Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [52]
The emergency room doctor told them that, in addition to a few scrapes and bruises, the most serious injury was a fractured tibia, which would require surgery to set and stabilize. Cici was filling out the paperwork when Bridget arrived.
“They say it’s routine,” Lindsay explained to Bridget. “The surgery should only take an hour and a half. She might be able to go home in five or six days. But she’ll be on crutches for the rest of the summer.”
“Thank God,” Bridget said, her shoulders sagging with relief, “that it wasn’t more serious. Of course”—her gaze went to Cici, immersed in forms at the nurses’ station—“nothing is routine when it’s your baby going under the knife.”
“They call it ‘pedestrian versus scooter,’ ” Cici informed them when she returned. And although her face was still tight and her eyes anxious, her expression was wry as she sank down into a hard plastic chair. “Apparently she was texting and walking, and she walked right out in front of an oncoming motor scooter. Can you believe that?”
Both Bridget and Lindsay winced. “She is so lucky,” Lindsay said.
“It could have been so much worse,” Bridget agreed.
Cici nodded. “It happened on campus, where the speed limits are low. Still...” She trailed off with a subdued shudder.
“Pedestrian versus moving vehicle,” observed Lindsay, “never turns out well for the pedestrian.”
Bridget called home with the report, and Cici called Lori’s father in California. He did not answer, of course, so she left a message. Lindsay brought up the first round of coffee from the cafeteria, and they settled down to wait.
“Hospitals,” Cici said, sliding down in her chair so that her head rested against the back. She cradled the coffee cup against her chest, warming her hands. “They all smell the same.”
“You’d think someone would invent something for that,” Bridget said.
“Like that hotel scent,” offered Lindsay. “Hotels all smell the same, too—or at least the high-priced ones do. Why can’t hospitals smell like that?”
Bridget wrinkled her nose. “Then no one would ever want to stay in a hotel, because it would smell like a hospital.”
“Funny how that smell triggers such vivid memories,” Cici said.
They were silent for a moment, each of them revisiting their own unhappy memories of hospital corridors, hospital beds, hospital smells.
Then Bridget smiled softly. “Not all the memories are bad. Sometimes being in a hospital reminds me of my babies.”
“Yeah,” Cici agreed. “When Lori was born, being in the hospital for three days was the first vacation I’d had in five years. Lying in bed all day watching soap operas, twenty-four-hour room service, three thousand calories a day ... I begged the doctor to let me stay over the weekend, but he wouldn’t sign off on it.”
“I don’t know,” Lindsay said. “I think there’s something wrong with a society that makes women give birth in the middle of its most disease-infested population, like having a baby is such a high-risk behavior that mother and child have to be isolated from the healthy people.”
“That’s why they send women home the next day now,” Bridget said.
“Unless of course it’s more convenient for the doctor to slice the mother open to take the baby out.”
Cici said uneasily, “Please, less said about slicing open?”
“Sorry Cici.” Lindsay reached across and squeezed her hand.
Bridget smiled and patted Cici’s knee. “Routine surgery,” she assured her.
Cici managed a faint, but grateful, smile.
Half an hour passed. They watched the minute hand on the clock.
Bridget said, “When I called home, Noah was mowing the grass. Ida Mae said he had already finished the back and had the front half done.”
Lindsay smiled. “He is a good kid.”
“I love the way the air smells right after the grass is mowed,” Cici said. “Especially in the evening, when the dew starts to fall.”
“I don’t love the gnats though,” Bridget said.
“They’ll be gone by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I hope Noah ate some supper,” Cici said.
Bridget made a move to rise from her chair. “Do you want me to go down to the cafeteria and bring up some sandwiches?”
Cici shook