Chapter Thirty-Six
When you say “hospital” to a Jersey girl, she pictures a monolith of an institution, taking up a block or more of real estate,
with ambulances coming and going and people carrying flowers and balloons and wearing concerned faces as they parade through
the front door. Here in Palmer, the hospital feels more like a bank than a medical facility. The only ambulance in sight is
parked off to the side. Across the street is a McDonald’s and a pharmacy.
Brick parks and asks Xavier to run inside for a wheelchair, and the boy’s face lights up. The whole crew tumbles out of the
van as if we are a tourist bus stopping for lunch. The two-hour drive here was filled with chatter and laughter and a few
out-of-key songs—our sweet friends trying to distract us from our pain. At one point we passed a scenic overlook for the peaks
of Denali, and I asked to stop so everyone could have one last view of what they gave up today.
“Nonsense,” said Luna. “We’re on a mission, no stopping.” We all strained our necks to catch a glimpse as Brick continued
driving. The sky was cloudless, and the view, what we could see of it, was perfect, and I felt awful—for my traveling companions,
despite them insisting it was their choice to come along, but also for my sister.
“I really wish you could have seen it,” I said to her quietly.
“You didn’t push me off the trail and down a ravine. Or did you? My memory is a little foggy.”
Xavier comes out of the front doors pushing the wheelchair like it is a go-cart, but when Brick helps me into it, the boy
gently takes my other arm. Lily stops Ian. “You’re a good dad,” she whispers to him.
“Well, he’s worried about you . . . both. He cares about you.” Then he crosses his arms and smiles. “I’m proud of him,” he
says. I see Lily nudge her elbow into Ian’s side as Zave wheels me into a side door that reads, emergency.
The waiting room is quiet. It has the requisite posters for choking procedures, and COVID precautions, and a shocking illustration
of what could happen if your car hits a moose—spoiler alert, moose wins, you die. An older woman thumbs through a magazine.
A young man with a scraggly beard and dirty hiking pants holds an ice pack to his elbow.
While Brick checks us in, Luna sits next to me and picks another twig out of my hair. “How will I get along without you,”
I say as I give her a squeeze.
“Boston isn’t that far from New Jersey. By the way, Mimi has decided to go ahead with the treatment. She’ll call her oncologist
as soon as we get home. When she’s done, you and Lily should come up and celebrate with us when she rings the bell.”
“Oh, Luna. That’s fantastic.”
“Yes, coming on this trip was just what we needed.”
“For us too.”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” she says, pointing to my swollen ankle.
“Worth it.”
“Did Brick slip you a funny painkiller from his first aid bag?” We giggle.
“I didn’t realize that was an option.”
Luna sighs. “Such a hoot.”
Brick brings over paperwork on a clipboard, and we are called into the back before Lily and I can sign it all. (Another thing
that would never happen in a busy, suburban hospital—we’d be waiting for hours, broken and bleeding in a crowded waiting room.)
“Follow me,” says a nurse as she takes control of my wheelchair. The whole group lines up behind us. Dane takes Lily by her
elbow to escort her in. “Are you all family members?” she asks, giving my companions the once-over.
“Yes,” says Dane, and I smile.
“Well, one family member only,” she says.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. And then to my sweet new family, “You all wait here. Lily and I’ve got this.”
“How about we all go across the street for a coffee and a McMuffin? It’ll be on Bridget,” says Brick.
“Yes, absolutely on me,” I say as I am rolled away. “It’s not drinks for falling in the drink. But it’s the best I can offer
right now.”
“Will an Alaskan McDonald’s have reindeer breakfast sausage?” asks Xavier, and everyone laughs.
The emergency department is a square room with a nurses’ station in the center and four cubicles, only one of which is taken.
The nurse stops in front of a restroom. “We’re going to need urine samples from both of you. There are cups on the shelf on
the wall. I can help you,” she says to me, “if you need.”
“Urine samples for a few possible broken bones?” I ask. Are we being drug tested? Is this a liability thing, the insurance
company won’t cover us if we were high when we went over the edge?
“It’s standard procedure before we can take X-rays. For women of childbearing age, we need to rule out pregnancy. It’s in
the forms you just filled out.”
My stomach drops. My jaw clenches. Lily was doing so well. This is going to set her back. Erase anything positive this trip has given her.
“Is this necessary? I’m nearly fifty, and she’s, well . . .”
“Are you postmenopausal? Has it been at least a year since your last period?”
“Well, um, no.”
“Big, it’s okay.”
“You know what? I don’t think we need X-rays right now. How about you bandage us up and send us on our way?”
“It’s fine. Let’s get it over with. And I’ll take her in,” she says to the nurse, “I got her down a mountain, I can watch
her on a toilet.”
In the bathroom, as we fumble with the cups and my balance and her injured hand and the breath-stealing pain in her side,
I beg my sister not to let this do the damage I think it will. “I’m so, so sorry, Lil. Please don’t let it get to you. Think
about all the stuff we talked about on the trail. You are so strong now.”
“Stop panicking, Mom. We both know the results already. Let ’em do the test, I couldn’t care less.”
I wish I could believe that. This adds insult to injury. My sister sticks her tongue out at me, washes her hands, and throws
the damp paper towel at my face. She does put on a good show.
The nurse collects us and our cups of pee and shows us to two open beds next to each other. “The doctor will be in with you
shortly,” she says, closing the flimsy blue curtain around us.
“Wait until Ruth sees us,” Lily says.
“The I-told-you-so’s will come fast and furious. If we can pool some of our pain meds and slip them in her coffee, we might
be able to slow her down.”
Lily giggles and then groans and holds her side. “Don’t make me laugh.”
I lean my head back on the pillow and pull the thin white blanket up to my chin. “This is the coziest bed I’ve been in since we got here.”
Lily repeats the giggle and the groan. “Hey, Big? I am sorry I locked you out of the cabin. That was, I just . . . I think
my brain just turned off.”
It wasn’t her finest moment, but if she hadn’t locked me out into the cold night, I wouldn’t have had that evening with Brick
where everything started to shift for me. Just like if Lily hadn’t picked the wrong fork on the trail, we might not have connected
on this trip the way I’d hoped to. I guess some lessons come with a side of bumps and bruises.
“Well, I’m sorry I pushed you into the ravine. Call it even.”
“You admit it! You did do it!”
We are still giggling when the doctor slides open the privacy curtain. “Well, we don’t usually have our emergencies roll in
here laughing.”
Except for the stethoscope around his neck and the ID badge clipped to his pocket, our doctor could be anyone we’ve met this
week. No white lab coat—a flannel shirt, pair of jeans, and work boots. Add his red cheeks and redder beard, and he might
have just stepped off the trail.
“Ladies. I’m Dr. Brown. Who wants to tell me what brings you here today?” he asks as he glances down at an iPad. I suspect
he’s got the basics.
Lily obliges him, leaving out everything pre-ravine. I think we both realize that part of the story stays with us. When she’s
done, I ask, “Is there some kind of wall of shame you’re going to put our photos on?”
“There is not,” Dr. Brown offers, resting a gentle hand on my good foot. “If there were, you wouldn’t make the cut. We love
our tourists here in Alaska, but some of them get into real messes. Bottom line, it’s always best to follow your tour guide’s
instructions.”
“Did Brick Malone tell you to say that?”
“Why, yes. Yes, he did.” Now he smiles. “Brick and I are old friends. And he’s been in here with a few too many risk-takers
over the years.”
Is it wrong that I’m flattered to be called a risk-taker?
“Let me put in the order for the X-rays, and someone will be back for you soon. I’ll come talk to you after I read the films.”
Within minutes (again, nothing like a Jersey hospital) a man in pink scrubs comes and wheels me out of the cubicle, gurney
and all. “See you on the other side,” Lily says, waving.
The orderly, who turns out to also be the radiologist, makes small talk as he helps me onto the table and positions my ankle
this way and that. “Let me guess. Slipped on ice? Got stuck between rocks in a scree field?”
“Nope. Fell into a ravine.”
“Ah, yes. That would have been my next guess. You’re the third one this week.”
I laugh, feeling a cross between embarrassed to be another statistic and proud to have survived this wild country. “I didn’t
think Alaska was such a dangerous place. You all should have that in the brochure.”
“Pretty sure it’s in there.”
“Ah, might have missed that.”
After the pictures are taken, the radiologist pulls them up on his computer. I can see my bones, but to me they are just a
Halloween skeleton. “It’s a hairline fracture of the lower fibula.” He points to the ankle, and if I squint, I can see a small
pencil line across the thin bone.
“Shit.”
“It could have been a lot worse. You’ll be in a boot for a few weeks. Follow up with PT. Physical therapy. See your ortho
when you get home. But don’t tell Jeff I told you any of this.”
“Jeff?”
“Oh, right. Dr. Brown. He likes to be the bearer of all the news. Protocol and all that, act surprised.”
“I will,” I promise. But when he wheels me back to the cubicle there is a bigger surprise waiting for me. Dr. Brown is wrapping
my sister’s wrist in an ace bandage. And she is sobbing.
“Lily, honey,” I say as the radiologist/orderly does a K-turn with my gurney to park me. “What’s happening?”
My sister doesn’t lift her head. Dr. Brown attempts an answer. “We’ll be giving the wrist some support, and I’m recommending
icing it for now. The ribs would have to heal on their own, regardless.”
“Why? What did the X-rays show?” I’m so confused. At the very worst, Lily could have a broken bone. Is that something to become
hysterical over?
“Well,” says Dr. Brown. “We didn’t do any X-rays. Considering . . .”
“Considering what?”
Lily finally lifts her head. Her eyes are puffy, and her nose is running. “Because . . . because . . .” She sobs between staccato
breaths. “I’m pregnant. Big, I’m fucking pregnant!”