I FEEL like someone’s driven a stake through my gut as I powerwalk through the emergency room at Sprucevale General, heart pounding, hands clammy. I feel like someone’s reached down my throat and is trying to pull my heart up through my mouth, and I swallow again and again like it’ll keep all my organs in place.
“Sign says this way to 132,” Seth calls, and I follow him.
Charlie’s voice was shaking on the phone, even though I hung up on her after a dozen words — hey it’s me, Rusty’s okay but she broke her arm, we’re at the emergency room — and bolted out of the brewery, Seth practically chasing me down.
He took the keys out of my hand and drove here. He navigated the stupid parking lot, talked to the front desk, charmed the nurses, and got her room number all while I stood by, unable to think anything but it must hurt so much, I hope she’s okay, I’m glad Charlie’s with her, and now he’s pushing me down the hall to the right room, and I shove back the curtain and there they are.
“Hi, Dad,” Rusty says softly when I come in. “Hi, Uncle Seth.”
She looks so small in her hospital bed that it knocks the air from my lungs. I swear she outgrows all her clothes every six months and I’m so used to looking at her and thinking that she’s so big now, so tall, so grownup, that seeing her like this spears me with pity.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I say, coming over, sitting next to her hospital bed, right on the edge of the chair. “How are you feeling?”
“It hurts,” she says, her voice small, her eyes big. “It hurts less, though.”
Her forearm is propped up, wrapped in bandages, looking too big for the rest of her.
“They gave her ibuprofen,” Charlie says, sitting opposite me, on the other side of the hospital bed. “The ER doctor already looked at it and thinks it’s a spiral fracture, so they probably won’t have to do anything but put a cast on, but we’re waiting for X-rays.”
I just nod. I feel like a can of soda that’s just been shaken, fizzing and ready to blow.
“It’s pretty boring,” Rusty says, sighing.
“What happened?” I finally ask. “Did you fall?”
Last year a nine-year-old at the playground told Rusty that he didn’t think she could jump off a swing high enough to land on the grass, a good seven feet away.
The phrase you can’t is like catnip to my daughter. There’s no better way to make her do something. She sprained her ankle and had to wear a brace for a week.
She made it all the way to the grass, though.
“Um,” she says, and suddenly she won’t meet my eyes. “Yeah. I fell.”
“I took her to the sliding rocks,” Charlie says.
She’s leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, and she looks me dead in the eye as she says it, her face tense, drawn, her curls half-wet and half-ragged. Suddenly, I realize she’s also got a hospital gown on, the gap turned to the front.
“I thought I said she couldn’t go,” I say, and I sound shockingly reasonable, even to myself.
Charlie swallows, takes a deep breath, puts both hands on her head like she’s trying to tame her hair.
“You did,” she says. “And I took her anyway. I’m sorry.”
Rusty’s just watching me, her eyes red-rimmed, her face splotchy, her hair sproinging everywhere. For just a second, I wonder if anyone’s ever thought that Charlie was her real mom.
I just nod. I shove my hand through my hair again, crack my knuckles, try to bite back the sudden fury riding through me, borne of panic and then relief.
“Sweetheart, can you talk to your uncle Seth for a little while?” I ask, reaching out and stroking Rusty’s hair. “I need to talk to Charlie for a minute.”
“It was my idea,” Rusty says urgently.
“I know, honey,” I say, leaning forward, kissing her hair.
“We’ll be right back,” Charlie says, and when she stands, she also drops a kiss on Rusty’s head, like it’s normal, natural, like she’s done it a thousand times.
I walk out of Rusty’s room, past a nursing station, down a hallway. I’m pretty sure that Charlie’s behind me but I don’t even turn and check. I don’t know where I’m going, I just know I don’t want to be around other people right now.
Finally, I turn a corner and there’s an alcove, windows, a couple of chairs, and no one else, and I stop.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie says before I can even turn around.
She’s about to cry, her jaw clenched, her eyes bright with tears.
“I didn’t think she’d get hurt,” Charlie says. “I went to the rocks all the time as a kid and nothing ever happened, and I know you said she couldn’t—”
“What the fuck?” I interrupt.
She goes quiet.
“Seriously. What the fuck were you thinking?” I ask, taking a step closer to her. I’m on the edge right now and I want to shout at her, yell, scream.
She closes her eyes, shakes her head.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers again.
“You didn’t give it half a second of thought, did you?” I ask, my voice still low, dangerous. “You didn’t for one fucking second stop and think, maybe there’s a reason Daniel doesn’t want Rusty doing this yet?”
“I thought you were overreacting,” she says, jaw clenching again.
“I didn’t want her going because when he was her age, Caleb got his arm stuck on the way down and broke it,” I say. “I was ten and I still remember the way he screamed, Charlie.”
“I never broke my arm,” she points out. “You never broke your arm. Hundreds of people have gone to the sliding rocks and haven’t broken—”
“I still said she couldn’t go,” I say.
“You won’t let her climb trees,” Charlie says. “Last year, when I took her to fair, you didn’t want her going on the carousel—”
“Do you know how fucking dangerous those things are?”
“It’s a carousel, Daniel! It goes half a mile her hour, and if it breaks loose or something you just get off it,” she says. “You can’t wrap her in cotton wool. She’s gonna go out into the world, and she’s gonna get hurt sometimes, and you can’t always be there to protect her.”
“Not now,” I say. “She’s seven, Charlie. Seven. She’s only just figured out that the tooth fairy isn’t real and you’re handing her knives and letting her jump off of rocks—”
“She loved it,” Charlie says, her arms crossed over her chest, like she’s protecting herself. I see a flash of something bright beneath the hospital gown she’s wearing and realize she’s still got her swimsuit on, a bikini top over shorts.
“I don’t care,” I tell her.
“She also loved the Scrambler, last year, at the fair,” she says. “And the Ferris Wheel. And that ride where you get in the car and it goes around in a circle really fast, whatever the fuck it’s called.”
I take a deep breath, trying to corral my frustration, my anger. I put a fist on my forehead, turn, walk a few steps away, turn back. I don’t know how to make her agree with me, how to make her understand that she can’t just do whatever the fuck she wants, when she wants to do it.
“I have to tell Crystal,” I say, simply.
The look on Charlie’s face tells me she hadn’t considered that, either.
“I have to tell her mom, and this is sure as shit going to come up in court on Tuesday,” I go on, and as I say it the enormity of the thing hits me. “I’m going to be the dad that got his kid’s arm broken because I let her do something dangerous. I’m already the dad who got her hand sliced open, and you can be sure as shit that both those things are going to be cited as reasons that she should be heading to Colorado next month.”
Charlie swallows, looks away. A single tear slides down her cheek, but it only makes me angrier that she pulls this shit, then cries about it.
“We could have gotten arrested last night,” I say, coming closer, dropping my voice. “Did you know that public nudity is a sexual offense in Virginia, Charlie? What do you think my chances of keeping Rusty would be if I were on a registry?”
“I didn’t think about that,” she whispers.
No shit.
“You’re going to make me lose her,” I say.
Charlie looks at me like I’ve slapped her. She goes white, then pink. She rubs her swollen eyes with the heels of her hands, then takes a deep breath.
“No, I won’t,” she says.
Then she turns. She leaves, practically fleeing down the hallway, and I watch her until she’s gone around the bend.
I’m still furious at her: for going behind my back with my own daughter, for getting Rusty hurt, for never thinking a goddamn thing through even once in her life, for never knowing what day it is.
And I’m terrified.
I’m terrified that I’m right, that falling for Charlie came with the price of losing Rusty.
