Knitting Bones Read Free Page B

didn’t want the police involved in this. He was scared, and began a struggle to remember. Somehow this started to involve his whole body, and a gentle hand came down on his chest.
    “I said, lie still. You can’t remember because you fractured your skull in a car accident.”
    “Amma gonna die?”
    “No, though we were a little worried about you when you arrived.”
    “Wha’ happen?” He sure hoped someone hit him, that he hadn’t hit someone.
    “A drunk driver ran a light. He’s more badly injured than you, which is unusual.”
    “Yeah.” Tony tried to nod—he had often joked about drunk drivers who walked away from accidents that killed other people—but the movement hurt his head.
    “Amma hurt bad?”
    “You have a broken leg, a broken arm, broken ribs, and a skull fracture.”
    “Wow. Car totaled, huh?” He liked that car, and it was paid for.
    “What was left of it had to be cut open with the Jaws of Life to get you out.”
    “Wow. Wait, skull fracture?” His head was actually broken? No wonder it hurt!
    “Yes, that’s why you can’t remember the accident.”
    “What day is today?”
    “Monday. You had the accident on Friday.”
    “Wow.”
    She took his pulse, then tucked his good hand, his right one, under the sheet. “Are you in pain?” she asked.
    Well, bless her, there was a question he loved to hear! He nodded and began trying to look pathetic. Actually, he was in pain, he could feel it moving around under the drugs they’d already given him. Oh, wonderful to be in a hospital, where the pain meds were legal, where the chance he’d get some was amazingly, happily high. Which he hoped to be, real soon.
    And there it was, a syringe just dripping with eagerness to sink into a vein—only she didn’t put it in the vein, she stuck it in a thin, clear plastic hose—oh. That’s why the back of his hand hurt. Gosh, not even the pain of a needle stick and here was the sweet, warm fog coming back again. He sank happily into it, even though someone at the back of his head was yelling, “ Three days? Three days?”

Three
    I T was Wednesday morning, around noon—Betsy had come home on Monday—when she looked up from her knitting. She was lying on the couch in her living room, her right leg supported on three needlepoint pillows. From the knee down it was encased in a hard, gray plastic foot-shaped case held shut with Velcro straps. The toes poking out the end of the case looked small and forlorn.
    She was knitting an afghan made of squares of scrap yarn. She was bored with it, but being fuddled with pain meds meant she could knit only very simple patterns.
    Her large and fluffy cat, Sophie, was asleep on her stomach. At twenty-two pounds, Sophie was a serious burden; but the animal had taken it upon herself to be a comfort to Betsy, a behavior so outside her normal selfishness that Betsy hadn’t the heart to discourage her.
    It was so quiet up on the second floor that both sets of ears picked up even faint sounds. Sophie’s head came up only an instant before Betsy heard the footfalls of someone coming up the stairs. They were followed by a soft tap-a-tap on her door. “Come in!” Betsy called, because she knew who it was.
    “Hello, hello, it’s me!” caroled Godwin. He was her store manager, though he preferred Vice President in Charge of Operations of Crewel World, Incorporated. He stopped just inside the door, which let into a short hallway, to ask anxiously, “Are you decent?”
    “Yes, yes,” grumbled Betsy, who thought that an irrelevant question, considering her age, weight, injury, and the sexual orientation of the man asking. Nevertheless she pushed Sophie onto the floor so she could rearrange her old bathrobe, the thick one with the broad vertical stripes of gray and maroon, so it covered her down to her ankles. She lowered her needles and peered over her magnifying glasses.
    He’d sounded all excited about something, but as he entered the living room he halted short.