Falling (31 page)

I
t's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine.

How could it be anything other than fine?

Emma rocks back and forth in the snow, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, holding Dominic's hand, an unnatural calm coming over her; this is not how she would ever have expected to react in the face of something so potentially terrible, but she is almost numb.

She had phoned Sophie, her voice shaking with fear, to ask her to come and take Jesse. She told her briefly what had happened. Dominic must have been shoveling snow from the roof; he must have slipped and fallen. No, there was no blood. Yes, she was sure he was just unconscious; he was breathing. The ambulance was on its way. Jesse shouldn't know anything, not until they knew what was going on.

Emma keeps rocking, keeps murmuring.

Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.

She senses a movement, and her heart leaps as Dominic stirs, then opens his eyes. Emma sinks with relief before bursting into tears.

“Ah, damn it,” he says, struggling to sit up. “That'll show me, climbing on the roof in this weather. I slipped. Thank Christ it's snowing. It cushioned me.”

They both pause at the sound of sirens. “I called an ambulance.” Emma is almost giddy with relief. “I didn't know what to do.”

“We can tell them to leave.” Dominic stands. “I just have a headache. I'm fine.”

The ambulance workers arrive and check his vitals. He seems fine. They declare him possibly the luckiest man in the world. He has what they describe as an “epic” bump, and just to be on the safe side they're going to bring him in to the ER. Just in case.

“I don't need to go to the ER,” says Dominic.

But Emma insists. He must go, she says. He should let the experts check him out, check to make sure everything is fine. Reluctantly, he allows her to lead him to the ambulance.

Sophie pulls up just as they are about to close the ambulance doors. She can hear Dominic arguing with the paramedics from inside. She leans her head inside.

“Aren't you supposed to be dead?” Sophie asks him.

Dominic extends his arms. “It's the second coming.”

“That's funny. But not really. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. But your friend here”—he looks at Emma with a tender, if exasperated smile—“is making me go to the ER, just to be sure.”

“So I'll take Jesse?” Sophie looks at Emma for confirmation, and Emma nods from inside the ambulance as they close the doors.

Despite the snow, they get there in no time. The roads were empty, and the ambulance had four-wheel drive. There is no wait today.
Dominic is brought straight into an examining room, where he's looked over and declared to be extraordinarily lucky.

“I do want you to have a CAT scan,” says the doctor, a young man, too young, thinks Emma, to be a doctor. “Just to be on the safe side. We want to be certain we're not missing anything. I'm sure everything in there is absolutely fine, but let's not leave any doubt.”

“I'm sorry to have to tell you that nothing in there is fine,” says Dominic, “according to my girlfriend.”

The doctor laughs.

“I really do feel okay, though,” says Dominic. “Can't I just leave? I can come back to the hospital if the headache gets worse.”

“We need to make sure the headache isn't a sign of anything more serious,” says the doctor. “With any luck, after the CAT scan you'll be good to go.

Emma sits in the waiting room as Dominic is taken upstairs, scrolling through her phone, exhausted suddenly from the surge of fear, adrenaline, and relief that has swamped her system.

There is a knock on the door. It is the young doctor.

“Mrs. DiFranco?”

Emma is about to explain they are not married, that her last name is Montague, but it is irrelevant. His face is serious, far more serious than it was earlier. She nods, more terrified than she had been before.

“Your husband is out of the CAT scan, but now he's being seen by the neurosurgeon. During the scan we found a small tear in one of his arteries, and some bleeding around the outside of the brain.”

Emma stares at him. “What does that mean? You can stop the bleeding, can't you? He's going to be fine. Isn't he?”

The doctor's face is grave. “He's going to need surgery, and the
neurosurgeon is on his way down to come and see you. He'll explain the procedure in more detail, but essentially it involves drilling a hole in the skull to try to evacuate the hematoma and relieve the pressure.”

Emma nods, numb. “Can I see him?”

“He's being prepped for surgery. But he's not conscious.” He takes a deep breath, as if he doesn't want to convey more bad news. “I'm afraid he lost consciousness during the scan.”

The surgeon speaks to Emma briefly, but as soon as he walks away, she realizes she hasn't heard anything he said. Words flutter around her brain like confetti.
Hematoma. Herniation. Burr hole.

But then a fragment of their conversation comes back to her. He mentioned—she is sure of it—that
the prognosis was better given that Dominic had had a lucid period
. Hadn't he? Had she imagined that?

She is shivering, so she puts Dominic's coat on to keep her warm, and in his pocket she finds his phone. She scrolls through his contacts, looking for his parents' number. Dominic may not be close to them, may only see them sporadically, but they need to know what's happened.

They arrive an hour later, moving slowly down the hallway, fear in their eyes. They seemed so intimidating the one time she had met them, but here, under these fluorescent lights, walking so tentatively down the corridor, they look frail and frightened.

“Mr. and Mrs. DiFranco.” Emma gets up from her chair in the waiting room. They turn to look at her blankly, with clearly no idea who she is.

“I'm Emma. I'm the one who phoned you. We met a few—” She stops. It's not important. “Dominic is about to come out of surgery.” She explains what the doctors are doing, removing the hematoma, drilling a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure, while his parents stare at her like rabbits caught in headlights.

She doesn't tell them that she has spent the past hour looking up epidural hematomas on her phone. She doesn't tell them that she is terrified. She keeps thinking of one phrase that loops over and over in her head:
Without prompt medical attention, an epidural hematoma carries a high risk of death.
What does
prompt
mean? she has asked herself over and over. The ambulance came as quickly as it could, given the snow. Was it prompt enough?
Please, God, let it have been prompt enough.

She has no idea how long Dominic had lain there in the snow before she found him. Had it been five minutes? Had it been longer?

She won't think about it. She can't.

“Is he going to be okay?” says his father.

“They haven't said. They did tell me it was good that he was conscious after his fall. But I'm sure he is going to be okay,” says Emma, as tears spring into her eyes. “He's so strong.”

His mother nods, just as the surgeon strides down the hallway. “Are you the parents?” He walks over and shakes their hands, then gestures to all of them to follow him into a tiny private curtained space off the main waiting room.

“The operation went well,” he says, as Emma closes her eyes in relief. “We drilled a hole in his skull and seem to have successfully removed the hematoma and brought down the swelling. Mr. DiFranco has been taken up to the ICU and we will be giving him medications called hyperosmotic agents, which will further reduce any residual swelling.”

“Can you tell yet whether there will be any brain damage? Any seizures, or paralysis?” Thanks to her iPhone, Emma knows enough to ask this.

“It is too early to say,” he says. “The next twenty-four hours are crucial.”

He offers a few more details to Dominic's parents—what a hematoma is, how it happened—as Emma sinks back onto the hard seat, drawing her knees into her chest and hugging them. She rests her head on her knees, and turns away from Dominic's parents and the doctor, as silent tears trickle slowly down her cheeks.

•   •   •

The ICU is quiet. There is a different doctor on the floor now. Emma wanders around the hospital corridors, eventually circling back to the waiting room. Dominic's parents sit there numbly, nursing cardboard cups of lukewarm coffee, which they aren't drinking.

In the early hours of the morning, a nurse pushes the door of the waiting room open.

“He's awake,” she says. “Would you like to see him?”

Emma jumps up, then hesitates. His parents should go first. She'll accompany them if they invite her.

But they don't invite her.

Emma sinks back into her chair, stung.
They don't know me,
she tries to reassure herself.
They only met me once, and so briefly. They have no idea what I mean to Dominic, what we mean to each other.

She stops the nurse by placing a hand on her arm as she is about to head out of the waiting room. “May I go in afterwards?” she asks, so quietly that Dominic's parents won't hear.

The nurse nods with an understanding smile. “Of course.”

Ten minutes later, Emma is sitting next to Dominic's bed, holding his hand, as tears of relief course down her face.

“I thought you were dead,” she says, attempting to smile through her tears. “For the second time in twenty-four hours.”

“I'm just tired,” he says. “You don't need to cry about it,” and he squeezes her hand.

“How does your head feel? Are you in pain?”

“It's not so bad,” he says, closing his eyes for a second. “I can't believe this happened.”

“I know. The random nature of life. But you're going to be fine.”

“Thank God you found me.”

“You have no idea how many times I've thought that since we got here. Promise me you will never get up on a roof ever again.”

“That's really not something I have to promise. I'm not even going to stand on a chair after this. How's Jesse?”

“He's fine. Sophie's been texting me. I'll tell her to let him know you're fine. He's sleeping over at her house.”

“And what about you? What are you doing?”

“I'm sleeping here. I'm not going to leave you, Dominic.”

“You should go home. You need a good night's sleep. I'm more worried about Jesse. I bet the little guy's scared.”

“Want me to bring him to see you tomorrow?”

“Not yet. I don't want him freaked out by all the hospital stuff. Maybe in a couple of days, when I feel a bit stronger.”

“Okay.” Emma can see he's getting tired, his eyes drifting closed every few seconds. “I love you,” she says, and she leans forward and kisses him, sitting next to the bed for a few minutes until he is asleep.

•   •   •

Emma is so exhausted that she has to blink furiously all the way home just to stay awake. She doesn't even remember the last time she was out driving at four thirty in the morning. The streets are deserted and silent, and the streetlights cast warm pools of light on the snow.
This is so spectacularly beautiful
, thinks Emma, driving slowly and carefully. Her first proper New England snowstorm. If only she were able to enjoy it.

She'd spoken briefly with Dominic's parents before leaving the hospital. They seemed as numb as she did, didn't seem to hear when she said she would take care of Jesse, too fragile and overwhelmed. As was she, but she had too many responsibilities, with Jesse, to give in to those feelings.

As Emma walks in the door of her cottage, Hobbes immediately curls around her ankles, looking up at her and mewing pitifully. She feeds her, makes her way slowly up the stairs, and pulls her clothes off before collapsing into bed, and sleeping the sleep of the dead.

T
here are no texts from Dominic when Emma wakes up. She feels a surge of worry before remembering the signs at the hospital saying no cell phones allowed.

Poor Dominic. His cell phone—the one she'd found in the pocket of his coat and used to call his parents, the one she'd so carefully returned to him when that kind nurse brought her in to see him—is probably in a plastic bag in a closet somewhere, uncharged. She makes a note to herself to bring his charger with her when she goes back to the hospital.

She checks e-mail, scrolls mindlessly through Facebook and Instagram before realizing with shock that it is almost nine in the morning. She had no idea it was so late, although she was up half the night, didn't get to bed until nearly dawn. She shakes her head to clear it. Things will get back to normal eventually.

She phones the hospital to see how Dominic is, but they won't
give out information by phone to anyone other than family.
I am family,
she thinks, but she can't prove it, is too tired to have this discussion. She will go to the hospital as soon as she can.

Texting Sophie that she is coming to get Jesse, Emma jumps in the shower, swigging water straight from the tap to swallow a couple of Motrin, hoping they'll stop the pounding headache that comes with no sleep.

The streets are busier today, the roads no longer blanketed in white, but plowed and already dirty. The Post Road is filled with traffic. Business as usual.

At Sophie's house, she gets out of the car and hops up the path. It may not in fact
be
the path, for there are a couple of feet of snow covering Sophie's entire front yard. She feels guilty leaving tunnels of footprints in the perfect white blanket, and she pauses in front of the house, looking up at Sophie's roof, where more thick snow sits, undisturbed, as perfect as a picture postcard.

Why did Dominic need to shovel snow from the roof? What was so important about our crappy roof on our crappy house?

She has to spend the day with Jesse, even though the only place she wants to be is with Dominic. It's not fair to leave Jesse, who must be so worried, even though he isn't showing it, with Sophie for the whole day. He needs to be with someone he trusts, someone with whom he feels safe.

With any luck, by the time she gets to the hospital, hopefully midafternoon, his parents will have left. If they were vaguely attentive to her yesterday, it was only because she knew more than they did when they arrived. But she is no one to them. At best, a temporary girlfriend to their son. A tenant. No one permanent.

Thank God the nurse let her in to sit with Dominic last night. Otherwise, Emma never would have seen him.

Wasn't it only in movies that they refused to let you see the patient if you weren't family? she thought last night. Clearly, given that they refused to tell her anything when she phoned, it happens in real life, too.

She told the nurses outside the ICU that she was his fiancée, surreptitiously slipping the Russian wedding ring—a gift from her parents on her twenty-first birthday, which she always wore on her right hand—onto the third finger of her left. It was almost true. They both knew they were going to get married. Not having formalized it yet didn't make their commitment any less meaningful.

Those nurses let her in to sit with him last night. Whoever answered the phone today wasn't having any of it.

Sophie's mudroom door is always open. Emma walks in and slides off her boots, and as Sophie comes from the kitchen to greet her, Emma starts to cry.

“I'm sorry,” Emma wails, as her face crumples.

“Are you kidding?” Sophie takes her friend in her arms and holds her tight. “Let it out, honey. It's going to be okay. Jesse's upstairs watching TV. He won't hear a thing.”

When Emma's sniffles start to subside, she pulls away as Sophie reaches over to grab a box of tissues.

“I'm so sorry,” Emma says again. “I'm just so tired.”

“Have you slept at all?”

“A little, yes. But I feel like I've been hit by a Mack truck. I think it's an emotional hangover.”

“I can't believe what happened. It's horrific. What do they say? How long will it take for Dominic to be released from the hospital?”

Emma tells her that when she left last night, or earlier this morning, things had been looking better. She doesn't know precisely what his recovery will entail, but the surgery had gone well.

“There's something I have to tell you,” Sophie says with a grimace.
“I was so worried about Dominic, about what would happen to him, that I phoned your parents.”

“My parents? Good grief, Sophie, why would you do that?”

“Because I thought things were looking really bad. I thought you might need them.”

“What did they say?”

Sophie's shoulders slump as she looks up at her friend. “They booked a flight right away. They're on their way here.”

Emma shrugs. She's too tired, too worried to continue to harbor a grudge against her mother. She'll sort it all out later. “Well,” she says, “it wasn't necessary, but I can see you thought you were doing the right thing. It's fine,” she adds, as she sees Sophie's distraught expression. “Honestly. Don't worry about it.” She peers at her friend. “When you say on the way here . . . when, exactly?”

“Rob's gone to pick them up from the airport. They should be here any sec—” They both turn at the sound of a car.

Sophie looks miserable. “I'm sorry, Emma. I know you haven't spoken to them since your trip, and I would never have done this if I'd known Dominic was going to be fine.”

They both go outside, and Emma says nothing. She watches the car pull up, then park, watches Rob get out and pull suitcases out of the trunk, watches the back door open. First her father, and then her mother get out of the car, blinking at the searing light outside.

“Darling!” Georgina drops her coat and rushes over, putting her arms around her daughter as Emma starts to cry.

•   •   •

Jesse bounces along in the backseat, a tall furry black hat on his head, his face almost entirely hidden by the strap in front of his nose. He is not strapped into his car seat because Emma hadn't taken it out of
Dominic's car, and he is excited to be going to the Bluebird Inn for Texas French toast and chocolate chip pancakes, excited to be with new people who not only have shown up unexpectedly but have brought him a toy London bus, a black cab, and the Beefeater hat, which he may never take off.

Emma has promised him he can have whatever he wants, in a bid to keep him happy and distracted. Her parents are doing an excellent job on very short notice. Georgina, in the backseat next to Jesse, is telling him stories about their farm, which seem to entrance him. She even has photographs from home stored on her phone, and she and Jesse are sliding through them, as she patiently explains who all of the people are and what they do on the farm.

She is talking to Jesse in much the way she talks to everyone else, as if he is a friend she has bumped into in the village shop and is filling him in on local gossip. Emma keeps shooting glances at Jesse in the rearview mirror, convinced he must be bored, but he is smiling beatifically at her mother and happily looking at the photos.

They park in the old filling station next door to the restaurant and make their way inside, taking a table by the window. Jesse proceeds immediately to snap off the heads of two of the geraniums in the window boxes before her mother tells him to stop. Emma watches nervously, waiting for him to throw a tantrum, but he seems transfixed by Georgina and immediately does what she says.

“We'll talk later,” her mother had said earlier, when Emma had finished crying and stepped out of her mother's embrace. “I want to hear about Dominic. Daddy has a very old friend who's a top surgeon at Yale, and he's already left him a message. We're going to get him the best help possible.”

“Thank you,” Emma says gratefully. “I think he's in good hands, but it will be nice to get a second opinion.”

“That little one is wonderful,” says her mother now, watching as Emma's father takes Jesse's hand in the parking lot and leads him carefully around the idling cars to keep him busy while they wait for their food to arrive. “I understand so much better now. I'm sorry, Emma, for what I said.”

“You don't need to apologize,” says Emma, realizing it's true. There are far more important things at stake than what happened in England; she forgave her parents as soon as she saw them get out of Rob's car.

The food arrives soon after. Jesse delightedly digs into his chocolate chip pancakes, demanding that Emma's mother try some. Emma watches them with a tremulous smile, the first smile she has been able to muster since she found Dominic lying outside on the ground in the snow. It is quite clear that Jesse adores her mother. It is the very last thing she would have expected, that her difficult, judgmental, occasionally imperious mother would be an object of adoration in the eyes of a small boy. But there is no doubt that Jesse is smitten, and her mother, seeing herself reflected so beautifully in Jesse's adoring eyes, is smitten in return.

Emma would never have thought to phone her parents for comfort. But they are here, and she is comforted. The small mountain of carbohydrates on the table, drowned, as they are, in maple syrup, is comforting, too. Sitting at this table feels like a slice of normality in a world that has otherwise turned upside down.

“What's your name?” Jesse says, midchew, looking at Emma's mother.

“Georgina,” she says, pausing thoughtfully. “How about you call me Gigi?”

Jesse nods, then glances at Emma's father. “What about him?”

Emma's mother furrows her brow in thought.

Jesse spears another piece of pancake. “Can I call you Banpy?” he asks Emma's dad. “My friend Dylan calls his grandpa Banpy, and I think you'd be a good Banpy.”

Emma's father beams. “I don't see why not,” he says to Jesse. Then he turns to his wife with a happy shrug. “Well,” he says, “I didn't expect this!”

“Instant grandchild!” Emma's mother is beaming just as brightly. “What an unexpected delight. And entirely worth the wait, if I may say.” Georgina gives Jesse an impromptu hug. Clearly he didn't follow their exchange, but he hugs her right back.

“Do you know when my daddy is coming home?” Jesse asks as they wait for the check.

Emma takes a sip of coffee to stall for time, casting an anxious glance at her parents. But they can't answer this question for her. Taking a deep breath, she says, “I don't know. He's had a big fall and they have to make sure he's completely fine before they let him come home. It may be a little while, but I can hopefully take you to see him in a couple of days when he's feeling a bit better.”

“Can't I go and see him today?” says Jesse.

“Not today,” Emma says. “Today he's just sleeping, resting to get better.”

Jesse stops wriggling and looks Emma straight in the eye. “What if he dies? Will I get to go and live with my mom?”

Emma is struck mute. She can't think of a thing to say.

“Jesse, don't say that, darling,” says Emma's mother calmly. “I don't think he's going to die. It was a serious bump on the head, but the doctors think your father is going to be fine.”

Jesse shrugs an okay, but the rest of them can hardly breathe. Emma gives her mother a grateful glance.

She is not equipped for this. She has no idea how to talk to a small
child about the serious stuff. What if something terrible did happen? How would she explain it? What would she say, after she has already told him his father will be fine? She forces the thoughts away and turns to the waitress to take the check.

Once they are in the car and Emma is driving them all back home, she thinks again how glad she is that her parents are here, that they can babysit, allowing Jesse to sleep in his own bed tonight instead of at Sophie's. She is almost starting to breathe normally when Jesse mumbles something behind her.

“What, darling? I can't hear you.” She turns the radio down.

“I want my daddy.” Jesse's face crumples as he starts to cry. Emma's mother immediately puts a large arm around him and holds him close, kissing him on the head.

“I want Daddy to come home,” he says, his whole body heaving. “I want to see him.”

“I think we can go and see him tomorrow,” Emma says, although she's sure that tomorrow will be too early. “I'll ask the doctors later. Why don't we all go home now, and you can introduce Gigi and Banpy to Hobbes, and maybe Banpy will even help you build a snowman.” She looks at her father helplessly, and receives a nod in return.

“Gigi can make hot chocolate and cookies, and I'll be back home before you go to bed tonight. How's that?”

Jesse is still crying, more softly now.

Emma reaches back and squeezes Jesse's hand. “What about . . . if you sleep in our bed tonight? With me? On Daddy's side?”

Jesse looks up and nods. When Emma starts to pull her hand back, he clamps his on top and holds on for dear life, and that's how they drive, all the way home.

Back at the house, they decide that Emma's parents will stay at Emma's, while she stays with Jesse at Dominic's. Not surprisingly,
exhausted by the events of the last few hours, Jesse cuddles up with Hobbes on the sofa and falls asleep. Emma finds she can no longer keep her eyes open, either, and her mother sends her upstairs to bed. Her legs are so heavy that she barely makes it up the stairs.

She crawls into bed, asleep almost as soon as her head hits the pillow. When she wakes up, staggering out of the deepest of slumbers, she's deeply disoriented. What time is it? she wonders. What day? The bed smells of Dominic.

Something is wrong; it takes her a few seconds to remember what it is. With the realization comes the worry, weighing on her chest. She lies there for a while, before remembering that Jesse is home and must be downstairs with her parents.