Breach of Promise by James Scott Bell Read Free Book Online Page B

watching.
A woman was already kneeling by Maddie when I got there. I heard a boy’s voice saying, “I didn’t mean to!” and a chorus of other voices muttering expressions of shock and sympathy.
“She’s mine,” I told the kneeling woman, partly as confession, and in part, I think now, to keep anyone from taking her away from such a negligent father.
“I’ll call emergency,” the woman said. “Don’t move her.”
Don’t move her? Because her neck might be broken? Because she might not ever move again?
A sweat came over me as I dropped down in the sand and put my hand on Maddie.
“Don’t move her,” the woman commanded, fishing in her purse for a cell phone.
Maddie’s pink overalls over a lighter pink T-shirt weren’t moving at all, and I wondered if she was breathing. An ugly, red stamp was deepening on the left side of her face, the imprint of a tennis shoe becoming clearer.
“Maddie Maddie Maddie,” I repeated in a whisper, my lips close to her ear. “You’ll be all right you’ll be all right.” And then she moaned, low and soft. And I almost cried out with relief.
Someone else, a man, put a towel over Maddie, and then the waiting began. All the activity in the park had ceased, the crowd gathering. Even people walking dogs stopped for a look.
“It hurts,” Maddie groaned.
    Oh God, give that hurt to me! T ake it away from Maddie and let me take it instead, please please.
I stroked her hair and told her to lie still.
“I want to dig,” she said.
“We will. Later. We’ll go to the ocean and dig up the whole beach, would you like that?”
“Yes.”
And we stayed like that for about ten minutes until the ambulance came. A nice paramedic checked her out, and decided Maddie could be driven to the hospital—there was one about a mile away—and she wouldn’t have to be taken in the ambulance.
I picked Maddie up and carried her out of the park, sure that the eyes of every parent there were on me. There goes the guy who was so into trying to schmooze a gig that he lost track of his daughter. There goes a guy who doesn’t deserve to be a father.
The drive to the hospital was bad, Maddie moaning all the way, tears falling. But the waiting in the emergency room for a doctor was worse. I had to go muck around with the desk over insurance, Maddie screaming at me not to leave her alone.
When I got back to her bed, a doctor was there. He looked like a humorless Bob Newhart. He spoke in a monotone and only registered an expression when I told him what happened. The expression was a raising of the eyebrows.
He asked Maddie some questions, looked in her eyes with a light, touched her head in a couple of places. Maddie, my little trooper, hung in there, and I was proud of her.
“Mild concussion,” the doctor told me. “Should be okay. Watch her for a couple of days—” like I wouldn’t—“limit TV and reading. If she gets nauseous or vomits or gets numbness in her arms or legs, bring her back in. And no physical activity for at least two days. Any questions?”
Yeah, where do I go to get flogged?
“No. Thanks.”
When we got back to the apartment I told Maddie to lie down, but she wanted me with her. Truth to tell, I wanted to be with her just as much. I flopped on the sofa and she got on top of me, resting her head on the soft spot underneath my shoulder. I stroked her hair. And as I did, I silently thanked God that it hadn’t been any worse.
Even as I did, though, I had the strangest feeling, really weird, that worse was about to make a great, big entrance.
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H
OMECOMING
1
    Paula came back on August 3, my birthday.
She did not come home.
Over the previous month I had tried everything to remain sane.
I had developed the sweats. My pits and hands would break out in little moist bursts when I thought of seeing her again.
    Paula and I had talked on the phone, and she said she wanted to get together as soon as possible. I asked her if she wanted to see Maddie. She