this in. Why would anyone…?
While the farmer stayed with Rusty in case he came to and started trying to move around, perhaps exacerbating his injuries, I rushed back to my car, popped the trunk and pulled out a couple of beach towels. I tucked one of the towels around Rusty’s body, like a blanket, and used the other to put gentle pressure on his wound.
‘Rusty? It’s Hannah. Stay with me, Rusty. Help is on the way.’
As I waited with the farmer for the ambulance, I massaged Rusty’s limp hand, trying to stroke life back into it, and attempted to reconstruct what had just happened. The car was black, I was sure of that. Make and model, who knew? If it didn’t have a distinctive hood ornament, or if nothing was inscribed on the car in racing stripes or fancy chrome letters a mile high, I was clueless. It was big, though. Mean. Two doors. Tinted windows, yes! Dark, way too dark by Maryland standards. No way I could see the driver as required by law. License plate? Oh, I wish, but he went by me like a flash. Perhaps the friendly farmer…?
Back up on the road, the farmer was diverting traffic, directing it around Randy’s fallen cycle. It seemed like hours, but a police car arrived fairly quickly, followed almost immediately by a chartreuse and white ambulance manned by two EMTs from the Elizabethtown Volunteer Fire Department.
As the EMTs tended to Rusty, I explained my relationship with the victim and told them about the helmet. Then I burst into tears. ‘But I was too late! If only he’d been wearing it!’
‘Ma’am?’ The patrolman was speaking to me. Through my tears, I recognized him as the same guy who had pulled me over for speeding through Shelton. When he offered me his hand, I realized I was still kneeling on the ground and, in spite of the heat of the afternoon, I shivered.
He escorted me to my car, opened the door to the passenger side and made me sit down. A bottle of water magically appeared.
‘Where are they taking him?’ I asked the officer as they loaded Rusty, now wearing a cervical collar and securely strapped to a backboard, onto a gurney. An oxygen mask covered his nose and an IV snaked out of his arm.
‘Peninsula Regional in Salisbury,’ the officer replied.
As the EMTs loaded Rusty into the ambulance, I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue, pressing hard, trying to discourage the flow of tears. ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Let’s just get him to the ER, OK?’ Apparently I had made no move to touch the water bottle because he twisted off the cap and placed the bottle firmly into my hand. ‘Drink.’
After I’d taken a few sips, he asked, ‘Is there anybody we should call?’
‘Dear Lord, yes!’ How could I have forgotten about Dwight, back at the house, waiting patiently for his son to return with the waterproof tape so that I could have a bath that night. ‘We need to call his father!’
‘Do you have a number?’
‘He’s still working at my house,’ I said, gathering myself together. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll tell Dwight the bad news.’
THIRTEEN
‘And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.’
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘The Lover: A Ballad,’ 1748
Two weeks after the accident, with Rusty lying comatose in the hospital, it seemed odd to be pawing through my closet, worrying about what to wear to his mother’s fancy garden party. Neither Paul nor I were in a party mood.
‘I can’t believe she’s going ahead with it,’ I commented to my husband as I slid plastic hangers along the rod from one side of the closet to the other.
‘They aren’t allowing Rusty any visitors, Hannah, so I don’t see what more you can do.’
‘True,’ I mumbled into the sleeve of a ragged terrycloth bathrobe. ‘I’m definitely going to petition Naddie Bromley to bump Kendall Barfield off in her next crime novel.’
‘Therapeutic, no doubt,’ Paul chuckled.
‘Ah ha!’ I’d finally located the turquoise sundress I’d bought in Hawaii at a shop called Tropical Tantrums. I swirled it out of the closet like a matador’s cape and held it in front of me. ‘What do you think of this?’
‘Reminds me of a certain night on the beach at Kauai,’ Paul said, drawing me close, crushing the dress, still on its hanger, between us. ‘You were barefoot then, too, as I recall.’
I kissed him quickly, then shoved him playfully away. ‘Shoes. Where are the matching shoes?’ I fell to my knees and scrabbled around on the floor of the closet looking for the pair of turquoise beaded sandals the saleswoman at Tropical Tantrums had also talked me into.
Paul patted my butt affectionately. ‘You’ll be the belle of the ball.’
‘Hardly, dah’link, but you will,’ I said, moving my butt out of range and struggling to my feet, holding the shoes. ‘Why don’t you wear the barong tagalog Daddy brought you from the Philippines?’ I suggested, referring to the sheer white formal shirt that had been hand-loomed from pineapple fibers, then embroidered from mandarin collar to hem with delicate folk patterns. ‘With your tan…’ I fanned my face rapidly with my hand, then reached for a Hawaiian shirt he’d bought but never worn. ‘On second thought, wear this. In a barong you’d be too dangerous.’
Paul eyed the shirt – bright red with white hibiscus – critically. ‘Jeesh, Hannah, I’ll look like Magnum P.I. in this getup.’
I gave him a look. ‘And your point is?’
‘OK, OK. I can tell when I’m outnumbered.’ He tossed the shirt on the bed, then headed for the bathroom. ‘How is Rusty doing? Any word on his condition?’
‘Dwight tells me he’s still in the ICU, being kept in a medically-induced coma.’ I eased behind Paul – who was standing at the sink, waiting for the water to run hot so he could shave – and fumbled through my ditty bag, looking for my tweezers. Tweezers and magnifying mirror in hand, I sat down on the toilet seat lid and went to work on my eyebrows. ‘Rusty’s got a depressed skull fracture,’ I said, addressing my reflection. ‘The CT showed a temporal hematoma, so they had to go in and drain that. Now they’re watching for signs of infection and waiting for the swelling in his brain to go down.’
Paul slathered his face with shaving cream. ‘Too soon to tell is what you’re saying.’
I lay the tweezers down, watched my husband draw the razor slowly along his cheek. ‘I ran into Doc Greeley when I stopped by the hospital yesterday, and those were his words exactly.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘And all I could think of was please Lord, not another one.’
Because of our long association with the Navy, we knew several young officers who were suffering the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury: personality changes, inability to concentrate, slurred speech, confusion. Medical advances in the treatment of wounded warriors had improved the outcome for many victims of TBI, but the road to recovery could be rocky and long. ‘Rusty really needs our prayers,’ I said.