I Liked My Life(17)

I know the voice on the other end of the line. My breath catches. “This is.”

“I am calling from Newton-Wellesley Hospital regarding your daughter, Eve.”

I drop to the floor as though someone took a baseball bat to my legs. This can’t be happening.

“She’s here at the hospital,” the voice continues, unaware of my frantic state. “There was a car accident. She’ll be fine, but you need to bring her insurance information and pick her up, if you have a safe means to get here.”

I replay the call about Maddy. Your wife is in critical condition, the same voice said. Please find someone to drive you to the hospital immediately. “You’re lying,” I shout now. “You fed me this bullshit before, but my wife was dead. Dead. She had died instantly.”

My right hand claws at my chest, drawing blood. I feel no pain. The woman falters for a second but then insists, “Sir, calm down and listen. There are times we say that to protect people in extreme circumstances, but I promise you your daughter is fine. She needs a few stitches. That’s all.”

I hang up, get off my hands and knees, still begging, bawling, and sprint to the car.

When I got the call on Good Friday, I was at work. Meg was already at the house for Easter weekend, so she brought Eve to the hospital and I used the drive to set perimeters around what happened. Maddy and I had been lucky in life. Too lucky. Everyone pays dues at some point. I settled on the fact that Maddy had been permanently disabled. It was the maximum sentence I could conceive, and my giant ego actually believed I had the power to contain the situation. It was my turn to serve Maddy, and by the time I parked the car I was prepared to take on my new duties. I hadn’t realized how high the stakes were then, or how little say we mortals have on these matters, but I damn well know now. You only confuse hope with power once in life.

I can’t remember the drive—did I speed? stop at streetlights?—but suddenly I’m at the ER. A double-wide door opens for an exiting patient and I walk through, ready to shout Eve’s name. I stop short when I notice clumps of her hair on the floor of the first exam room. It’s the same sandy blonde as Maddy’s.

I throw the curtain aside and there she is. My daughter. Alive and looking rather bored. The front part of her hairline is shaved and covered with a bandage about an inch long. My instinct is to collect her hair off the floor, to keep every part of her together.

“What happened to you?” she asks.

I follow her stare to the bloodstain on my shirt, but don’t answer. Hearing her talk is such a relief to my senses that for the second time my legs buckle, only this time in gratitude.

“Dad, seriously, are you all right?”

I kneel by her side and grab her hand, crying into the sheets. This is the scene I was robbed of having with Maddy. I’d been directed straight to a conference room, where a doctor came in, looked at his feet, and apologized. I replied that we’d find a way to work it out, still certain the tragedy consisted of installing wheelchair ramps and accommodating physical limitations. “You don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “Your wife didn’t survive.”

Maddy is dead. Eve is not. For some reason that feels like breaking news.

“There’s blood on your shirt,” Eve says, trying to lift my head with her other hand. I stay furrowed, my forehead pressed into her arm. I picture her veins beneath me. Working. Pumping life through her.

I play through our history. Eve and I have memories without Maddy. They pop to mind as if someone’s spoon-feeding them to my brain. Tennis. We played together. When Eve was younger, I let her win, but at some point her lessons paid off and we routinely and legitimately split the victories. I’m stronger, but she’s more strategic, and a trash-talker like her mother. “You’re getting too old for this,” she jabbed on our last trip to Florida. “Maybe we should play bingo instead.”

I go back further. Bean. When she was an infant, skinny and long, I was the only one who could calm her down from a fit. The trick was to hop from foot to foot at an even pace. The faster I jumped, the more she relaxed in my arms. I’d press the right side of her face against my heart to keep her head steady and whisper, “It’s okay, my little jumping bean.” That’s where the nickname came from. We had a connection, she and I. Maddy actually called me home from work one day when Eve wouldn’t let up. I think she was only four or five months at the time. “If Daddy’s little girl doesn’t stop crying Mommy is going to have a nervous breakdown,” Maddy said. I knew she was serious from her use of the third person. Maddy wasn’t one to disassociate from her thoughts.

There’s more. When we were en route to her first day of kindergarten, Eve announced that she and I were getting married. Maddy laughed and asked what she’d do without us, alerting me this was not cause for alarm. “Don’t worry, Mommy,” Eve said, “you can live in the guest room.”

Yes, there was a time when Eve preferred me. I know I’m now forever relegated to a pinch hitter, but I have to step up. I am all our child has left. And it suddenly seems so obvious, this detail I’ve been overlooking: she’s all I have too.

Eve gives up competing with my internal trip down memory lane and instead gently rests her hand on my head. It’s soothing. I wonder how Eve thought to do it. How do women just know?

The doctor appears, forcing me to stand. He looks a little put out by my lack of composure, but then softens in a way that suggests he knows about Maddy. It’s a small town. Our neighbor is the chief of surgery here. With a series of nods he directs me to a little room off the registration area. I’m confused why our discussion requires such privacy until he speaks.