My Brother, My Wife, and Their Son novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Four Stitches

In the ER Cedric refuses to make Maisie say sorry in front of the staff, and Mom collapses in the corridor.

The emergency room nurse took one look at Maisie's hand and put us in a bed right away.

I sat beside her with the napkin still pressed to her palm.

Maisie kept her face turned into my shirt.

"Does it hurt a lot?"

"A little," she whispered. "Is Mommy mad at me?"

"No."

I said it too fast.

I made myself say it again slower.

"No, sweetheart. Mommy isn't mad at you."

The doctor came in, a tired woman with her sleeves pushed up.

She washed the cut with saline and picked out two slivers of glass with tweezers.

Maisie squeezed my thumb and did not cry once.

"Four stitches," the doctor said. "She's very brave."

She glanced up at me, then back at the cut.

"How did this happen?"

"She fell on a broken glass at my parents' house."

"Fell," the doctor said.

She turned the hand under the light and looked at the bruise on the back of it.

"There's a slap mark here too."

The nurse who was taping the gauze stopped moving.

I could have said it was a game. I could have said children play rough.

I looked at the red print across Maisie's knuckles.

"Her mother pushed her. A boy slapped her hand first."

The nurse typed something into the computer.

"I have to write that down exactly as you say it," she said. "Is that all right?"

"Write it," I said.

She read it back to me, every word, and I signed the screen.

Then she gave Maisie a sticker of a purple cat.

Maisie held it up to the light and smiled for the first time that night.

We were halfway to the elevator when I heard heels coming fast down the hall.

"Cedric."

Regina had her coat open and her hair coming loose.

She did not look at Maisie's bandage.

"Jasper is upstairs in the children's ward," she said. "He keeps asking for her. Bring her up."

"For what?"

"To apologize. He's scared, and she hit him."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"You pushed her onto glass, Regina."

"I reacted. He couldn't breathe."

She said it flatly, and she did not apologize.

Two nurses at the station had stopped talking.

A security guard at the far end of the hall shifted his weight.

Maisie slid behind my leg.

"Mommy, I don't want to say sorry," she said into my knee. "I didn't do anything."

Regina crouched down, and her voice softened in a way I knew.

"Maisie, honey. He's just a little boy, and he's sick."

"He hit me."

"He didn't mean to."

"He did," Maisie said. "He said you were his."

Regina's mouth closed.

Footsteps came up behind her, and then Mom, Dad and Colby arrived together.

Colby's eyes were already wet.

"Cedric, please. It's one sentence. Jasper hasn't eaten since the house."

"He was sitting at the table three hours ago eating bread," I said.

Colby opened his mouth and found nothing to say.

Mom stepped forward and reached for Maisie's good hand.

"Come with Grandma. We'll get you a juice."

Maisie pressed against my leg so hard that I felt her shaking.

I put my arm around her.

"Nobody is taking her anywhere."

"Don't be dramatic," Mom said. "She's four."

"That's why," I said.

Dad stepped between us, jaw set.

"This family is not going to fall apart over a child's tantrum. You will go upstairs, Cedric, and you will both behave like adults."

"Maisie is bleeding through a bandage, Dad, and nobody in this hallway has asked how she is."

"She's fine!" Mom's voice cracked across the hall. "Why must you make everything about her? Jasper could be dying in that bed and you are standing here counting favors."

Regina looked at me then, finally.

Her eyes were pleading, but not for Maisie.

"Please, Cedric. Just this once."

I was going to say no again.

I did not get the chance.

Mom's hand went up to her chest.

She swayed once and dropped to the floor in front of the elevators.

Colby cried out, Regina screamed for a doctor, and the guard started to run.

Dad knelt over her, then turned his head and looked straight at me.

"Look what you've done," he said. "Look what you've done to your mother."

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