30

The pediatric intensive care unit was on the eleventh floor. I left my coat and purse in the car, and still had my pajama bottoms on. This and the McDonald’s Happy Meal I’d bought before getting on the elevator were enough for the nurse at the station to assume I belonged there. Parents who have children on the brink of death aren’t often asked for their identification.

I sat on a metal bench at the end of the hallway under a window that overlooked the employee parking lot. The air vent above made the noise of a hungry stomach. I put the Happy Meal down beside me.

I was disgusted with myself for being there. The place where Elijah died.

For two weeks I thought of the accident every minute of every day. Every time I closed my eyes, I was there at that playground, yelling up at her on the platform to be careful in the moments before it happened. I saw their little legs, his running, hers standing still against that pole. And then her leg lifting just as he passed.

But I don’t know—I couldn’t be sure.

I listened. To the listless sounds of a toddler having vials of blood drawn, and to the gentle voice of his mother telling him he was brave. Across the hall from that child, a tired-looking man carried a little girl out of the room. She held a teddy bear, and waved good-bye at whomever she’d left as her ratty winter boots dangled at the man’s hip. A nurse followed and shut the door quietly. Inside the room I heard a woman cry, her sobs bellowing. I could hear in her cries how angry she was.

And two doors down from that woman, a family sang a song that Violet had learned in preschool. The music was muffled, punctured with beautiful, childish squeals and the ding of a bell from a board game. Like the white noise of a carnival. I wished for a moment I could join them.

Nurses came and went, banging the heels of their hands against sanitizer boxes outside each door. People left for coffee. Mothers paged for towels. A clown in a tutu with a cart of toys knocked gently door by door, asking if it was a good time. Whispers. Giggles. Clapping. Good girl. What a big boy. Long stretches of silence. A notification through the speaker system that the elevators in the west hall would be shut down for the next twenty minutes. I stared at a thick layer of grime along the baseboard of the peach and gray pebbled floor. Heavy double doors at the end of the hall clanked shut and then swung open, over and over and over.

“Do you need anything?” I hadn’t noticed the woman in a pale green uniform approach me. I tried to swallow before I spoke and then winced; my throat felt stuffed with medical gauze. The air was stale. I shook my head and thanked her. I sat there for four hours.

On my way out, the box of cold fries in my hand, I stopped outside the closed door where I’d heard the woman weep earlier that afternoon. I looked through the gridded glass and saw her lying in bed, a tiny lump cradled beside her, a highway of tubes running into the blankets from bags of fluid that hung like storm clouds above them. Raindrops came down, drip by drip. There was a whiteboard on the wall beside the bed that said “My name is ____ and my favorite thing to do is ____.” Someone had filled in the blanks: Oliver. Play soccer with my friends.

Mothers aren’t supposed to have children who suffer. We aren’t supposed to have children who die.

And we are not supposed to make bad people.

There was a moment outside that door when I wanted Violet to be the one who was pushed off the top of the slide.

I sat in my car in the hospital parking lot and replayed it differently this time. I had to stop letting my mind go there; I had to believe my daughter had not tripped that boy.

* * *

? ? ?

That evening, you slipped your hand across my shoulders to rub my neck while I fried shrimp in a pan. When I pulled away you asked what was wrong. I wanted to tell you where I’d gone that day. I wanted to say, I’m a monster for thinking the things I do. Instead I mumbled something about a headache and stared at the spitting oil. You shook your head as you walked out of the room.

31

Today’s not a good day, I’m afraid.” Mr. Ellington stood in the doorway with a wet cloth in his hand. I’d knocked on and off for five minutes until he answered. Thomas and Daniel had gone to their aunt’s house, he’d said. Mrs. Ellington wasn’t feeling well. He must have seen the disappointment in my face because as I turned to walk home, he reached for my shoulder.

“Just a minute, Blythe. Let me see if she’s up for some company after all.” I waited in the front hallway until he came back. “Go on up. She’s in bed resting.”

I’d never been in their bedroom before, but I knew it was the room at the end of the hall. I was nervous—it was such a private space—but I also felt special. The door was ajar, so I slipped through quietly and Mrs. Ellington sat up in bed.

“Come in, honey. What a nice surprise to see you today.” She had no makeup on and her hair was wrapped in a silk scarf. Her eyes looked smaller and her eyebrows were thinner, but she looked just as beautiful as ever. She patted the bed beside her and I wondered if I shouldn’t get so close, if that would bother her. But she patted again so I sat down and put my hands politely on my lap.

“I don’t look so good today, do I?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I looked around her bedroom instead. The gold curtains were pulled to the side with rope, and the textured, leaf-patterned wallpaper looked exactly like my mother’s, only it was a deep yellow instead of the hospital green in our house that I had never liked. I ran my hand over her bedspread, which matched the curtains. Everything looked so luxurious and warm. I thought of my own mother’s bed, never made, the sheets rarely washed.