Carrie King
She kept rubbing Jamie’s back, adding soothing words, until the child’s distress wound down into whimpers. At that point, Lee guided him to a seat on the couch next to her, settling himself on Jamie’s other side. Jamie didn’t seem to be sure which one of them he should lean on. Glancing up, she could see that Lee had already anticipated something like this: he was holding out a hand. She took it and they rested their arms on the back of the couch. This let Jamie simply lean back as they nestled close on their respective sides, surrounding him with warmth and support.
“Are you all right?” she asked behind Jamie’s head. “He’s strong; I’ll bet you got quite the bruising.”
“I’ve been through worse,” replied Lee. He scrubbed his free hand through his hair. “It’s a normal reaction.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve unfortunately seen it before myself.”
He tilted his head, a question in his expression.
“You know I’m a teacher. First grade, right now,” she explained. “But when I was in the Peace Corps, I handled the lower half of an all-ages classroom.”
“Peace Corps? Where were you deployed?”
“Sierra Leone. I was there during the 1982 election.”
His eyes widened. “And they let you stay?”
“I was in the eastern part of the country, and I was able to blend in pretty well. The violence wasn’t that bad there anyway, mostly because people were afraid to come in to vote at all.” She sighed. “But there was some, and it affected my students.”
Jamie’s voice was small. “Did they lose their grandparents, too?”
“Some of them,” she answered. “Plus other family members. Some even lost their entire family.” She paused. “How are you doing?”
“I guess I’ll be okay.” He looked up toward Lee. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
“Nah, I’m fine. Like I said, that was normal. I remember doing it myself a few times while I was growing up. I’ve told you about that, that my parents died in a car crash when I was five and then my grandmother died when I was seven. She’d been sick for a while, though, so I’d known it was coming.”
“Yeah. You went to live with an uncle after that.”
“And I was one angry kid. It came from the same place as all the hurt.”
At that, Jamie leaned back, closing his eyes, although the fresh tears leaked out anyway. “Does it ever stop hurting, Lee?”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair again. He was usually quite the debonair man, Carrie thought, but right now he looked pretty worn: tousled hair, half-undone tie, wrinkled shirt. The pocket square on his jacket had a loose corner which hung awkwardly, and a collar pin dangled on the other side. The rims of his eyes were red, and it looked like they might be bloodshot later.
“I wish I could tell you it does stop hurting, sport,” he told Jamie. “But it doesn’t. I still miss my parents and grandmother even now.” He took a long breath, letting it out slowly. “You do get used to it, though, and after a while you learn how to deal with it better. Most of the time, anyway.”
“We can help you with that,” she added. “You aren’t going to be alone through all this. Your mom’s going to miss her mother, too, and even your dad is going to be sad for a long time. He loved Dotty.”
Jamie nodded slowly, his eyes moving from one to the other, but there was a slight frown on his face. Was it from her use of the past tense?
“I’ll miss her, too,” said Lee. “I didn’t know your grandma all that long, but…” he trailed off, eyes going distant. “We spent a lot of time together while your mom was in the hospital last February. I think she’d have been thrilled to find out that we’re actually already…” he blinked back to their surroundings, looking mildly surprised before the lines of grief got even deeper. “Or, at least, I hope she would have been.”
“I think she would have been,” said Carrie.
The door opened, and Joe and Amanda came back in, this time with a doctor and a nurse. She knelt in front of Jamie. “Hi, sweetheart. Your brother’s out of surgery, and the doctor says we can go see him for a few minutes if we want. He hasn’t woken up yet, though, so we’ll have to stay quiet. Do you think you can do that?”
He jumped up. “Yeah. Let’s go!”
She held out a hand, and the three of them left with the nurse. The doctor remained behind, sitting down in the chair across from Lee and Carrie. “Should I repeat the update, or do you want to wait and get it from Mr. King and Mrs. Stetson?”
“I’d like to know now, please,” said Carrie. She hated being the last to know anything.
“All right. I’m sorry to have to tell you that it’s a difficult situation. He has what’s called a basilar skull fracture, among other things, with cerebrospinal fluid leaking out and some intracranial hemorrhaging. We’ve managed to repair all that and relieve the pressure, but he’s still in a coma. Are you with me so far?”
Lee glanced her direction. Under his tan, his skin had gone gray. “I am. Carrie?”
“Mostly. This is pretty bad, isn’t it?”
“I’ll be honest: the survival rate for this kind of injury is only about 67%. But this kid’s a fighter. He was otherwise in good shape, and he hung on hard during the surgery. Right now, he’s stable, and if we can prevent infections, we’ve got a decent chance. We’ve started him on some pretty strong antibiotics for that.”
“What about traumatic brain injury?” she asked. “I…she trailed off. “I’ve had some kids in my classes that had those. They’re not easy to work with.”
“No,” sighed the doctor. “And yes, there’s a pretty good chance of one here. If he pulls through, he’ll be in some sort of rehabilitation for a while, and I’d expect some permanent effects. But it’s too soon to speculate about how bad they’ll be, or even about what they’ll be.”
Carrie nodded. “Anything else?”
“No, I —”
He was interrupted by the door banging open again. “Doctor Dawson, stat! The King child —” the nurse broke off, seemingly realizing which family was in the waiting room, even as the doctor leapt to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” he began as he moved toward the waiting room door. “But —”
“Go,” Carrie interrupted. “Take care of Phillip first. We’ll wait.” He was through the door before she’d finished speaking, letting it slam behind him. Lee stood up, obviously intending to follow, but she caught his wrist. “Not you.”
“Didn’t you hear? The nurse said —”
“I heard her. But you and I can’t go anywhere.”
“It’s Phillip!”
“Joe and Amanda and Jamie are already there with him! That’s a crowd, and we’d only make it worse.”
He turned back to look at her, the anguish plain on his face. Then he screwed his eyes up for a moment, letting out a harsh breath, before returning to sit beside her. “I guess you’re right. If anyone should take a step back, it’s us.” He paused. “Damn it.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically, reaching down to take his hand. This was the first time they’d had a chance to have any more than a brief conversation, but the touch seemed like the right thing to do. He didn’t avoid it, although he flicked his gaze up to meet hers. After a moment, she felt him shift so that his fingers wrapped around hers. They were warm and strong, just like Joe’s.
“Does it ever get any easier?” he asked. “Being a parent — er, stepparent. I’ve been reading about it, and trying to follow Amanda’s lead with the boys, but I still always seem to be off-balance. And now this. I don’t even know how I’m going to support either one of them through this. Emotionally, I mean. I just…” he sighed. “That’s not in any of the books I’ve read.”
“You can start by just being there,” she told him. “I don’t have my own children, either, but I’ve…” now she was the one who trailed off. “I’ve seen parents lose spouses and children, and I’ve seen children lose their parents and grandparents and even siblings. Families tend to form and re-form as a result of those losses. The one thing that seems to get them all through is a steady presence, someone who won’t leave, no matter how bad it gets.”
Lee nodded. “Sounds simple enough. I’ll bet it isn’t, though.”
“No. Are you familiar with the stages of grief?”
He thought for a moment. “I think so. They had a couple of seminars about them at the Agen…at where Amanda and I work. One of our documentaries is about, um, what was her name?”
“Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.”
“That’s right.” His next words came out in a rush. “Five stages, right? Starting with anger? I was only in the seminars because I had to — so I could learn about her work in preparation for shooting, but I ah, I don’t remember all of it. It always seemed to me that lots of people used a different order anyway. Some people never do get angry, and some seem to stay that way, so I figured the theory wasn’t right.”
He was clearly hiding something but confronting him probably wouldn’t do any good. Carrie shook her head. “There’s a progression, but it’s different in every person, and it isn’t necessarily linear. It’s also not a sequence that a person goes through only once before returning to normal. That’s especially true for children.” She paused. “He might come back already into denial, or depressed, or even beginning to show some signs of acceptance. He’ll probably also cycle through the stages a lot faster, since children process emotions differently. Not to mention it’s going to present differently, since even at his age, he’s still learning the vocabulary to be able to talk about his feelings. We’ll need to watch his behavior as much as, or even more than —” she cut herself off. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lecture. Teacher hazard.”
“It’s all right.” The ghost of a smile appeared. “I’m used to rambles and lectures, and at least you took some breaths in between the sentences. Amanda sometimes doesn’t.”
It stood to reason that she and Amanda would have some things in common. After all, Joe had chosen both of them. It would also stand to reason that this man might have things in common with Joe, too, since both of them had chosen Amanda. Blended families, she knew, were often fraught with recriminations and harsh words. Hopefully, though, they’d all be able to continue avoiding that.
She squeezed his hand, and they lapsed into a companionable silence. After a while, Lee leaned his head back and closed his eyes, apparently dozing. It was a good idea; he looked exhausted, and things were still a long way from being over. She wondered when they would hear something. It already seemed like quite a while had passed, although she had no way to accurately count. Had the doctor been able to address whatever called him back to Phillip’s side?
Waiting was often the hardest part. Unfortunately, it was also the only thing the two of them could do right now.
Well, that, and one other thing. Twisting around, she replaced the hand that was holding his so that she could cross herself, and began whispering under her breath. “Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce, le Seigneur est avec vous. Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes, et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni. Sainte Marie —”
She was startled to hear Lee’s voice joining her. “Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous, pauvres pécheurs, maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort. Amen.”
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” she said into the silence that fell afterward. “Or that you were Catholic.”
“I’m not, but I’ve lived in Europe. Which means I’ve seen the words written out a couple dozen times, and I have a good memory. I have to, for a job like mine. When I’m directing while we’re out on location, I mean.”
“Your accent is almost perfect. Where did you study?”
“Here and there. What about you?”
Yet another evasion. She covered by chuckling softly. “My brothers and sisters and I grew up speaking English and Kreyòl, but we went to a French-language parish, so we all tend to use that for prayers. And I took it in school, too.”
“Makes sense,” he observed. “Are you still — do you still go to Mass, I mean?”
She sighed. “Not as often as I should, and I go in English now. Do you…” she trailed off, wondering if he would at least answer this honestly. “Do you have any kind of faith, Lee?”
“Amanda’s Presbyterian, and I’ve gone to church with her and the boys a couple times, but…” he trailed off. “I didn’t find out until last year, but my parents had me baptized. I found the certificate when I was going through some of their papers. So I guess I’m Episcopalian, but I don’t know what that actually means.”
The chuckle this time was genuine. “That’s your creed. I was asking about your faith. Do you pray?”
“I used to insist there was no such thing as a God, but I’m…” he shook his head. “I’m not so sure anymore. Ever since I met Amanda, some things have seemed too perfectly timed to be coincidental. I’ve never learned how to pray, though.”
“You did just fine a moment ago.”
“I can memorize and recite words. People tell me that’s not the same thing.” He sighed. “I envy you, actually. I…” he scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I can’t stand this, the waiting, and it’s the second time this year I’ve been stuck in a hospital waiting room not able to do anything. Even praying might at least give me something!” He pushed up, beginning to pace. “And Catholics seem to have it better than most, with their —” he broke off, making a gesture with his hands. “Rosaries, isn’t that what you call them? They’re something you can actually touch.”
“But we don’t need them,” she said, standing so she could walk up and face him. Or try to, anyway; she hadn’t realized before how tall he was. “Can you count to ten?”
“What?”
“You already know the words, Lee, and with time the meaning might come. Even if it doesn’t, it’ll keep us both busy. Can you count to ten?”
He stopped, staring down at her. “Of course I can.”
“Then I’ll get you through the rest.” She offered her hand. “Come sit back down. We’ll do it together. A Rosary usually takes between fifteen and twenty minutes. Surely we’ll hear something by then, and if not, by then we’ll have waited long enough to go ask.”
Carrie couldn’t figure out if the expression on his face was exasperation, desperation, or something else. But whatever it was, she’d gotten through, because he took her hand and let her guide him back to the couch.
“All right,” she said once they settled. “We’ll begin with —”
“En français, s’il vous plaît,” he interrupted. “Cela attirera davantage mon attention de cette façon.” It’ll keep more of my attention that way.
“D’accord,” she acknowledged. “Nous commencerons au nom du Père, et du Fils, et du Saint-Esprit…”
Author’s Notes:
- The Sierra Leonean parliamentary elections were held on May 1, 1982. The U.S. Peace Corps was active in Sierra Leone during that same time.
- Catholic clergy in Haiti gradually shifted from using French to using Kreyòl during the 1970s and 1980s.