Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 119680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
I crouch and wrap my hands around her calves. “Hey, hey. Breathe with me, okay? Take a breath. Slow and steady.”
She does as I say, timing her breaths with mine. It takes a couple of minutes, but she gets herself under control. “He’s lying about what happened,” she whispers.
“Can you explain that to me?”
“You know we got into it on Friday after you dropped me off, about me playing hockey behind their backs.” She curves her hands over her knees. “He was blaming it on my mom, saying she must have known. He got all up in her face and grabbed her arm, so I got all up in his.”
I fight not to let my own anger bubble to the surface. She doesn’t need more toxicity. She needs patience and softness and understanding. “What happened then?”
“I just needed to get him away from her. He does this. Takes my mistakes out on my mom because she won’t fight back the way I will. The deck is in bad shape. The railing needs replacing, and I ended up cornering him right where it’s the worst. Not on purpose. It just…worked out that way. But he knows how bad that railing is. What if he pulled the same move on my mom? What if he got her out there, but he didn’t back off and the railing broke? It’s a big drop, BJ. Like two stories up. And it’s all rocks. What if she’s not okay?” She dashes away her tears. “Every time I have something good, he ruins it. And now he’s ruined her too. All because I’m selfish.”
I thought I understood how hard Winter’s life was, but I didn’t realize it was like this. “You’re not selfish.”
“But I am. I knew how angry he was when I left tonight. I knew, and I went anyway. And now my mom is in surgery, and I don’t know if she’s going to be okay.”
15 BREAK THE BROKEN
Winter
I don’t return to the waiting room. I can’t face my dad now. Maybe not ever. Not when I’m sure he caused the fall. Instead, BJ and I wait in a room down the hall, close to the nurses’ station. His parents show up an hour later, dressed like they’ve been on a date. BJ’s mom is a petite woman with a dark brown, nearly black bob and a warm smile. BJ fills her in while Coach Ballistic takes me to update the medical information.
“We have a family fund with the Hockey Academy that will cover the deductible and we can help you with any other forms for supplemental insurance, okay? We’ll get you through this,” he assures me.
I hold onto the hope that he’s right and that the Hockey Academy really can help, otherwise we’ll end up back in the trailer. I don’t want to think about what else that means.
It’s one in the morning by the time my mom is out of surgery. The doctor tells us she made it through just fine, but that she likely won’t come out of sedation until morning. There are pins and plates in her right arm and left leg. She also has stitches in the back of her head and a concussion. That part scares me. Concussions are serious. They can change a person. My dad has had two. One was a forklift accident at work, and the other was a fall at the trailer park. He’d been drinking, as usual, so it’s anyone’s guess what happened. He was treated for the first concussion, but not the second. And it seemed to make him meaner.
I wait until my dad leaves before I go in to see her.
Even though I was warned, I’m not prepared for the sight of my mother lying in the hospital bed. Terror and guilt crowd for position with simmering anger. Her right arm is casted to her shoulder. Her left leg is in traction, casted past her knee. She’s surrounded by medical equipment, beeping and monitoring her heart rate.
As I stare at her broken body, I can see what happened playing out—my dad cornering her like I did him, doing what he does best: intimidate, manipulate, insult, degrade.
The worst is when he’s quiet with his anger, when he gets in close and whispers horrible, hurtful things—the kind of things that make Mom cry and me seethe. If this was an accident, it was an orchestrated one. All he needed to do was trap her against the railing. She’d have nowhere to go, a captive to his anger and spiteful words. Gravity did the rest.
“What if she’s not okay?”
“The doctor thinks she’ll make a full recovery, but it’ll be slow,” BJ’s mom, Lily, says softly.
I always worried it would come to this. That one day I wouldn’t be there to stop him. Now that it’s happened, all I feel is overwhelming sadness. I couldn’t be the hand that pulled her out of the darkness. I couldn’t save her from him.