Family Tree

by Susan Wiggs

  “I’ll check in on you later,” Dr. Johnson said, her gaze warming as she gave Fletcher the once-over before slipping out. Apparently he had that effect on lots of females.

  Breathe, Annie coached herself. Smell the roses. Blow out the candle. Find your voice.

  It was Fletcher, but it was some version of him that she didn’t recall. Or maybe this was a Fletcher she’d never met. The boy she’d known in high school had been gangly and tough and wild. That boy had turned into a young man who was intense, compelling, driven, and impossibly sexy. This was a man in a suit and tie, though he retained a bit of his scruffy charm—longish hair and the shadow of a beard. He had filled out. Gangly had turned to strong. The scrappy attitude now read as confidence. He was different. Harder and more solid than the boy in her dreams of the past. Something that looked like pain flickered in his eyes.

  But when he smiled, the smile touched a light switch in those eyes, and she saw someone who used to be her whole world.

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said in the voice that still sounded strange to her. “Good grief, of course I don’t.” She gazed around the room, wondering if she should invite him to have a seat. The furniture looked ordinary, though each piece was covered with a plastic coating. Apparently, people in long-term nursing care tended to leak.

  “How did you find me?” she asked him. She stared down at her legs. They were formless and pale, two long doughy unbaked loaves. Then she touched her hair. So short. Spiky. He used to run his fingers through her long hair. He used to say he loved her crazy curls.

  “Your . . . I heard from your mom.”

  “You talked to my mother?” So weird to picture the two of them talking.

  He walked over to the bed and sat in the plastic-coated visitor’s chair. “I’m sorry about your accident. Your mom says you’re a miracle.”

  “I don’t feel like a miracle.” Annie couldn’t stop staring at him. The piercing eyes. The square jaw. He was a man made for being stared at. “But I get it. Everyone assumed I’d never wake up.”

  “How are you feeling, Annie?”

  It wasn’t the “how are you feeling?” of her care team. This morning, a social worker had given her a page of round-faced emoticons with expressions to clue her in: happy, sad, worried, angry, scared, amused.

  How are you feeling? She turned the question over in her mind. “People have been asking that question a lot. Sometimes they ask what I’m feeling. I feel unstuck from the world. Unstuck in time.”

  “I don’t know what that’s like.”

  “It’s like . . .” Annie bit her lip. The emotion she felt was a combination of the worry face and the sad face on her chart. Quiet mind. According to the staff here, she was making excellent progress. Only a short time ago, her daily activity consisted of a therapist lifting a limb and asking her to resist.

  Every muscle needed strengthening, because every muscle had been asleep along with her bruised brain. She squeezed the rubber balls. Opened and closed her mouth. Shrugged her shoulders. Lifted her arms. Her knees. Her eyebrows. Everything.

  She had to exercise her mind, too. The dumb analogy game was part of her routine now. In addition, she looked at cards with colors and shapes and words on them. She practiced making a peanut butter sandwich. Brushing her teeth. Writing her name, trying it with her left hand and then her right. The left hand worked better, so she felt fairly confident that she was still left-handed. She played memory games. She totally aced using the bathroom, because the alternative was unthinkable. Maybe that was what “motivation” meant.

  As she explained all this to Fletcher, she stared at the floor, not wanting him to see her worry-sad face.

  “That’s . . . I’m sorry.” He scooted the chair closer to the bed. “Annie, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about everything that happened to you.”

  “You didn’t cause it.” She smiled briefly. “Or maybe you did, and I don’t remember.”

  “You’ll just have to trust me on that.”

  “Trust you.” She dared to look up and study his face. That face. She used to see her whole world in his eyes. She had trusted him long ago but it hadn’t been enough.

  “How can I help?” he asked.

  Always helpful. That was one of the reasons they’d fallen apart, years ago, wasn’t it? He helped. He took care of things. Other things. Not her.

  “Supposedly I’m getting all the help I need right here.” She gestured at the whiteboard outlining the day’s agenda—physical, occupational, and cognitive therapy. “The brain rewires itself after injury. That’s why I have to relearn old habits. And it’s why I can’t remember certain things.”

  “What things?” He gave a brief laugh. “Sorry, dumb question, asking if you could remember the things you forgot.”

  “And yet it makes perfect sense to me.” Something she recalled for certain—she loved talking to him. “It’s disorienting. I’m told I have to be patient and get my bearings. People here keep telling me that my motivation is the key. I’m trying to figure out what motivation feels like.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard for you, Annie. You’ve always been motivated.”

  Had she? The word didn’t mean anything to her in this moment. She noted the perfect tailoring of his suit. Every line of it matched the trim lines of his body.

  He frowned a little. “Something wrong?”

  “The suit. It looks like a bespoke suit.” “Bespoke” meant made to measure. She had no idea how she knew that. “I’ve never seen you in a suit before.”

  A grin flashed. Oh, that smile. Time had not dimmed its effect. “Not familiar with that term,” he said. “I have to wear a suit to work most days.”

  “Oh. Where do you work?” Had she known this? Was it something she’d forgotten, or had she lost him so completely that she didn’t know anything about him anymore?

  “At the courthouse. I’m a judge. I was a lawyer, and last year I was appointed to the bench.”

  A lawyer, a judge.

  “Wow. Just wow,” she said. “That’s really impressive.”

  “Is it?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Yes, it’s impressive. Did I know this about you? Is it one of those things in the big black hole of all the things I forgot?”

  “We didn’t stay in touch, Annie.” He stared down at his hands, flexing and unflexing them. “There wasn’t any point.”

  Oh. They hadn’t stayed in touch after the falling apart. Annie wondered what she knew about Fletcher, and what she’d forgotten. She didn’t know exactly where he was from, but that seemed like something she’d never known. He hadn’t talked about it much, even when they were young and had talked about everything. Before arriving in Switchback, he had lived in a lot of places all over the country.

  “People used to say you’d never amount to anything.” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Should I not have said that? I’m blunt as a spoon, according to the doctors here. People with TBI don’t always pick up on social boundaries. TBI is short for traumatic brain injury.”

  “Plenty of people without TBI don’t always pick up on boundaries either,” he said. “I see it every day in my courtroom.”

  “You have a courtroom. That’s so cool. I always knew you’d do something important. I wish I’d been around to see it.”

  Judging by the expression on his face, she suspected she was blurting again. But she was also telling the truth. She knew without a doubt that he was special.

  “You’ll make progress. I know you, Annie. You’ll get—”

  “Through this,” she finished for him. “Everybody says that. But nobody says what happens after getting through. And now I’m whining. I’m told the memories will come back. Maybe not all, though. Maybe some memories are lost forever, and that might be a good thing. But then I panic sometimes, worrying about all the other things I’ve forgotten.” She studied him again, feeling a fount of emotion rising up through her chest. “There are lots of things I remember about you,” she added. “I’m not su
re if they’re memories or dreams.”

  She looked down at her hands, seeing her fingers entwined. She was supposed to do ball squeezes once an hour to strengthen her hands. She picked up two balls and started squeezing. “Fletcher, why are you here?”

  “I wanted to see you. But I shouldn’t be here if it upsets you.”

  “I don’t think I’m upset.” She tried to figure out if she knew what upset felt like. Was there a face on her chart for upset? When Fletcher had walked into the room, Annie had sensed a flutter of excitement. It was not an unpleasant feeling. She was not upset.

  “It’s nice of you to come,” she said. “You were always nice, weren’t you?”

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  She squeezed the fuzzy balls as she studied him, her hands remembering the feel of his shoulders when she gave him a hug. She would run her fingers over his sinewy arms and find his hands, and weave their fingers together. He used to smell like a combination of the outdoors and his dad’s garage. When he rode one of his father’s scooters, his hair held the scent of the wind for hours afterward.

  “I’m staring at you, aren’t I?” she said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  She felt a lifting sensation in her heart. “I remember how I felt about you,” she said. “I remember us. We were so young, weren’t we? Young and romantic. Oh my gosh, I was obsessed with you. It drove my mother crazy. She was terrified that I was going to start having your babies and get all fat and happy and never have a life of my own.” She studied his face. Watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. The prospect of having his babies did not seem terrible. She had always wanted babies. Maybe she still did.

  He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “Obsessed with me? You never told me that.”

  “I guess I used to have more filters. But couldn’t you tell? You were the biggest thing that had ever happened to me. I couldn’t imagine life without you. But it ended, didn’t it?”

  “It got . . . interrupted.”

  She sighed. “Memories are strange things, aren’t they? You can’t touch them and hold them in your hands, but they have incredible power. Because I’ve lost so many memories, I feel as though I’ve lost that power.” She lifted her gaze to him. Her hands ached from squeezing the balls. “I’m whining again.”

  “You’re not.” He reached over and covered her aching hands with his. “You don’t have to do this all on your own, Annie,” he said, his voice low with a peculiar intensity. “I remember every single moment.”

  12

  Then

  The accident at the garage ended Fletcher’s childhood as completely and abruptly as the guillotine amputation that took his father’s leg. He learned a new language, like what it meant to have a high-grade open fracture with severe vascular injury and damage to the posterior tibial nerve. He learned the complicated vocabulary of the surgical wing and the round-the-clock rhythm of life in the hospital.

  Something else happened, too. His eyes were opened to the fact that he was now responsible, not just for himself, but for his father, for the garage, for the day-to-day coping with living that had to be done. Even though a guy lost his leg, the world did not stop to wait for him to recover. There were decisions to be made, and Fletcher had to be the one making them.

  There were questions to be answered, endless inquiries from the medical team. The hospital people said the accident had to be completely documented so his dad could make an insurance claim and apply for payments from Workers’ Compensation. The paperwork, with all its attendant duties, felt overwhelming sometimes, keeping him up at all hours, on the phone, on hold, talking to people thousands of miles away, strangers who didn’t give a shit about his dad’s leg, who didn’t hesitate to say things like “that’s not a covered event.” But Fletcher didn’t have a choice. His father needed someone to fight for him.

  It shouldn’t be a fight at all. When a guy’s leg got crushed in an accident, insurance was supposed to cover his medical costs. Simple. Until the insurance company made it impossible.

  The day after surgery, Dad was doing okay, according to his vital signs, but he seemed dazed. He lay half sitting up in bed, studying his leg—or the empty space where his leg should have been. The nurse had explained that he was on a lot of different medicines, some of which made him drowsy and confused.

  The people at the hospital said his rehab work would begin almost right away. Dad had to learn how to function with one leg and one prosthesis.

  There was still more paperwork to be done. Someone from the hospital’s business office had told Fletcher to fill out endless forms, and had flagged all the places that needed to be signed. Medical directives, power of attorney, financial forms, consent forms.

  “You’re giving me all the power,” he told his father with a grin. “Better watch out.”

  “You do right by me,” Dad said, “or I’ll kick your butt.”

  “How’ll you do that with only one leg?”

  “Smart-ass.”

  “Actually, that booklet they left you explains that you’re going to get the most high-tech titanium, badass leg ever made.” He tried to sound positive, even though the insurance company said the more expensive leg was not “medically necessary.” Fletcher had thought they were joking. He quickly learned that insurance companies had no sense of humor.

  “A new leg. I can hardly wait.” His dad’s face looked gray and tired, yet his eyes were on fire with anger.

  Late the night before, Fletcher had read that one of the most common issues of an amputee was rage and grief—not just for the patient, but for the family. No shit, he thought. “Dad, this sucks so bad. It makes me insane, how bad this sucks. I wish there was something we could do to make it go away. This shit happened, and it’s the lousiest break in the world. Let’s work through it one thing at a time.”

  His father gave a grim nod and signed all the necessary forms. His hand was unsteady, and the writing looked weird and spidery, which freaked Fletcher out. For the first time in his life, he looked at his father and saw an old man.

  “Whatever,” Dad mumbled. “Guess I won’t be much use around the garage for a while.” He fell silent, then snapped his fingers. “Whiskey.”

  “You can’t have—”

  “No, I mean, we could become whiskey makers. Don’t need two legs for that, and it’s something I’ve been studying. Remember that year I worked in shipping and receiving in Kentucky? There’s a big demand these days for small-batch whiskey.”

  “Sure,” Fletcher said, not wanting to get into an argument. “Sounds great.” Actually, the idea of distilling whiskey didn’t seem preposterous. He’d had a job at a barrel works in Kentucky sophomore year, and he’d found the alchemy of whiskey making remarkable. That a combination of branch water and grain could produce something so singular was intriguing.

  Annie’s friend Pam Mitchell worked at her father’s distillery, and she said they needed to expand their business. But that was a discussion for another time.

  Dad scowled down at a consent form to authorize the incident investigation. “It was that damn power hoist. I bought it brand new. The sales rep said it was top-of-the-line, but he lied. It’s garbage, not to mention a hazard. Son, I don’t want you going near that thing except to take it to the junkyard.”

  The comment stuck with Fletcher. A hazard.

  “You get some rest, Dad,” he said. “I need to go back to the garage to meet the insurance adjuster.”

  “Yeah, tell him to watch himself around that piece of junk.”

  “Will do.”

  As he drove up the mountain, Fletcher saw that he’d missed a call from Annie. He didn’t feel like calling her back. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t hurt her. The plans they’d made seemed like a fantasy now. Still, that didn’t stop him from remembering the smell of her hair and the way her lips tasted when she kissed him, and the insanely great sex they had. He had never known a person who listened the way she did. She beli
eved in him. She got him. Annie lived in a place inside him that left no room for anyone else. It was hard to imagine life without her, but his entire future was different now. In one crashing instant, everything had changed.

  He walked into his father’s garage to find everything exactly as it had been when the rescuers had taken his father away. Fletcher felt a thrum of panic in his chest as he surveyed the damage. He was haunted by the memory of his father’s voice, hoarse from calling for help for hours. Why hadn’t Fletcher been there?

  He’d been poking around the salvage yard on the other side of town, looking for a part, and he’d lost track of the time. Then he’d run into Celia Swank, and they’d goofed off for another hour or so, talking about how weird it was to be done with school. Their class had scattered; only a few stuck around. Celia had tried flirting with him, but he’d pretended not to notice. Her epic boobs and shiny lips didn’t tempt him. But he’d shot the breeze with her, only half listening to her gossip. And the whole time, he’d had no idea his dad was pinned under a ton of metal, nearly dead. The thought made Fletcher nauseated with guilt.

  The ruined garage looked like the scene of a violent crime. There were tools and rags flung every which way by his dad as he’d struggled to get someone’s attention while he was trapped and bleeding, probably crazed by pain. Where his father had lain, the smear of blood resembled a dark oil stain, its peculiar odor tainting the usual familiar scent of the garage. Now it smelled more like a slaughterhouse.

  Fletcher glared at the broken steel. Fucking piece of crap. So much for the top-of-the-line claims made by the tool company’s sales rep. One moment of failure, and a man’s life was ruined. A single event, affecting not just his dad’s future and livelihood, but Fletcher’s as well. All the plans he’d made crumbled into dust.

  Gordy Jessop, home from the U for the weekend, came by to see if he could help. He listened with a somber expression as Fletcher told him all the gory—truly gory—details.

  “Man, that blows. His leg.” Gordy gave a shudder. “What a mess.”