Later, the doctor would tell me I’d been unconscious for eleven days. A car accident. Black ice on Route 30, a Tuesday night in January, coming home from Walter’s school concert. My car went into a ditch and rolled once. Broken ribs. A punctured lung. A bleed on my brain that they’d had to watch for days. They’d kept me asleep on purpose at first, to let the swelling go down. Then, when they stopped the medicine, I just hadn’t woken up.
But I didn’t know any of that yet.
All I knew was the white ceiling and the beeping and the ache.
And then I turned my head, and I saw the little figure curled up in the chair beside my bed.
My grandson. Walter. Nine years old.
He was asleep. Folded up in one of those awful vinyl hospital chairs like a paper crane somebody had crumpled. His backpack was on the floor under his feet. His cheek was pressed against his rolled-up jacket, which he was using for a pillow. And one small hand was still stretched out across the gap between the chair and the bed, wrapped tight around the edge of my blanket.
Like he’d fallen asleep holding on.
