Handle With Care

by Jodi Picoult

  'It hasn't been the right time . . .'

  You stuck your hand into the bag of letters. 'We're down to two-letter words,' you said. 'Daddy tried to do Oz, but that's a place and it's not allowed.'

  'There's never going to be a right time. Honey,' she said, turning to you, 'I'm really wiped out. Can I take a Scrabble rain check?' She walked into the kitchen.

  'I'll be right back,' I told you, and I followed her. 'I know I have no right to ask you this, but - I'd like you to be there when I tell her. I think it's important.'

  'Sean, I've had an awful day--'

  'And I am about to make it more awful. I know.' I looked down at her. 'Please.'

  Wordlessly, she walked back into the family room with me and sat down at the table. You turned, delighted. 'So you do want to play?'

  'Willow, your mom and I have some news for you.'

  'You're going to move back home for good? I knew it. At school Sapphire said that once her father moved out he fell in love with a dirty whore and now her parents aren't together anymore, but I said that you'd never do that.'

  'I told you so,' Charlotte said to me.

  'Wills, your mother and I . . . we're getting divorced.'

  She looked at each of us. 'Because of me?'

  'No,' Charlotte and I said in unison.

  'We both love you, and Amelia,' I said. 'But your mom and I can't be a couple anymore.'

  Charlotte walked toward the window, her back to me.

  'You're still going to see both of us. And live with both of us. We're going to do everything we can to make things easy for you, so not much has to change--'

  Your face was pinching up tighter and tighter as I spoke, becoming a flushed and angry pink. 'My goldfish,' you said. 'He can't live in two houses.'

  You had a betta that we'd gotten you last Christmas, the cheapest concession to a pet we could provide. To everyone's shock, it had lived longer than a week. 'We'll get you a second one,' I suggested.

  'But I don't want two goldfish!'

  'Willow--'

  'I hate you,' you shouted, starting to cry. 'I hate both of you!'

  You were out of your chair like a shot, running faster than I thought you could to the front door. 'Willow!' Charlotte called out. 'Be--'

  Careful.

  I heard the cry before I could reach the doorway. In your hurry to get away from me, from this news, you had not been cautious, and you were lying on the porch where you'd slipped. Your left femur was bent at a ninety-degree angle, breaking through the bloody surface of your thigh; the sclera of your eyes was an unholy blue. 'Mommy?' you said, and then your eyes rolled back in your head.

  'Willow!' Charlotte screamed, and she knelt down beside you. 'Call an ambulance,' she ordered, and then she bent closer to you and began to whisper.

  For a fraction of a second, as I looked at the two of you, I believed she was the better parent.

  Do not, if you can help it, break a bone on a Friday night. Even more important, do not break a femur the weekend of the annual convention of American orthopedic surgeons. Leaving Amelia home alone, Charlotte rode in the ambulance with you, and I followed in my truck. Although most of your serious breaks were handled by the orthopods in Omaha, this one was too severe to simply immobilize until they could assess it; we were headed to the local hospital, only to learn in the emergency room that the orthopedic surgeon called to consult was a resident.

  'A resident?' Charlotte had said. 'Look, no offense, but I'm not letting a resident rod my daughter's femur.'

  'I've done this kind of surgery before, Mrs O'Keefe,' the doctor said.

  'Not on a girl with OI,' Charlotte countered. 'And not on Willow.'

  He wanted to put a Fassier-Duval rod - one that would telescope as you grew - into your femur. It was the newest rod available, and it threaded into the epiphysis, whatever that was, which kept it from migrating, like the older rods used to. Most important, you wouldn't be in a spica cast, which was the postoperative care for femur rodding in the past - instead, you'd be in a functional brace, a long leg splint, for three weeks. Uncomfortable, especially during the summertime, but nowhere near as debilitating.

  I was stroking your forehead while this battle raged. You had regained consciousness, but you didn't speak, only stared straight ahead. It scared the crap out of me, but Charlotte said this happened a lot when it was a bad break; it had something to do with endorphins released by the body to self-medicate. And yet, you had started to shiver, as if you were in shock. I'd taken off my jacket to cover you when the thin hospital blanket didn't seem to work.

  Charlotte had badgered and argued; she had dropped names - and finally she got the guy to call his attending at the convention center in San Diego. It was mesmerizing to watch, like an orchestrated battle: the push, the retreat, the turn toward you before the next round. And it was, I realized, something your mother was very, very good at.

  The resident reappeared a few minutes later. 'Dr Yaeger can get on a red-eye and be here for a ten o'clock surgery tomorrow morning,' he said. 'That's the best we can do.'

  'She can't stay like this overnight,' I said.

  'We can give her morphine to sedate her.'

  They moved you onto a pediatric floor, where the murals of balloons and circus animals stood completely at odds with the shrieks of crying babies and the faces of shell-shocked parents wandering the halls. Charlotte watched over you while the orderlies slipped you from the stretcher to the bed - one sharp, hollow cry as your leg was moved - and gave instructions to the nurse (IV on your right side, because you were a lefty) when your morphine drip was set up.

  It was killing me, to watch you in pain. 'You were right,' I said to Charlotte. 'You wanted to put a rod in her leg and I said no.'

  Charlotte shook her head. 'You were right. She needed time to get up and run around to strengthen her muscles and bones, or this might have happened even sooner.'

  At that, you whimpered, and then you started to scratch. You raked at your arms, at your belly.

  'What's wrong?' Charlotte asked.

  'The bugs,' you said. 'They're all over me.'

  'Baby, there aren't any bugs,' I said, watching as she scraped her arms raw.

  'But it itches . . .'

  'How about we play a game?' Charlotte suggested. 'Poodle?' She reached up for your wrist and pulled it down to your side. 'Do you want to pick the word?'

  She was trying to distract you, and it worked. You nodded.

  'Can you poodle underwater?' Charlotte asked, and you shook your head. 'Can you poodle while you're asleep?'

  'No,' you said.

  She looked at me, nodding. 'Um, can you poodle with a friend?' I asked.

  You almost smiled. 'Absolutely not,' you said as your eyes started to drift shut.

  'Thank God,' I said. 'Maybe she'll sleep through now.'

  But, as if I'd cursed your chances, you suddenly jumped - an exaggerated full-body tremor that made you come right off the bed, and dislodged your leg. Immediately, you screamed.

  We had just managed to calm you down again when the same thing happened: as soon as you began to fall asleep, you startled as if you were falling off a cliff. Charlotte pushed the nurse's call button.

  'She's jumping,' Charlotte explained. 'It keeps happening.'

  'Morphine does that to some people,' the nurse said. 'The best thing you can do is try to keep her still.'

  'Can't we take her off it?'

  'If you do, she's going to be thrashing around a lot more than she already is,' the nurse replied.

  When she left the room, you jerked again, and a low, long moan rose from your throat. 'Help me,' Charlotte said, and she crawled onto the hospital bed, pinning down your upper body.

  'You're crushing me, Mom . . .'

  'I'm just going to help you stay good and still,' Charlotte said calmly.

  I followed her lead, gently laying myself across your lower body. You whimpered when I touched your left leg, which had the break. Charlotte and I both waited,
counting the seconds until your body tensed, your muscles twitched. I had once watched a blast at a building site that was covered with netting made of old tires and rubber so that the explosion stayed contained, manageable: this time, when your body leapt beneath ours, you didn't cry.

  How had Charlotte known to do this? Was it because she'd been with you more times than I could count when a break happened? Was it because she'd learned to be proactive, instead of reactive, in a hospital? Or was it because she knew you better than I ever would?

  'Amelia,' I said, remembering that we'd left her behind, that it had been hours.

  'We have to call her.'

  'Maybe I should go get her--'

  Charlotte turned her head so that her cheek was pillowed on your belly. 'Tell her to call Mrs Monroe next door if there's an emergency. You have to stay. It'll take both of us to keep Willow quiet all night.'

  'Both of us,' I repeated, and before I could censor myself, I touched Charlotte's hair.

  She froze. 'I'm sorry,' I murmured, pulling away.

  Beneath me, you moved, a tiny earthquake, and I tried to be a blanket, a carpet, a comfort. Charlotte and I rode out the tremors, absorbing your pain. She wove her fingers through mine, so that our hands rested like a beating heart between us. 'I'm not,' she said.

  Amelia

  O

  nce upon a time there was a girl who wanted to put her fist through a mirror. She would tell everyone it was so that she could see what was on the other side, but really, it was so that she wouldn't have to look at herself. That, and because she thought she might be able to steal a piece of glass when no one was looking, and use it to carve her heart out of her chest.

  So when no one was watching, she went to the mirror and forced herself to be brave enough to open her eyes just this one last time. But to her surprise, she didn't see her reflection. She didn't see anything at all. Confused, she stretched her hand up to touch the mirror and realized that the glass was missing, that she could fall through to the other side.

  That's exactly what happened.

  Things got even stranger, though, when she walked through this other world and found people staring at her - not because she was so disgusting but because they all wanted to look like her. At school, kids at different lunch tables fought to have her sit with them. She always got the answers right when she was picked by a teacher in class. Her email inbox was overflowing with love letters from boys who could not live without her.

  At first, it felt incredible, like a rocket was taking off under her skin every time she was out in public. But then, it got a little old. She didn't want to give out her autograph when she bought a pack of gum at the gas station. She would wear a pink shirt, and by lunchtime, the rest of the school was wearing pink shirts, too. She got tired of smiling all the time in public.

  She realized that things weren't all that different on this side of the mirror. Nobody really cared about her here. The reason people copied her and fawned over her had very little to do with who she was, and far more to do with who they needed her to be, to make up for some gaping hole in their own lives.

  She decided she wanted to go back to the other side. But she had to do it when no one was watching, or they'd follow her there. The only problem was, there was never no one watching. She had nightmares about the people who trailed after her, who would cut themselves to pieces on the broken glass as they crawled through the mirror after her; how they'd lie bleeding on the floor and how the look in their eyes would change when they saw her on this side, unpopular and ordinary.

  When she couldn't stand another minute, she started to run. She knew there were people following, but she couldn't stop to think about them. She was going to fly through the space in the mirror, no matter what it took. But when she got there, she smacked her head against the glass - it had been repaired. It was whole and thick and impossible to break through. She flattened her palms against it. Where are you going? everyone asked. Can we come, too? She didn't answer. She just stood there, looking at her old life, without her in it.

  I was really careful when I sat down on your bed. 'Hey,' I whispered, because you were still pretty much out of it and might have been asleep.

  Your eyes slitted open. 'Hey.'

  You looked really tiny, even with the big splint on your leg. Apparently, with the new rod in your femur, a future break wouldn't be as bad as this one had been. On a TV show once I'd seen an orthopedic surgeon with drills, saws, metal plates, you name it - it was like she was a construction worker, not a doctor, and the thought of all that hammering and banging going on inside you made me feel like I was going to pass out.

  I couldn't tell you why, too, this break had scared me the most. I guess maybe I was getting it confused with the other things that brushed up against it that were equally as terrifying: the letter about divorce, the phone call from Dad at the hospital telling me I'd have to stay home alone overnight. I hadn't told anyone, because obviously Mom and Dad were completely wrapped up in what was happening to you, but I never actually slept. I stayed awake at the kitchen table holding the biggest knife we had, just in case someone broke into the house. I'd kept myself awake on pure adrenaline, wondering what would happen if the rest of my family never actually made it home.

  But instead, the opposite happened. Not only were you back but so were Mom and Dad - and they weren't just putting on a good show for you, they were really together. They took turns watching over you; they finished each other's sentences. It was as if I'd smashed through that fairy-tale mirror and wound up in the alternate universe of my past. There was a part of me that believed your latest break had linked them again, and if that was true, it was worth whatever pain you'd gone through. But there was another part of me that thought I was only hallucinating, that this happy family unit was just a mirage.

  I didn't really believe in God, but I wasn't above hedging my bets, so I had prayed a silent bargain: if we can be a family again, I won't complain. I won't be mean to my sister. I won't throw up anymore. I won't cut.

  I won't I won't I won't.

  You, apparently, weren't feeling quite as optimistic. Mom said that since you'd come through the surgery, you kept crying and you didn't want to eat anything. It was supposed to be the anesthesia in your system that was making you weepy, but I decided to make it my personal mission to cheer you up. 'Hey, Wiki,' I said, 'you want some M&M's? They're from my Easter candy stash.'

  You shook your head.

  'Want to use my iPod?'

  'I don't want to listen to music,' you murmured. 'You don't have to be nice to me just because I won't be around here much longer.'

  That sent a chill down my spine. Had someone not told me something about your surgery? Were you, like, dying? 'What are you talking about?'

  'Mom wants to get rid of me because things like this keep happening.' You swiped the tears from your eyes with your hands. 'I'm not the kind of kid anyone wants.'

  'What are you talking about? It's not like you're a serial killer. You don't torture chipmunks or do anything revolting, except try to burp "God Bless America" at the dinner table--'

  'I only did that once,' you said. 'But think about it, Amelia. Nobody keeps things that get broken. Sooner or later, they get thrown away.'

  'Willow, you are not being sent off, believe me. And if you are, I'll run away with you first.'

  You hiccuped. 'Pinkie promise?'

  I hooked your pinkie with mine and tugged. 'Promise.'

  'I can't go on a plane,' you said seriously, as if we needed to plot our itinerary now. 'The doctor said I'll set off metal detectors at the airport. He gave Mom a note.'

  One that I would probably forget, like I forgot the other doctor's note on our last vacation.

  'Amelia,' you asked, 'where would we go?'

  Back, I thought immediately. But I couldn't begin to tell you how to get there.

  Maybe Budapest. I didn't really know where Budapest was, but I liked the way the word exploded on my tongue. Or Shanghai. Or the G
alapagos, or the isle of Skye. You and I could travel the globe together, our own little sisterly freak show: the girl who breaks, and the girl who can't hold herself together.

  'Willow,' my mother said. 'I think we need to have a talk.' She'd been standing at the threshold of the bedroom, watching us, I wondered for how long. 'Amelia, can you give us a minute?'

  'Okay,' I said, and I slunk outside. But instead of going downstairs, which was what she meant, I hovered in the hallway, where I could hear everything.

  'Wills,' I heard my mother say, 'no one's throwing you away.'

  'I'm sorry about my leg,' you said, teary. 'I thought if I didn't break anything for a long time, you'd think I was just like any other kid--'

  'Accidents happen, Willow.' I heard the bed creak as my mother sat down on it. 'Nobody is blaming you.'

  'You do. You wish you'd never had me. I heard you say it.'

  What happened after that - well, it felt like a tornado in my head. I was thinking about this lawsuit, and how it had ruined our lives. I was thinking of my father, who was downstairs for maybe only seconds or minutes longer. I was thinking of a year ago, when my arms were scar-free, when I still had a best friend and wasn't fat and could eat food without it feeling like lead in my stomach. I was thinking of the words my mother said in response to you, and how I must have heard them wrong.

  Charlotte

  'C

  harlotte?'

  I had come to the laundry room to hide, figuring that the load of clothes spinning in the dryer would mask any sound I made while I was crying, but Sean was standing behind me. Quickly I wiped my eyes on my sleeves. 'Sorry,' I said. 'The girls?'

  'They're both fast asleep.' He took a step forward. 'What's wrong?'

  What wasn't wrong? I'd just had to persuade you that I loved you, breaks and all - something you'd never questioned until I undertook this lawsuit.

  Didn't everyone lie? And wasn't there a difference between, for example, killing a person and telling the police you hadn't and smiling down at a particularly ugly baby and telling her mother how cute she was? There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good?