When He Fell

“Where was he? On the climbing structure? Or the swings—”

“I…I’m not sure.”

“But if you were on duty,” I persist, trying to keep my voice reasonable, “you were looking. You must have some idea.”

Juliet hesitates. I can hear her breathing, and for some reason it makes me angry. “On the climbing structure,” she finally says. “I think.”

You think? I bite the words back. “Okay,” I answer, managing to keep my voice even. “Okay. Thanks.” And then I hang up.

I feel prickly with suspicion, with hurt. Juliet saw my son fall, or at least was there when it happened. She saw him taken away in an ambulance. Why didn’t she call me? I don’t understand how she could be so callous. Ballet exams.

I press my fists to my gritty eyes. I met Juliet in a mother and babies group, when Ben and Emma were both eight weeks old. I went to save my sanity, because dealing with a fussy, disgruntled baby in my box of an apartment all on my own for twelve hours a day was testing the limits of my endurance. Juliet was there, looking beatific and Botticellian, nursing her chubby, pink-skinned daughter with an ease that I was too tired to envy.

Juliet took me under her wing that first day; she told me about cabbage leaves for sore boobs—I just smiled, since Ben was firmly on the bottle by then—and how it was okay to still be wearing maternity jeans. “The fourth trimester,” she said cheerfully. She looked beautiful with her long, curly golden-brown hair, her generous, unapologetic figure, her expensive yet careless clothes. She basked in motherhood, reveled in it, while I sat there clutching Ben as if he was a stick of dynamite that had been super-glued to my fingers.

Juliet has guided me through the choppy waters of motherhood ever since then, always offering me the latest advice on healthy snacks and limiting screen time and intelligent play; I don’t really take any of it on board but I appreciate her earnestness. She popped out two more babies while I struggled alone with Ben, and I watched from afar as she took her growing brood on holidays to Florida and the south of France. I was never jealous, or at least not that jealous. Our lives were too far apart for me to envy her penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, or the succession of au pairs, nannies, and aides that paraded through her household ‘just to give her a little help’, or even her silver-haired hedge fund manager husband Bruce, who worked fourteen-hour days and still was a doting dad.

No, I didn’t envy her any of that, at least not more than was natural, because I knew if I let myself I’d drown in a sea of jealousy. I’d destroy myself by wanting what I knew I could never have, and I’m smart enough—mostly—to keep myself from that toxic cycle.

But I still wish now that she’d called me. It makes me wonder why she didn’t, and then it occurs to me that no one from Burgdorf has called me. Ben has been a student there for three years, since first grade, and not one person has reached out. Not even Mrs. James, who knows I’m here. The insensitivity of it, for a school that prides itself on being so caring, burns. Don’t any of them care about me, about Ben?

Ben. Just this morning he was bouncing around the apartment, kicking his soccer ball against the doorway even though it annoys my neighbor on the left, a single woman with a boyfriend I suspect is married to someone else. I know the signs.

I yelled at him for kicking his soccer ball, and as I bolted a cup of coffee and stuffed a browning banana into his lunchbox, I relented and let him go on his DS for five minutes before we left for school. I am always relenting.

Did we talk on the way to school? I search my memory, trying to conjure up some meaningful conversation when in my heart I know there wasn’t one. I might have scolded Ben, told him to slow down or keep up or not to jump up and try to touch the tops of the street signs because someone knew someone who lost a finger that way. But we didn’t talk. Sometimes I wonder if we ever do.

And when he went into school? I try to picture the moment; me standing on the sidewalk on Fifty-Fourth Street, not even hiding the fact that I am checking my phone, that I am worried about getting to work on time.

Did I watch Ben go in through the double doors? Burgdorf is in an old office building in midtown but they’ve tried to make it look more child-friendly. They painted the doors bright blue and they hung a banner outside, with the school’s logo: three blue interconnecting circles that symbolize heart, hand, and mind.

As I search my memory now I acknowledge the hard truth: I didn’t watch him go through the doors. I didn’t even wave goodbye. I have a horrible feeling that I was already turning around, walking in the other direction before he’d even gone inside.

The night stretches on and Ben starts to storm again; Dr. Stein tells me this but advises me not to look in the window. I swallow hard, because I don’t want to imagine what my son is doing that I shouldn’t witness, and yet I do. Of course I do.

Sometime around dawn they settle him again and I finally get an update. If Ben can remain stable today, without any more storming episodes, they will transfer him to the neurology department tomorrow morning. Next they will see if he can breathe without the ventilator and then, in a few days, ‘all things going well’, they will attempt to take him out of the induced coma. That’s the best case scenario.

“And then,” Dr. Stein says, “we’ll begin to assess how much trauma his brain has sustained.”

Which is something I’m desperately afraid to discover. Dr. Stein briefly lays a hand on my shoulder.

“This might be a good time to recharge yourself,” he says. “Get a cup of coffee or better yet, a meal. Go home for a few hours.”

I blink at him in near-incomprehension. Go home? But then I nod, because I can’t live at the hospital and I have a feeling I stink.

I emerge onto Fifty-Eighth Street at seven o’clock in the morning; it is a bright, crisp autumn day and Manhattan is stirring all around me as people climb into cabs or walk briskly down sidewalks to work. I see people with trench coats and brief cases and smart phones, Starbucks cups and wax paper-wrapped bagels in hand, everyone busy, busy, busy, and I marvel that just twenty-four hours ago I was like them, and I was annoyed. I didn’t even realize how easy my life had been. And I’m afraid I still don’t know how hard it’s going to get.

Even though it’s only a dozen blocks I take a cab to my apartment building on Tenth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street as I’m way too tired to walk. I live in a modern building of box-like apartments in Hell’s Kitchen, all aimed at the young upwardly mobile corporate types, which was what I was when I rented my one-bedroom eleven years ago; I’d just been given a promotion at Alwin to Sales Associate and I was thrilled to move out of the tiny walkup I was sharing with a woman I’d met on my training course.

Since Ben’s birth I’ve toyed with the idea of moving; the building and neighborhood are not very child-friendly. But moving costs money. Getting a decent apartment in Manhattan requires a broker’s fee, which runs to thousands of dollars. And there’s the actual cost of moving, not to mention the exhausting process of searching for a place, applying to rent it, and getting through all the checks…

Renting in Manhattan is not for the faint of heart, and buying’s even worse. Not that I’ve ever had the money even to think of buying. And so I’ve stayed where I am; about five years ago I hired someone to build a wall across the dining alcove to make a bedroom for Ben. Before that I’d stacked bookcases to make it more private, but the light from the living area still filtered in and Ben’s always had trouble sleeping. The wall has helped, even though it turns the living area into a windowless cave.

People are hurrying out of the building as I come in, everyone moving quickly to get to work and no one meeting my eye. Not that anyone does; it’s not that kind of building. The doorman murmurs a greeting—there are over a dozen doormen on rotation and none of them know my name—and I move past him slowly. My feet feel like cement blocks.

Upstairs my hall is quiet; everyone has already gone to work. I unlock my door and step into my apartment’s tiny foyer. The first thing I see is Ben’s soccer ball, kicked into a corner before we left, and an unruly sob escapes me before I can bite it back.

I toss my keys onto the table and press a fist to my lips, willing the other sobs back. I’m afraid if I let them out I’ll never stop crying. I’ll fall apart completely, and I don’t have the luxury of that now.

I move through the apartment, stripping off my filthy clothes, and then step into a scaldingly hot shower. I let myself cry a little bit in the shower, as if the streaming water can hide the tears from myself. They slip down my cheeks as my shoulders shake and my mouth forms a silent scream. I wonder how much emotional pain a person can endure, can hold. I feel as if it is spilling out of me, and I crave the comfort of another person, anyone to help me carry this burden.

But there’s no one.

After my shower I dress and then gather some things together for the hospital. I have no idea how long I’ll be staying, or how often I’ll be able to come back here. I pack some basic toiletries and a few changes of clothes; it’s only when I see the red light blinking angrily on the answering machine, like an accusing eye, that I remember I walked out of work yesterday and haven’t so much as sent a text as to where I went or why.

With my heart thudding sickly, I scroll through half a dozen missed calls and texts from my boss on my cell that I hadn’t even opened yesterday. I dial my boss Elena’s cell. She answers on the first ring, her voice a screech in my ear.

“Madeleine, where the hell have you been?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Elena—”

“Did you remember the meeting we had with the Boston reps yesterday afternoon? The presentation on dapaglifozin you were meant to give?”

I remember now; I had a PowerPoint presentation on a new medication for diabetics that had just been approved by the FDA. It was a big deal, and yet now it means less than nothing to me. It’s all so trivial, so meaningless. Jobs. Work. Money. But no, I need money.

“Elena, listen,” I interrupt, and she sucks in an aggrieved breath. “My son Ben had an accident at school. A…serious accident. I went to the hospital yesterday as soon as I’d heard, and…” I can’t make myself continue.

“And?” Elena asks in ringing tones, clearly unconvinced by my little sob story.

“He’s suffered a traumatic brain injury,” I say, the words squeezed out of my too-tight throat. “They’re not…they’re not sure if he’s going to…” I stop. Elena lets out a huff of breath.

“Maddie?”

“Live,” I finish, and there is nothing but silence.

Ten minutes later Elena has granted me indefinite compassionate leave; she informs me rather gruffly that I will have to consult HR regarding the current policy of payment.

“I still have ten days’ annual leave,” I say. I know Alwin doesn’t grant compassionate leave until you’ve used up all your vacation days.

“Maybe you’ll be back by then,” Elena says. I almost want to laugh. I know she means it as an encouragement, but even I am realistic enough now to know I won’t be back after ten days.

Will I? The truth is I have no idea what situation I’ll be in, in ten days. What situation Ben will be in. And I feel too tired and alone to hope.

As I’m getting in the elevator, my phone buzzes with a text message. My heart lifts and then crashes again when I see it’s from Lewis: I need to cancel this afternoon.

Josh and Ben were going to get together, I recall. Lewis and I had talked about taking them bowling downtown, after I got off work. That was before, of course. Before Ben’s fall. Before I messed things up with Lewis.

Before everything changed.