Free When He Fell by Kate Hewitt Page B

raises his eyebrows at me and nods towards my door. “You’re on your own?”
    I nod, swallow hard. “Yes.”
    “I just meant your son,” he clarifies as we walk toward the elevator. “He’s not with you.”
    It shouldn’t surprise me that my neighbor knows I have a son; we’ve shared the elevator often enough, after all. He’s probably seen Ben and me go into our apartments dozens of times. It’s just that we’ve never really talked.
    The elevator doors ping open and we both step inside. At a little after six in the morning it is empty except for the two of us.
    “No, he’s not with me,” I say, and then to both my horror and shame, my mouth trembles and I can feel my expression wobbling as tears fill my eyes. Spandex Man’s face slackens in shock. I try to blink back the tears but it’s too late for that. They spill down my cheeks and I dash them away quickly.
    “Sorry,” I mutter as I drag my sleeve across my face. “Sorry, it’s just that it’s been a really hard couple of days.”
    I’m trying to get myself under control, but I feel like I’ve taken my finger out of the plughole in the dam of my emotions, and there’s no releasing the floodtide of feeling. The tears keep coming, and my shoulders start to shake. A raw, animal sound of pain escapes from my mouth. I am mortified.
    The doors ping open again and an unsmiling woman in a severe brown trouser suit comes in. She takes one look at me and her whole body goes rigid. I am breaking so many unwritten New Yorker rules. You don’t fall apart in front of your neighbors, in an
elevator
. Definitely not in a building like mine. Elevators are for silence and staring straight ahead.
    Spandex Man angles his body so I’m shielded from the woman, and I am grateful for his sensitivity even if I can tell he is almost as appalled as she is by my behavior. At least he is trying to hide it. He pats my shoulder once, awkwardly, and says, “Hey…hey.”
    The doors open again and the woman hightails it out of the elevator. She’s out of the building before the doors have even closed again. I shuffle to the side of the lobby, all black granite and mirrors and shiny chrome, and wipe my face again. A few shuddering breaths later I’m starting to get myself under control. And Spandex Man is still there.
    “Sorry,” I say again, and he frowns.
    “Look, I know probably everyone is asking you this, but is there anything I can do?”
    Just like Lewis asked. But I still don’t have an answer. “I don’t think so,” I say. “My son fell two days ago, on the playground at school. He’s in a coma.”
    Spandex Man’s face slackens. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry—”
    “It’s a medically induced coma,” I explain quickly, as if this makes it better. “To help his brain to heal. They might start waking him up today.”
    “That’s really tough,” he says, and I can tell he means it.
    “Thanks. I’m sorry I fell apart back there.” I nod toward the bank of elevators. “I’m running on zero sleep and I’m pretty strung out.”
    “It’s understandable,” he says and I take a step backwards. Time to restore some normality. Some distance.
    “So, thanks,” I say again and then with a little goodbye wave, I turn and walk out of the building.
    At the hospital Dr. Velas is waiting for me, with a group of nurses and specialists. We all crowd into Dr. Velas’s office and she goes through the next phase of Ben’s care: they are going to slowly start taking him off the medications that have kept him in a coma, and monitor his responses. If he experiences any distress, they will return to the earlier dosage and wait until he is stable again.
    “We have to take this slowly, Maddie,” she tells me. “This isn’t Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, where a single kiss wakes someone up. Coming out a coma is a long, slow process.”
    “And when he comes out of it?” I ask. Slow or not, I need to know what happens next. I want to be prepared.
    “We will start to