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“We have a family fund with the Hockey Academy that will cover the deductible and we can help you with any other forms for supplemental insurance, okay? We’ll get you through this,” he assures me.
I hold onto the hope that he’s right and that the Hockey Academy really can help, otherwise we’ll end up back in the trailer. I don’t want to think about what else that means.
It’s one in the morning by the time my mom is out of surgery. The doctor tells us she made it through just fine, but that she likely won’t come out of sedation until morning. There are pins and plates in her right arm and left leg. She also has stitches in the back of her head and a concussion. That part scares me. Concussions are serious. They can change a person. My dad has had two. One was a forklift accident at work, and the other was a fall at the trailer park. He’d been drinking, as usual, so it’s anyone’s guess what happened. He was treated for the first concussion, but not the second. And it seemed to make him meaner.
I wait until my dad leaves before I go in to see her.
Even though I was warned, I’m not prepared for the sight of my mother lying in the hospital bed. Terror and guilt crowd for position with simmering anger. Her right arm is casted to her shoulder. Her left leg is in traction, casted past her knee. She’s surrounded by medical equipment, beeping and monitoring her heart rate.
As I stare at her broken body, I can see what happened playing out—my dad cornering her like I did him, doing what he does best: intimidate, manipulate, insult, degrade.
The worst is when he’s quiet with his anger, when he gets in close and whispers horrible, hurtful things—the kind of things that make Mom cry and me seethe. If this was an accident, it was an orchestrated one. All he needed to do was trap her against the railing. She’d have nowhere to go, a captive to his anger and spiteful words. Gravity did the rest.
“What if she’s not okay?”
“The doctor thinks she’ll make a full recovery, but it’ll be slow,” BJ’s mom, Lily, says softly.
I always worried it would come to this. That one day I wouldn’t be there to stop him. Now that it’s happened, all I feel is overwhelming sadness. I couldn’t be the hand that pulled her out of the darkness. I couldn’t save her from him.
Every good thing is slipping through my fingers. And in its place is whatever comes of this.
“I can’t go home. I can’t go back to that.” Panic hits me, along with stabbing blades of guilt that I can even think of myself when my mother is lying here broken, when I’ve failed her so completely.
But I don’t want this to be my future too.
I can’t walk this path.
I won’t.
I’ll go to the trailer. Stay at the shelter. But I won’t live under the same roof as my dad. Not after this.
“You can stay with us until we get this figured out,” BJ’s mom says.
“What?” I wonder what BJ said to her while Coach and I were at reception so he could take down our insurance information.
“We have a spare bedroom. It’s yours for as long as you need it.” Her smile is warm and full of empathy.
BJ hooks his pinkie with mine.
I worry about the ripple effect. How this will impact what comes next. How it will change this thing with BJ. How hard it will be to keep my feelings for him locked down if we’re living under the same roof. How nice it will be to have a break from the emotional warfare.
It’s nearly three in the morning when we get back to the Ballistics’. I’m exhausted but on edge. Lily follows me and BJ upstairs, and she sets me up in the room across from his. Like every other part of their house, it’s pretty and clean.
She turns to BJ, who stands just outside the door, one hand tucked into his jeans pocket, the other kneading the back of his neck. His eyes are droopy, like he’s struggling to stay awake. He fell asleep a bunch of times in the waiting room. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he’s got a neck crick.
“Why don’t you give us a minute, Randall?” Lily says to BJ.
He nods once and crosses to his bedroom, but leaves the door open a crack.
“How you holding up?” Lily asks.
I lift a shoulder and let it fall. “I’m worried about my mom.” Tears prick at my eyes, and I have to swallow all the emotions that threaten to overwhelm me.
She nods. “I’m sure you are.”
“I shouldn’t have left. I knew he was angry, and I left her alone with him,” I admit.
Lily’s eyes turn sad. “Oh, honey, this isn’t your fault. It’s a terrible accident, but you didn’t cause it.”
