The Dance Begins Read Online Free PDF

much now,” she said, her voice catching. “I can come with you.”
    “I want you to lie here like this,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Very still. Just calm and—”
    “Don’t go!” There was real fear in her eyes. It was so rare to see her afraid these days and it broke his heart.
    “Where’s your palm stone?” he asked.
    Her lower lip trembled. “My pocket,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
    He reached into her pocket and pulled out the stone, then pressed it into the palm of her left hand and she curled her fingers tightly around it. He struggled to lean forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I promise.”
    “Don’t go,” she whimpered again, but he could tell by the hopeless tone of her voice that she knew he had to.
    “Sing something,” he said as he looked around him, wondering how he would get to his feet. “What’s your favorite song these days?”
    She sniffled. “The ‘if I had a hammer’ song,” she said.
    “Really? Where’d you learn that?”
    “Amalia.”
    He smoothed her bangs back from her forehead and smiled. “My little pacifist kid,” he said. “I love you.” He reached toward the trunk of a sapling and tugged with an arm that seemed completely devoid of strength. For a frightening moment, he was afraid he would never be able to get up. He and Molly would be stuck there for hours and hours, waiting for someone to spot his scooter on the loop road and think to look in the woods. But he finally managed to get to his feet and work his way slowly, clumsily back to the road, Molly singing about the hammer of justice in a small, tearful voice behind him.
    Yes, he would have to call the ambulance.
    And then he would have to call Nora.
    *   *   *
    Nora actually beat them to the emergency room. Her pharmacy was close to the hospital, plus it took forever for the EMTs to evaluate Molly in the woods before loading her onto a backboard. Graham hated leaving her alone in the ambulance, but he needed his van to be able to transport his scooter to the hospital.
    On the phone, Nora had greeted the news with complete silence before kicking into high gear, asking technical questions about Molly’s injury, telling him how to handle the staff in the ER in case he and Molly got there before she did. No one other than Graham would have been able to tell that there were tears behind her words. Nora hid her vulnerability well.
    Now, he and Nora sat in the curtained cubicle with Molly as she waited to be discharged from the ER. The head of her bed was raised and her swollen, broken arm was in a splint held close to her chest by a sling. She wouldn’t be able to get a cast until the swelling went down in a couple of days. She was still crying, more from the shock of what had happened than from the pain, Graham thought. She leaned against him where he sat on the edge of her bed. She kept squeezing his wrist with her good hand, as though she was afraid he might disappear. Her need for him could scare him sometimes. Every once in a while, he felt the weakness in his legs begin to creep into his arms and he knew he wouldn’t always be able to hold her like this. He forced the thought from his mind. Right now, he could hold her. Right now needed to be his focus.
    Nora had been amazing. She’d worked as a hospital pharmacist when she first got her degree, and she knew how to manage the system. Molly’d been x-rayed, diagnosed, and treated in record time. Between Nora’s efficiency and his calming influence on Molly, they’d practically sailed through the last couple of hours. “You two are quite the team,” one of the nurses had said to them. He’d smiled at his wife. They were a team. They had been from the start.
    She hadn’t said a word about the training wheels. Not a word of blame. Nothing.
    Now she got to her feet. “I have to go back to work, honey,” she said to Molly. “But I’m going to pick up some ice cream on my way home