Becoming Mrs. Lewis(110)

Would I move into his room? Did he still want us to hold fast to abstinence? My body would not allow me to think of much other than Jack and his touch.





CHAPTER 49


My friend, if it was sin in you and me That we went fishing for each other in The troubled waters of life

“SONNET XXXII,” JOY DAVIDMAN



October 18, 1956

Only God knows when life will burst open, shattering all self-made plans and expectations as illusory as dreams. For me, it was a Thursday, a regular Thursday by all accounts.

My sons were back at school. Jack’s final Narnian chronicle, The Last Battle, had just been released. Harcourt had published Till We Have Faces with its haunting black cover. We were both as thrilled as if we’d had our first child together, waiting for the reviews and readings.

Life had begun anew for both of us.

Autumn air rustled the birch tree, and songbirds called out to one another outside the open window of the small room where I typed pages for Kay Farrar’s new mystery novel. The imminent move to the Kilns preoccupied me.

Sambo rubbed against my leg, his fur sticking to my flannel pants. I leaned down and tickled him behind the ear. “You happy too, old boy? You’ve adjusted to Oxford, haven’t you?” He purred and walked toward the front door, looking over his shoulder. He wanted out.

I stood. That is all I did—stood and took one step.

And everything changed.

A white-hot, searing pain burst from my left hip. Fire shot down my leg and stripped breath from my lungs as I fell to the ground with a shriek of agony. For the fraction of a second I believed I’d been shot. I expected to see a hole in the wall or window, a thin river of blood trickling across the hardwood floor and seeping into the edges of my knotted rug.

The phone rang from the far side of the house in complete disregard of my agony, as if mocking me. Whoever was on that phone should have been able to hear me scream. I crumpled in on myself, folding into a fetal position with my leg bent at the wrong angle. The pain obliterated all senses but its own, selfish in its flooding anguish to be all I knew. I saw nothing, smelled nothing; the world existed only in the fire that was screaming through my body.

Slowly thoughts emerged, one by one. What happened? Was it bad? How had I fallen? Where was I? Had I tripped over Sambo?

No, I hadn’t. I’d stood, and my leg had given out below me.

With meticulous and tiny movements, I crawled across the wooden floor.

You can do this.

Slowly.

You have to get help.

Don’t panic.

Flames licked the inside of my thigh. I took long, deep breaths, but they caught in my throat and escaped as sobs against my will. I battled the mental fog of pain, struggling to think whom to call. I needed someone near, someone to come get me.

Kay. She was close by, only a block away. I finally reached the edge of the table. I couldn’t stand for the phone, so I grabbed its dark, hairy cord and yanked it to the floor. It banged and clattered, scaring Sambo to lurch across the room with a loud meow. In what seemed like slow motion, I dialed Kay’s number and waited through four long desperate rings for her to answer.

“Help me,” was all I said.





CHAPTER 50


What will come of me

After the fern has feathered from my brain

“YET ONE MORE SPRING,” JOY DAVIDMAN



My eyelids felt as heavy as granite, and I lifted them as if pushing a rock up Shotover Hill. In blurred vision I saw white curtains and glimmering steel, and I squinted against the glare. Where was I? The bed was hard and small, the pillow flat beneath my head as I lay supine. Somewhere far off, or was it close by? There was metal clanging against metal and the whispered voices of the serious. Cotton gauze covered my thoughts, and my brain wouldn’t fire. Had I drunk too much? Was this a hangover?

Polished tile floors.

Fluorescent lights too bright.

I attempted to move, only slightly, when the pain arrowed from my hip in both directions—down my leg and across to my groin. An involuntary cry erupted, and I remembered everything in one flash: Kay and Austin squealing onto High Street to carry me to bed. Kay whispering that it was she who had been calling when I fell—a premonition that something was amiss. I’d had a fitful and harrowing night swallowing the leftover codeine from my dental work and never dulling the pain. At sunrise the ambulance was called and roared in to transport me to Wingfield Orthopaedic Hospital. The X-rays and needles, the crying out, and the blessed and blissful absence of pain when the medicine soared through my veins.

With my cry a nurse appeared, her white cap a swan in flight at Jack’s pond.

“Mrs. Gresham,” the nurse said quietly. “I see you’re awake.”

“Where is the doctor? I need to know what’s wrong.” My logical mind burst like a flash through the fog: Diagnose. Solve. Fix.

“You have a broken leg,” she said in the weirdly placid voice of one trying to keep a hysterical person calm.

“I know that part.” My voice was shattered, fragile as the remainder of me. Someone had plaited my hair into two braids, and they fell over my shoulders with white ribbons at the ends. I had never worn my hair this way, and the omen seemed morbid—I was no longer myself. The blanket over my left leg was tented, a metal cage below to keep the fabric from resting on the broken bones.