When He Fell Read Online Free Page B

seemingly unshakable faith that things will work out for us, for Josh, even when they haven’t in the past. But I don’t think about that.
    I finish tidying up the kitchen and then I go back into the bedroom to say goodnight to Josh. He is already huddled under the covers, his eyes closed, his breathing even. I wonder if he is asleep—maybe he really is just tired—but then I notice how tense his shoulders are, scrunched up by his ears.
    “Josh,” I say softly, and he doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even open his eyes. I decide to play along that he is asleep, just for tonight, because maybe all he needs is a little space, a little time. Maybe he did just have a bad day as Lewis said.
    Gently I pull the duvet up over his shoulders and brush a kiss on his forehead, my lips barely touching his skin. I breathe in his little boy scent of soap and sweat and sunshine, my eyes closed. Then I tiptoe from the room and close the door softly, and hope that just as Lewis always believes, everything will look better in the morning.

3

MADDIE
    That night in the ER Ben experiences storming, which is a term I’d never heard before, but which Dr. Stein explains to me. Storming is, in layman’s terms, when a person’s vital signs go haywire; Ben’s temperature rises and then drops, his body seizes, his heart rate is all over the place. Dr. Stein tells me this happens in ‘roughly fifteen to thirty-three percent of all TBI cases’—TBI being traumatic brain injury. I am starting to know the acronyms, and I hate them all.
    When I ask Dr. Stein why this happens, he launches into a lengthy soliloquy on possible causes of storming. Maybe it’s ‘sympathetic’, and is part of the recovery process. Maybe it’s a reaction to the drugs he is receiving, or a change in dosage. Maybe it’s a neurological response to the initial trauma. Blah blah blah. I am desperate to understand, and yet this is a language I don’t speak. I want bottom lines and doctors don’t give those. They don’t deal in promises.
    I stand at the door and peer at Ben through the window; the sight of his body flailing in the bed, the machines beeping faster and louder, is beyond terrifying to me, but I am coping better now, or perhaps I am simply numb. Numb and utterly exhausted, living in this terrible stasis, and I have no idea what happens next.
    Lewis hasn’t called me back. I didn’t expect him to, but I am still disappointed.
    At ten o’clock that night I break down and call Juliet. I need to talk to
someone
.
    “Oh, Maddie,” she exclaims as soon as she answers the phone. “Is Ben going to be okay?”
    Shock slaps me in the face.
She knows.
Juliet knows about Ben. How? Why? And why didn’t she call? I swallow down my own question to answer hers.
    “I don’t know, Juliet. He’s in a medically-induced coma.”
    “Oh, no.” She let out a muffled sob and I feel an unreasonable dart of anger, because I haven’t permitted myself to shed any tears, but she can? She has that presumption?
    “How…how did you know?” I ask. And then I realize how little I know; I don’t even know how or where he fell. I’ve been too busy coping with the result to wonder about how it happened, or where, or why. And suddenly I feel like I need to know these things, that they might be important.
    “I…” Juliet hesitates. “I was on playground duty.”
    Burgdorf parents are required to volunteer for the school three hours a week; I usually end up stuffing envelopes or doing data entry after work, while Ben is in afterschool club. Juliet does the ‘fun’ things, the field trips and playground duty.
She was there when Ben fell.
Which means she knew about this for hours and hours, and yet she never even called me.
    “It happened on the playground?” I finally ask, and my voice sounds scratchy, hoarse. “Did you see him? How did he fall?” I blurt the questions, needing facts.
    “I didn’t see,” Juliet says quickly. “The kids were running all around, you know