“She’s a lucky girl, surviving this crash as it is. She made it out alive and she’ll be in my prayers.”
“Thank you.”
The officer then went into details about the accident. Harvey was upset with driver who had hit Bella’s car and went into a fury. He learned it was sixteen-year-old girl who had gotten drunk during the day with her friends in some basement. She was driving home. The girl hadn’t been hurt, but was deeply sorry.
“I’m so sorry,” the policeman said.
“Thanks. Good day, officer.”
He went back and waited for her to be wheeled in from radiology so he could talk to her surgeon.
So many thoughts rushed through his mind. He realized what was important in life. And he didn’t want to live without Bella, he couldn’t bare it. She made his dead, black heart beat again.
Harvey sat in her empty cubicle, the IV pole standing there without its bag and tubing, those machines still and silent. He cracked his knuckles, a habit he’d given up at age twelve. He used t
o do that when he and Ryan went away to boarding school. The elite day school they’d attended only went through sixth grade, so their parents bundled them off at age twelve to New England with new blazers sporting the school crest. Harvey had been miserable and homesick. Ryan had immediately made friends and started smoking.
Ryan, it seemed, had a genius for the clandestine, making a substantial amount of pocket money from a homework sharing program that employed the smart and awkward to write papers in exchange for bullying amnesty. The lazy kids then paid for the essays and Ryan took a cut. He offered to let Harvey write for them, jokingly, knowing his brother was far brainier than he was sneaky. Harvey had been disgusted by the underhanded operation. He did his own work, spent a lot of time by himself those first few months, and bit his nails down.
It took a lot for him to go out for the cross-country team, to get his head in the game and focus. To give up feeling sorry for himself. It had helped him a great deal. He’d made friends on the team and gotten into shape, so he was no longer scrawny. It had helped him learn to rely on himself. Now that was all he had, self-reliance and fear. So he got on the phone and Greta who he wanted consulting on Bella’s case. Within minutes, he had a callback. The friend from Johns Hopkins had put his head general surgeon in contact with the trauma team at St. Cecelia’s and her scans were being emailed as they spoke.
Fifteen minutes after that, Bella was back in the room, and both teams told him her spleen had to come out, and that she’d broken six ribs. Internal bleeding was minimal, thankfully. There would be a lengthy surgery, and she would not be conscious until she was in recovery. He wouldn’t have the chance to say he loved her, to tell her he’d take care of the kids.
Harvey asked the nurse if Bella could be brought out of sedation long enough to speak with him, or to call their children and hear their voices. They shook their heads. It wasn’t in her best interest. The pain she’d suffer would be immense, and she would be unable to speak sensibly with anyone. It was better to keep her comfortable and get her into surgery as soon as possible. He agreed, signed the consent. The nurse gave Harvey her personal effects in an ugly green plastic bag. Inside he found her phone. He touched the screen and it blazed to life with a photo of their twins clowning around in the grass from a few days ago. She’d messaged him that picture, he recalled.
Tapping in the kids’ birthdate, he unlocked the phone, his password guess correct. There on the screen was an incomplete text message. To him. “Harvey, I’m coming to make this right. I’ve always loved you, and I’m not letting you go, not ever.” If she’d just waited, or if he hadn’t been so damned stubborn and just told her how he felt—that he was mad but he still wanted to be with her. Then she’d be fine, unhurt, healthy.
He heaved a sigh and went to the nurse’s station to ask where the waiting area was for surgery. When she looked up at him briskly, the words that tumbled out were, “Is she going to die?” His voice was not his own, but something lost and ragged.
“Depends on what happens in OR, young man. She has extensive injuries, but they’re not necessarily fatal. If she makes it through surgery, it’ll be months of physical therapy for her to recover, but she could recover.”
“Thank you,” he said, feeling lighter, buoyant even.
“That’s not a guarantee she’ll pull through, mind you,” the nurse cautioned.
She told him how to reach the family waiting area and assured him that her patient number would be on the monitor to let him know if she was in surgery or post-op recovery. He nodded and forgot to thank her and got lost twice by taking a left turn instead of a right. He had traveled all over Europe and Asia, took great pride in how he never got lost, and today he couldn’t find a room with some chairs and closed-circuit TV.
On his third attempt, he located it. Then he called Maria and told her the news. Maria wept loudly, professed that she would stay with the twins no matter what and that she’d pray the rosary for Bella until she heard from him. He asked how the kids were and she told him that they had succumbed to Redbox rentals and a bucket of chicken—rare treats she was using to distract them.
“After all the jumping at the trampoline park, they will go to sleep early, thank the Lord. By tomorrow, tell me this will all be over with and a bad memory, Mr. Harvey.”
“I hope so, but I can’t promise anything. Do you think I should come over and talk to them, tell them about the accident and what’s going on?”
“Yes. That would be wonderful. They might not know your there father, but they need you so much.”
“I hope she comes through this—” he broke off.
“So do I,” she said and hung up.
It occurred to Harvey that in the hours since this happened, the only person he’d felt compelled to phone was the nanny. Not his mother, or his friends, or even a coworker. He’d called Greta, but that was to get something he wanted, the medical consult. It looked like Greta had called him a few times since then. So he called her back and gave her the lowdown, albeit in far less detail than he’d given Maria, whom he already considered family. Was it because of the secrecy and the unresolved situation about the twins that he hadn’t confided in anyone? Or was it that he didn’t have any real family at this point besides Bella and the kids? He felt strangely alone, and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. Disgusted with himself, he called Ryan.
“What?” Ryan mumbled into the phone.
“It’s five in the afternoon, why are you asleep?”
“I was out till after nine this morning. I have to sleep sometime. Why did you call me?”
“Bella James was in a car accident. It’s bad.”