Heart of the Matter Read Free Page A

touched Valerie’s arm, flashed her one last perfunctory smile, and said, “It was  so  nice to meet you. We hope to see Charlie next Friday.”
    Two days later, holding the tent-shaped invitation, Valerie dialed the Crofts’ number. She felt a surge of inexplicable nervousness—social anxiety, her doctor called it—as she waited for someone to answer, followed by palpable relief when she heard the automated recording prompting her to leave a message. Then, despite all of her big talk to the contrary, her voice rose several octaves as she said, “Charlie would be  delighted  to attend Grayson’s party.”
    Delighted.
    This is the word she replays when she gets the call, only three hours after dropping Charlie off with his dinosaur sleeping bag and rocket-ship pajamas. Not  accident  or  burn  or  ambulance  or ER  or any of the other words that she distinctly hears Romy Croft say but can’t begin to process as she throws on sweats, grabs her purse, and speeds toward Massachusetts General Hospital. She cannot even bring herself to say them aloud when she calls her brother from the car, having the irrational sense that doing so will make everything more real.
    Instead, she simply says, “Come now. Hurry.”
    “Come where?” Jason asks, music blaring in the background.
    When she does not answer, the music stops and he says again, more urgently, “Valerie? Come where?”
    “Mass General . . . It’s Charlie,” she manages to reply, pressing the gas pedal harder, now going nearly thirty miles over the speed limit.
    Her grip on the steering wheel is sweaty and white-knuckled, but inside, she feels an eerie calm, even as she runs a red light, then another. It is almost as if she is watching herself, or watching someone  else altogether. This is what people do, she thinks. They call loved ones; they speed to the hospital; they run red lights.
    Charlie would be delighted to attend, she hears again, as she arrives at the hospital and follows signs to the ER. She wonders how she could have been so oblivious, sitting there on the couch in her sweats with a bag of microwave popcorn and a Denzel Washington action flick. How could she not have known what was happening at the palatial home on Albion? Why had she not followed her gut about this party? She curses aloud, one lone, hoarse  fuck, her heart filled with guilt and regret, as she peers up at the looming brick and glass building before her.
    The night becomes hazy after that—a collection of disjointed moments rather than a smooth chronology. She will remember leaving her car at the curb despite the  NO PARKING  sign and then finding Jason, ashen faced, inside the glass double doors. She will remember the triage nurse, calmly, efficiently typing Charlie’s name before another nurse leads them down a series of long, bleach-scented corridors to the PICU burn unit. She will remember bumping into Daniel Croft on their way, and pausing as Jason asks him what happened. She will remember Daniel’s vague, guilt-filled reply—They were making s’mores.  I didn’t see it—and her image of him typing on his BlackBerry or admiring his landscaping, his back to the fire and her only child.
    She will remember the first horrifying glimpse of Charlie’s small, motionless body as he is sedated and intubated. She will remember his blue lips, his cut pajamas, and the stark white bandages obscuring his right hand and the left side of his face. She will remember the beeping monitors, the hum of the ventilator, and the bustling, stone-faced nurses. She will remember her raw appeal to the God she has all but forgotten as she holds her son’s good hand and waits.
    But most of all, she will remember the man who comes to examine  Charlie in what feels like the middle of the night, after her worst fear has receded. How he gently uncovers Charlie’s face, exposing the burned skin beneath the bandages. How he leads her back to the hallway where he turns to her, parts his