Knitting Bones Read Free

do about the convention?”
    Jill smiled. “I don’t think that’s the big problem right now. The big problem is going to be getting you out of here. Should be interesting to see how they do it.”
    It was. And painful, too.

Two
    T HE door to Betsy’s hospital room opened, and Jill appeared in the doorway. “Hi, are you ready to go?” she asked.
    “I guess,” said Betsy. It had been five days since the horse had rolled over and broken not just both her fibula and tibia—the two long bones between her knee and ankle—but also torn the ligaments that held her ankle bone in place. The tendons were not torn completely loose, and they had a decent chance to heal if supported by a cast or brace. A surgeon had removed the marrow from the shattered larger leg bone and strung the pieces on a metal rod as if they were beads. The tibia was held in place by a plate with screws. The pieces of bone would grow back together, but the hardware was permanent. For the rest of her life Betsy would carry a card, signed by her doctor, explaining why she set off metal detectors in airports.
    And meanwhile, she was unable to get around at all. This was not the kind of broken leg that allows for a walking cast, at least not for several weeks. She was instructed to go home and stay there, mostly sitting down or lying in bed, hobbling around on flat surfaces with crutches. No stairs, no prolonged moving around, and certainly no driving.
    “Does it hurt much?” asked Jill.
    “Not too much. So long as I lie still, there’s only a kind of ache,” she said. “Of course, they keep insisting I get up and move around—and now that you’re here, there’s going to be some serious movement, isn’t there?” Jill had come to bring her home. Betsy’s surgery had been four days ago. Her medical insurance mandated, and her doctor agreed, that she could finish healing at home. “And by the way, have you given any thought to how I’ll get up to my apartment?” she asked Jill. Betsy lived on the second floor of a two-story building, which normally was great, because her needlework shop was on the ground floor. But there was no elevator.
    “Lars will carry you,” said Jill.
    Betsy chuckled uncertainly. Lars was Jill’s husband, a very large cop who could probably climb the stairs with her thrown over his shoulder, without even lightening his load by first taking off his gunbelt.
    “Isn’t he on patrol today?”
    “Certainly. But our motto is ‘To Protect and Serve,’ and carrying you up to your apartment is service.” Jill used to be a cop, too, but she had quit to raise her daughter, the adorable Emma Elizabeth.
    “Jill, are you seriously proposing that Lars carry me up the stairs to my apartment?”
    Jill’s light blue eyes widened with sincerity. “Sure. Otherwise we’ll have to get two or three men trying to carry you in a wheelchair, and maybe stumbling and letting go with you hanging on for dear life, and the wheelchair going over and over and you winding up at the foot of the stairs with your other leg broken, if not your skull.”
    Betsy wasn’t sure if Jill was joking. She looked serious, but then, she was at her most serious when pulling Betsy’s leg the hardest.
    Jill was of Norwegian stock, and not the least inclined to let her feelings show—whether she was joking, angry, or penitent. She had apologized in her direct way—once—for instigating the horseback ride that led to the mishap, but she had not mentioned it again. Betsy was fine with that; it was nice to have a friend who didn’t find it necessary to make endless demonstrations of sorrow or repentance. On the other hand, doubtless Jill felt responsible for getting Betsy home safely.
    Betsy decided just to trust Jill. She would wind up safe in her apartment one way or another, because another thing Jill was, was reliable.
    Betsy said, “Thank you for helping me.”
    Jill smiled, pulled her cell phone from her purse, punched in a fast-dial digit, and said,