Chapter 19: Hospital

The surgeon came out at nine that night and said the hip was cracked, not shattered.

Eleanor was asleep, and she would stay asleep until morning.

Benedict had not sat down since noon.

He had paced the corridor in his shirt sleeves, and at some point he had taken off his jacket and handed it to me without looking.

I held it against my chest for nine hours.

It smelled of him, and of the hospital, and I did not put it down.

The housekeeper had told us how it happened, crying into a tissue in the waiting room.

Eleanor had carried the box of my grandfather's letters up from the hall table to her sitting room.

She had wanted to read them herself, she said, in private.

She had missed the last step.

The box had gone down the stairs after her, and every envelope lay on the floor of the hall.

"It's not your fault," Benedict said when I told him that.

"I left them on the table," I said.

"She's seventy-four, and she's stubborn, and she doesn't ask for help. It's not your fault, Hallie."

"I know."

"Say it."

"It's not my fault," I said, and then my voice broke.

He pulled me against his chest in the middle of the corridor and held me with his chin on my head.

A nurse walked around us and did not look.

Eleanor's room was at the end of the hall, dim, with one lamp.

Benedict sat in the chair at her bedside and took her hand.

He sat there for two hours without speaking.

I stood in the door and watched his shoulders.

At midnight the nurse touched my arm.

"She'll sleep until six," she said. "Take him home. He's no use to her tonight if he falls over."

I crossed the room and put my hand on his back.

"Benedict. We're going home."

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