Rise: How a House Built a Family(82)
Hope packed my hand in ice while I held a second pack on my head. It was strange to have my kids taking care of me. And it was also frustrating to have accomplished so much with the house and feel weak and broken instead of strong. I thought of runners at the end of a marathon. They looked a lot more beaten than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But this was not what I had imagined when I was standing outside the tornado-broken house, and it wasn’t what I felt that Caroline expected of me.
I wanted winning to hurt a lot less.
In the waiting room, I read a book on my Kindle, and Hope pinned room-decorating ideas on Pinterest. The usual cast of crying babies and tired elderly sat around us, worrying through their own pain with little interest in their neighbors. Hope had brought a bag of almonds, and a bottle of water for each of us. If I didn’t feel like an ice pick was protruding from my brow, I would have enjoyed the reading break.
When I was finally called into the back, everything went as expected at first. They took me to Radiology for an X-ray of my hand and surprised me by taking one of my face in case of a fracture to the orbital socket. I hadn’t thought of that. They followed the painless radiation blasts with a very painful wound irrigation. The male nurse was a newbie and managed to drench my shoulder, back, and then the entire bed with saline solution and had to change the sheets and bring towels to mop my clothes dry. By the time I resettled, we were moved from our curtained room to an examining room with a door. I worried that it meant my hand was broken. I could not build the rest of the house with a cast on. Instantly, I was depressed.
A sturdy woman with bright red glasses and white hair so thin she was almost bald came in and sat down beside the bed. Hope ignored her, still decorating the house through Pinterest.
“I’m Pamela,” she said, patting my leg. “And I just wanted to come in and chat with you for a while, hon.”
I nodded, wondering who had told her I was a writer. It wasn’t as though I was well known enough to have fans seeking me out, but every time someone learned I wrote novels, they either had a novel they wanted to write, or they wanted me to write the story of their life into one of my novels. I closed my eyes, trying to summon the energy to show interest in her story and give her solid information about a career versus a hobby as an author.
“Good news is the hand isn’t broken, and neither is your skull. Just banged up. Now tell me about this cut here, and how you got it. Okay, hon?” She patted my leg again. “And what did you hit with that hand? It’s really banged up, now, isn’t it.”
I told the story again, wishing she would write it down so I didn’t have to repeat myself. She had asked a half dozen more questions and pointed at the network of nasty bruises and scrapes covering my legs and arms before I figured out what was going on. I laughed, first a little chuckle and then for real. Hope and Pamela sat up straight, eyes wide and on me, then darting to the door, wondering if they should go for help, call someone to scan my brain.
I waved them down. “It’s just ironic. You think this is evidence of domestic violence, right? And after all those years of sporting my husband’s bruises on my neck and hips, when not a single person asked about them, now I get hurt in an attic and alarm bells sound.”
Pamela smiled, tight-lipped and noncommittal.
Hope looked back at her phone screen.
The doctor rapped his knuckles on the door, then came in before we invited him. “How’s everything going here? Getting things sorted?” He had a British accent, and I wondered how he ended up in a Little Rock ER. He leaned in close to look at my cut, swiveling a magnifying glass on a pole between us for a better view.
Pamela relayed the attic story, doubtful but coming around, and I promised it was true. “Trust me, I know domestic violence. I’m free of that now.” Maybe it wasn’t entirely true. Matt’s hands weren’t around my throat on the average Tuesday night, and we hadn’t seen Adam in years, but fear has a long reach. They were still hurting me through the dents and craters they’d left in my self-esteem. The doctor was more interested in my house-building project than a domestic-violence threat. We chatted about energy-efficient building and passive solar. Then he suggested that it was time to start stitching up my face, and I balked.
“What are my options?” I asked, eyeing the door and mapping the best getaway path.
“You made a hole in your head, and we have to close it. Not a lot of great options for that. At the very least I have to glue it.” He leaned in for another look. “Longer than I’d like for glue though. If you split it back open it’s more likely to scar.”
He pinched the gap together a few times. I closed my eyes and kept my breathing even, pretending the razor knives of pain were no big deal and hoping that would help make the wound look small enough to be glued back together like a chipped lamp.
“If you think you can stay out of attics for a while, we can give the glue a try.”
The counselor left and sent in a nurse with a tray. I imagined it holding nothing but a big tube of epoxy. We continued talking about the various stages of building a house and more energy-efficient options. I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely interested in construction or merely trying to verify that my beating had come at my own hands.
Hope never looked up from her phone, partly because she was lost in Pinterest land, but also because she was nearly as squeamish as I was. A peek at my sliced-open eyebrow through a magnifying glass would have undone her.