Reinventing Leona (13 page)

“Grandmother had it coming.” Maddie sandwiched David’s face between her hands. “But it was an accident. Do you hear me?”

Surely his bossy little sister knew his reluctant agreement was the result of her jerking his head up and down, but she appeared satisfied. Maddie released her hold, returning her attention to her patient. Using the pad of her thumb, she raised Grandmother’s eyelid. “She’s alive. Maybe has a concussion.” Her long, slender fingers quickly assessed the damage to the catawampus limb. “At her age, I’m almost certain she’s broken a hip.” Maddie nudged David. “I need more room. Bring me the cushions from the couch. I have to stabilize her leg.”

“Why doesn’t she open her eyes?”

“Brother, move it,” Maddie ordered.

David’s head understood his sister’s command, but his legs were uncooperative to the urgency. This tragedy was his fault. He could have intervened. Put an end to the bickering. Dad always did. Time and time again, David had witnessed his father stand as a buffer between Momma and Grandmother’s thrashing tongue.
I’m not half the man he was.

“We need to get her to a hospital as soon as possible.” Maddie appeared calm, focusing on her examination with the skill of a seasoned physician, unaware David had failed to move as she ordered.

From the lines creasing her brow, David had the sickening feeling the family physician wasn’t telling him everything.

“What’s all the ruckus?” Justin stood in the doorway, holding a plate of pumpkin pie.

Etta May’s bowed head popped up from her clasped hands. “Leona may have killed her mother.”

“And you without the decency to put down your dessert,” Nola Gay snapped.

“Back off, lady.” Justin crammed another bite into his mouth. Eyes taunting the old girl, he dragged his tongue over the pie filling stuck to backside of his fork.

“Nobody’s dead.” Maddie’s confident admonition to the pale-faced speculators did not stop the leg tremors affecting David’s ability to stand.

“Young man.” Aunt Roxie tugged at the banded collar of David’s Oxford sweatshirt. “We need that ambulance. You see if you can’t find Charlie. I’ll get the cushions.”

Parker pocketed his phone. “Let me help him.” He slid his arms under David’s armpits and lifted him to his feet.

Forced vertical, David tried to balance himself on his straw legs. “Maddie?”

“Get . . . that . . . ambulance.” His sister enunciated slowly like she used to do when she tired of his teasing and threatened retaliatory action. “Have . . . I . . . made . . . myself . . . clear?”

David wobbled above his sister, grateful Parker’s arm of solid support had not been withdrawn. He glanced up the stairs. Guilt had whitewashed his mother’s face from pale green to a sickly yellow. “Momma, everything’s going to be fine. God will not give us more than we can bear.” Repeating his father’s favorite words failed to rally the same reassurance David had believed as a kid.

What kind of a God expects a family to rely upon rhetoric any jury would find flimsy?

Chapter Eleven

The blaring siren sputtered as Charlie Copeland’s vintage ambulance swerved around the corner of Church and Main. Lights flashing, the emergency vehicle sped past the held-up Thanksgiving parade. Steadying the gurney, Maddie ran through the emergency protocol she’d followed in spite of David’s irritating interference, not to mention refereeing squabbles between Nola Gay and Justin.

She’d checked her patient’s vitals: heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing. Concerned about the severity of her head injury, she checked her pupil dilation. Brain function appeared normal, but a CT would give a definitive evaluation. After assessing the injury to the hip, she stabilized the possible break to minimize internal damage to nerves and tissue. Finally, she covered the patient with a blanket to prevent shock. Maddie heaved a slow, pleased sigh. All things considered, she’d managed an A-plus performance. Why didn’t she feel better about it?

Watching her grandmother’s comfortable respirations normalize her coloring, Maddie chafed at the ebb of her self-satisfaction. For the life of her, she could not explain this ridiculous desire to see Roberta Worthington open her eyes, sit up, and spout off something catty. Would saving her grandmother’s life change their relationship? Doubtful. The bond between grandmother and granddaughter had died years ago. Stabilizing a leg and calling an ambulance wasn’t exactly heroic. Maddie tried to wiggle free of the weight of the gurney pressing her against the side of the vehicle, but she was wedged in tight. An uncomfortable prick needled her heart. Could a relationship die if it had never been alive? She ran her hand across the thin blanket draping her grandmother, smoothing the bumps. Who was she to play God? She’d done her duty. Provided the best medical care she knew how. Whether or not Roberta Worthington thought so would wait for another day.

Seated on the other side of the stretcher, Momma adjusted the plastic freezer bag Aunt Roxie frantically threw together after Howard and Melvin returned from their convenience store run.

“Keep that ice on her hip.” Maddie regretted the snappy edge the adrenaline rush had given her voice. She added a softened explanation. “It will reduce the swelling.”

“I’m doing the best I can.” Momma’s flat-line tone matched her expressionless features.

Strange
. Emergencies had always been Momma’s strong suit. Nothing thrilled the woman more than a chance to bark orders and assume command. So her mother’s insistence she ride along in the ambulance hadn’t come as a surprise, but the color trickling from her face like hourglass sand set off alarm bells in Maddie’s head. She didn’t need two patients on her hands.

Maddie reined the panic rising in her throat.
Think. Ask questions. Observe.
“How are you doing, Momma?”

“Fine.”

Short answers. Profuse perspiration. Unhealthy pallor. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to interpret the evidence. Maddie never thought she’d live to see it, but the trauma of the past few days had finally teetered the Tower. Once again, instead of satisfaction, a deep loss rolled over Maddie, crashing against the breakers of her heart.

Desperate to stanch the emotional flow draining her mother, Maddie searched for a topic of distraction. “Do you remember the first time I tried using your old Singer sewing machine?”

Her mother’s brow furrowed into a puzzled crease. “I told you not to.” She changed hands on the dripping bag, wiping away the excess moisture on her slacks.

“You made everything I wore. I’d watch you whip a garment together. The whole time, I’d be thinking, how hard could it be?”

Momma kept her eyes on the ice pack as if she were guarding a Wells Fargo delivery. “You did a good job laying the pattern and cutting out the pieces.”

Encouraged by her mother’s attempt to follow her train of thought, Maddie hurried on. “But when I tried to stitch the first seam, my finger was in the way of the sewing machine needle. The evil thing plunged straight through my nail bed. I’ll never forget the popping sound of being impaled.” Maddie made her eyes wide for added effect. “All that blood. It was so cool.”

Momma glanced up, beads of sweat glistening on her forehead. “I thought I was going to pass out.” She swiped the back of her free hand across her brow, then focused her attention on the assigned task, swaying with each dangerous turn of the ambulance.

Panic clamored around in Maddie’s head. For Momma not to gag at the mention of blood meant only one thing: her emotional shock had escalated.

Maddie felt her taut sinews snap as the glue holding her professional resolve in place dissolved. She pawed through Charlie’s first aid kit, wishing the volunteer paramedic stocked his antique station wagon with something more useful than gauze and cotton balls.
Keep her talking.
“With the guts of a neurosurgeon, you calmly lifted the presser foot, unscrewed the needle from the arm, then delivered me and my skewered hand to the emergency room.”

“I’m glad you don’t remember me driving like a crazy woman, then melting into a heap on the waiting room floor.”

Maddie laughed, relieved by the display of razor-sharp wit and the faint blush of color skimming her mother’s Carole Lombard cheekbones.

But she should have expected no less. Momma could have easily been classified as a stress veteran. On more than one occasion, Maddie had watched her mother charge into a contentious ladies committee meeting, deliver a few quick quips, and before the gathering adjourned, enemies were friends.

Men, especially, were at Momma’s mercy if she decided to turn on her famous charm. One time Howard Davis stormed into the parsonage threatening to fire Daddy on the spot. Momma leapt into action, drawing the big guns of her enchanting arsenal. By the time she was finished with Howard, he was doubled over with laughter and oblivious to his slipping toupee covering one eye like a pirate’s patch. Ever since his run-in with Momma, the elder’s domed head had been au naturel and sporting a Cadillac sheen.

“Do you think I hate you, Madison?”

Momma’s words, barely audible over the crackling wail of the siren, blasted Maddie from her thoughts.

Not sure how to respond, Maddie stared at her mother. “What?”

“I didn’t live up to my mother’s expectations, and she hates me for it.” Tears splashed upon the blanket tucked around Grandmother. “Did I expect too much from you, Maddie?”

Maddie’s gaze darted around the vehicle, seeking alternate escape routes. Maybe Charlie would drive the ambulance off a bridge before she was forced to answer these loaded questions. If Momma was busy thrashing around in a river, she wouldn’t have time to delve below the surface of their strained mother-daughter relationship. Some things were better left unsaid, and their feelings were one of those things. Maddie noticed the vacant glaze of her mother’s eyes and halted her search. Shock had Momma by the throat.

“Momma, I want you to take some deep breaths through your nose.”

“I didn’t mean . . .” Her airy voice cracked. “To expect too much from you.”

“Breathe, Momma.”

“People can see me through the walls of the parsonage. I had to be perfect. Did you feel like they could see you too?”

Diving into a river to save Momma was one thing. Bearing the burden of newfound confidant was out of the question. They were mother and daughter, not bosom buddies, nor could they ever be. Momma’s spiritual compass pointed toward heaven while Maddie’s spun around in search of a true north. Bumping around in the back of that rescue vehicle, Maddie caught a glimpse of her future in the tired face of her mother. Suffering a lifetime of paralyzing guilt because she failed to reach an unattainable standard did not interest her in the least.

Trying to shore up the sagging mother-daughter borders, Maddie steered the conversation toward something generic. “Is that why you never threw away a single stashed pickle in the back of the pantry?”

Her mother gave a labored, confused nod. “I hate pickles. But Ray Story is our trash man. He would have hauled the evidence straight to his sisters.” She reached across Grandmother’s slow-rising chest. “Did you hear my question? Did you feel like you had to be perfect?”

Shock or no shock, taking a bone from Tater would be easier than shaking Momma once she sank her teeth into a train of thought. But Maddie realized a surgeon would have an easier job untangling a malfunctioning nervous system than sorting out Momma’s imposed perfection from her own obsessive compulsive tendencies.
There’s not a specialist in the world who’d touch my case.

When Maddie didn’t answer, Momma continued, “Why didn’t you tell me about Justin?”

The blunt question shamed Maddie. If her life was so great, why didn’t she want to share it with her parents? Why had she felt the need to keep her boyfriend a secret? He wasn’t a forbidden tattoo or piercing to be hidden until Momma and Daddy caught up with the times. He was the person who made her happy, and that should make her parents happy, right?

“I’m sorry—”

“Did you think I would stop loving you?” Tears spilled down her mother’s cheeks.

Maddie knew shock victims talked irrationally, but this conversation had careened toward disaster. She had to take the wheel, change the subject, or run the risk of dealing with her mother in uncharted waters. “Breathe, Momma. In through the nose, out through the mouth.” Maddie used the calming physician’s voice med students practice in front of their bathroom mirrors before rounds. “Let’s not try to solve the world’s problems today. Once we get Grandmother—”

“I didn’t tell my mother about J.D.” Momma’s pupils appeared fixed on a point in the distant past. “I fell in love with a man who could never meet Roberta Worthington’s expectations. I failed my mother. I knew she’d hate me for it. And she did.”

Momma had kept things from her mother? Impossible. Imagining Leona Harper struggling to break free of her own cocoon bordered on heresy. Momma’s fear of capsizing would never allow her to rock the boat of convention.

“Grandmother doesn’t hate you.” Maddie patted Momma’s hand. Her mother’s skin felt cool and clammy. “Roberta Worthington is a bitter old woman who has made it her life’s ambition to make everyone else miserable.”

“I’m the cause of that bitterness.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Maddie tightened her grip. “Momma, look at me. Your theory is flawed.”

Confusion furrowed Momma’s brow. “What?”

“If I disappoint you, can I expect you to hate me?” Maddie shook her mother’s arm. “Is your love conditional?”

“No.” A pained expression contorted Momma’s face as if the question was preposterous. “There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you.”

“I know that.” Maddie wondered whether Momma’s blanket statement included moving in with a member of the opposite sex, but now was not the time to lob that grenade.

Maddie could feel the rise and fall of her grandmother’s chest under her outstretched arm. Roberta Worthington defined happiness by how she was treated, not how she treated others. When people failed to meet her conditions, disappointment consumed her like a flesh-eating bacterial infection.