What Happened to the Bennetts(3)

I thumbed to the phone function and pressed 911. The call connected. I held the phone to my ear to hear over the dog’s barking.

The 911 dispatcher asked, “What is your emergency?”

“My daughter’s been shot in the neck. Two men tried to carjack us on Coldstream Road near the turnpike overpass.” I struggled to think through my fear. Allison was making gulping sounds. She was losing blood fast, drenching my shirt. My hands were slick with my daughter’s lifeblood, slipping warm through my fingers.

“Sir, is she awake and responsive?”

“Yes, send an ambulance! Hurry!”

“Apply direct pressure to the wound. Use a compress—”

“I am, please send—”

“An ambulance is on the way.”

“Please! Hurry!”

Allison’s eyelids fluttered. She coughed. Pinkish bubbles frothed at the corners of her mouth. “Daddy?”

My heart lurched. She hadn’t called me that since she was little.

I told her what I wanted to believe: “You’re going to be okay.”





Chapter Two



The waiting room of the emergency department was harshly bright, and the mint-green walls were lined with idealized landscapes of foxhunts. Green-padded chairs had been arranged in two rectangles, forming rooms without walls. The front section held a handful of people, but we had the back to ourselves. Wrinkled magazines lay on end tables, ignored in favor of phones. There was a kids’ playroom behind a plexiglass wall next to vending machines.

I had been in this waiting room so many times over the years, for so many reasons. Allison’s broken arm. Ethan’s random falls. Once, a moth flew into Lucinda’s ear. Every parent knows the local emergency room, but not like this. Never before had I seen anyone look like us, right now.

The three of us huddled together, shocked and stricken. Allison had been taken to surgery. My undershirt was stiffening with drying blood, and Lucinda had spatters on her Lady Patriots sweatshirt and bloody patches on her jeans. She had stopped crying and rested her head on my right shoulder. Ethan’s T-shirt was flecked with blood, though the fabric was black and it didn’t show except for the white N in Nike. He slumped on my left, and I had an arm around each of them.

“She’ll be okay, right?” Lucinda asked, hushed.

“Yes,” I answered, but I was scared out of my mind. “How was she in the ambulance?”

“Okay. She didn’t panic. You know her.”

“Yes.” I nodded. Allison had a high pain threshold. At lacrosse camp, she broke her arm in the morning and didn’t tell her coach until lunch.

“The EMT was in the back, I had to sit in the front. He was nice. He talked to her. He called in her vital signs.”

“How were they?”

“Her blood pressure was low.” Lucinda started wringing her hands. I remembered her doing that when her sister Caitlin was dying of breast cancer, five years ago. I hugged her closer.

An older couple shuffled in together and took a seat in our section, glancing around. The husband had a walker with new tennis balls on the bottom, and he walked ahead with concentration. His wife noticed us, then plastered her gaze to the TV, showing the news on closed-captioning.

Lucinda wiped her nose with a balled-up Kleenex. “Jason, do you know what she said to me in the ambulance? She told me not to worry.”

Tears stung my eyes. “What a kid.”

“I know.” Lucinda sniffled. “I wonder how long the surgery will be.”

“They have to repair the vein. I think it was a vein, not an artery.”

“How do you know?”

“If it were an artery, like the carotid, the blood would have pulsed out.” I hoped I was right. Any medical information I had was from malpractice depositions, of which I’d done hundreds. I was a court reporter, which made me a font of information about completely random subjects. It wasn’t always a good thing.

“We were supposed to look for a homecoming dress tomorrow. She found one she liked at the mall. She saw it with Courtney.”

I remembered. Allison had shown me a picture on her phone. The dress was nice, white with skinny straps. She would have looked great in it. She had the wiry, lean build of an athlete. She worried it would make her butt look flat.

Allison, your butt isn’t flat.

Dad, you don’t know. You just love me.

I had so many nicknames for her. Al, Alsford, The Duchess of Alfordshire, and The Alimentary Canal because she ate like a horse. She called me Dad or Dude. I was an involved father, according to my wife. I was present in my children’s lives. I sold raffle tickets and bought gigantic candy bars that I gave out at work. I taught both kids to pitch and saw that Allison was the better athlete.

Lucinda sniffled again. “I assume they’ll keep her a few days, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I could pick it up for her.”

“Pick what up?”

Ethan looked over, his eyes glistening. “The dress, Dad.”

“Right.” I was too upset to think, it just didn’t show. I couldn’t follow the conversation. My wife talked more when she was upset, but I talked less. I was lost in my own thoughts. I was lost.

Lucinda wiped her nose. “I hope she can still go to homecoming. She’s so excited. I think she really likes Troy.”