Snapshots. Pamela Browning
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him following behind. The phone on the other end seemed to ring for an interminably long time, and he started muttering, “Pick up, pick up.” He imagined his sister-in-law in her condominium in Columbia, South Carolina. She’d have recently arrived home from work at WCIC, where she was coanchor of the evening news. Or maybe she was staying late at the station tonight, but he prayed that wasn’t the case. Due to her coolness under pressure, Martine’s identical twin was the person of choice to call in crisis situations.
“Hello?”
He’d planned to cushion the blow of his news, but when he heard Trista’s voice, he blurted it out.
“Tris, there’s been an accident. It’s Martine.”
A sharp intake of breath. Then, in a rush, “Is she all right?”
“She’s alive. We’re on the way to the hospital.”
“What happened?”
Keeping the ambulance in sight as he drove one-handed, he told her, his words tense and measured.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Trista said, and he imagined her heading for her closet, phone still pressed to her ear as she grabbed a duffel and started tossing clothes into it. He was approaching the hospital by this time, speeding into the curve leading to the emergency entrance, and he didn’t know what he said after that, only that they hung up.
He bolted from his car, stood jittery and on edge as the ambulance crew wheeled Martine into a curtained cubicle where he was not permitted to go. He paced the waiting room, thought about calling Trista again, but was reluctant because she’d be busy lining up airline reservations. Two officers from the department showed up and informed him that Padrón had died in the fiery crash, but Rick was too crazed with worry to derive any satisfaction from that.
The next few hours would be forever blurred in his memory. Long after Martine disappeared, a doctor summoned him to a small bare room. Rick swallowed, prepared to hear the worst.
“Your wife will recover,” said the doctor, someone Rick had never seen before. His name tag pegged him as Ethan D. Stillwater, M.D.
Rick’s knees went weak with relief, but the doctor didn’t notice. He consulted his clipboard. “She’s suffered three broken ribs, concussion, a fractured collarbone and assorted abrasions and contusions. She’ll soon be as good as new.”
Completely numb by this time, all Rick could do was try to pay attention as Dr. Stillwater rattled on about length of hospital stay and rehab. By now the issues Rick had with Martine before the accident seemed moot; he felt overwhelmingly guilty for what had happened to her. She’d never approved of his going into police work and had always resented the time he gave to his job. Maybe, in the long run, she’d been right.
“Sir, your wife has been placed in room 432,” said a nurse, briefly and comfortingly touching his arm.
“Thanks,” Rick said automatically. He took an interminable ride to the fourth floor on a jolting elevator whose mirrored walls revealed that his face was as white and pinched as those of his fellow passengers, all of whom must have urgent reasons for being there in the middle of the night just as he did.
He wouldn’t have recognized Martine if her name hadn’t been printed on a placard beside the door. A tightness gripped his heart when he first saw her, a heavy mantle of self-reproach pressing him down. Her face was bruised and swollen, her head bandaged so that only a few tendrils of hair escaped. She wore a hospital gown, its institutional print faded from many washings. When she first opened her eyes, she stared as if she wasn’t quite sure who he was, her eyes drifting closed almost immediately after registering recognition but no emotion at all.
Rick settled himself on the uncomfortable plastic-covered chair and caught a couple of hours’ sleep, waking when an aide delivered a breakfast tray. Martine was still asleep, so he forced down what he could from the tray—gummy oatmeal, a wedge of toast soaked with margarine.
After that he phoned a friend of his from the department and asked him to stop by the house. Charlie rang him back a couple of hours later and told him that Padrón had entered by disarming the security system and breaking a back window. “I’ll take care of it,” Charlie said, and Rick left it to him, knowing that he would.
Martine dozed most of the day, and Rick tried unsuccessfully to do the same. When the door swung open late in the afternoon, he glanced up sharply, expecting yet another nurse or an aide. Instead, Martine walked in, her eyes frantic. But no. His befogged brain cleared in a moment to realize that it was Trista.
Overwhelmingly relieved to see her, Rick stood immediately and pulled Trista into a hug, taking comfort from her warmth. Her bones felt fragile and her pale hair smelled of the almond-scented shampoo she’d favored for as long as he could remember. He released her reluctantly when she pulled away.
Trista turned immediately toward the figure in the bed. “I got here as soon as I could,” she said, noting the monitors and machines crowding the small space. “How is she?” She wore little makeup and a white T-shirt with jeans and a navy blazer. The back of her hair was crushed, as if she’d rested her head on the back of the airplane seat and forgotten to fluff it afterward.
Rick filled her in as best he could, though he had the feeling he was leaving a lot out. Trista nodded, looking worried and upset as she slung her shoulder bag on the nightstand and slipped out of her jacket. “I called Mom. She’s not well enough to come,” she said. A sense of calm radiated from her, and Rick drew sustenance from it. He was desperately in need of support, someone to care about him, and Trista was the closest member of their family. His parents, fulfilling a lifelong dream to teach English in China, were living in faraway Nanchung, and he seldom saw his brother, Hal, whose prissy, uptight wife, Nadia, vaguely disapproved of him.
As Trista’s glance took in his beard stubble and rumpled clothes, she moved to the side of the bed and caressed her twin’s hand.
“I can’t imagine how awful it must have been,” she murmured sympathetically. “For both of you.”
“I couldn’t stop Padrón. I tried.” As long as he lived, Rick would never forget those moments of watching helplessly as the man forced Martine into the car.
Trista’s hand reached backward for his so that the three of them were linked as they’d been so many times when they were children growing up together. Her grasp was warm, familiar, and he should have completed the circle by clasping Martine’s free hand. He didn’t. The gesture was preempted by the IV needle.
“Why don’t you take a break, Rick,” Trista said quietly and sensibly. “Grab some sleep. I’ll stay here.”
He refused. He didn’t want to leave Martine, even though Trista was more than capable of looking after her. But after he slumped over a few times in the chair and realized that he was viewing Trista’s caring face as if through a heavy fog, Rick finally admitted to himself that he’d been wiped out by an ordeal that had begun with that unwelcome discovery in Martine’s dresser drawer.
“I think I will go home for a while,” he told Trista, who had pulled a second chair close to the bedside and was still holding her twin’s hand.
“Go on,” she said. “You’re a walking zombie.”
You don’t know the half of it, he thought, but he didn’t say it. His anguish over the rift between Martine and him was coming back, invisible and unknown to everyone. Certainly, he’d feel less raw and vulnerable after a good night’s sleep.
“Go on,” Trista urged gently.
“Call me if there’s any change.”
“I will.” She smiled up at him.
It was eleven o’clock at night when Rick left the hospital. With Miami’s streets almost deserted at this late hour, he didn’t have to concentrate on his driving, only on staying awake. He pulled the car into the garage in Kendall and sat for a moment after the door descended behind him. Returning home was hitting him hard in his gut, and he