Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

“So you like your new room?” Mom said brightly.

“Yeah, it’s great.” I wheeled over to the worktable and discovered that it was just the right height for my chair to slide under. That’s when I saw the computer, a Mac. I guess I’d seen it before that, but the room at first had looked like a picture to me, a magazine photograph, and the new computer hadn’t really registered or something. Slowly the whole thing was becoming real, though. “Wow. Is this mine? A Mac?” There was a printer and everything.

Mom said, “Yes, it is. It’s yours. It’s a present.”

“Wow. Who from?” I turned to Daddy, but he was bent over at the door, still working on the lock, this time screwing it in at shoulder height for me, waist high for him. “You guys?”

“No,” Mom said. “It came from Mr. Stephens. You don’t really know him yet. As a matter of fact, that was him just now on the phone. He was calling to see how you were and all. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

“Who’s Mr. Stephens?”

“He’s a lawyer,” Daddy said. “He’s our lawyer.”

“You have a lawyer? You and Mom?”

“Well, yes, we all do. He’s your lawyer too,” Daddy said. He’d finished with the lock and closed the door and tested it. It worked, but the room seemed real small with the door closed and all these people in it, like a closet, except for the big window, and I was relieved when he unlocked and opened the door again.

“My lawyer? What do I need a lawyer for?”

Mom said, “Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this just now, with you barely home yet. Aren’t you hungry, honey? Want me to fix you something?” She started to get up.

“No! What’s this lawyer business? How come this Mr. Stephens gave me a computer?”

“He’s a very kind man,” Mom said. “And he knew you’d need one for doing schoolwork, and he knew you wouldn’t be able to use the computers at school until next fall, when you go back. And naturally we couldn’t afford one….” She was picking invisible threads from the bedspread, not looking at me, but her legs were still crossed at the ankles, like she was on stage. I hate these kinds of conversations, like everyone but me knows the lines and has been rehearsing the scene without me.

Daddy sighed. “It’s because of the accident,” he said. “A lot of people in town whose kids were on the bus have got lawyers, because of the accident. Thank God we didn’t lose you, but a lot of people … well, you know. People in town are very, very angry,” he said. “Us included. There’s been a lot of grief here. People lost their children, Babes.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t lose me !”

“No, honey,” Mom said. “And we will thank the Lord for that every day and night for the rest of our lives. But you … you almost died, and you were badly injured, and you won’t be … you can’t …”

“I can’t walk anymore.” I said it for her.

“Well, that’s … that’s a terrible loss,” Daddy said. “To you, especially,” he said. “But to all of us.”

I looked at him hard, and he said, “Because we love you so much. And because you’re going to need special care for a long time to come, all that physical therapy and who knows what. For years, Babes. Spinal cord injuries don’t just go away. It’s not going to be easy. Not for you, not for any of us. And it’s going to cost more money than we can imagine. For years.”

“What about insurance? Doesn’t insurance pay for these things?”

“Partly, yes, but it’s still expensive. There’s a lot the insurance doesn’t cover. That’s one of the reasons we have a lawyer for you, to make sure the insurance gets paid and to help us pay for the rest.”

“One of the reasons. What’re the other reasons?”

Daddy said, “Well, Mr. Stephens is representing several families: the Ottos — you know them, of course — and Risa and Wendell Walker, and us, and I think a couple more. Mr. Stephens is suing the state and the town for negligence, because he is sure that the accident could have been avoided if the state and the town had done their jobs right.”

“Suing! But it’s not the same for us! The Ottos … I mean, they lost Bear in the accident, and maybe it’s like that with the Walkers and poor little Sean, but …” I could feel myself starting to cry; I did not want to cry.

So I shut up. I did not remember the accident, maybe, but I definitely knew what had happened. I could read the newspapers, and of course I had asked people, and eventually people had told me, although they had not wanted to. Everyone had come to the hospital to visit and tell me how lucky I was, to touch me on the hands and shoulders and top of my head like I was some kind of rabbit’s foot, so when I asked them about the other kids, what happened to the other kids who were on the bus that morning, at first no one was willing to tell me. Oh, now, Nichole, don’t you trouble yourself about that. You just concentrate on getting better and coming back to school. That sort of stuff.

But what about the other kids? I really needed to know. What about Rudy and Skip, they were on the bus, were they okay? I had asked about them first, naturally, as soon as I learned what had happened to me. And what about the Lamstons, what about the Prescott kids, what about the Bilodeaus? What happened to Sean Walker, who had been sitting in my lap that morning because he didn’t want to leave his mother? I could remember that much, Sean trying to catch a glimpse of his mother by the road. And what about Bear Otto? What about the Ansel twins? What happened to Dolores? Was she all right? How come I’m lying here in the hospital with tubes stuck in me and my body all numb. How come I’m not dead too? Someone, anyone, tell me where all the other children are!

Slowly people let me know. One by one. That’s how I came to understand what they meant by lucky. Rudy and Skip, they were especially lucky; they had been up front in the bus and had been almost the first to be removed from it, with barely a scratch on either of them. Jennie had stayed home sick that day. There were a bunch like that. Close calls. Because I was regarded as one myself, people liked standing around in the hospital room talking to me and each other about all the close calls.

But so many of the other kids were dead, and no one wanted to talk about them. They told me with downcast eyes and sad slow shakes of the head and as few words as possible. The Lamstons were dead, all three of them. One of the Prescott kids was dead. Two of the Bilodeaus, who had been at the rear of the bus, had been trapped underwater. Sean Walker had been in front, like me, but when the bus flipped over he’d fractured his skull and died from it before they got him out of the bus, and I’d only broken my back. So I was lucky, right? And Bear and the Ansel twins and several other kids who’d been in the back, they were all dead. Dolores was okay, I learned. She’d been in shock for a while, people said, but now she was okay. So she was lucky too. I wondered if she had a lawyer, like me.

It just wasn’t right — to be alive, to have had what people assured you was a close call, and then go out and hire a lawyer; it wasn’t right. And even if you were the mother and father of one of the kids who had died, like the Ottos or the Walkers, what good would it do to hire a lawyer? To sue, because your child had died in an accident, and then collect a bunch of money from the state — it was understandable, yet it somehow didn’t seem right, either. But to be the mother and father of one of the kids who had survived the accident, even a kid like me, who would spend the rest of her life a cripple, and then to sue — I didn’t understand that at all, and I really knew it wasn’t right. Not if I was, like they said, truly lucky.