“It’s my fault,” Max said as I followed him toward the waiting ambulance.
“It is not. Don’t say that.”
“If she wasn’t trying to impress me, she wouldn’t have done it,” he said.
“If she wasn’t spoiled and obstinate, she wouldn’t have done it,” I said.
“Jane, how can you say that? Especially now.”
“Because it’s true. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“It was selfish of me.”
“That’s not such a crime. All you wanted to do was take a run on your own. So did I. If you’re to blame, then so am I.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the same.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” I said, and it was the last thing I said to him before he and Charlie climbed into the ambulance with Lindsay.
I didn’t know where to find the others, so I started looking in the lodge on the off chance they might have given up skiing, and that’s where I found them. After one run, Winnie had complained that she was tired, and they all followed her inside for a cup of hot chocolate.
“Jane,” she said when she saw me, “where have you been? I think I sprained my ankle.”
I pulled a chair up to the table.
“What’s the matter?” Winnie said. “You look all white.”
I took Winnie’s hand, since she was the one most likely to become hysterical. “Lindsay’s had an accident. They took her to the hospital.”
“In an ambulance?” Heather asked. Her voice was soft.
“Yes.”
“Oh God,” she said.
“Look, everything could be fine. Let’s not worry too much until we find out how serious it is. Let’s just stay calm.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Jane,” Winnie said. “You’re not related to her.”
“Neither are you,” Heather said to Winnie.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” Winnie said. “I think of you girls as my sisters. I’m sorry you don’t feel the same way about me.” She continued to drink her hot chocolate.
“Let’s calm down,” I said. “I have Charlie’s keys. I think we should go to the hospital.”
“Of course,” Heather said. “Let’s go.” Heather started taking off her ski boots. Her shoes were in a bag under the table.
“I’d take you girls,” Basil said, “but I don’t want to leave my car here. Why don’t I go back to the Franklins’ and let them know what happened, then meet you at the hospital?”
We didn’t need Basil. He hardly knew Lindsay, but it wouldn’t be right to tell him that. Besides, the grief-man appeared to thrive on disaster. He was full of purpose. He gave us directions to the hospital, then told us to be careful because it was beginning to snow. “You wouldn’t want to be killed yourselves,” he said.
At the word killed, I thought Heather was going to faint. I squeezed her arm through her thick sweater and she smiled at me. It was a weak and unhappy smile.
Winnie put her arm around Heather.
“Now, sweetie, let’s not get hysterical.” Winnie liked to reserve hysteria for herself.
On the way to the car Winnie leaned heavily on me and groaned about her ankle. I carried her equipment and mine and stowed our skis on the roof of Charlie’s Navigator.
The snow wasn’t heavy, but the car was unfamiliar, so I drove carefully.
“Can’t you hurry, Jane?” Winnie asked.
“Let’s just try to get there in one piece,” I said.
“Let Jane do what Jane does, will you, Winnie? For God’s sake. She’ll get us there,” Heather said.
The ride to the hospital took forty-five minutes, and although it wasn’t as long a distance as it might have been, I would have felt more hopeful about Lindsay’s prospects if it were shorter.
By the time we reached the hospital, the snow was falling heavily. Heather’s eyes were puffy and her nose was running. I pulled out my tissues from an inside pocket and passed one over to her. She tried to smile. As soon as we parked, Heather ran into the hospital. I couldn’t run because Winnie, with her pronounced limp, insisted on leaning on me.
We walked into the emergency room. Max and Charlie were sitting on a Naugahyde sofa in the waiting area.
“They took her right into surgery,” Charlie said. His eyes were shiny, but he was trying to hide his distress. Max wore such a haunted expression I could barely stand to look at him. Winnie pushed her way into a small space between Charlie and the edge of the sofa.
“Charlie, I think I broke my ankle,” she whined. He looked at her but didn’t say anything. He turned away. “Did you hear me?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Charlie!” Her voice was sharp. She got up and hobbled to the counter. A nurse was manning it. “I need to have my ankle seen to immediately,” she said. She glanced back at Charlie with a haughty expression.
“We’ll get to you as soon as we can,” the nurse said.
“Sooner would be better.” Winnie looked around. “It doesn’t look too busy here.” Winnie hobbled away and sat in a chair as far away from Charlie as she could get. He stood and went to the window.
I sat on the sofa beside Max. Without thinking, I touched his leg with my fingertips.
“What does the doctor say?” I asked.
“She has some internal hemorrhaging. They don’t know what the prognosis is yet.”
Heather gripped the arms of her chair.
“Has anyone called the Maples?” I asked.
“Oh God, the Maples,” Max said.
“Should we wait?” Heather asked. “Until we know more?”
“That’s up to you and Charlie,” I said.
The nurse called Winnie’s name and Winnie, without help from any of us, got up and went through the double doors.
Heather walked over to Charlie, then came back.
“Charlie and I think someone should call our parents,” she said.
“I’ll do it,” Max said.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll do it,” I said.
“It’s my responsibility.”
“No it isn’t.”
Of course, Charlie or Heather could have called, but I was afraid they’d make the Maples more upset than necessary. Someone calm had to call.
Max put his hand over mine and I felt the warmth and hardness of it. I slipped my hand away and stood up. The phones were down the hall.
I went to make the call. It was a good thing I did, because, as I suspected, Marion didn’t take it well.
“We’ll leave immediately,” she said.
“It’s snowing pretty heavily up here,” I said. “Maybe you should wait until morning.”
“I can’t,” Marion said.
Charles Sr. got on the extension. “You think we should wait, Jane?”
“I don’t know, Charles. The weather isn’t very good up here and it’s getting worse.”
“We’re going to leave right now and see how we do,” he said.
“What about the boys?” I asked.
“Charlie and Winnie will have to come home.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“In the meantime, we’ll call Gabriella. I’m sure she’ll come,” Marion said. “Heather and Charlie, why didn’t they call?”
“They thought it would be better if I did,” I said.
“They didn’t want to upset us even more,” Charles Sr. said.
“That’s right,” I said.
I hung up the phone and went back to the waiting room. Charlie was still at the window. I walked over to him, touched his shoulder, and told him his parents were on the way.
“Thank you, Jane,” he said. “What would we do without you?”
“You’d manage.” I smiled. He turned toward me, hugged me, and held on to me. I felt a tear against my cheek. When he released me, I turned from the window and saw Max looking at me.
Basil blustered in. “It’s getting almost impossible to drive,” he said. “I don’t even know how we’ll leave the hospital.”
“I’m not leaving,” Max said.
“How is she?” Basil asked.
“She’s in surgery.”
“I stopped at the Franklins’ and they’re ready to take you all in,” Basil said.
“We still have the house,” I reminded him.
Charlie returned from the window.
“The snow’s thick on the ground.”
We sat and we sat some more.
Eventually Winnie came back out through the double doors. She was on crutches and her ankle was wrapped in an Ace bandage.
“It’s a sprain,” she said.
“I’ll bet you all wish you didn’t wake up this morning,” Basil said.
“If we didn’t wake up this morning, we’d all be dead,” Max said.
Heather laughed, a snort of laughter, short and loud.
Basil looked at the floor. I followed his eyes toward the pocked linoleum.
Three hours later the doctor came down to tell us that Lindsay was out of surgery. He looked at Winnie. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. No one knew what that meant, but I could only imagine what had gone on behind those double doors.
“We just have to wait,” the doctor said. “You never really know with head injuries.”
“Can I see her?” Max asked.
“No one can see her yet. You should all go home. You can’t see her till morning.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Charlie said. He shook the doctor’s hand.
After the doctor left, Max said he had no intention of leaving.
“Me either,” Heather said.
“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” Winnie said, “though I am so uncomfortable.” She looked at her ankle. “It would be nice to get into bed.”
“We’re staying,” Charlie said, “at least until morning. Then we have to do something about the kids.”
“They’re with your parents.”
“My parents are coming up right away. They’re going to try to find Gabriella to take care of the boys.”
“They didn’t ask me if I approved of that idea,” Winnie said.
“No, they didn’t,” Charlie said.
I didn’t think we should all spend the whole night in this waiting room if no one could see Lindsay until morning. Maybe one of us should stay in case she woke up, but there was no need for everyone to stay, certainly not Basil Funk. I went to the window to check the weather. It was bad.
I returned and spoke to Basil.
“Basil, could you do us a huge favor?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Well, at least now I knew why he was there.
“Take Heather and Winnie back to the house. There’s no reason for them to sit up all night.”
“I’m not leaving,” Winnie said.
“Neither am I,” Heather said.
I sat beside Heather. “You’re going to need to be strong for your parents and it won’t help if you’re exhausted. I think Charlie should get some sleep too. Even Max.”
“I’m not leaving,” Max said.
“Jane’s right,” Charlie said. “There’s no point in all of us staying through the night if we can’t see Lindsay, so long as someone is here in case she wakes up.”
“I think one of the family should stay,” Winnie said.
“We couldn’t get Max out of here with a crowbar, so he might as well be the one to stay,” Charlie said.
“But what if we get stuck and can’t come back? What if the weather’s too bad?” Heather asked.
The nurse behind the counter spoke up.
“There’s a motel across the street,” she said. “Why not stay there?”
So it was settled. Rooms were rented across the street.
They rented a room for me, but on my way out I turned and saw Max sitting there by himself staring into space and I couldn’t leave him. The others went on and I returned to the waiting room.
We sat there side by side like two old people waiting for a bus.
“It’s all my fault,” Max said.
“Stop saying that. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have stopped her.”
“We went after her as fast as we could,” I said.
“I wasn’t thinking about her, the way she is, what she’d do. I was just thinking of myself. That’s all I ever do. I’ve spent the last fifteen years being a selfish bastard.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is. You don’t know. Even this,” he said, “this Lindsay thing. It was all about me, what I wanted. I’m like that with women. Some of the stories are true. Not all of them, but some of them. I dated a lot of women, but I never got really serious with any of them. Strange, I know. When I met Lindsay, it started the same way, just another conquest. I thought maybe I could change. She comes from a nice, solid family. I thought that maybe this could be it, but I never even really knew her.”
He took my hand.
“I don’t know what we would have done without you today,” he said.
“You would have managed.”
At about two o’clock in the morning Max fell asleep with his head on my shoulder. He snored softly. I was wide awake, listening to every breath.
At five, he blinked his eyes open and smiled at me. He seemed unaware of where he was at first and with whom, because he turned to me and gave me a soft half-asleep kiss.
“Morning,” I said.
“I fell asleep.”
“You did,” I said.
He sat up straight.
“Any news?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”