Kate Hewitt - When He Fell

I shower and dress and am just locking the front door when the door to the apartment next to mine opens, and my neighbor steps out, bumping into my shoulder hard.

“Oh, sorry,” he exclaims. “No one’s usually out here at this time in the morning. Are you okay?”

I rub my shoulder and nod. “Yeah, I’m fine.” My neighbor is a runner. I’ve never learned his name in the five or so years he’s been in the building, but I’ve secretly nicknamed him Spandex Man for the impressive amount of Lycra running gear he wears when he goes out for a jog. He has the lean, kind of stringy build of the diehard runner, and his brown hair is cut short so it is bristly on top. We’ve never spoken beyond a few murmured pleasantries about the weather when we’ve shared the elevator.

Now he raises his eyebrows at me and nods towards my door. “You’re on your own?”

I nod, swallow hard. “Yes.”

“I just meant your son,” he clarifies as we walk toward the elevator. “He’s not with you.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that my neighbor knows I have a son; we’ve shared the elevator often enough, after all. He’s probably seen Ben and me go into our apartments dozens of times. It’s just that we’ve never really talked.

The elevator doors ping open and we both step inside. At a little after six in the morning it is empty except for the two of us.

“No, he’s not with me,” I say, and then to both my horror and shame, my mouth trembles and I can feel my expression wobbling as tears fill my eyes. Spandex Man’s face slackens in shock. I try to blink back the tears but it’s too late for that. They spill down my cheeks and I dash them away quickly.

“Sorry,” I mutter as I drag my sleeve across my face. “Sorry, it’s just that it’s been a really hard couple of days.”

I’m trying to get myself under control, but I feel like I’ve taken my finger out of the plughole in the dam of my emotions, and there’s no releasing the floodtide of feeling. The tears keep coming, and my shoulders start to shake. A raw, animal sound of pain escapes from my mouth. I am mortified.

The doors ping open again and an unsmiling woman in a severe brown trouser suit comes in. She takes one look at me and her whole body goes rigid. I am breaking so many unwritten New Yorker rules. You don’t fall apart in front of your neighbors, in an elevator . Definitely not in a building like mine. Elevators are for silence and staring straight ahead.

Spandex Man angles his body so I’m shielded from the woman, and I am grateful for his sensitivity even if I can tell he is almost as appalled as she is by my behavior. At least he is trying to hide it. He pats my shoulder once, awkwardly, and says, “Hey…hey.”

The doors open again and the woman hightails it out of the elevator. She’s out of the building before the doors have even closed again. I shuffle to the side of the lobby, all black granite and mirrors and shiny chrome, and wipe my face again. A few shuddering breaths later I’m starting to get myself under control. And Spandex Man is still there.

“Sorry,” I say again, and he frowns.

“Look, I know probably everyone is asking you this, but is there anything I can do?”

Just like Lewis asked. But I still don’t have an answer. “I don’t think so,” I say. “My son fell two days ago, on the playground at school. He’s in a coma.”

Spandex Man’s face slackens. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s a medically induced coma,” I explain quickly, as if this makes it better. “To help his brain to heal. They might start waking him up today.”

“That’s really tough,” he says, and I can tell he means it.

“Thanks. I’m sorry I fell apart back there.” I nod toward the bank of elevators. “I’m running on zero sleep and I’m pretty strung out.”

“It’s understandable,” he says and I take a step backwards. Time to restore some normality. Some distance.

“So, thanks,” I say again and then with a little goodbye wave, I turn and walk out of the building.

At the hospital Dr. Velas is waiting for me, with a group of nurses and specialists. We all crowd into Dr. Velas’s office and she goes through the next phase of Ben’s care: they are going to slowly start taking him off the medications that have kept him in a coma, and monitor his responses. If he experiences any distress, they will return to the earlier dosage and wait until he is stable again.

“We have to take this slowly, Maddie,” she tells me. “This isn’t Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, where a single kiss wakes someone up. Coming out a coma is a long, slow process.”

“And when he comes out of it?” I ask. Slow or not, I need to know what happens next. I want to be prepared.

“We will start to assess his capabilities. And then we’ll begin rehabilitation.” She pauses. “But let’s take one thing at a time. If he opens his eyes in the next forty-eight hours, that would be great.”

Disappointment swamps me. If he opens his eyes? That’s a lot slower than I expected, despite Dr. Velas’s warnings. I knew this was going to be a long haul, but the realization overwhelms me anyway.

“Okay,” I say, and I try to smile.

I set up a mini-office in a corner of the waiting room; there are a couple of other people there who look as tired and careworn as I do. We share weary, sympathetic smiles but we don’t engage. I can’t handle someone else’s story right now. I can cope with only so much pain.

For the next couple of hours I answer work emails; Elena has appointed a junior associate, Evan, to cover my work and he’s been firing queries at me since he started. Clearly he doesn’t get the concept of compassionate leave.

I don’t like my job and haven’t for years, but I’ve never had the luxury to consider retraining. I have zero savings beyond what I put aside for Ben’s tuition and no safety net. And the thought of someone doing my job for me, taking my place, is yet another thing that scares me. They can’t lay me off, I tell myself. I’m allowed compassionate leave. They can’t just fire me.

In any case, I’m only on my third day of the ten vacation days I haven’t yet taken. I have a week left to think about my options. For Ben to get better.

Around ten o’clock I get a call on my cell from Burgdorf. Maybe Mrs. James finally has some answers.

Taking a deep breath, I answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Ms. Reese?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to update you on what happened on the playground,” she says, and my hand tenses around my cell.

“Yes?”

“I spoke to Mrs. Rollins yesterday and discovered that she had talked to some of the children who were on the playground when Ben fell.” A pause, and I can tell she’s considering her words carefully. “It appears Ben might have been pushed by another student.”

“ Pushed? ”

“Apparently they were having an argument.”

That doesn’t really surprise me, because Ben is always annoying other kids, elbowing them out of the way, shouting in their face. But I don’t like the thought that she might be blaming Ben. “Where was he pushed?” I ask. “How did he fall? What did he hit his head on?”

“I don’t yet know the answers to those questions—”

“A report must have been filed,” I cut across her, my voice sharp. I feel like Mrs. James is keeping something back, and I want to know what it is.

“I’ve looked at the report,” she says. “It says Ben fell from the climbing structure.” Which was what I had expected, but why didn’t Mrs. James tell me this earlier? Why didn’t Juliet tell me? Mrs. James continues briskly, “I can assure you, we have dealt with the matter. The student in question is being suspended for a week. Any further acts of aggression will result in expulsion.”