Those We Love Most Read Free Page A

about her vulnerability, her neediness of him, made Roger squeeze harder, and they stayed that way for a few moments until she pulled away to study him. She dabbed the wetness in her eyes, collected herself, and then assessed him, as if checking for damages.
    “You OK?” Roger asked her softly, and Margaret nodded, looking inside the room toward the corner, where his daughter was leaning over the bed, obscuring the view.
    “Hi, honey,” Roger boomed, more brightly than he felt and too loudly for the circumstances.
    “Daddy!” Maura jumped up and rose from the bed, out through the curtain and into her father’s arms in one almost continuous motion. As they hugged, she began to cry, convulsively, her shoulders shaking, and he patted her back as if she were still a small girl.
    “Oh, Dad.” She lifted her head off his chest, and swirling across her face like a tempest, he saw terror and guilt, grief and pain. Roger recalled suddenly how easy it had been to comfort her when she was young. The wrongs and injustices in her life had been trifles then, bloodied knees and bruised hearts. He had thought, when they’d sent her out into the world, that they had prepared her for life. How did anyone prepare his or her child for this? he wondered.
    “It’ll be OK, honey, it’s OK.” In the absence of knowing what to say, Roger continued hugging and patting her in a reflexive response.
    His eyes strayed through the wide opening in the curtain to study James on the bed behind Maura, and his first thought was how pale and small his grandson appeared, lying so immobile. There were tubes seemingly everywhere, and bruises and cuts on his arms and other parts of his body that were visible above the sheet. His scalp had been shaved on one side and a giant angry seam of scabbed skin ran across the one hemisphere, with what looked like oversize staples holding it all together. James’s head swelled oddly outward like a balloon on one side, giving his face a lopsided look, and both of his eyes were bruised and blackened. A machine behind him made a whoosh ing sound, and Roger realized with a jolt that it was breathing for James, keeping time in exact intervals as his small rib cage rose and fell in a rhythmic shudder. Roger released Maura and moved to the bed, drawn by the fragility of his grandson, the sight of a life suspended in the balance so graphically.
    “I’m here, James,” he said thinly. “I’m here.” He didn’t know where to touch, what to touch; every inch of James seemed broken somehow or under siege.
    “I’m sorry,” said Maura. “About your business meeting. That all of this … pulled you away, I mean.” She let out the last part in an almost inaudible voice. Now, standing apart from her, he took in her appearance. Her thick, dark hair was limp and unwashed, her blue eyes red rimmed. There was a smear of blood on her inner wrist, and Roger realized that the pressed jeans and clean cotton shirt she was wearing now had probably been brought to the hospital for her by Margaret or her husband, Pete. Whatever she’d had on at the time had most likely been covered with blood, he thought grimly. She looked defeated, determined, and terrified.
    “Come, sit, Maura,” Roger said, taking her arm and guiding her back into the padded chair next to James. “Have you had anything to eat?”
    Maura looked up at him numbly, as if she hadn’t understood the question. She nodded and reached for James’s hand in the bed.
    “I’ve been trying,” said Margaret authoritatively. “She’s managed a few bites.” Roger nodded. He looked up as his son-in-law entered the small room with cups of coffee in a cardboard holder, and Pete’s eyes met Roger’s with a noticeable relief. He handed a Styrofoam cup to Margaret and then to Maura and turned to offer the third to Roger.
    “Roger! Thank God, welcome. Coffee? I can get another one downstairs.”
    Roger shook his head and held up his hand.
    “Take it, Roger,” urged