TO DO: Be there (and stop Maddy from going there)
MOMLY WAS ALIVE. The nurse at the front desk told us she was banged up pretty bad, and had a mild concussion and a broken arm.
“And what about Maddy?” I asked before she’d even finished saying “broken arm.” My heart had turned into a frog trying to jump out my throat. My brain thinking bad things only. I’m sorry, but she didn’t make it . . . No. No, no, no. Don’t think that. Don’t think that. But I couldn’t help it. What if Maddy was . . . I tried not to think what I couldn’t stop myself from thinking. That Maddy, my mini-me, my Waffle, was . . . hurt. Was . . . gone. I tried to speak clear, my voice balling up like a piece of paper. “I mean, Madison. Madison Jones.”
“The little girl who was with her,” Uncle Tony made plain, his voice sharp. Almost too clear.
“Ah.” The nurse’s face brightened up. “Baby ain’t have a scratch on her.”
All the breath in my body left, and then came rushing back in. Filled me up with a bunch of thank goodness. The cannons stopped firing. And the boom-boom-boom became the beep-beep-beep coming though the crack in the door of the room Maddy and Momly were in. It was as if me and Uncle Tony had teleported there.
“Hello?” Uncle Tony cried out as he tapped on the door and crept in like we didn’t belong there, like we were afraid the doctor who was also in the room would think we had come to steal our family back.
“Patty!” Maddy jumped up from a chair and crashed against me. She squeezed, not like she was trying to lift me up, but like she was trying to melt into me. And I squeezed back like I was scared to let go.
Uncle Tony darted to the bed where Momly lay. Maddy and me weren’t far behind him. The first thing I noticed was Momly’s face. It was puffed up, so much purple on her pale skin. Bruises and lumps and knots, worse than a Barnaby beat-down. And then I noticed her arm. The broken one. It was swollen up to the shoulder, making the skin look like it was being stretched too tight. Compared to the other arm, it looked more like a leg, at least the top part did. The bottom part they had in some kind of sling-contraption thingy, to keep it from moving. But I could still see the imprint in the fabric where the bone jutted out, like a second elbow. Looked like it hurt like crazy.
“Come on in, y’all.” Momly’s voice was all grog. She waved us toward her with her good arm—her right arm—like she was hosting a party. “Dr. Lancaster, this is the rest of my family. Patty, and my husband, Tony.”
“Nice to meet you,” Uncle Tony said, immediately shaking the doctor’s hand.
“The pleasure’s mine,” Dr. Lancaster said, smooth. “Me and Maddy are just here making sure Mrs. Emily doesn’t fall asleep while she’s concussed.”
“What happened?” I asked, because how does someone who drove as safe as Momly, someone who didn’t even listen to music in her car, get in a crash?
“Yeah, Em, what in the world happened?” Uncle Tony followed up, gently stroking Momly’s hair.
Momly’s eyes were half-open, blinking super slow like windshield wipers on the low setting. Like when it’s just drizzling. “Someone ran a red light. Smacked right into us and kept going.”
“A hit-and-run?” Uncle Tony asked, his voice hardening in a way I’d never heard.
Momly nodded. “Yeah.” She tried to shift in the bed but was in too much pain to do so. Every little inch up or to the side made her show teeth. A pain smile. “But I’ll be fine,” she was telling us now, stroking Uncle Tony’s arm. “Right, doc? Concussions and broken bones heal. I’m just glad the strongest girl in the world’s not hurt.”
Maddy’s arm tightened around my waist. Down, tears. Down! Hold it together. You are Patina Jones. Daughter of Beverly Jones. No junk. No punk.
“I know,” I said, forcing a small smile and resting my cheek on the top of Maddy’s head. I figured I’d better put my face down somewhere before it split down the middle. Then Maddy reached over and took Momly’s hand, her chest heaving as she worked to fight back her own feelings, even though she had been there the whole time. It was like now that me and Uncle Tony showed up, she could let herself be scared.
“It’s okay, Maddy. I’m fine. I swear. It’s just a broken arm. Remember when Cotton broke her arm? She was better in no time! Nothing crazy.” Cotton broke her arm trying to prove she could do a handstand on the bathroom sink at Barnaby Elementary, but she slipped. She was lucky. Could’ve broke her neck. Or broke her life. But that would’ve been her own fault. This was different. “Hey . . . hey, Patty, I won’t be running any relays anytime soon, huh? No handoffs for me.” Momly was trying to lighten the mood, but it fell flat. I forced a fake laugh, because I got what she was trying to do. But jokes were Uncle Tony’s thing.
“But . . . but . . . I just don’t want them to anfiltrate it!” Maddy wasn’t distracted at all by the corny comedy. Momly refocused.
“They’re not gonna amputate it, baby. They’re gonna fix it,” she assured her. That voice, the one that usually only a mom has, even though . . . well, she’s our mom too, kicked in and seemed to calm the whole room down. But I knew Maddy. I could look in her face and see that she wasn’t so sure that things were going to be fine.
“Maddy, they’re not gonna take it,” I echoed. Then a better idea to chill Maddy out sprouted up in my mind, and I walked to the other side of the room to grab one of the two chairs that were there.
“We’re definitely not,” the doctor confirmed. And while he explained how bone healing works, and Maddy started getting into how our mother had had her legs cut off, I bent down and pretended to try to move the chair. I started grunting like I was constipated or something, just to draw attention. “Ughn . . . ughn.” I turned around and Maddy was still going on about how for our mom, first it was a toe, then it was a foot, then her legs—none of which she actually remembers—and how for Momly, what if it starts with one part of the arm, and the next thing you know half her body is cut off.
“What if she can’t drive with half a body?” she asked the doctor, who at this point looked somewhere between amused and confused.
“Maddy, can you come help me, please?”
“Help you what?” she asked, her voice still quavering.
“Help me move this chair. It’s too heavy.” The chair really was more like real furniture. Not some flimsy fold-up. Of course I could’ve moved it if I really wanted to. But I bent down again with a huge, “Ughn!”
“It’s just a chair, Patty,” Maddy said, skeptical but coming to my side anyway.
“Yeah, but I think hospital chairs be heavier for some reason.”
Maddy frowned, but then she grabbed the chair by the armrests and yanked it forward. I widened my eyes as Maddy backed the chair across the room, inch by inch, until it was at the foot of Momly’s bed.
“That one’s for Uncle Tony,” I said as she slapped her hands together like, light work. “But I need to sit down too.” I pointed at the other chair. “And then you can sit on my lap.” Maddy trotted back to the other side of the room to get the other one, Uncle Tony plopping down in the first.
“Thank you, Maddy,” he said, winking at Momly.
“No problem. They not even that heavy for me,” Maddy boasted.
“Of course not,” I agreed, watching her lug the next chair. When she’d parked it beside the other, I sat down. “Girl, I’m so glad we got somebody strong in this family.” I patted my thighs, beckoning her to come take a seat so we could continue on with the visit and put the tears and scary stuff behind us. But, in true Maddy fashion, she wasn’t ready to sit yet. Oh no. I got her going. Got her all revved up. Next thing I know she was now explaining to the doctor that she was one of the strongest first graders he’d ever seen.
“It’s true,” Momly gurgled.
And when Dr. Lancaster asked, “Is that right?” Maddy ran up on him like a maniac, threw her arms around his legs, and tried to lift him!
“Wha . . . Whoa, whoa!” the doctor hooted.
“Maddy!” both Uncle Tony and Momly barked, clearly embarrassed. And me, well, I actually thought it was kind of awesome. I mean, think about it. Here we all are, sad about what happened to Momly—and what could’ve happened to Maddy—and somehow (thanks to me, ahem) we got from there to watching Maddy try to lift the doctor up off the floor.
“I . . . got it. I . . . can . . . do it!” she growled, yanking at the doctor’s legs, his pants lifting enough to see his yellow dress socks. The doctor looked at me. I looked at him. He smiled, and then raised slowly up on his tiptoes just enough.
“What? How did you . . . ?” Dr. Lancaster gasped. Maddy let him go, stood back up, breathing heavy and nodding like some kind of warrior.
“I told you,” she said to the doctor, then turned to the rest of us. “Told y’all.”
“Lord have mercy,” Momly muttered under her breath, shaking her head slightly. If only Ma had heard her, we would’ve had to go into a whole Sunday service right here in the hospital. “Okay, Maddy, that’s enough. You’ve . . . proven your point.”
But . . . she hadn’t. It was like she had roid rage. That’s what it’s called when you take steroids and get all jacked and then start flipping out, right? Roid rage. It was like she had that. Because you wouldn’t believe what she did next. She came back over to where me and Uncle Tony were sitting, and I thought she finally was going to hop up on my lap, but instead she turned toward Momly and grabbed the bed frame. “I can lift up this whole bed, with Momly in it!”
“NOOO!” everyone—everyone—shouted, and I sprang from my seat and grabbed Maddy before she could even try. Not that she would’ve really been able to lift it, but still, anything’s possible, and then one broken arm is two broken arms and a broken back.
But thankfully, nothing, at least nothing like that, happened.
What did happen was Dr. Lancaster finally explained to Uncle Tony that Momly would have to have surgery to set and pin the bone.
“And when is this surgery?” Uncle Tony asked.
“Well, we wanted to do it today, but like I said, we have to monitor the concussion. So we’ll need to do it tomorrow morning.”
We stayed at the hospital for a few more hours until finally Momly basically forced us to leave, saying we didn’t have to go back to school but that I could not miss track practice. I was surprised. Maybe she knew that I wouldn’t have been able to focus in class, probably resulting in me getting in trouble for finally letting one of them fake hair flippers have it. Or maybe she knew I needed practice. I needed to run.
And I did, even though, because yesterday’s practice had been rained out, this would be the last practice before the meet on Saturday. I was fully prepared for the hardest practice ever.