25. Keaton A Single Secret
I’m no doctor, but I’m fairly aware that blood should not spurt from bodies in the way it is spurting from my foot right now. “Oh my God!” Harris says, running to me. “Keaton! I’m so sorry!” He looks at Bowen. “Let’s get her in the car. I can drive to the hospital.”
Bowen picks me up in a fireman’s carry, and I think that maybe we should wrap my foot until I see a giant shard of crystal sticking out of it. He runs out the door and down the street, and I cling to his neck as he jogs. “Where are you going?” Harris calls as he hurries behind him, breathless.
My foot is throbbing, and I realize as Bowen turns down the side street closest to my house that he’s going to Violet and Dr. Scott’s. “Isn’t he kind of old?” I ask.
“What?” Bowen asks, racing up the steps.
Harris bangs on the door.
“Isn’t Dr. Scott kind of old?” I’m getting light-headed. I haven’t lost enough blood yet for that, I reason, so this must be panic.
“He’s eighty-two,” Bowen says, “but he still practices.”
“Even sliced in half she has a lot of opinions,” Harris chimes in. He’s trying to lighten the mood, I know, because we can all see the blood dripping from my foot onto the porch.
“I’m sure I’m fine,” I say, as Dr. Scott, in his Brooks Brothers pajamas and bathrobe, opens the door.
I can see in his face that a switch has flipped. “Take her into the kitchen,” he says. “Put her on one stool and her foot on another.” He walks confidently through the house and calls, “Violet! Please bring my sewing kit.”
“Sewing kit?” I squeak.
Bowen follows Dr. Scott and sets me down where he has instructed, and Harris extends his hand for me to squeeze.
Dr. Scott appears with a stack of towels and a crystal glass, which, frankly, I’ve had enough of tonight. He holds one of the cloths in his hand and hands me the glass. “Drink this,” he says.
I take a big gulp and sputter. “It’s vodka!” I choke out a moment before I scream. In one swift movement, Dr. Scott has pulled the glass out of my foot and is applying pressure with a towel.
Violet appears in a robe with a zipper, pink foam rollers in her hair, and with what I presume is the “sewing kit.” It definitely looks higher tech than I am expecting, thank goodness. She stands beside him, taking over the pressure on my foot without Dr. Scott saying a single word as he rummages through the case. Despite the pain I’m in, I know I am witnessing something that they have done together many times. Dr. Scott produces a needle and what can only be described as thread. I’ve had stitches before but I’ve never been in a position to watch the process.
I feel myself start to panic. The pain is setting in now, and I’m realizing he is going to try to sew my skin together right here in his kitchen. I scream again.
Harris holds the vodka to my lips, and I manage to eke out, “Is this for real? Are we doing kitchen surgery?”
“We can triage this and get you to the ER,” Dr. Scott says. “But it’s just a few stitches. I can take care of them, no problem. Help you avoid the waiting room. But it’s up to you.” He pulls out a syringe.
“Please tell me that’s something to numb my foot.”
Dr. Scott laughs. “Of course it is.”
Bowen pulls the top part of my body firmly close to him. I realize that, while it’s partly an act of comfort, it’s really an act of not letting me jump out of my skin as Violet takes the pressure off just long enough for Dr. Scott to give me the shot in my foot.
Then sweet numbing relief washes over me. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. “If you have the supplies, I’d love it if you’d just do it here.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Violet clucks. “Did you think he was just going to dig in there with no numbing?”
I wince, and Dr. Scott chuckles. “Stitches with no anesthesia? This isn’t the battlefield.”
“Well, you did give me vodka,” I say.
Violet wipes down my foot with a brown liquid—Betadine, according to the label on the bottle—and Dr. Scott begins his work. I am starting to calm down, which is when I realize how sweaty I am. I look up at Bowen. This was not exactly what I had pictured for tonight. As if he’s reading my mind he says, “This is exactly the romantic evening I had planned.”
We all laugh, and I try not to wince—or look—as I feel the needle going in and out. It’s unnerving to see a needle and thread coming at one’s body. It doesn’t hurt necessarily, but I can definitely feel it. “How’s our patient?” Dr. Scott asks, still sewing.
“Our patient is impressed,” I say, truthfully. “You just jumped right in there without a second thought.”
“Still pretty quick for an old man, huh?” he asks.
I’m ashamed that I had been so judgy. Here he is cleaning up my mess when he could have been snuggled in bed beside Violet and her curlers.
Violet cleans the area one more time and then Dr. Scott puts Polysporin on the stitches. “Brave like her grandmother,” Dr. Scott muses as he works. “Half-dead from pancreatic cancer and just kept going.”
I’m grateful the stitches are in because the doctor is obviously senile.
“Our grandmother died in a car accident or whatever,” I say gently. “Remember? We talked about it at dinner?”
Dr. Scott shares a look with Violet, but he can’t hide the surprise written all over his face. “Well, yes, I know,” he says. “But surely you know she had pancreatic cancer?”
Violet swats his arm. “To my knowledge, she never even told Townsend that she had it. How would her granddaughter know?”
Dr. Scott backs away, admiring his handiwork. “Well, apologies for dropping the bomb. But to be honest, I always thought that whatever fate she met was kinder than the next month or two would have been for her. She had been sick for quite a while when she died.”
“And she didn’t tell our grandfather?” I ask Violet.
“I feel guilty speaking of the dead when they aren’t here to defend themselves—and I can’t know for sure. I only heard about it through the rumor mill.”
“She didn’t want him to worry about her,” Dr. Scott adds.
I put my hand to my heart. “That is really sad and really sweet,” I say.
Dr. Scott nods, looking down at my foot. “You, my dear, are as good as new. Swing by the kitchen—or the office—in four weeks or so, and I’ll get those stitches out.”
Four weeks. Harris looks at me questioningly, and I know he’s wondering the same thing I am. Will I even be here in four weeks? But I can discuss that with Dr. Scott later. “I need to pay you,” I say.
“You fed me tonight. That is plenty payment enough.” He pauses. “No, on second thought, the real payment is putting that house on tour. It’s all Violet has been able to talk about.”
He kisses his wife’s cheek, which I can tell by the smell is slathered in Oil of Olay.
“Well, that is very nice,” I say, taking one last sip of vodka for good measure. “I owe you.”
Harris and Bowen help me down from the stool. “Need me to carry you back?” Bowen asks.
“Need or want?” I ask, the vodka kicking in.
He laughs, and I shake my head. “No. I’ll be fine. Thank you again, Dr. Scott.”
Violet sees us to the door, and as we make our way to the street, I say, “If I was a painter, I would paint this.” I gesture to the view before us.
“I bet you could paint it,” Bowen says. “I have a feeling you can do anything you want.”
I smile and he squeezes my arm. “You were a trooper in there.”
“I had someone helping me to be brave.”
“She means me,” Harris says, and we all laugh.
As we walk back to my grandparents’ house, the trees make a canopy over the street and through them is a perfect view of the moon dancing over the water. I don’t pause enough to realize how beautiful it is here, but sometimes, on nights like tonight, it hits me all at once.
“This place is going to be hard to leave,” Harris says. I wonder if he means for me or for him.
I have one arm around his shoulders and the other around Bowen’s, and they are helping me hobble. “Hey, Keat, do you think Mom knew Becks was sick?”
“My gut is telling me that she had no idea.”
He nods. “Mine too.”
“You sure are a secretive family,” Bowen says.
Harris laughs. “Buddy, you have no idea.”
“Everybody has their secrets.” Bowen has an unreadable expression on his face. I don’t love the way he says it, like he has so many. But, then again, I guess we all do. He squeezes my hand, and I realize I want to know all of his. And, what’s more, there’s not a single secret he could tell me that would make me want to walk away.