* * *
—
Dr. Cooper’s office is cold. Even though my insides are warm from the pill, I shiver.
“It’s like an icebox in here,” Maddie murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself.
The door opens. “Ah, the famous Ward girls, gracing me with their presence!” Dr. Cooper closes the door to the exam room and grins at us, exposing expensively whitened teeth.
Maddie side-eyes me and I try to hide my smile. I know she’s thinking of what Mom calls him. Doctor Vampire. “You can see those teeth from miles away,” our mom said once.
He busies himself washing his hands. “Madeline, your studies are going well? Dartmouth, is it?”
“Brown,” Maddie answers.
He dries his hands and gazes at her. “And what will be your field, eh? You’re a Ward, the world is your oyster.”
“I’m joining the circus,” Maddie says.
Dr. Cooper chuckles. “Is that so?”
“Seriously. I’m headed back next week to take a summer circus course. My life’s dream is to be shot from a cannon.”
“Always so spirited, Madeline,” he murmurs, turning to me. “And this one.”
His smile wobbles as he struggles for something to say.
Because he and I both know that I’m not spirited, or exceptional, or anything much. Dr. Cooper literally has no small talk to offer me.
I’m just “this one.”
“Emory,” he says finally. “Let’s take a look at that knee, shall we?”
He hooks a hand under my armpit and hoists me onto the table. The tissue paper rips underneath me as I slide back.
He pats the blue brace gently.
“Are we ready?” he asks. His breath smells minty and there are little hairs springing from his ears. I feel like someone who takes such good care of their teeth might also want to trim their ear hair, but what do I know?
I look at the ceiling. “Sure,” I say.
He starts unsnapping the buckles on the brace, moving slowly. “Tell me at any time if you feel pain, Emory.”
“I can’t feel anything. I took a pill before I came in.”
He eases his hand beneath the brace and slides it out from under my leg.
It feels weird without the brace on. My leg feels lighter than it has in weeks.
“Yikes.” Maddie prods my thigh. “You lost a lot of muscle tone. Well, you can build that back up before dance team in the fall.”
Dr. Cooper presses his fingers all around my knee. “Oh, she won’t be dancing for quite some time.”
“Wait,” I say, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. “I can’t be on dance team?”
“Oh, goodness, no,” Dr. Cooper says. “You’ve got a good bit of physical therapy ahead of you before you can even attempt that.”
“Mom is going to freak. Dance team is Mom’s jam,” Maddie says. “Maybe you can still dress, Emmy, but just sit out.”
“I don’t care,” I say. I’m pretty sure I only made the team because Mom made a call, to be honest. “I never liked dance team anyway. That was just Mom trying to make me Maddie 2.0.”
I don’t know if I would have said that if Vicodin wasn’t buzzing through my body.
“Emmy,” Maddie says, but not harshly, because she knows it’s true.
“I’m an alternate, Maddie. I suck. I sit out most of the time anyway and when I am in, I’m in the back.”
I’ll have to act disappointed when I tell my mom, but really, I’m relieved. No more pulling and tugging at the itchy royal-blue skirted shorts and gluing sparkles on my eyelids. Pasting a fake smile on my face.
Dr. Cooper is looking at me.
“What?” I say. “Are we done?”
“There’s a bit of swelling,” he says, “but it all looks good. It’s healing nicely. I just need you to bend it. Very slowly, just a bit at first.”
Suddenly I’m panicked. I look down at my pale, thin leg, the skin wrinkled from the brace. I think of the car, the accident, how I felt sitting in the passenger seat, feeling like something was missing from my body, that something wasn’t right. My kneecap had smashed against the dashboard as we flew through the air and then again when we landed. I think I remember it, some sort of cracking sound maybe. The sound of something splintering.
I don’t want to hear that sound again.
I feel sick.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to.”
“Very common,” Dr. Cooper says. “You’re afraid it will break again? Very understandable. But I assure you, it won’t.”
“You can do it, Emmy,” Maddie says softly. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “You can.”
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m too afraid. I’m…”
Dr. Cooper slides his hand under the back of my knee. “A very awful thing happened to you, Emory, something much larger than you can possibly articulate right now. But the first step for you to move forward and heal is bending this knee. Making yourself healthy.”
I close my eyes.
It’s so stupid. Joey is somewhere in the wilds of Colorado hiking and talking and doing god knows what so he comes back better, Joey 2.0, and Candy is never coming back again and here I am, afraid to bend my damn knee. The simplest thing in the world.
“Just a little bit. You may feel some discomfort.”
Dr. Cooper’s fingers press the underside of my knee, pushing up gently. His hands feel overly cold and creepy.
“Emmy,” Maddie whispers.
My leg is everything that happened in that car and I will carry it around forever, literally and figuratively. I should feel lucky to be alive. I didn’t overdose, like Joey. Or go through the windshield, like Luther.
Or die, like Candy.
I jerk my knee up. My knee feels like fire and I groan.
“You did it!” Maddie claps her hands.
“Pain level,” Dr. Cooper says. “A scale of one to ten.”
“I don’t know,” I say, breathing hard. The pill is tapering off. “Maybe five. I don’t know.”
“All right. I’ll write you a prescription for more Vic—”
Maddie shakes her head, cutting him off. “Thanks, Dr. Cooper, but our mom wouldn’t like that.”
“I’m sorry?”
Maddie sighs. “You know, our brother. He’s in rehab. She’s already guarding the prescription from the hospital with a tight fist.”
I watch Dr. Cooper’s face shift from confusion to understanding. Mill Haven is small. Of course he’s heard.
“Yes, that’s right. Well, I’m glad he’s getting the help he needs, but Emory’s pain is her own. Certainly, her medication usage can be monitored, but she shouldn’t go without just because—”
“You don’t know our mother,” Maddie says. “Or maybe you do.”
They stare at each other.
“Well.” Dr. Cooper clears his throat. “Let’s try again, Emory. A few more times before you go. I see from your chart that your mother’s arranged for in-home physical therapy starting next week, and I’ll give you some instructions on knee care and strength exercises. And if you change your mind, I’ll send you home with a scrip, just in case.”