AN: Happy New Year! I hope that everyone's 2022 is an improvement over 2021. I, for one, could stand to see some stress and drama go by the wayside.
This chapter got a little out of hand and is quite long. I apologize. I attempted to cut it in half and quickly decided that was too much work, so there you go!
Thanks to all of the readers and those that have left reviews or followed the story. I'm happy to know that there are still MSec readers out there!
Have a great week! I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 4
May 1983
Elizabeth found that life went on. At least everyone else's life went on. When she first returned to school, everyone asked about her, told her how sorry they were, what wonderful people her parents were, and on and on. She didn't want everyone to make her parents' death the center of everything and she wished they would just leave her alone. Then after a few weeks they did. Everyone left her completely alone. Her friends distanced themselves, her teachers said nothing when they collected her work, Jimmy had a new girlfriend. It was then that she wished someone would notice her.
As the weeks fell away, Elizabeth counted steps everywhere she went. She vaguely remembered her mother telling her that she had an appointment with the eye doctor scheduled, but she didn't bother telling Joan. Joan seemed to be struggling to deal with her own grief and keeping track of two kids on top of it. Will was back to himself. He was king of the hill in 8th grade. Everyone thought he was funny. He had tons of friends. He adjusted and Elizabeth withdrew.
Clutching her notebook to her chest, she followed the crowd, riding the wave of people from one spot to another. She kept her eyes open, but she didn't process what she could see. Instead, she felt. She could feel how close people were to her. She sensed the way people were moving around her. She processed all of the sounds of so many conversations, locker doors slamming, books being dropped, toilets flushing. There were an abundance of smells from sweaty bodies and cheap cologne used to mask them, remnants of the cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast and the sharp scent of the ink from the ditto machine in the teachers' lounge. Elizabeth took it all in while she counted the 162 steps through the halls to the third floor of the high school where she entered the classroom.
Normally for history, she would step into the room, move down the row of chairs in the first row, only 3 steps from the door, and she sat in the fourth seat back, another six steps. But today was different and she could feel the change when she walked into the room. "Come on in, everyone. Grab a chair. Group work today," the teacher announced.
A wave of fear washed over Elizabeth when she realized that she had no idea where the desks were, how the room was set up, where she belonged. "Good God, Lizzie, could you move?" came the voice from behind her. She shuffled forward a couple of steps and tried to make her eyes focus. She hadn't needed to rely on her vision in what seemed to be forever, and her brows pulled in to each other as she squinted.
"Lizzie, are you feeling okay?" She felt the warmth of the teacher's hand half a second before it landed on her arm. "You look a little pale."
"Um, actually, I don't feel well. May I go to the nurse?" Elizabeth asked, thankful that she'd just been offered a way out of her predicament.
"Of course." came the reply, and the hand shifted to her shoulder and squeezed. Immediately, she heard the teacher's pen scratching against the paper before it was pressed into her palm. "Go ahead," the teacher said. Elizabeth shuffled backwards, bumping into the edge of the door. She spun and grabbed the door frame. The bell rang and her ears perked. Nearly everyone had filtered into the classrooms and the hallway was essentially vacant. Elizabeth counted her steps to the office, her footsteps now echoing in the empty hallway.
After a brief encounter with the nurse, Elizabeth sat quietly in a chair just inside the office door.
When Joan entered the office an hour later, her voice held a tone that Elizabeth couldn't decide if it was worried or annoyed. "Lizzie? What's going on?"
Elizabeth looked up from her perch on the straight-backed wooden chair. "I don't feel good, Joan." She felt Joan bristle.
"What's wrong? Do you have a fever?" Joan asked, urgency in her voice.
"No, she doesn't," Mrs. Evans, the school nurse replied, as she exited her office next to where Elizabeth was sitting. "She only complained of a stomach ache, but she's not one of my frequent fliers. I feel like if she was sent down, she really doesn't feel well."
Joan reached out and touched Elizabeth's head. "My head hurts too." That wasn't a lie. She'd had a headache for at least some part of the day for most of the last month.
Joan sighed, "Alright then, home with you, and straight to bed. No TV watching." Elizabeth frowned. She had never really been a big TV watcher. She used to enjoy movies, but hadn't really had the chance to see any since Jimmy used that time to feel her up. Now she didn't even have him. It didn't matter. Besides, she couldn't really see the screen anyway. Mostly she just sat in her room and listened to music: Frampton, Sonny and Cher, The Jackson 5. She didn't really even study anymore. She just listened in class. She rarely did homework; the level of concentration needed to write made her headaches worse, but no one really said anything. Her grades had fallen, but that was expected. At least that's what the hushed whispers of her teachers indicated when they thought she was out of earshot.
On the way back to the house, Joan eyed her niece. She was torn. She wanted to give Lizzie space, but the girl seemed to be becoming more withdrawn. At first Joan allowed it. Lizzie was always more of a quiet, thoughtful type. It wasn't fair to expect that she would deal with the loss the same way Will had. She sighed. Joan had concerns about Will as well, but not the same ones. She shook her head. She needed to address the problem in front of her now. "How are you doing, Lizzie?"
Elizabeth chewed her bottom lip. "I just don't feel good. Maybe it's something I ate."
"You ate something? You eat so little, I'm surprised you haven't blown away. What's really going on?" Joan pressed.
Elizabeth shrunk down into the seat. How could she really explain, when she didn't know what was going on? She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, her contacts abandoned once Jimmy moved on. She no longer had reason to impress anyone and they didn't help her see any better. "I have a headache and I went to class today and it was just all too much. My stomach started hurting and I felt like I was going to throw up. I don't know why."
"Do you still feel like you're going to be sick?"
"Kind of," Elizabeth lied. "It comes and goes. Maybe I will just take a nap and see how I feel when I get up."
Joan observed Elizabeth. Something was off, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "Okay then." She pulled into the driveway and put the car into park. "I hope you aren't contagious."
"Me too," mumbled Elizabeth as she grabbed the couple books that rested on the floor between her feet. 1, 2, 3 Her ankle rolled as she stepped on the edge of the sidewalk, her foot shifting into the grass. Elizabeth clenched her teeth together. How come it's always my right ankle? Without missing a beat, she kept walking, the ache that seemed to be ever present, now sent a screaming pain across the top of her foot and up the front of her leg.
She made it in the house, down the hall and into the guest room-turned her room. Elizabeth closed the door and moved to sit on the end of the bed. She brought her foot up and pulled it across to rest on the opposite knee. She rubbed her ankle. The pain would get less. It always did. She never saw it as a bad thing. It was a physical pain that helped distract her from thinking about other things that hurt far worse.
She moved to change clothes. She peeled off her jeans and reached for her sweatpants that lay on the chair next to the closet. When they weren't there, she bent down to feel on the floor, yelping when her shoulder collided with the doorknob to the closet. "Son of a," she stopped. "I have to get better about shutting that door," she mumbled.
After switching out her jeans and sweater for sweats and a t-shirt, Elizabeth crawled under the covers and willed herself to sleep. As was so often the case, she played out the events of her childhood in her dreams. The early memories were varied, special birthday parties, Christmases, horseback riding, time spent reading with her mom, or working out math problems with her dad. It didn't matter how it started, it always ended the same. She would always say yes to going to get a strawberry milkshake. She would never put studying or a boyfriend before her parents. She was always in the car when it went rolling down the embankment. She would always cling to Will and whatever horrors he experienced would be hers as well. They would be connected, siblings with shared experiences, instead of two teens that inhabited the same house.
"Lizzie!" Will pounded on the bedroom door.
"Will!" Joan called. "It isn't necessary to scream and knock the door in."
Will came back into the kitchen. "I knocked first and she didn't answer. Why'd she leave school anyway?"
"She didn't feel well," Joan answered, stepping out of the kitchen and into the hallway. "Maybe she really is sick," Joan muttered.
Elizabeth came stumbling out the bedroom door, as she tied her sweatshirt around her waist. Will had woken her from a sound sleep. Dizzy and disoriented, she felt her way down the hall. "Sorry," she said, raising her hands to brace them against the wall before she fell into it. "I was just really asleep, and now I'm..."
Joan turned from the stove to face her niece. "Are you feeling better?"
Elizabeth was about to answer as she crossed the threshold into the kitchen, but she felt the nylon strap of Will's duffle bag wrap around her foot. She immediately thought that she was about to twist that ankle again when her other foot became entangled as well and, given the speed at which she was walking, she was propelled forward. It happened so fast that Elizabeth couldn't process it, much less react to it. The only thing she remembered was her feet coming out from under her and the blinding white light and then nothing.
— ∞ —
Henry McCord glanced at his watch as he rushed up the steps of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church. "3:58," he muttered. He wasn't usually running this close. He was a man who liked precision in all things. If he was supposed to be somewhere at 4, he arrived at least ten, if not fifteen, minutes early.
Today was the exception and he was flustered. Things had gone wrong from the moment he overslept and he'd just been off all day long. He needed to recenter. He was glad it was Thursday and it was his Adoration day.
He stepped into the side chapel and set his backpack into the pew. An older gentleman turned in the pew a few rows ahead of him and smiled. "Henry, how are you doing, son?"
"I'm doing fair, Mr. Johanns. Thanks for asking. Are things going okay for you?" The man nodded and the two made small talk for a few minutes before the gentleman picked up his beret and cane and headed out into the nave. Henry knelt in his pew and listened to the clopping of the man's hard soled shoes echo through the church until the heavy, wooden door creaked open and slammed shut. It was then that Henry settled in to pray.
Adoration, or the weekly prayer hour Henry had signed up for, had started as a way to appease his mother. She hadn't wanted him to go away to school. She wanted him to stay in Pittsburgh, or at the very least go to a school in nearby Ohio, or even Philadelphia. Charlottesville, Virginia seemed like a world away to Estelle McCord.
Henry's mother took great pride in raising four fine Catholic children. Although she would never admit it, he knew that she was worried that he would stray away from his faithful upbringing. It wasn't something that was vocalized, but it was definitely something they had seen in their own parish in Pittsburgh. Good kids graduate high school, leave for college, get exposed to the "heathen" lifestyle. Then, before you knew what was happening, young Thad, who was a promising future surgeon, was suddenly back home taking a low end job at the steel mill, hoping to work his way up.
Estelle wanted more for her children, and it was lucky for her that Henry shared her dream. He had no interest in working at the steel mill. He wanted to explore academic pursuits. His mother had been fine with that, until the day he laid the UVA brochure on the table in front of her. "No," she said immediately.
But then, as he always did, Estelle's son laid out the most rational argument as to why it had to be UVA. He could go with little out of pocket expense, which meant that his younger siblings would have the option of going. His older sister wanted to go to college, but was pestered out of it by their father, Patrick, who felt that higher education was unnecessary and even more so for women.
Estelle finally relented. There was one non-negotiable condition. Henry had to join a Catholic Church and he had to sign up for an hour of Adoration every week. Henry agreed without hesitation.
A few times over the course of his freshman year,his friends tried to convince him that he didn't really need to go. He could tell his mother whatever she needed to hear and she would be none the wiser. That didn't sit well with Henry. He was a rule follower and his mom had been good enough to help him convince his father. He didn't want to break that trust. As an added benefit, he enjoyed going. He looked forward to spending time with the Lord each week. It helped keep him centered. Henry did enjoy time with friends, and he did go to the occasional party, but he was there to get an education, to further his dreams. Adoration helped keep him focused on the goal.
After Henry spent some time in prayer, he rose and moved to the side table where a sign-in book was kept. He signed the log and picked up the binder of prayer requests. Each week, Henry devoted some time to praying for others that may need it. Often it was the same types of things: for the healing of friends and loved ones, for family members that had fallen away from the Church, and many prayers of Thanksgiving for everything under the sun. New babies, plentiful garden harvests and even rejuvenating vacations or safe travel could all be found in the book. Each week there was one entry that drew his attention. It was a woman, he supposed, based on the precise slant of the handwriting. She often added several prayer intentions each week, but they were written as a single unit, then she would skip a line and add "For Lizzie and Will." There was never anything else.
He noted that in previous months, others were praying for Lizze and Will, but he couldn't make the connection as to why. Slowly, the numbers dwindled until it was just this one, every week. Henry didn't think he'd even met the woman. He tended to stick to his assigned time, so he only regularly saw Mr. Johanns and the middle aged woman that came in after him, Tillie Varner. He shook the thought away. He didn't need to know who the people were to pray for them. Saying a quick prayer for Lizzie and Will and whatever they may need, he flipped the page and moved on.
His hour went quickly. When Tillie walked in, Henry looked over his shoulder and smiled, gathered his things and headed out to take on another week of classes, ROTC, and work study.
— ∞ —
Will was half bent, his elbows on his knees, his head resting in his hands. He hadn't really cried since those first few days after his parents died. It wasn't that he didn't miss them, or that he wasn't sad, because he was. It was more that the deaths of his parents made him driven. He suddenly had a need to be the best. The best student, the best athlete, the best friend. For as much as his sister had withdrawn, Will had become outgoing. Staying busy kept him from thinking too much, from dwelling on his inadequacies, from feeling guilty.
Now, Lizzie was in trouble and it was his fault. Joan had been after him countless times to pick up his gym bag and put it away, but he always put it off until after he'd eaten. It didn't seem like a big deal to him. It was only a few minutes. Then Lizzie was flying through the air and whacked her head against the bar. The cracking sound of her skull against the wood still echoed in his mind. By the time he and Joan rounded the corner, Lizzie's body was bent at odd angles around the legs of the barstools, blood pooling on the floor under her head, the strap of Will's duffle still twisted around both feet. Joan pulled the stools back and crouched down. Joan's hand immediately went to Elizabeth's neck.
Will stood unmoving. The scene brought back all of the memories of the wreck and how helpless he had felt, unable to do anything. "Will!" Will turned sharply to look at Joan. "Will. She's going to be okay. You need to call 911 though. The paramedics will need to come and take her to the hospital."
Will was unsure how he functioned, but he made the call and gave the operator the needed information. He was lost in his thoughts until Joan touched his leg. "She's going to be okay, Will. We aren't going to lose her." Will nodded. They wouldn't even be in this position at all if he'd just picked up his stuff.
"Mrs. Bryan?" Will startled and Joan immediately stood and faced the man in the white medical coat that was standing just inside the room.. "My name is Dr. Younger. I'd like to speak with you about your daughter."
"My niece," Joan corrected. She glanced at Will and he nodded.
"I'll be okay. Just come and get me before you go to see Lizzie," Will said.
"Yeah, I will do that." She turned her attention to the doctor in the doorway to the waiting room. "That will work, won't it?"
The doctor's lips drew into a tight line. "We'll arrange something. Please." He turned and gestured in the hallway. Joan followed him to a nearby consultation room. It was eerily similar to the one she sat in when she asked questions about Ben and Susie's death. It was unsettlIng and made her feel queasy and emotional.
"Mrs. Bryan. We'd like to ask you a few questions about Elizabeth." Joan noted the man sporting a pair of khaki pants and a green polo shirt that appeared in the doorway.
"What do you need to know about my niece?" Joan's eyes moved from one man to the other. "What's this about?"
"Your niece has regained consciousness, but isn't speaking. She required 24 stitches. That injury is consistent with your story. It's the other injuries that we are questioning. Would you care to tell us about those?"
The man moved from the doorway to join Joan and the doctor at the table. "Mrs. Bryan, my name is Raymond Elliott. I am a social worker here at the hospital."
Joan cocked her head to the side, "Alright. I'm not sure I understand. Lizzie doesn't have any other injuries other than her fall against the bar this evening. She tripped and hit the edge of the bar in the kitchen. I've already shared that. Are you sure you have the right patient?"
"Ma'am, your niece is covered in bruises and has a severely sprained ankle. What do you know about those injuries?" the doctor pushed.
"I don't know anything about any other injuries. I'd like to see Lizzie now."
"Mrs. Bryan, I'm afraid I cannot do that. We're concerned for Elizabeth's safety and that of her brother. We'd like to interview him." The social worker leaned in and spoke softly.
Joan met his gaze and leaned in closer. "I'm not sure what you're angling at here, but I have nothing to hide. I have no idea what you're talking about and I've done nothing wrong."
"If Miss Adams would answer our questions, that could clear up this misunderstanding," the doctor reiterated.
"She's scared. The last time she was in a hospital, she was told that both of her parents were dead. She probably has some anxiety. I know I do." With that, Joan rose from the table. "Talk to Will if you need to, but I have nothing to hide."
At that moment, a nurse appeared at the door. "Um, Miss Adams is requesting to see her aunt and her brother. What should I tell her?"
"Why don't you accompany me? If Lizzie is scared, she's not going to talk. Let me talk to her and see what I can find out. If you're there, I wouldn't be able to do anything to her, not like I am anyway." Joan shook her head disbelievingly. When the two didn't immediately respond, "I want to see my niece." She started walking out into the hall. Stepping around the corner, she stuck her head in the waiting room. "Will, let's go."
The two men stood in the hallway looking at each other for answers. This went against every known protocol. Seeing them, Joan said, "I don't have any answers. I don't think he's going to have any answers. The one with the answers isn't talking to you, so you might as well let me talk to her." All of them looked at each other. When it appeared that no one was going to offer an actual solution, the nurse spoke up.
"I can stay in the room while Mrs. Bryan talks to her niece." Eyes shifted around the group.
Will spoke up. "What's everyone talking about? What's wrong with Lizzie?"
Joan pulled him into her side and hugged the boy, who was almost as tall as she was. "Hopefully it's nothing. Lizzie just doesn't want to answer the questions the doctors have and so they are jumping to conclusions." She narrowed her eyes to stare at the doctor. "Anyway, they want to talk to you too. Will answer their questions honestly." She sighed, "Now is not the time to try to be cute."
Will's face scrunched up in confusion. "Ohhh-kay." He stretched the word out.
With that, the doctor seemed to assume the role he'd vacated when Joan started talking. The man squared his shoulders and said, "Yes, Mr. Elliott, you take the young man here and have a chat with him. I will go with Mrs. Bryan and Nurse Misty and we'll visit with Elizabeth."
The nurse turned on her heel and started down the hall and Joan followed. She looked over her shoulder and said, "You'll be bringing Will down in a few minutes?"
The social worker nodded and the doctor looked slightly annoyed, but only muttered, "Not protocol."
Elizabeth lay in the hospital bed, her head throbbing. She rested back into the recline of the bed and tried to access her situation. The place where the stitches were was numb. She'd reached up to feel them and it seemed like a lot. The gash was at least 2 inches. She could no longer see anything. She'd become used to her vision being bad enough that it wasn't useful, but the total darkness was new and worrisome. That wasn't even the bigger issue. Evidently she was covered in bruises and given the pointed questions everyone had been asking, they assumed someone was abusing her. She hadn't been in the mood to answer them and the truth seemed far fetched. Who falls down and loses their sight? It didn't seem logical. She didn't have any kind of eye injury, she bumped her head.
She was having trouble discerning the amount of time that had passed. Before, she could tell by how bright things were around her, that it was morning by the gray that she saw versus the black. Now everything was black. It was like she was in an echo chamber. Everything was so terribly loud. She had a blood pressure cuff on her arm and every few minutes the compressor kicked on hammering as it squeezed her arm to the point of pain. The sheets were crinkly, too starched and the slightest movement sounded like pieces of sandpaper scraping against each other. There was a never ending stream of noise from outside the room. Nurses chattering, machines in other rooms beeping, the squeak of unoiled wheels being pushed across the tile floor. It was overwhelming and made her head pound harder.
There were footsteps that stopped in the doorway. It wasn't a nurse because the nurses never broke pace, skittering in, pushing and prodding her and poking buttons that beeped, before mumbling unintelligible things and moving back out. She looked up, waiting for the person to speak, but then she inhaled the slightest scent. It was Joan's perfume.
Joan saw Elizabeth through the glass as they approached, she was lying back in the bed with her eyes closed. Joan's breath caught in her throat. Elizabeth looked frail and small in the hospital bed. She'd been on the girl to eat more. Because she didn't eat much at meals, Joan had taken to thrusting an apple, banana or even a donut into her hand when she wandered through the kitchen. She couldn't keep track of the number of apples she'd found in the kitchen trash with only one or two bites taken from them. Now, seeing Elizabeth, Joan was sad and embarrassed. The doctor wanted to accuse her of hitting Elizabeth. That certainly wasn't the case, but she had been neglectful. The girl looked painfully thin.
When they stepped to the doorway, Elizabeth looked up, but there was no immediate recognition. Joan was about to speak when Elizabeth finally said, "Joan?"
The nurse didn't seem to catch the hint of a question in Elizabeth's voice, but Joan noticed. She quickly closed the distance and sat at the edge of the bed, sweeping Elizabeth up and into a hug. "Lizzie, how are you feeling?"
"I-I'm alright. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fall. I didn't see the bag. I know it's hard to come back to this place. Tell Will that I'm okay. That I wouldn't leave him." Elizabeth's words rushed together as panic seeped in.
"Shh, it's fine." Joan held Elizabeth close, rubbing her back, internally cringing at how she could feel Elizabeth's ribs and vertebrae through the thin material of the gown. When Elizabeth started to pull away, Joan immediately let her go. "We need to talk and I need you to answer truthfully, okay?"
Elizabeth's stomach turned over on itself and the remnants of the few bites of food she'd managed to choke down, threatened to revisit. She lowered her head..
"Who's been hurting you, Lizzie?" Joan asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. "No one," she whispered.
"What happened to your ankle?"
"I twisted it," Elizabeth chewed her bottom lip.
"When?" Joan asked.
"This afternoon."
Joan glanced over her shoulder at the nurse who shook her head. "That's not what the doctors think. They say you have bruises. They think I've been hitting you or pushing you down or something to cause those bruises."
Elizabeth's head whipped up. "But you haven't," she said loudly.
"I'm aware of that, but they are not. That's why I'm asking you again. Who is hurting you?" Joan pushed harder.
Elizabeth looked away from Joan. "I told you, no one. Sometimes I just bump into things, or I step wrong and I roll my ankle. It's not a big deal."
"Let me see your bruises, the ones you have from bumping into things."
Elizabeth sat quietly for a moment, mulling over her options. She didn't know how to explain that she wasn't exactly sure which bruises the doctors were talking about. She didn't know which bumps actually caused bruises and which ones didn't. Truthfully, she couldn't remember how most of them happened. She was always bumping into something.
"My head hurts. Can I please lay down?" Deflection seemed like a decent tactic and her head was throbbing.
"Elizabeth Ann." Joan said, sharply. The use of her middle name made Elizabeth take note. Joan rarely called her anything but Lizzie. There was no use. She wasn't going to be able to keep her secret forever.
"Fine." Elizabeth twisted the sheet around her hand, pulling it into her lap. "I can't see. I haven't been able to see well for a while, but now I can't see at all. I can't tell you where my bruises are because I don't know. I've run into so many things that I don't remember and I can't see them, so…" she trailed off.
"What do you mean you can't see at all?" Joan cocked her head to the side, trying to figure out the implications of what Elizabeth was saying.
"When I woke up after the fall, I couldn't see anything." She paused for a moment while the realization was formed into words. "I'm blind." Elizabeth shivered. The word left a bitter taste in her mouth.
"You're what?" Will asked as he passed through the doorway.
"I can't see." Elizabeth said quietly. one shoulder raising in a slight shrug..
The doctor, who had been standing off to the side listening, approached the bed. Joan glared at him. "Did you miss something, Doctor?" Her tone was accusatory.
He ignored the question and turned his focus to Elizabeth. "Elizabeth, my name is Dr. Younger. I'm going to need to examine your eyes. Can you please look up for me?"
Elizabeth didn't move. The torrent of emotion that swirled inside her made her feel dizzy. She didn't want anyone to examine her. She didn't want anyone to try and fix it. She didn't want to make it better. This was the cross she was to bear. She should've been with her family. She wasn't and this was the fallout. Joan took her hand.
"Lizzie. I know you're scared, but the doctor has a job to do. Let him do his job." Joan shot the man a look. "Maybe this time he'll get it right."
Given the way his body stiffened next to her, Elizabeth imagined that he wasn't too happy, or maybe he was embarrassed. She'd been on the receiving end of Joan's correction a few times. It wasn't a great place to be.
'Come on, Lizzie. Just do what the doctor wants," Will said, shuffling his feet near the doorway.
She didn't want to cooperate, but she also didn't want Joan to be mad at her and she could tell that Will was worried and she didn't want that, so she complied. She raised her head and turned it toward the man whose breathing was heavy. He touched her chin and tipped her head back further. Elizabeth wanted to comment on the fact that whatever he'd been eating had a bit too much onion and that he needed a breath mint, but decided against it and held her breath instead.
She assumed that he was shining one of those penlight things in her eyes, although she was none the wiser. "Hmm, her eyes seem to be dilating appropriately. There's no obvious signs of trauma." The doctor moved his hand close to her face and she flinched. "She can see."
"I can't see your hand, but I can feel the heat from it and the air moving around me," Elizabeth felt the man huff in disbelief. She shrugged and shrank back into the mattress. "Think what you want."
"Well, I see no reason to keep Miss Adams overnight. If you think she has a vision problem, you are welcome to make an appointment with your optometrist. Otherwise, it's just care for the stitches. Visit your family doctor in a week to have those taken out. The nurse will come with your discharge papers." With that, Dr. Younger turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Nurse Misty scurried out behind him.
"Son of a-" Joan muttered. Then she took a deep breath and sighed loudly. "Alright kids, it seems like it's time to go." Joan's eye's flitted around the room. "Do you have any idea where they stashed your clothes?"
Elizabeth shrugged, "I'm sorry. I don't." Elizabeth felt Joan pat her leg and move from the bed. It was followed by doors opening and closing, drawers sliding on their glides, and Joan's incessant mumbling under her breath.
If this had been happening the previous year, Elizabeth and Will would likely be giggling at Joann and her ability to be so easily frustrated. They both knew there was a possibility that one or both of them had hidden something with the express purpose of causing her such angst.
But, it wasn't a year ago, when, after sharing an afternoon with their aunts and uncles and cousins, they would go home with their parents. The situation was so vastly different. Now, Elizabeth felt so guilty at even the thought of causing Joan to worry and get upset. She was near to giving in to the sting behind her eyes that made her need to cry. She held her breath trying to ward it off when the quick steps of Nurse Misty mixed with the scuffling steps of Joan rummaging around the room.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm guessing you are looking for your belongings. I should've set these out." Misty moved the extra blanket that was hanging precariously off the edge of the bed and reached under it to pull out a large white plastic bag with a cotton drawstring. "Everything should be in here." She set it down and pulled the curtain away from the wall on the far side of the bed. The ball bearings screeched along the metal track in the ceiling and noise made Elizabeth wince. "You can go ahead and pull this around if you need some more privacy. I'll have your paperwork momentarily." Misty moved from the room.
"I'll wait down the hall," Will offered quietly and Elizabeth listened as he scuffed his feet out the door and until the sound faded.
"Let me help you change," Joan said as she pulled at the plastic, opening the bag. "Well, that shirt is trash," she said. Elizabeth heard the thump of it hitting what she assumed was the trash can. "Good thing you had your sweatshirt tied around your waist."
Elizabeth smiled slightly. "You hate it when I do that. You say it looks sloppy."
"It does look sloppy when it's tied around your waist. But I suppose there is some good that has come out of it. Here, Let me help with the gown." Joan reached around Elizabeth's side and untied the bow that was at her waist. As she pulled the strings apart, Elizabeth's side and hip were exposed and Joan gasped.
Elizabeth quickly tugged the gown back around her. "I can do it," she said.
"Lizzie, your hip is—it looks bad."
"So I've gathered," Elizabeth quipped.
"Let me see you," Joan said.
"It doesn't matter. It's no big deal." She pulled the gown tighter.
"Honey, it is a big deal. The doctor thinks you're being abused. Just saying you aren't probably isn't enough." Joan paused. "You can't see anything?" Elizabeth nodded slightly. "Like nothing at all?"
"I'm sorry." Elizabeth mumbled. "I don't want to cause you problems. It was never my intention."
"I don't care about any of that," Joan snapped. "Why didn't you say something? If your eyes were getting worse, we could take you to the eye doctor and see what the problem is. I can't believe that stupid excuse for a doctor doesn't believe you."
"It's just what I deserve. I wasn't there." A single tear rolled down her cheek. And before she could wipe it away, Joan wrapped her arms around the girl and held her close.
"Stop that, Lizzie. Stop that right now. That's not the way it works. It's just not." Joan held her for a long moment, and finally let her go. Her voice cracked when she spoke. "Let's get you changed, so we can go home. We'll deal with whatever comes, alright?" Before Elizabeth could protest, Joan peeled off the gown and tried to ignore the fact that she felt like the girl was much too skinny and she was covered in bruises, with several on her hips, side, upper arms and a nasty looking one on her shoulder. The sweatshirt was carefully placed over her head, avoiding the stitches.
Joan helped Elizabeth put her feet in the legs of her sweatpants and pull to a stand. As Elizabeth bent to pull her shoes on, Joan caught the wince and made Elizabeth stop. Pulling her sock down, she saw the combination of yellow and new purple mottling around her right ankle. "How are you walking? And how did I not notice it?"
"If I'm dealing with the physical things in front of me, I don't have to deal with other stuff. It's not a big deal." Elizabeth said softly.