injury the doctors said should have killed him. It was the reason Shawn
would never quite be Shawn again.
If the first fall was God’s will, whose was the second?
I’d never been to the hospital in town, but it was easy to find.
Dwain had asked me what the hell I was doing when I flipped a U-turn and
accelerated down the hillside. I’d listened to Shawn’s shallow breathing as I
raced through the valley, along Fivemile Creek, then shot up the Bear River
Hill. At the hospital, I parked in the emergency lane, and Dwain and I carried
Shawn through the glass doors. I shouted for help. A nurse appeared,
running, then another. Shawn was conscious by then. They took him away
and someone shoved me into the waiting room.
There was no avoiding what had to be done next. I called Dad.
“You nearly home?” he said.
“I’m at the hospital.”
There was silence, then he said, “We’re coming.”
Fifteen minutes later they were there, and the three of us waited awkwardly
together, me chewing my fingernails on a pastel-blue sofa, Mother pacing
and clicking her fingers, and Dad sitting motionless beneath a loud wall
clock.
The doctor gave Shawn a CAT scan. He said the wound was nasty but the
damage was minimal, and then I remembered what the last doctors had told
me—that with head injuries, often the ones that look the worst are actually
less severe—and I felt stupid for panicking and bringing him here. The hole
in the bone was small, the doctor said. It might grow over on its own, or a
surgeon could put in a metal plate. Shawn said he’d like to see how it healed,
so the doctor folded the skin over the hole and stitched it.
We took Shawn home around three in the morning. Dad drove, with
Mother next to him, and I rode in the backseat with Shawn. No one spoke.
Dad didn’t yell or lecture; in fact, he never mentioned that night again. But
there was something in the way he fixed his gaze, never looking directly at
me, that made me think a fork had come along in the road, and I’d gone one
way and he the other. After that night, there was never any question of
whether I would go or stay. It was as if we were living in the future, and I
was already gone.
When I think of that night now, I don’t think of the dark highway, or of my
brother lying in a pool of his own blood. I think of the waiting room, with its