Small-Town Girl

Julie froze, certain she hadn’t heard correctly. “Russell?”

“I know how much you love Vancouver, love this house. And you’ve done a beautiful job with it. But we’re in a rut.”

“Russell, this house is perfect—and I’m not talking about the bloody furniture or the color on the walls, for heaven’s sake. We’re close to Ben’s school, and his friends…. And what about the ten thousand we just spent on landscaping?”

She considered Russell’s long commute to work. “Do you want to move closer to the university? Is that it?”

“No. Farther. Much farther.” Russell cleared the plates from the table and rinsed them for the dishwasher.

Julie sat, waiting for him to tell her exactly what he had in mind. Finally he returned to the table. Gripping the back of the chair, he took a fortifying breath.

“I’ve been tossing the idea around for years now. Ben’s accident is only the catalyst.”

Cold dread pinned Julie to her chair. Years, Russell had said. Yet he’d never even hinted he wasn’t happy living here.

Then he added, “I’d like us to move back to the farm town I grew up in….”

Dear Reader,

We’ve all suffered personal tragedies, the sort that can turn your entire world upside down. You see people walking to work, stopping for coffee, mailing a letter, and wonder, Why are they bothering? Don’t they realize how unimportant it all is?

That’s how I felt as a young teenager when my brother was seriously injured in a farming accident. With my other brother and two sisters, I sat in front of the TV at my grandma’s house while my parents waited at the hospital. Disney was playing—it must have been a Sunday night. I remember staring at the set and wondering how Donald Duck could be up to his usual antics when my brother was so desperately hurt. I felt lost and scared. All I wanted was for life to go back to the way it had been that morning at breakfast, before any of the men had gone out to the fields.

In Small-Town Girl, that’s how Julie Matthew feels, too, when her son is gravely injured by a drunk driver. She wishes she could turn back the clock to the moment her phone rang that morning. She wishes she could change the answer she’d given, the decision she’d made so quickly.

But of course she can’t. And so our story begins….

C.J. Carmichael

Small-Town Girl

C.J. Carmichael

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For around-the-clock advice (mostly pertaining to my stories) I thank my brother-in-law, Dr. Gordon Bird

For my brother David

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

AT THE TIME, THE MEETING had seemed very important to Julie Matthew, senior editor of West Coast Homes. She frowned when the magazine’s administrative assistant opened the boardroom door and beckoned to her.

“I’m rather busy, Gina.” She’d just put up her first overhead on projected advertising revenue. “I don’t suppose this could wait?”

Gina shook her head, her expression grim.

“Well, then.” Julie sighed, then smiled apologetically at the familiar faces, including those of the publisher and managing editor. Her felt marker still in her hand, she strode out of the room, closing the door behind her. “This had better be—”

Without a word, Gina handed her the phone, her eyes huge in what was, Julie noticed, a very pale face. What was wrong? Julie took the receiver in her left hand and clenched the marker in her other.

Russell was due home from Saltspring Island today. He’d taken some papers to mark in the peace of their seaside cottage. Had there been a problem with the shuttle plane as it sprinted across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Harbor? Oh, God, please no…

“Julie Matthew speaking.”

A stranger asked, “Are you Ben Matthew’s mother?”

Ben. It was Ben. Julie leaned against the wall, her knees suddenly undependable. “Yes” was all she could say.

“I’m sorry. Your son was in an accident. The ambulance brought him here, to the General Hospital.”

No! She didn’t actually scream—at least, she didn’t think so. She tried to ask what had happened, where to go, how he was. But her brain was stuck in a loop. Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben…

It wasn’t her husband. It was Ben, her nine-year-old son.

JULIE TOOK A TAXI from her office to the hospital. Gina had ordered the cab for her, and had promised to get hold of Russell, too. Julie should have been the one to tell her husband. But when she’d held her cell phone she couldn’t direct her shaking fingers to the familiar numbers.

Julie managed to pay the driver, get out of the car and shut the door. Now that she was here at the hospital, her heart began to slam against her chest. The red letters spelling out Emergency seemed ominous, almost evil. A deep breath didn’t help much but gave her the strength to head for the reception desk.

“Julie.”

She froze, taking in the face of her husband, who had somehow beat her here. He had the shell-shocked expression of a casualty victim on the cover of Life.

“I can’t believe this….” He offered his open arms and for a moment she gave in to the relief of his strong embrace.

“How did you get here so fast?”

“Gina called me on my way home from the harbor.”

It didn’t matter. Only one thing mattered.

“Where is he?”

“I haven’t seen him yet. They tell me it’s—it’s a head injury. He was unconscious when they brought him in. I think he still is.”

COMA. MANY TIMES JULIE had read books, watched movies, where characters were described in this state. Now she discovered she didn’t really know what the term meant. Dr. Assad, Ben’s neurologist, tried to explain.

“When you see him, he’ll appear as if he’s asleep. But Ben isn’t responding to outside stimuli the way a sleeping person would.”

“But…he will wake up…he’ll be okay?” Russell asked the question Julie didn’t dare voice.

“The CAT scan showed small amounts of bleeding. We won’t know the extent of his injury for a couple of days.”

Julie still couldn’t frame a question or even a comment. This couldn’t be happening to them. Yet there was no doubting the reality of the clean-cut, earnest physician in front of her.

“I wish I had definitive answers for you,” Dr. Assad said. “I know the uncertainty is difficult. Where brain injuries are concerned, long-term predictions are difficult. I’m afraid we’ll have to take this one day at a time.”

“Can we see him, Doctor? Can we see Ben?” Russell asked.

The physician nodded. “We have him in our Fast Track area. Be prepared for a lot of activity. Also, don’t be alarmed by the tube down his throat and the monitor leads. We’re taking good care of your son.”

Julie followed the doctor, Russell’s guiding hand on her back. People, corridors, walls blended in a kaleidoscope of whites and grays and greens as she thought of Ben. All she wanted was the relief of seeing him. Of holding his hand.

At the entrance to the trauma area, Julie stopped dead. She barely noticed the half-dozen medical personnel or the equipment Dr. Assad had warned them about. For her, all the light in the room focused on one person only—her child, motionless on an operating table.

The neurologist had been wrong. Ben didn’t look as though he was sleeping. At home Ben slept with his arms flung out and his covers tangled, hair curled engagingly over his forehead.

Here he was arranged neatly, with his arms at his side, his legs straight and together. His beautiful russet curls had been partially shaved.

Julie couldn’t move. She’d been clinging to an irrational hope that Ben would open his eyes when he heard her voice, when he felt her hand touch his. Now she knew, without even trying, that he wouldn’t.

“Oh, Ben.” Russell hurried to their son. He gathered one of the small, limp hands and pressed his cheek to it. Julie saw Russell’s tears escaping from behind his closed eyes.

Several tentative steps brought Julie to her husband’s side. She laid the back of her fingers against Ben’s cheek. His pale skin felt warm. Illogically, the numerous electrodes attached to his scalp made her think of the shock treatments notoriously used for mental illnesses.

Dr. Assad had assured them the EEG was painless. It was merely a tool for measuring brain-wave activity. Besides, Ben was beyond pain at the moment. Ben was beyond anything, judging from his face, which was blank, utterly devoid of his unique personality.

Where had he gone? If he wasn’t in this body anymore, where was he? Did he know they were here? Did he know she loved him, that she’d give anything…

“Ben.” She bent low to whisper his name inches from his ear. His perfect, beautiful ear. “Ben, it’s Mommy. You’re going to be all right, baby. I promise you’re going to be all right.”

She ran a finger down the side of his face, feeling the sharp edge of bone beneath soft boy skin. When he was an infant, sleeping in her arms, she’d often touched him this way. She’d dreamed about his future, imagining jars of insects, crayon-scrawled pictures, scraped knees and brave smiles. She’d pictured him sailing through high school, going to college, finding a girl….

Never this.

“I love you, Ben.”

She felt a cool hand on her arm and gazed up blankly.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Matthew. We’ll be moving Ben to ICU soon. You and your husband are welcome to stay while we make the preparations.” The nurse guided Julie toward a chair. Russell took her other hand.

Julie swayed as her field of vision narrowed. She blinked, putting a hand to her forehead.

“Julie?” Alarm coated Russell’s voice. “Are you all right?”

“Washroom—” She almost choked on the word as the nausea hit, upturning her stomach, bringing bile to her throat.

“This way.” The sympathetic nurse opened the exit and pointed her down the corridor.

“Let me come,” Russell said.

She shook her head at him, then rushed off. In the washroom she headed for the first available cubicle, then almost blacked out as she knelt on the floor. Facing the toilet, she retched, then flushed, then retched again. The former contents of her stomach swirled with the in-rushing water, before disappearing down the pipes.

Now she noticed a pale-yellow stain on the white toilet seat. A couple of black hairs stood out against the plain tile floor. She retched once more, wiped her mouth with a wad of toilet paper, then flushed the toilet again.

Oh, God, she was weak. Pathetic and useless. She leaned her head against the metal wall and closed her eyes. Something burned behind her lids. Tears? But she couldn’t cry; she wouldn’t.

Ben. She had to help Ben. She’d promised. She was his mother, for God’s sake.

Facts. She needed facts. Sitting on the cold floor, her head against the cubicle wall, Julie dug her cell phone out of her purse.

AT JULIE’S REQUEST, Gina found several books at the public library and rushed them to the hospital. She gave Julie a sympathetic hug, but later Julie couldn’t remember anything the younger woman had said. She took the books to the waiting room by the ICU, where Ben had just been transferred, and started to read.

What she learned wasn’t reassuring. Statistically, patients with severe head trauma, in very deep comas, had a fifty-percent survival rate. A third of those patients who recovered from significant brain injury developed emotional or behavioral problems as a result.

Julie confronted those difficult facts and read grimly on. She learned the difference between brain death and coma. In brain death the actual neuron cells were destroyed, offering no hope of recovery. But in Ben’s case, those cells were intact. Just not functioning normally.

Hope. She needed hope. And here was something else she could cling to. There were cases in which brain injury patients originally considered hopeless recovered fully.

Just as Ben was going to do. He had to. Julie shut the book firmly, knowing she could face Ben now that she knew he had a real chance. Her boy would survive.

THE POLICE RAN THROUGH the particulars of the accident with Julie and Russell. A drunk driver had rear-ended the van Ben had been traveling in. It still wasn’t clear whether Ben hadn’t been wearing his seat belt or had fastened it incorrectly. At any rate, when the Caravan tumbled off the road, Ben crashed through a side window, to land on a grassy boulevard several yards away. Ben’s best friend’s mother, who’d been driving the van, had walked from the accident. As had her son, Jeff, and the drunk driver, though not in a very straight line.

Only Ben had been hurt.

As she stood sentry at her son’s bedside Julie made herself visualize the accident, imagining she’d been there and what she might have seen. She did this to herself over and over, the way she probed a canker sore, or tore at a hangnail.

In her mind she saw the van fly off the road and flip over. Her son catapulted from the driver-side passenger window, then hitting the boulevard next to a video store. A size-three Converse running shoe, tan brown with dirt-gray laces, kept flying in the air. The untied laces—Ben would never heed her admonishments to do them up—streamed through the air like ribbons.

In these constant mental replays, the shoe never landed. Not the way Ben had, in a still heap of mangled boy against lush green grass. No, the manufactured combination of rubber, canvas and cotton kept soaring, like a kite, or one of the seagulls patrolling Vancouver’s inner harbor. A boy’s sneaker. Size three. Laces untied.

Hospital staff had included the shoe in the bag of Ben’s belongings she was given to take home from the hospital. Good as new, almost.

The one that had stayed on Ben’s foot had been ruined.

BY THE END OF THE FIRST DAY, Ben’s vital signs were stabilized, but his condition remained listed as critical. The second day he began breathing on his own and the ventilator was disconnected. Poised for their son’s return to consciousness, Julie and Russell hovered over Ben for the rest of that day and the next. Yet nothing happened.

“What does this mean?” Julie pleaded with the doctor for an explanation. But he had no answers to give.

Julie learned how the mind became numbed by despair. She and Russell began to take turns at Ben’s bedside, unable to talk any more of their fears or hopes. Each hour that ticked by became another mark against them.

“Hey, Ben, want to listen to some music?” On the morning of the fourth day Russell brought a tape machine from home, along with some Disney tapes. Soon a cheerful melody from The Lion King bounced life into the small private room.

The doctors said hearing was often the first sense to return. Julie leaned over her son, searching his face for the tiniest reaction to the familiar tune. A smile, a twitch, a blink of his eye.

Nothing.

“Oh, Ben.” She set the Harry Potter book she’d been reading aloud onto her lap. “Do you remember how much you enjoyed The Lion King the first time you saw it?” She’d bought him the video for Christmas when he was six. He must have watched it once a day for the next two weeks. Soon he’d had all the lyrics to every song memorized.

“You and your friends danced around the family room, singing at the top of your lungs….” She carried the memory forward, speaking for the sake of her son, hoping something in her voice might reach him and pull him back.

“That Halloween you dressed up as Simba to go trick-or-treating.” Russell, sitting in a chair next to her, picked up the conversation and kept it moving. With closed eyes, Julie heard the drone of his voice, but no longer the individual words or their meanings.

She was so tired. And every day, hope was harder to grasp.

“Remember how much you love purple Life Savers? You always open the package and search…”

Her husband’s voice mingled with the tune from the tape machine. Julie leaned her head against the wall behind her. Her fingers relaxed their grip on Ben’s hand. For a moment she felt the blissful lure of oblivion.

Then something crashed to the floor. She jerked upright at the noise. The book had fallen off her lap.

“Julie?”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized to Russell. Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her, but at Ben.

“Did you see that?” Russell rushed to their son’s side. “Ben started at the loud noise. I’m sure of it.” He took the child’s flaccid hand.

“Can you hear me, Ben? Your mother and I are with you. We’ve been here all the time. You’re going to be okay, son. We love you, Ben.”

For the first time since the accident, Ben’s features rearranged themselves. The grimace could have been the result of pain or confusion; it was impossible to tell. With hope fluttering in her chest, Julie signaled for a nurse, all the while watching desperately for another sign her son was finally waking up. But nothing else happened for the next interminable hour.

First the nurse on duty, then Dr. Assad questioned Julie and Russell carefully about what they had seen. Both held out cautious hope more improvements would follow soon.

And they did. That evening Ben’s eyes fluttered. At one point he even opened them briefly. The next day he started muttering, flailing his arms. Russell kept playing music; Julie continued reading. On the fifth day of his coma, Ben finally spoke.

“I’m so tired…of that song.”

In an instant, every tightly held muscle in Julie’s body relaxed. Tears flowed down her cheeks, splashing unheeded onto her blouse. Her hands trembled as she put one on her husband’s shoulder; the other, on her son’s head.

Ben was back.

CHAPTER TWO

Four months later

AT THE LIVING ROOM WINDOW Julie played with the gold band of her watch, pushing it back and forth over her wrist bone. Her laptop computer sat open on the ottoman next to the armchair where she’d been editing a column for next month’s edition of West Coast Homes.

More honestly, trying to edit.

She couldn’t concentrate. It was four months today, and she knew she ought to be grateful. Ben was alive, better, and life in the Matthew residence had returned to normal. Well, sort of normal. She and Russell were back at work part-time and Ben’s rehab, as of today, was over. Soon Ben would be back in school, and their lives would resume their usual, predictable rhythms.

Normalcy. It was all she had craved since that dreadful day.

She twisted her watch again, then adjusted the blinds to the perfect angle. She fluffed the pillows on her antique love seat, then ran a hand over the polished ebony surface of the grand piano. Not so much as a flake of dust clung to her fingers.

“Should we wake him, Russell?” When Ben’s naps went over an hour, she became nervous. She’d already checked on him and he appeared fine. But she couldn’t contain her irrational fear—what if he didn’t wake up this time? Or what if he suffered a seizure. His medication was supposed to prevent them, but what if one happened anyway?

Russell surfaced from the textbook on his lap, Contemporary Literary Criticism. He removed his dark-framed glasses in order to check the time on the clock above the mantel.

A sweet memory snuck up on her. The first time they’d met, in the University of British Columbia library, she’d asked him for the time. He’d removed his glasses then, too. His mop of brownish-red hair had desperately needed a trim, and she’d longed to reach over and tug one of those curls as he’d glanced at the clock on the wall.

“It’s almost noon,” he’d said in answer to her question. Then he’d asked, “You’re English?”

“From London. Islington.” Her family had been in Canada for only a few months and already she’d found her accent an asset in drawing the attention of men. “And rather hungry at the moment.”

“May I offer tea? Cucumber sandwiches?” He’d mimicked her, but not unkindly. And as he spoke, he’d snapped shut his textbook and risen from his chair. She remembered thinking he had the warmest smile she’d ever seen.

Ah, Russell… The memory faded as quickly as it had arrived, landing her back in the living room with her husband of ten years. Ten very good years. Only, lately… Well, they’d been under a strain.

“Ben’s always tired after therapy,” Russell reminded her.

In his tone she heard the effort of strained patience. She’d always liked things just so in her house and her life. But lately, well, since the accident, she’d been unable to let anything slide. Everything had to go according to plan, like clockwork, or she couldn’t cope.

She knew her behavior drove Russell to the brink of his patience—which said a lot, because Russell was one of the most patient men she’d ever met.

But she couldn’t help herself.

“I’m so glad we’re finished with therapy.” Julie wanted to believe the nightmare was now behind them. Those two months of Ben in hospital, then these last two, where he’d received outpatient treatment. According to his neuropsychological assessment he was ready to reengage in regular life.

Russell, reading again, didn’t add any comment. She surveyed the world through the flattened slats of the wooden blinds. Late August, and the city was lush with its abundant greenery. In the distance, the ocean sparkled like a band of platinum in the setting sun.

“Dinner’s almost ready. I suppose I can just keep the chicken warm.”

“If he isn’t up in fifteen minutes, I’ll prod him a little.” Russell didn’t lift his gaze from his book this time; still, Julie heard the sigh behind his words.

Relax, Julie. He’d said the words to her so often these past months he didn’t need to utter them anymore. They rang in her ears like a mocking refrain. Because relaxing was something she’d never been good at. And now…

“I’ll check on the food.” She left the room and went down the hall to the kitchen. But there was nothing to do there, either. The counters were clean and the table set. A chicken-curry casserole warmed in the oven. The rice steamer was on hold; a garden salad waited in the fridge.

She brushed a hand over Ben’s dinner plate. Closing her eyes, she could picture him here, talking and eating at the same time, tipping his chair back on two legs, barely swallowing before putting more food into his mouth.

Habits she’d once hated, and now missed desperately. Since the accident Ben ate so carefully, struggling to control his fork, not to spill his milk.

She turned to the fridge, where for years she’d kept a calendar posted with Ben’s homework deadlines, after-school commitments, play dates with friends.

Now the only writing in the clean, white squares were the times for his scheduled rehab therapy, ending with today’s. All that loomed was the September 3 back-to-school day. Would Ben be ready to face those academic and social challenges? More important, would his friends and teachers be ready for him?

Not many of the guys he chummed around with had called since he’d been released from hospital. Even Jeff, his best friend, had come around only once. Though to be honest, Ben didn’t seem to want to see his friends, either. Was he self-conscious about the changes in himself? Or was he still too weak to play?