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The excuses sounded lame, even to her own ears. There was a shuffling noise, then Harvey spoke.
“I’ll call Pastor Stan and his wife to see if they’ll watch the girls. We’ll meet you at the hospital.” He disconnected.
“I don’t want to go with Pastor Stan,” June said, immediately. “I want to stay with Addie. I took first aid. I can help.”
“I want to help, too,” Cecily said.
“The way you can help is to find my purse and car keys. They should be on my dresser.”
“I want my wings,” Addison managed between sobs.
By the time she made it downstairs with Addison, June and Cecily were racing behind with her purse, keys, and Addison’s fairy wings. They helped load their sister into the BMW for the ride to the hospital.
Pastor Stan and his wife met them in the parking lot, with Harvey and Adele, the latter of whom immediately took charge, ushering an angry June and weeping Cecily into the back of the pastor’s car.
“I bet you’re gonna get a really cool cast,” Cecily said, hanging out of the car window.
“I want to be the first one to sign it, okay?” June said, glowering once more at her grandparents and Bryce before being driven away.
“Only…” Addison’s voice was quavery as the ER attendants loaded her into a wheelchair. “I don’t want to get a cast all alone. You’ll come with me, right, Aunt Beamer?”
“Let them try and stop me.” Bryce fervently hoped they’d let her be with her niece the whole time. “We’ll make sure they patch you up good as new.”
Addison gave a mewling cry. “It hurts. I want Mommy and Daddy. Why won’t they fly down from heaven and help me, Aunt Beamer? Why?”
How was she supposed to answer that question? She glanced over at Harvey and Adele, but their faces were just as pained.
Bryce finally opted for words she hoped a five-year-old might understand.
“I know they’re watching over you, and that they love you very, very much. Just like I do.” Gripping her niece’s hand, she rushed into the ER. “It’s all going to be okay.”
And she prayed she was right.
***
Sitting in the wretched peach-tinted waiting room at Jones Memorial Hospital waiting for Addison to get out of X-ray was the longest half hour of Bryce’s life. The intake process, with the online forms to complete, the insurance cards to drag out, and the initial examination from an ER doc, had taken over an hour, then they were told they had to wait for an orthopedic consult and the X-ray. Thankfully, Bryce and the Paynes had been able to be with Addison the whole time, holding her hand and comforting her, until the X-ray, when they’d all been shuttled to a waiting room.
If her own guilt weren’t a heavy enough burden, the accusatory looks Harvey and Adele threw her way practically buried her under the weight of their judgment and scorn.
“For heaven’s sake, I wonder how much longer they’re going to be with her. She’s only a baby,” Adele wailed to the waiting room, which was empty except for the three of them.
“She’s five. And she’s tough,” Bryce said, more to reassure herself than to contradict Adele. “The orthopedic doctor needs to see if the fracture was displaced enough to require surgery, or if they have to reduce the fracture under anesthesia.”
Both of those options sounded scary, and while Bryce didn’t understand medical lingo, she was pretty sure the phrase “reduce the fracture” meant they’d push the hell out of the bone to get it to line up before casting it into place. Yet as rough as that sounded, it had to be better than cutting her niece open. Didn’t it?
Worries swirled through her, and it seemed as though they’d been in this hospital purgatory for endless days, but the clock on the wall ticked only a smidge more than two hours after a sobbing Addison had been wheeled inside the ER. Even though she said her left leg felt like she’d been stung by a bazillion bees, her tears had finally dried up, although she’d been mad the tech wouldn’t let her wear her fairy wings in the X-ray.
The wings now lay across Bryce’s lap. The yellow left wing was still holding strong, albeit a bit grimy around the edges, but the right wing—where it had broken and Bryce had slid on a pair of nude pantyhose, using some electrical tape to secure it all together—looked like a frightful, Frankenstein’d piece of trash.
Tears pooled in Bryce’s eyes, a few escaping to drip down her cheeks.
Why, oh why hadn’t she bought her new fairy wings? The poor girl had been running around with nude pantyhose stretched on a frame, affixed by black electrical tape—and Bryce couldn’t find five minutes to order the kid another set?
As if reading her mind, Adele spoke.
“We bought Addison a new pair of wings at our house. We thought she’d be happy to have pretty new ones, considering those have gone around the bend a few times.” Adele’s words jabbed Bryce.
“The white ones she wore at Easter were new, but they got splattered with yuck,” Bryce retorted, then because she was feeling guilty, she threw them a conversational bone. “I haven’t bought others because I’ve been hoping to wean her off them. She jumped tonight because she insists she’s growing invisible wings…ones that’ll let her fly to heaven to visit Heather and Bentley. I’d…I’d love your help talking to her about angels, and how we won’t see any.”
