The Crash

Chapter 19

19

I wake to the sound of a resounding thud coming from up above.

At some point between when I ate lunch and now, the sun dropped in the sky. All the windows are still completely obscured by snow. I look down at my watch and squint at the display in the dark. I can just barely make out the numbers.

It’s eight o’clock. Oh my God. How could I have slept that long?

I often hear voices coming from upstairs but rarely that loud. Hank is shouting at his wife, and it’s not for the first time. Even with a wall between us, he sounds furious .

Polly says something back. I can’t make out her response, but there’s a tremor of fear in her voice that makes me cringe.

And then the stomping of Hank’s boots, which shakes the entire house down to its foundation. I hold my breath, waiting for the sound of the basement door opening. Will he come down here? That man terrifies me.

If he were to try to hurt me, what could I do? I can’t get away from him. He can easily take his anger out on me. I’m trapped. Even if I weren’t pregnant with a broken ankle, Hank could easily overpower me—I’m a sitting duck.

But no. The footsteps grow softer and then vanish completely.

It’s only after the footsteps disappear that my heart rate slows back down to normal. I rub my eyes, trying to push away the fogginess in my brain. I don’t think I’ve slept that many continuous hours since my third trimester started. And what’s more, I still feel tired. I have a groggy, hungover feeling, and my mouth feels dry and disgusting.

I think back to the lunch Polly made for me. I had attributed the sour taste I had in my mouth to our conversation, but now I’m not so sure. Is it possible she slipped something into my lunch, and that’s why I slept so long? Is she capable of doing something like that?

No, Polly wouldn’t do that. After all, she was reluctant to even give me pain pills, for fear it might hurt the baby.

But Hank might.

Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I can see a plate of food sitting on the tray next to my bed. It looks like spaghetti and meatballs, although it’s obviously been sitting there for a long time, given that the sauce looks like it has congealed. Polly must have come down and left it for me while I was in my coma-like slumber. The meal looks like it has seen better days, but I would devour it in seconds if my bladder weren’t such a distraction. I need the bedpan—like, five minutes ago.

“Polly!” I call out. “Polly!”

I hope she’s within earshot. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it. I’m not sure what would be worse—the humiliation of wetting the bed or the agony of having to get out of bed for her to clean the sheets. But then again, I’ll be on my way to the hospital soon anyway.

“Polly!” I shout one more time.

I’m worried. There were a lot of loud noises coming from upstairs, and Hank was shouting. What if Polly is injured? What if she can’t get down to me because she’s huddled in a corner, bruised and bleeding?

Finally, the basement door creaks open, and the light flicks on. I brace myself for the sound of Hank’s thunderclap footsteps, but instead it’s Polly’s softer footfalls. She’s okay.

“Good evening!” Polly sings out in a strained voice, her braid swinging behind her head as she descends the stairs. A second later, she comes to a halt at the foot of my bed.

And I gasp.

Polly has purple bruises under both her eyes. Hank’s temper is truly out of control.

But then she comes closer, and I realize that she doesn’t have bruises under her eyes after all. It was just a trick of the shadows in the room. Instead, she has dark circles under her eyes that appear even more prominent on her pale face. She looks exhausted. I don’t detect any new bruises on her body either, but clothes can hide a lot.

“Did you have a nice rest?” she asks me. “I came to bring you dinner, but you were out like a light!”

“Yes, sorry about that,” I mumble. “And…um…could I…use the bedpan? Right now?”

“Of course!”

She reaches over to pull my tray out of the way for me, and maybe it’s my imagination, but she seems to wince with the movement, as if she has an injury to her arm or ribs. But I could be mistaken, because she’s humming to herself as she goes into the bathroom to retrieve the bedpan. As she’s rifling around in there, I feel a tickle in my throat. I give a little cough, and beyond my control, a trickle of urine comes out of me. It was inevitable, but it’s still mortifying.

“Polly,” I say when she emerges from the bathroom carrying the bedpan, “I…um…I think I wet the sheets a little.”

“Oh!” She barely bats an eye. “No worries. I had put down a paper chuck on the sheet below you. I’ll just swap it out.”

And she does, without making a big thing of it. It’s a damn shame Hank made her give up her job as a nurse. I feel guilty that she has to take care of me on top of everything and then I had the gall to yell at her for the snow not being plowed quickly enough. The poor woman is already dealing with enough.

“Thanks so much, Polly,” I say after she’s helped me off the bedpan.

Polly winks at me as she pulls the blankets off my bed, replacing them with fresh ones. “You’re very welcome. Would you like me to heat up your food for you?”

“No, that’s fine.” I stick my fork into the cold spaghetti. “I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard this before,” I tell her, “but you have this unbelievable nurturing nature. When you have children, you’re going to be such an incredible mother.”

She freezes in the middle of folding one of the blankets. Her face stiffens but then finally relaxes into a smile. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.”

“I’ll probably be an awful mother.” I stuff a big bite of spaghetti into my mouth and take a moment to chew. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know how to cook yet. I don’t even know how to put on a diaper. To be honest, I’m terrified.” And I won’t have a husband or boyfriend around to help me, although I don’t want to reveal that what I told her earlier was a lie.

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it,” Polly murmurs. “Everyone does.”

“Maybe…” I let out a yawn. I really feel like I just got hit by a truck. To be fair though, that isn’t far from the truth. “After I finish eating, could Hank drive me to the hospital?”

She shakes her head. “I’m afraid not. The plow must’ve gotten delayed—there was quite a lot of snow. Anyway, we’re still stranded out here unfortunately.”

My mouth falls open. It didn’t even occur to me that I might not be able to leave tonight. “But what about the phone lines?”

“Still down.”

She avoids my eyes when she says it, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s lying. What if the phone lines actually are working? What if the area around their cabin has already been plowed?

Yet they still won’t let me go. He still won’t let me go.

“I’m so sorry,” Polly says anxiously. “I’m sure the plow will be here first thing in the morning.”

I try to adjust myself in bed, which ends up being a huge mistake. Even just that slight movement sets off a white-hot blinding pain in my ankle that takes my breath away. There has got to be something seriously wrong—something even worse than just a fracture. For a second, I can’t even think straight.

“Tegan?” Polly’s voice sounds far away. “Are you okay?”

“Please…” My voice is hoarse. “I’ve got to get to a hospital. Please. There’s got to be a way.”

“There is,” she says. “I swear, we’ll get you there first thing in the morning.”

“Please, no.” Tears prick at my eyes. “I’ll lose it before that happens. Please.”

She flashes me a sympathetic look. “I know. I understand what it’s like to…I understand. Really. I promise—we’re doing all we can.”

The tears spill over onto my cheeks, and now I’m ugly crying. I can’t stop sobbing and sniffling. In seconds, there’s snot all over my face, and my shoulders are heaving. I’m dimly aware of Polly holding out a tissue, and I take it to dry my eyes and dab my runny nose. Her brows are knitted together as she watches me.

“We will get you out of here,” she assures me. “It’s only one more night. You have my word.”

But that’s what she said last night.

“Don’t worry,” she adds. “The snowplow will be here soon.”

Bullshit.

“Are we really trapped by the snow?” I lift my swollen eyes to meet hers. “Or is that just what Hank is making you say to me?”

She opens her mouth, and at first all that comes out is a surprised squeak. “It’s the truth,” she finally says, although her voice lacks conviction.

I wonder if I can appeal to her. She’s in trouble, just like I am. Could the two of us escape here together? Will Hank let that happen? After all, he’s more than a match for scrawny, undernourished Polly and me with my awkward belly and broken ankle. He could keep us here with one hand tied behind his back.

“Look,” she says, “we’ll get you out of here soon. But in the meantime, we really should get that boot off your ankle.”

“No,” I gasp. The idea of wrenching my ankle from the boot is unthinkable. “Please don’t touch it.”

“At least let me help you get your pants off. They’re filthy.”

She has a point. The bottoms of my leggings got a good dose of snow and mud, and they have dried stiff and crusty. But I can’t imagine how she’ll manage to get them off. “I don’t know…”

“I’ve got a pair of shears in the bathroom,” she says in that chipper voice of hers. “I’ll just cut them off. Easy peasy.”

“Fine.”

Polly goes into the bathroom and returns with a pair of pink-handled scissors. She pulls back the covers to reveal my stylish ( not ) gray sweatpants that I had pulled on under my dress. With practiced efficiency, she slices through the fabric with her shears, making a final snap through the waistband. When she’s cut the front completely open, she gently slides them out from under me.

The majority of the pain is centered on my left ankle, but my entire leg is swollen. I mean, both my legs were puffy even from before the accident, but the left is noticeably tighter and slightly pink. Between the weight of the boot and the swelling, it’s hard to even move the leg. And when I try, the pain is excruciating.

My ankle is definitely broken. I can’t even pretend it might not be. And instead of having it set in a cast or repaired surgically, I am lying in this bed while it heals completely wrong. This delay in getting medical treatment might cost me my ability to walk normally.

“Now isn’t that better?” Polly says with a clearly forced smile.

“Uh-huh,” I say dully.

Maybe Polly is telling the truth about everything. Maybe the plows are on their way and I’ll get to the hospital tomorrow, and they will make this right. Modern medicine is an incredible thing. And I can still feel Tuna moving, so she must be fine. Tomorrow morning, I will go straight to the hospital.

After all, Hank can’t keep me here forever.

Can he?

I lift my face to look up at Polly’s eyes, staring down at me. Her eyes are bright green, but in the dim overhead light, they look much darker. And a sudden terrible certainty goes through my head:

I’m going to die here.