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“Of course,” I sniffled, pushing my chair back to give her room.
I grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and dabbed at my eyes, where no doubt streaks of mascara tracked down my cheeks.
“Everything looks good, right, Gina?” Dad asked with a sly smile. “Good enough to steal you away from that husband of yours, right?”
Gina, who was probably in her early sixties, just rapped him lightly on the head and made a few marks on his chart.
“We have to watch this one,” she told me with a grin. “He’s up to no good. I’ll be back in an hour, so behave, Danny, you hear?”
“Not if I can help it,” Dad said with a weak grin as Gina walked out. I did my best to smile back, but Dad’s face fell at my expression. The tears rose again.
“Pips, please don’t cry,” he begged.
I took a deep breath and sucked the tears down. “I’m okay. Sorry.”
Dad watched me carefully and lay back on his pillow, clearly worn out already. “I’m so sorry,” he said again quietly. “I’m so sorry you have to deal with this.”
“You’re sorry,” I repeated numbly. “Yeah.”
I stared at my hands, which gripped the cool, metal arms of my chair. My knuckles turned white before I released them. Another tear fell; I sniffed it back.
“Dad,” I said softly. “Daddy.”
“Pip, I—”
“You could have died.”
We stared at each other, the gravity of the words falling between us like a gavel. He was lucky his injuries weren’t worse. He was lucky he wasn’t at the bottom of the East River. He knew it, and I knew it.
I stared at his maimed hand, which was resting in a suspended sling hanging from the bed, presumably to help with the swelling.
“What did the hand doctor say?” I asked.
Dad shrugged, then winced at the movement. “He hasn’t come yet. They said he’d be here this morning.”
I nodded. I reached out as if to touch his hand, but he shirked at even the idea of it. Dad stared out the window next to him. A pair of pigeons tapped lightly at the pane, but beyond them, there was only the red brick siding of another hospital wing.
“Dad,” I said gently. “Dad?”
He looked back at me, his tired eyes full of pain and fear and glossed slightly. “Shit, Pips. I’m just so damn ashamed, you know? I never wanted you or Ma to get wrapped up in all of this, and now I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
It was obvious he wasn’t just talking about his hand.
“It’ll be all right,” I told him, wishing I could say it with more conviction. “I promise, it will be all right.”
Dr. Bennett, the hand doctor, arrived a few minutes later, moving quickly and hanging some of the X-rays that had been taken the night before. He rattled off the Latin names of at least five different breaks. Dr. Carraway hadn’t been lying last night—the hand really had been effectively crushed.
“I see a lot of construction workers with this kind of injury,” Dr. Bennett said as we all gazed at the X-ray. “Usually when some kind of beam falls on their hand.”
“It was a hammer,” Dad corrected him quietly.
My stomach dropped, but I stayed quiet.
The doctor cleared his throat before informing us that Dad would need at least one extensive surgery to repair the damage, and at least six to nine months of physical therapy to regain use of his hand, although full use could take up to two years, maybe longer.
When I asked about the piano, Dad turned white and shook his head. Dr. Bennett, an abrupt, middle-aged man with a scant sense of bedside manner, had taken one look at Dad and said he’d make that assessment after the surgery. Dad would be able to finish recuperating from the liver surgery at home after all, but he’d need to come back early next week for the first, and hopefully the only, surgery on his hand.
I waited until Dad fell asleep with his next round of Percocet before leaving to find Brandon and run some errands. I wanted the house to have everything Dad loved when he came home. Brandon, feeling helpless, insisted that I allow David to drive us from place to place while Brandon worked.
