Chapter 4 - After the Siren
Vega brought me into an empty family room.
I sat on the edge of a couch while people whispered good news and bad news somewhere beyond the wall.
“Once the ambulance left,” she said, “your mother told your sister exactly what to say.”
I looked at the closed door.
“She told her it was a fall.”
“Yes.”
Vega checked her notes.
“Your mother said, ‘Keep it simple. She climbed, she slipped, Claire panicked.’”
There it was.
My daughter reduced to a problem with a convenient explanation.
“What did my father say?”
“He told Vanessa to stop talking until they decided what to do.”
Of course he did.
“Did they check on Ruby?” I asked.
Vega waited a beat.
“Not in that portion of the recording.”
The surgery lasted longer than the first estimate.
Jo arrived near midnight wearing mismatched socks and carrying a phone charger, clean clothes, and the stuffed rabbit from Ruby’s bed.
“Who’s with her?” she asked.
“The surgeons.”
“Then I’m with you.”
When the doctor finally came, he said Ruby was stable.
They had treated the facial injuries and done what they could for her eye.
The next days mattered.
There would be more examinations, follow-up care, decisions we could not make yet.
I listened without interrupting.
Then I asked whether I could touch her.
“Yes,” he said.
“Gently.”
Ruby looked impossibly small beneath the blankets.
I sat by her right side, where the nurse suggested, and laid two fingers against her hand.
Jo set the rabbit beside her pillow.
I stayed there until morning thinned the window glass.
Eventually Ruby’s fingers moved.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here, baby.”
Her voice was rough.
“Am I in trouble?”
I bent forward so she would not have to search for me.
“No. You are not in trouble.”
“Grandma said I could.”
“I know she did.”
A tear slipped toward the bandage.
“Is Aunt Vanessa still mad?”
I had thought the worst thing Vanessa took would be sight.
Now my daughter was lying in a hospital bed, afraid of the person who put her there.
“No one who hurt you is coming into this room,” I said.
May you like
That was my first promise.
Before breakfast, my mother called the nurses’ station and tried to break it.
