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1 MADDIE

My phone rings on a Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a meeting. Not an important meeting, nothing crucial or critical or even remotely urgent. Just a boring meeting to go over new HR procedures for the pharmaceutical company I hate working for. But one of Alwin Pharmaceuticals’ policies is no phones in meetings, and so I reach into my bag and switch it to silent without so much as glancing at the screen. My boss, Elena Drummond, gives me a pointed look and an over-loud throat clearing before she continues.

It’s only later, when I’m back in my cubicle in a fluorescent-lit office on the fourteenth floor of a nondescript building in midtown, that I happen to glance at it, and then only because it falls out of my bag when I toss it onto my desk.

Missed Call. Ben’s School. I put the ID in as Ben’s school rather than its full title, The Burgdorf Institute for Committed Learning, because I joke to people, even as I mean it semi-seriously, that it sounds like a mental institution. Sometimes I wonder if it is. I certainly don’t fit in with the two kinds of mothers whose children attend Burgdorf. First there are the hippy-dippy types like my friend Juliet; her husband is a board member and hedge fund manager. They could afford to send their three girls to one of Manhattan’s best private schools but they chose Burgdorf because they are committed to its ‘principles of learning as exploration’ as well as Burgdorf’s motto, ‘Educating The Individual As Well As The Citizen’. Whatever that means.

The other kind of mother at Burgdorf is the pinched and bitterly disappointed woman whose child hasn’t been able to get in anywhere else.

And then there is me. And Ben. But we’ve always been misfits, skirting the periphery of other people’s lives. I’m not sure I know how to do or be anything else.

Now I reach for my phone and press a button to return the call, sending up a silent entreaty to whoever cares that Ben isn’t in trouble. Again.

He is, as the headmistress of Burgdorf has rather acerbically put it, a lively boy. Lively is Burgdorf’s non-pejorative word for ill-behaved. Ben isn’t a bad boy; he’s just loud and rambunctious and restless. He doesn’t always respect boundaries or rules or personal space. He’s been in trouble—although Burgdorf never talks about children being in trouble; they just need to be redirected or channeled, as if they are water—for a variety of infractions: talking when the teacher is talking, throwing his pencil across the room, getting up when he is meant to be sitting down, pushing in the playground. Nothing major, but barely a day goes by without me receiving the pale blue form that his teacher, Mrs. Rollins, fills out detailing his latest sin. The note is headed in curly script: We Just Want You To Know.

For the last year I’ve been skirting around the topic of ADHD with Burgdorf’s counselor; no one at the school seems to like labels. And while I don’t want to slap a label onto my son, a definite diagnosis, with its accompanying potential solution, even if that comes in the form of prescribed medication, holds some appeal. I work for a pharmaceutical company, after all. I can see how a little Ritalin might improve a situation.

“Burgdorf Institute,” Tanya, the receptionist, answers cheerfully. She is twenty-two and interning in the office while she completes her Masters degree in Pedagogical Studies.

“Tanya, it’s Maddie Reese. I’m calling about my son Ben—”

“Oh, Maddie.” Tanya’s cheerful voice turns hushed, tragic. I still, feeling as if my insides have frozen solid. That is not the tone someone uses when your son has thrown one too many spitballs.

“Has something happened?” I ask, which is a ridiculous question because of course something has. It is just a matter of what. Of how bad.

“Oh Maddie, I’m so, so sorry—”

God in heaven. The words come into my head more like a prayer than an expletive. My throat is dry, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, and my frozen insides are starting to turn liquid. “Tanya. What is it? What’s happened?”

“I…” Tanya breaks off, and then says, “Let me put you through to Mrs. James.”

Ruth James, the Headmistress of Burgdorf. I sink into my chair, raking a hand through my hair, my fingernails snagging on my scalp. It feels like forever before Mrs. James comes to the phone, but in reality is twenty-two seconds. I watch the seconds tick by on the clock by my computer, each one matching the painful thud of my heart.

“Maddie.” Mrs. James’s voice is low and honeyed, sounding both warm and authoritative. It is a tone that she always uses, a tone that secretly annoys me because it seems so fake. I’ve joked to Juliet that Mrs. James must practice speaking like that when she’s at home, maybe into a microphone; it is such an actor’s voice. Juliet might smile a little when I say stuff like that, but she never jokes back. She is intensely loyal to Burgdorf and its staff. I’ve also joked to her that she’s drunk the progressive education Kool Aid, but she won’t even smile at that.

“I’m afraid,” Mrs. James says, her voice dropping an octave and becoming more of a hushed whisper, “that Ben has had an accident.” I don’t reply; my tongue is still sticking to the roof of my mouth and my mind is both numb and spinning. “He’s in the Emergency Room at Mount Sinai Roosevelt,” Mrs. James continues. “He was rushed there right away—”

Rushed. Rushed is not a good word right now. Somehow I manage to unstick my tongue and speak, although when my voice comes out it sounds strange, almost garbled. “What…what happened?”

Mrs. James hesitates, and I clutch the phone more tightly to my ear, so my fingers ache.

“He had a fall,” Mrs. James finally says, and her tone is careful, as if she is choosing each word with precision. “He hit his head. We did call you,” she adds, with the faintest hint of accusation in her voice.

“I was in a meeting,” I say, an apology, and then a wave of both fury and shame crashes over me. Why on earth am I justifying myself? “How bad—I mean, is he…is he all right?”

“He was knocked unconscious from the fall. The playground supervisor called 911 right away, and an ambulance was there within minutes.” She sounds as if she is reciting facts from a sheet, a checklist of what to do in an emergency, of how Burgdorf correctly handled the situation. “But if you want to go to the ER now—”

If I want to? Does she think there was a choice in this matter? That I might say I’ll pop by later, after I’ve plowed through some paperwork, when he is up and at it again?

“Of course I’m going to go,” I snarl, the anger that surges through me surprising me. I feel so many things in this moment: shock, fear, despair, and yes, still faint, frail hope. But anger trumps them all, and I don’t even understand why.

I walk out of Alwin Pharmaceuticals without telling anyone; I feel like every second that slips by was hurtling me towards the edge of a cliff, and I do not want to look down and see what yawns below me. I am caught in a riptide of events; words and phrases float through my mind like sticks being carried by that unstoppable current. He had a fall. He was rushed to ER. He was knocked unconscious when he fell.

I take a cab to Mount Sinai Roosevelt on Fifty-Eighth and Tenth Avenue, the edge of Manhattan, the Hudson River visible through the concrete alleyways if you crane your neck. In through the double doors to the massive, soaring lobby, my heart racing as I gaze around wildly for the entrance to Emergency.

“It’s around the corner,” the guard at the front desk tells me, his voice bored, his face a mask of indifference.

The people at the triage desk in the ER seem just as relentlessly indifferent. “Benjamin Reese?” They scan computer screens, taking forever, before glancing back up at me with blank stares. Perhaps I should find comfort in their lack of concern; surely it can’t be serious if they don’t know? If they don’t care?

“Please take a seat, Miss…?”

“Ms. Reese. I’m his mother.” My voice rings out, cracking on the last word, and still no sympathy. They must see scenes like this a hundred, a thousand times over; they are immune, inoculated against grief by the sheer number of times they witness it.

“Please take a seat,” the woman repeats in a monotone, and without any other options, I do as I am told.

Five minutes later a nurse comes through the double doors of the ER ward and calls my name. I rise from my seat like a puppet being yanked on a string and walk towards her on stiff, marionette’s legs.

“Ms. Reese?”

“Yes—”

“You are Benjamin Reese’s mother?”

“Yes—”

“Please come this way.” I follow her through the double doors; they swing heavily behind me, making me feel as if I’d been entombed in the ER. She leads me to a small waiting room with green vinyl seats and a fake potted plant on a little fake wood table and I stop on the threshold, not wanting to go in. Not a little room, the little room where in the sappy movies the camera pans back from behind the glass, and you watch the doctor give the parents the terrible news, see them silently break down. Not that room.

“If you’d like to wait here, the doctor will be in to see you shortly.”

It is that room. And I am in it.

I pace the room; it is tiny, and it only takes three steps to cross it. I press my hand flat against the wall and then push off, as if I am swimming. I feel as if I am swimming, or wading through thick, cloying mud; it’s becoming hard to breathe. My mind skitters towards possibilities and then darts away again, fast. I can’t bear to think about any of them even for a second. I wish I could call someone, but there is no one. My life isn’t like that. It never has been.

I could call Juliet, maybe; she is my closest friend, perhaps my only friend. I know she would come if I ask her, and yet I resist making that call. I don’t want to make this real.

Then I think of Lewis, and my heart lurches with both despair and need. Lewis would know what to do in this situation. Lewis always knows what to do; he’s the most comfortingly capable person I’ve ever known. But I can’t call Lewis; I haven’t spoken to him in two weeks. And he’s not mine to call.

“Ms. Reese?”

I spin around to face a doctor in a white lab coat. He has thinning hair and glasses and he carries a clipboard; his face has that neutral look that doctors do so well.

“Where is Ben?” My voice comes out in a crack of accusation.

“I’m Dr. Stein,” the man answers, the faintest of rebukes in his voice for my having skipped such pleasantries. “And Ben is in a room across the hall. He’s had a fall and hit his head, as I believe you are aware. We’ve currently put him in a medically-induced coma, for his own protection and safety.”

I stare at him. “A what?”

“When Ben fell he experienced some trauma to his brain. There has been some swelling, some shearing…”

Shearing? I think of sheep. “I don’t know what that means.”

“When a person receives a traumatic injury to the brain,” Dr. Stein explains, his too-patient voice grating on my already raw emotions, “the axons in the nerves can be damaged or even torn. That’s what we call shearing. The injury to his brain also caused swelling, which increases the intracranial pressure. If that continues, we can relieve it by drilling a hole in his skull.”

Quite suddenly I feel as if I could be sick. Dr. Stein must see that in my face because he says with some alarm, “Ms. Reese?”

I swallow bile; my tongue feels thick in my mouth. I sit down hard on the vinyl sofa and rest my head on my knees. A few deep even breaths and I manage to speak. “Is he going to be all right?” I want the bottom line. Clearly I can’t handle the details.

“I can’t answer that question definitively,” Dr. Stein answers.

“Can you tell me anything?” I ask, my face still pressed to my knees. The room is fading in and out and I am having trouble breathing. My skin feels cold and clammy, my hands and feet tingling with pins and needles. I know I need to start coping, because Ben doesn’t have anyone else, although not for lack of trying on his part. For the last six months or so he’s been asking for a dad. Asking about his dad, and I don’t have any answers. Not ones I’m prepared to give.

“We will keep him in the coma in order for his brain to heal,” Dr. Stein explains. “The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will be critical.”

I raise my head; the room swims before me. “Critical?” I repeat. “In what way?”

“For his survival, Ms. Reese,” he says and I reel back as if I’ve been struck. “Is there someone you can call?” Dr. Stein asks, because clearly he can see that I’m not coping well. “Someone who can be with you?”

I think again of Juliet; she’ll be with her three girls now, getting them from school, running them to various activities around the city. Ballet for Emma. Tae kwon do for Hannah. Archery for Lily. Juliet has a full-time aide—her word—to help her with the business of managing her three children’s privileged lives. But even with her aide, I know she’ll be busy; she might have even switched her phone off.

And then I think of Lewis. “Maybe,” I say, and I reach into my pocket to curl my hand around my phone. The thought of talking to Lewis, of hearing his steady voice, comforts me. “But first I want to see Ben.”

Dr. Stein nods. “When he is a little more stable, we’ll transfer him to the neurology department. But for now…” He opens the door, gesturing for me to go first even though I don’t know where I’m going. I step out of the room; I’m in that post-adrenalin rush, jelly-limbed and icy with cooled sweat. Distantly I hear the sound of a busy ER: beeps and sirens and someone crying. Another person groans.

“Right this way,” Dr. Stein murmurs and I follow him to a room with heavy, swinging doors. a room that has bright lights and too many machines, all surrounding a boy in a bed who is utterly still and silent. My son.

I walk slowly towards him, barely trusting my legs to keep me upright. The machines beep and whirr and sound very loud in the room; a nurse stands by his head, checking something. I have no idea what. I have no idea about any of this.

I take a step closer to Ben. Remarkably he doesn’t look that injured. There is a bandage on his wrist, and Dr. Stein murmurs that it might be broken, but they can’t take an x-ray until his condition is more stable. There are no internal injuries as far as they know; the damage is merely to his brain. His brain.

There is a little dried blood on his cheek, and his left eye is swollen shut. He is breathing through a ventilator and other tubes trail away from him like snakes.

His head is wrapped in white bandages; it reminds me of when he used two rolls of toilet paper last Halloween to dress up as a mummy. Lewis and I took the boys trick or treating, and we shared a bag of candy corn, both admitting to a secret weakness for those nauseatingly sweet triangles of sugar. It seemed like a lifetime ago; only a year, but a different reality. This is what is real now and yet I can’t take it in; everything in me resists.

I sink into a chair by his bed and reach out to touch Ben, but my hand falls short. I am afraid to touch him, to hurt my son. His golden-brown lashes fan his cheeks, and he almost looks peaceful, despite the bandages and bruises and tubes. Surely he cannot be as damaged as all that. Only this morning he was bouncing around, kicking his soccer ball, scuffing the walls. Only this morning I snapped at him as I wrote out a check for the month’s afterschool club and tension knotted the muscles of my neck, throbbed in my temples. All because of a lousy check, a stupid soccer ball.

Tears crowd my eyes, gather in my throat, and I swallow hard.

“When do you think he’ll come out of the coma?” I ask, and my voice quavers.

“When his condition is more stable, we will attempt to bring him out of the coma,” Dr. Stein tells me. “But first the ICP needs to reduce.”

“The ICP?”

“Intracranial pressure.”

“When will that be?” I’m hoping he will answer in hours, but his hesitation tells me otherwise.

“Perhaps in a few days,” he says, and I can tell he is temporizing. “As I said before, the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are critical.”

I nod, and reach out to stroke Ben’s uninjured hand. His skin is still soft, like a baby’s, but I’ve noticed lately he is starting that headlong tumble into pre-adolescence; he has become obsessive about me not seeing him getting undressed, and he needs to shower more than he used to. The hair on his legs and arms has become darker, coarser, not the white-blond, baby-fine hair of his toddlerhood. He’ll be ten in March.

“Ms. Reese?” I can’t tell if the doctor sounds impatient or sympathetic. Probably both. “You should wait outside.”

I turn to look at him. “I can’t be with him?”

“It’s better now if you leave us room to monitor his condition. Just in case.”

Just in case of what? I am not brave enough to ask the question. I nod and with one last look for Ben, I leave the room. Dr. Stein directs me back to the private waiting room where people hear bad news. I don’t want to go there, but I can’t face the huge ER waiting room either.

I sink into a chair, my mind still spinning, straining in denial. I can’t believe this is happening, that this is happening to Ben, to me, and yet another part of me is not surprised at all. Another part of me, a secret, ashamed part, has been waiting for something like this all along, has known I would never get it right, that I could never manage to bring up a child right, or even at all.

An animal sound of pain escapes me, and I reach for my phone. I punch in Lewis’s number recklessly; I don’t care about the consequences. I need someone now and it’s just a call. I’m not hurting anyone.

But I falter when his phone switches over to voicemail, and in the end I only manage one broken word.

“Lewis,” I whisper, and then I disconnect the call and press the phone to my forehead, squeezing my eyes shut tight as I do my best to block out the world.