The Name I Crossed Off My Emergency Card

Vicki at the Door

They moved me up to a room on the third floor in the afternoon. Because of the blood pressure, they wanted to keep me two nights instead of one.

Tim came up first and kissed me on the head and said I looked like something the cat dragged in.

Then he said, “Mom, Vicki’s out in the hall. She wants to know if she can come in. I told her I’d ask.”

I looked at the door. It was halfway open, and I could see a little of the hallway, and the edge of a sleeve.

“What happened down there?” I asked him.

Tim shrugged those big shoulders. “Dottie took her down for coffee,” he said. “They were gone almost an hour. When Vic came back up, she’d been crying, but she didn’t seem mad. She seemed different. I don’t know, Mom. I’m just a lineman.”

“You’re a good son,” I said. “Tell her to come in.”

Vicki came in and stood at the foot of my bed. She looked at the big bandage on my knee and the machine and the tube in my arm.

Then she looked at me, and her chin started to shake the way it did when she was little.

“Mom,” she said. “I took it. The bank didn’t make a mistake. I took it for Shane’s truck. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Mom.”

I’d thought for three days about what I’d say when she finally told me. I’d had all kinds of speeches. And right then, every one of them just went out of my head.

“I know you did, honey,” I said. “Come here.”

She came around the side of the bed and put her head down on my shoulder, careful of the tube in my arm, and cried.

I put my hand in her hair. I didn’t say it was all right, because it wasn’t, and we both knew it. But I didn’t let go of her, either.

When she sat up, she wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

She had a piece of paper folded up in her pocket, torn out of a little notebook. She smoothed it out on the bed tray.

It said $100 a week, 26 weeks. Starting Friday. Then underneath it, in her round handwriting, it said: And I drive you to every therapy. Every single one.

“I worked it out downstairs,” she said. “Dottie helped me. I can do a hundred a week if I take the Saturday shifts. It’ll take till April. I know that’s a long time. I know you need it now.”

“Your brother will help me cover the rent till then,” I said. “He already offered. He doesn’t know what for.”

“I’ll tell him,” Vicki said. “I’ll tell him myself. Tonight. I’m not having you lie for me.”

I believed her. I hadn’t believed her about the bank, but I believed her about that.