“Cause of death?” Edward asked, attempting to speed it along.
“On appearance,” Dr. Price told him, “a front bumper made contact with her hip and upper thigh region. An SUV probably, not a sedan. That impact caused the rotation of her upper body, the legs turned sideways before her right side made contact with the ground, her chest and shoulder region, to be exact. Resulting in multiple rib fractures.”
Edward waited with anticipation. “I don’t understand,” he said and squinted, barely glancing at the body in front of him. This sounded as insignificant as a fall from a bike.
“She was struck by a vehicle traveling at an approximate speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour. She was not killed on impact. Internal bleeding did her in.”
Edward blinked, trying to understand the implications.
“A perfect storm,” Dr. Price continued. “There are not always outward symptoms to warn injured victims that they are in jeopardy. She probably felt fine for a while. A trip to an emergency room, a trauma center prepared for this type of injury would have saved her life. Once the lungs were perforated and her chest began to fill with blood, the injuries became life-threatening in a matter of—”
“What are the odds,” Edward interrupted.
“Odds? Happens more often than you think.”
“How long until it was too late? Until she bled out?”
“It started internally. See here.” Dr. Price looked up at Edward and pointed at the vena cava. “There’s the rupture. By the time she felt light-headed and had abdominal pain, it was too late. Twenty minutes from that point at the most. Give or take. She could have been saved but like I said, the perfect storm.”
The perfect storm. So little time. How quickly Penelope would have had to act to save her. Calling an ambulance might not have been enough. She could have alerted someone, anyone who was better prepared to handle this situation, yet it seemed impossible to put all this decision-making on his daughter. It sounded so far out of her reach.
“You said an SUV?”
“You are looking for an SUV with very little damage,” Dr. Price continued. “I found no glass on the body so the windshield didn’t shatter.” He had paused and taken in a deep breath. “You hit the right spot at the right angle and that’s all it takes. Probably didn’t know what hit her.”
“What’s the cause of death?”
“I’ll classify COD as vehicular blunt force trauma. The crime scene was a riddle for me at first. Not a drop of blood anywhere and a body void of blood.” He stretched his mouth into a grimace. “That’s the stuff urban legends are made of.” He cocked his head. “If it rained that night, that would explain it,” he said and zipped up the body bag. “Depends on how heavy the rain was.”
“Are there any leads?”
“I don’t understand this, Edward. Is there anything you need to know specifically—”
“No, I just, I’ve taken an interest, ever since, you know . . . they died the same night and . . .” Edward didn’t finish the sentence.
Dr. Price placed his right hand against his chest in what Edward took as an attempt to convey that he understood his pain. His desperation.
“Edward . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’m so sorry about your daughter, I know there are no words . . .” He paused as if he’d caught himself in a moment telling a grieving father how to mourn his child.
Edward left and when the door closed behind him, he was glad Price hadn’t mentioned Donna at all. There was no telling what he might have confessed.
He sat in his car in the parking lot and it was then he remembered the tomatoes from his mother’s garden, the way she lined them up in single-file rows with a walking path between each one and how puny they were and had to be left to ripen off the vine because there was never enough sun in Ohio. He attempted to escape from the present with those memories but even his mother’s tomatoes reminded him of blood, and all he wanted to do was rest, pace his thoughts, and he’d be fine but at the same time he knew something was going to trip him up. He began to shake and he knew he’d go home and wash his hands over and over for the better part of an hour. Now that he’d seen Rachel again, he’d try to scrub away the blood he knew he still had on his hands after that night but they’d never feel clean. He was sure of that.
He still knew very little about that night, the state of the woman’s body just a consequence of Penelope’s action, yet what that action was motivated by, he still couldn’t tell. Did Penelope know the woman? That had been tearing at him, the not knowing part a vampire feeding on him, sucking the life force out of him, as if knowing the why of the accident would extend to the why of his very own failings. In his mind he went over it but the gaps were going to claim his sanity, soon.
Though he felt as if he was searching for all those answers at once, he still had some fight in him. Some, not much. But some. Donna would come around so he could sort it all out. She had to.
52
EDWARD
Edward was unable to work. He spilled his coffee every morning. The tremor in his hands, which used to kick in while he was doing something, just to go away when he was not, had turned from intermittent into a steady rhythmic shaking. His fingers were slow, as if weighed down, and felt thick and clumsy.
What happened?
What happened?
What happened?
What happened?
How many more times could he ask Donna and not get an answer?
Weeks passed and Donna didn’t so much as utter a word. Edward’s life had become a never-ending circle of caretaking, of washing and dressing her, bringing her food.
There was a picture on the wall opposite from Donna’s bed, and he saw her stare at it every day, some expressionist garden scene with women gathering around a table. In a spur of the moment, Edward tipped the painting slightly to the right.
The very next day Donna pointed at it. Two months into her silence, Donna had come back to life, gesturing and making demands to fix a lopsided picture on the wall. The day after, it was a chair turned on a wrong angle. The morning after that, Donna woke with a voice as raw as sandpaper.
“Where is Penelope?”
Edward was taken aback at first, thought her to be in a half-sleep state where reality hadn’t quite set in yet. He caught something in her eyes that made him pause—there was no hint of knowing, just a mundane question to which she expected a mundane answer. At work. In her room. Shopping. Out.
Edward held her hand, stroked her cheek. He explained it to her. He told her about the cremation, about how he planned to buy a niche, a compartment within the columbarium at the cemetery, where Penelope’s memorial would be maintained in perpetuity.