Would You Read Online Free PDF

stuff, a sweater for Mom, and go back in an hour. I lie on the couch while he wanders around. I watch TV with the remote on my leg, exactly within fingertip distance, clicking every time a thought sneaks into my brain.
    Click.
    Some kind of documentary dog show, where we see them getting bathed and shampooed. Was it this morning I had a shift at the Y?
    Click.
    Law&Order.
    Dad keeps bumping into chairs or tripping over the rug. He's shuffling, picking things up and putting them down. “That car wasn't driving itself,” he mutters.
    Click.
    Another stupid model show with selfish bitchy girls dissing each other while trying on thongs. What would they do if one of their perfect bodies got crushed by a Honda Civic?
    Click.
    “Somersault?” says Dad suddenly.
    Uh-oh.
    “She didn't know how to somersault! The only kid atPlaytime Pals who couldn't
do
a somersault! That's why she played soccer instead of gymnastics!”
    Click.
    “This is how you're gonna spend the night?” says Dad.
    “Mmmm.”
    “I'm going back to the hospital. Go to bed.”
    “ Uh-huh.”
    I'm too tired to go to bed. Too wired. I find this channel that is selling a knife that can cut anything: tomatoes, cardboard, hard-boiled eggs, frozen dinner rolls and ham bones. I watch and watch and watch. Wow, we should get one of these.
    I go upstairs around morning. I crawl into Claire's bed, which is not exactly made, and I flip the pillow over. I pull up the duvet and I curl into the smallest kitten ball I can get into. And I go to sleep.

Morning Comes at, Like, Noon
    Now I know what
like zombies
really means. We sit at the breakfast table like zombies with no discernible brain function. But then I think, Oh god, what if Claire is a zombie?
    We're each bent over a cup of coffee, but no one bothers to steam milk or pour juice or toast an English muffin. I move the telephone ringer to silent. We don't hear the ring but we hear the machine bleep and pick up. After about the fourth time, I turn the recording to silent too. The radio is not on, so no Mozart or any of those other guys in wigs. Usually Mom and Dad would be doing the Sunday crossword right now, speaking in code:
Seven letters starting with
C-O-…
    But instead, we're huddled like refugees on a dock. What are we supposed to do? Act like normal people?
How It Went
    Dad tells me he was drooling and Mom was asleep with her head on his lap when they came to say that all efforts had been made to salvage Claire's brain. The bleeding in her head had been evacuated, her broken bones had been set, she was being pumped full of saline, and Mrs. Johnson should go home to get some rest. Dad brought her home, but no rest yet.
    “The men in the ambulance said she was conscious for a minute or two,” says Mom. “After the accident. One of them said, ‘If a person is talking, you can be pretty sure she's breathing.’”
    Mom had an injection, Dad told me. A sedative. That's why she sounds so careful.
    “Claire was talking when they got there, but no one could tell me what the words were. I wish I knew what she …” Her voice catches and two tears run gently down her face. She doesn't even wipe them away.
    Dad puts a hand under Mom's elbow and seems to lift her up. They leave their coffee cups on the table and shamble out of the kitchen. I think he's going to put her to bed. She looks like a little old lady, leaning on him, the backs of her arms freckled and shaking.
    I wait till the thumps upstairs are settled.
    I write a note:
Gone to see Claire. Took my bike. N.
First Time
    The nurse has colored hair, something like Pumpkin Kool-Aid. Her name tag says TRISHA.
    “I'm going to let you start with five minutes,” she says, not thinking about how it may be the most intense five minutes of my life. Or maybe avoiding thinking about it. She's been here and seen this a hundred times, or a thousand. I've been here once. Maybe her whole life is looking at families whacked in the face with trauma. So maybe, to be fair,