“Mr. Dolan, how exactly did this occur?” he asked, and Steve scowled and began to speak but Angie spoke up first.
“He fell on the driveway, isn’t that right dear?” said Angie, and Steve mumbled agreement.
The doctor looked skeptical, but accepted their explanation, even though he could see it couldn’t possibly have resulted from a simple fall. The ulna showed a displacement fracture, while the radius showed a rotational fracture. Tellingly, there was no injury or evidence of fall or impact to the Olecranon, the ‘point’ of the elbow characteristically damaged when falling on the arm with sufficient force to break one or both of the bones. Additionally, the wrist fracture was an almost textbook Colles’ Fracture. Taken together, both injuries pointed to a lateral twisting force, as though someone had tried to wring his arm off, a combination he’d previously only ever seen in child abuse cases. The strength needed to do this to an adult male would have been enormous.
However, they were adults, and they were both adamant it was caused by a fall, so the Ortho filed it under the ‘none of my business’ heading and went ahead describing the treatment. Steve was not best pleased. Because of the misalignment and displacement of the fractures, the ulna and radius bones would have to be screwed back in place with a plate and titanium screws. His arm and hand would then be immobilized in a solid cast from shoulder to fingertips for six to eight weeks to prevent further injury to the fractured bones while they knitted again.
Steve was admitted and scheduled for surgery the following morning, so Angie followed the orderly as he was wheeled from ER to Surgical One for pre-op checks, and waited until he was settled in his room.
“When I get out of here, I’ll…!” he began, but Angie cut him short.
“No, you won’t. You’ll leave your children alone, all three of them!” she snapped. “You won’t touch them, contact them, talk about them, nothing. I’m sick of this, Steve, and I’m sick of you. Today was the last straw. You were never going to tell me about the Anderson boy, were you? How many other bastards are you hiding from me around my home town?”
Steve scowled at the memory of Robbie throwing him across the yard like he weighed nothing, and glared at Angie.
“There aren’t any! How can you believe that pack of liars over your own husband?” he snarled, but his eyes told a different story. Angie looked him over, comparing him with Robbie, physically so similar, so many facial features in common and yet Robbie made such better use of his. Steve seemed to possess two expressions; sullen deviousness or cocky arrogance, and nothing in between. Angie was remembering the open smiling face she’d seen earlier that afternoon, the realization that her son was handsome suddenly dawning on her. Robbie hadn’t changed that much, she realised, what had changed was her perception of him. And with that realization came another one; she didn’t want to be with this man any more.
“Shut up Steven Dolan, just… shut up! Don’t bother lying to me anymore; I know about the girl in Pueblo, and the girl in Santa Fe, and the girl in Topeka, shall I go on? Did you also promise them that you’d leave me for them, or was that just the girl in Pueblo? Melanie or Melody, or whatever her name was? Did you manage to knock up any of the others as well, or was it just her? What was the money for, an abortion? Because it wasn’t enough for child support; is that what it was? If you’re going to play around, you should know better than to play with your own employees. Prime rule of cheating, Steve; never shit on your own doorstep!”
Angie stood up, gathering her stuff.
“I want a divorce, Steve. Today I finally saw what you’re capable of; you attacked your own children; I should have let Joey beat you after what you did to my daughter…”
“Daughter? She’s fucking her brother, she a fucking little incest-slut!” burst out Steve, and Angie stepped closer to prod him on his broken arm, causing a lance of pain to shoot through his body, making him groan.
“She’s my daughter, and yours, so you keep a civil tongue in your head. I still don’t fully understand this thing with Robbie, and I don’t like it, but there’s one thing I do understand; she’s with the one man on this planet I’m absolutely certain would never hurt her or make her cry, and she loves him. We drove that boy, our boy, away; we made him into Sarah Anderson’s son, and now we have no right to judge him. Sarah was right, we stood by and watched him slowly disintegrate, and we never once found any time for him; our own son! I saw Robbie smile today; do you know how it makes me feel to realise that I’ve never seen my son smile, that I never once gave him anything to smile for? Can you even imagine what it feels like for your own son to stare you in the face and call someone else mom? I carried him under my heart for nine months, and he looked at me today like I was nothing to him; I did that to him, and so did you, you bastard! Now I need to find a way to apologise to him for never giving him anything of me. We should burn for what we did to that boy, and one day I’ll have to stand before my maker and explain myself, and so will you; what are you going to say?”
Angie paused in the doorway, and looked back at Steve.
“I’m going now, I’ll move your stuff into the pool-house, when you get out you can stay out there until you can make alternate living arrangements, but I don’t want to see you again. I’m sorry Steve, I need to see my children, and I need to try and apologise to Robbie for what I did to him. You should think about what I said, Steve, it’s not too late to try and find your kids again.”
Steve stared at her.
“Angie, please, at least wait until I get out of here, we can talk about this, please, we’ve been together for nearly twenty-four years, since we were kids in school, surely another few days won’t hurt…?”
He broke off as Angie slowly shook her head. “No, Steve, in a few days or a few weeks or a few months, I’m still going to want the same thing. We’re over; we have been for years. All your little ‘adventures’ in Topeka and Pueblo, and Santa Fe and everywhere else, all of them, they meant so little to you, but they carved me away from you piece by piece. If you’d only ever learned to keep it in your pants maybe we wouldn’t be here right now. But you lied to me, constantly, you cheated on me endlessly, and I looked the other way, for what? For a new car every year, and a pool? Or maybe some jewellery when you remembered our anniversary?”
She paused to gather her thoughts.
“But you forgot one thing, Steve, you forgot about our kids; you locked one out of your life, and today you lost the other one forever; I helped you do that, and I don’t know how I can ask my children to forgive me, but I’m willing to try; are you? And what about Joey Anderson, did you ever do anything for him? You left your son and his mother to fend for themselves, you never once put your hand in your pocket and said ‘can I help, what do you need?’ It would have been a shock, and it would have hurt me, but I would have respected you for trying to do the right thing by your oldest son; but you never once tried to be a stand-up guy; instead you just swept it under the mat and hoped it would never surface. Goodbye Steve, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
Angie called her lawyer on the way to the car, gaining a march on Steve; she wanted him served as soon as possible, while he was still in hospital. She had his cell, so he wouldn’t be making any furtive calls to his lawyers and accountants just yet;
Angie was determined to make sure that she got what she was due, and that her children, both of them, would benefit. She pondered Sarah’s words, the truths that she had been forced her to face, and wondered how she could ever repair a lifetime of neglect with her son.
Her eyes pricked with tears as she finally confronted the memories of the look on his little face every time he’d held his arms out to her to pick him up, or hold him, or just let him be with her, and she’d pushed him away or ignored him in favor of Casey.
Hot shame flashed through her as she remembered the countless occasions when they’d abandoned him in his playpen, left alone and isolated in another room day after day while they fawned and fussed over Casey. Then there were the times they’d looked right through him when they knew he needed them, and most shameful of all, the spiteful, nasty little pranks and tricks they’d played on him, just because they could.
Angie climbed into the car and absently started the engine, still thinking about what Sarah had said; they’d fed him, clothed him, and ignored him his entire young life, and she suddenly froze as she realised she couldn’t remember his birthday; her own son, and she’d forgotten when his birthday was! They’d put their perfect daughter and their supposedly less than perfect son side by side, and chosen one over the other, and so they’d deleted him from their lives for reasons so trivial that she now had trouble believing they could have done it; but they had, and now she had to pay for it.
Without knowing she was echoing her daughter all those years ago, Angie slumped against the steering wheel, resting her forehead on the wheel as she cried at last for her son, for the little boy she’d wronged for so little reason, and for the man he’d become, the man she would never know.
As Angie was driving Steve to the ER, Robbie was tending to Casey, who was still trembling with reaction after being assaulted by her father. Sarah, Joey, and Karen orbited around her as she clung to Robbie, her face stinging where Steve’s hand had landed squarely across her cheekbone. A reddened bruise was already appearing despite the ice-pack. Karen sat down next to her and started dabbing some soothing ointment on the bruise, and Casey’s self-control finally broke.
Karen held her as her fright and pain manifested itself in shaking and crying and Karen held her like a small child, smoothing her hair as she sobbed against her. Robbie looked on helplessly, sensing that now was one of those times when Casey needed another woman, not him. He and Joey backed away as Sarah took her away from Karen, and held her close. Sarah caught Robbie’s eye and looked upwards, indicating his old room, and he nodded in understanding.
Robbie took over from Sarah, and dabbed at Casey’s eyes.
“I think you’d better come lie down for a while, Case,” he said, helping her to rise, “You can use my old room, come on.”
So saying, Robbie took her upstairs and urged her to lie down, making her as comfortable as possible. He sat in silence with her for a while, stroking her hair while she hugged him, until he noticed she was crying again, but silently, the tears rolling down her cheeks. He sat with her, gently wiping her tears away, being careful of the large bruise appearing on her left cheekbone.