Those We Love Most Read Free

color would look best with his baseball uniform.
    Maura had asked the doctors pointed questions, getting them to explain their medical jargon and then repeating what they said to James in a mother’s words. But that had merely been a broken arm.
    Now he was here under such unimaginable circumstances, and Roger blinked a moment in the fluorescent lights, taking in the institutional lobby with its forest green paint and maroon upholstery. A man in a corner chair was sedately holding a wad of gauze around his hand, and Roger could see rusty bloodstains on the front of his shirt. Two African American women were reading magazines, one older, with her purse clasped firmly on her lap. Behind the nurses’ station, farther down the hall, people in brightly patterned hospital tunics with stethoscope necklaces moved purposefully around the desk, holding charts and paperwork.
    “Touch and go” were the words Margaret had used to describe James’s condition on the phone, her voice clipped and agonized. There was internal bleeding and a severe head injury. They had operated immediately, while Roger was still scrambling to get to the Tampa airport, Julia going well above the speed limit, dodging in and out of lanes to make the next flight.
    James was sedated now; a “medically induced coma” they called it, and the surgeons had done all that they could for the moment. Brain injuries were so individual, they explained, the outcomes too unpredictable to offer any sort of accurate prognosis. So much depended on exactly where the person was injured and how severely. Age and level of intelligence could be factors in recovery too, they said. There were so many unknowns, Margaret had told him. But overall it was not good.
    What happened next was up to James and whatever willpower was left in that little, broken body. The car, with the son of one of Maura’s neighbors driving, had apparently struck him at a relatively slow speed. But it was the way that James had been hit, the angle of the impact, that had ruptured and bruised organs and the fact that he’d flown through the air and landed on his head. Roger hadn’t thought until this moment about whether or not he’d been wearing his bike helmet, but the question flitted through his mind as he stood at the ground floor elevator bank. It wouldn’t change the outcome now, he thought glumly. He exhaled, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the button for the fourth floor.
    Roger set down his bag and briefcase and removed his blazer, feeling like a traveling salesman as he watched the floors click by in red digits. God, how the hell did anyone mentally gird themselves for something like this? You imagined it, experienced it occasionally with people your own age, but was anyone ever prepared to visit a critically injured grandson’s hospital room?
    He stepped out of the elevator and saw Margaret almost immediately, positioned by the ICU curtain down the hall. He met her eyes and saw something veiled and pleading in them, but then there was relief, a subtle unburdening played across her features relaxing her brows. He could tell instantly how upset she was from the tight coil of her body, but he knew that Margaret would refrain from showing Maura her raw fear. She would need to remain ramrod strong for her daughter, for all of them. That was her calling card. Signature Margaret. The artificial lighting in the ICU corridor gave a jaundiced hue to Roger’s partially tanned forearms. He was aware of the smells of the hallway, antiseptic and ammonia mingled with what he imagined was the sweaty smell of human fear.
    “Hi.” Roger set his bag gratefully at his feet in the hallway and moved toward Margaret, arms outstretched. She placed both hands on his upper arms, rose on her toes, and offered her cheek, as she always did in public, something he’d grown accustomed to over the years. He felt a softening, a slump of her shoulders as one rogue sob escaped, and he drew her closer. Something