She had loved all three of them, but leaving Andy had broken her heart. She sat staring at his photograph for a long time, wondering where he was now. He was eight years older than she was, so he’d be sixty-six now, still probably somewhere in Wyoming. Their affair was eighteen years ago, she was forty then, and he was forty-eight. Ben and Milagra were in high school, and Deanna had just left for college. It seemed as though a thousand years had passed since then. There hadn’t been anyone serious since Andy. He had been the love of her life. But she couldn’t see herself on a ranch in Wyoming, and he would never have survived in New York. He would have been as miserable as he had been when he visited her, so she had freed him, for both their sakes. She’d never cared as much about any man after him.
She put the photographs back in the box then, set the box on the floor, climbed back up the ladder, and tried to pull down another box. It was bigger and heavier than the first two. She finally tugged it toward her and was juggling it awkwardly when she leaned too far over and lost her balance. The ladder came crashing down with her on it, spilling her across the floor of her bedroom, past the rug and onto the hardwood floor she was so proud of and had refinished when she moved in. She fell with a heavy thud at an awkward angle, pushed the ladder off her, and tried to get up, when an agonizing pain shot through her left leg. She could see that her foot was in a weird position, and when she stood up, she felt like throwing up, and almost fainted. She had to sit down on the floor again and put her head between her knees until she felt less dizzy. She could put no weight on her left foot at all, and she had the sinking feeling that her ankle might be broken or very badly sprained. She hoped the latter, but couldn’t tell. She hopped to her bed on one foot, feeling dizzy again, and lay down, telling herself that this was ridiculous. She’d never fallen off a ladder before, or even gotten injured. She was on and off ladders all the time for her work, checking lights and angles for a shot.
She felt worse as she lay on her bed, feeling like a prisoner, knowing she should put ice on her foot, but there was no way she could hop down the narrow metal spiral staircase on one foot to get to the kitchen on the floor below, and then back up to her bedroom again. She had never put in an elevator, which would have been expensive, seemed unnecessary, and would have eaten up space she needed for her studio. Now she regretted it, if this was a harbinger of things to come, if she was going to fall off another ladder or get hurt in the future.
She had no one to call to come and help her. She could have called Penny in Brooklyn, but there was nothing she could do, and Maddie wasn’t going to call her at that hour. It was two in the morning by then. She would never have called Deanna, and she would be in the Berkshires anyway. She felt foolish calling a friend to come and help her down the stairs in the middle of the night. And there was no one she was close enough to reach out to except Penny. She hadn’t spoken to any of her friends in months, she’d been too busy, and felt awkward calling them now. She wasn’t bleeding to death, and an injured ankle didn’t seem serious enough to warrant calling 911. All she could do was hope she felt better in the morning and could make it down the stairs to ice it, or go to the emergency room if it hadn’t improved.
In the meantime, she lay on her bed, looking at the overturned ladder stretched across the floor from the closet, the box she’d dropped with its contents spilling over the rug, and the one where she’d found the photographs and letters from her old lovers. She lay there for a long time, wide awake, thinking of the photograph of Andy Wyatt, looking so handsome, smiling at her in the image. She wanted to go through that box over the weekend, but instead of making things neater, she’d made a mess. All she could think of was Andy, while trying not to focus on the excruciating pain in her ankle and feeling scared, and she burst into tears as she lay there alone.
Chapter 2
When Maddie woke up in the morning, the pain in her left ankle was worse, and her whole body felt battered. She hadn’t really slept all night, she had drifted in a kind of haze, aware of the pain but feeling woozy and in another dimension. She wondered if she was in shock, and had dozed periodically but never slept deeply, always aware of the pain.
She still had the same dilemma about how to get downstairs to the kitchen, and she was also desperate to get to the bathroom. Not knowing what else to do, she crawled to the bathroom, using her arms to pull herself along and her right leg to help propel her, and wincing every time her left leg moved. The pain was more localized in her ankle. When she pulled herself to a standing position on her right foot and saw herself in the bathroom mirror, she was shocked by how terrible she looked. She was deathly pale with circles under her eyes, still wearing her clothes from the day before, since she hadn’t dared to take off her jeans and make the pain worse. She was embarrassed to call 911 and hated to disturb Penny on the weekend. She was determined to work it out herself, which was what she always did. Maddie was never dependent on anyone. She thought of sliding down the fireman’s pole to her studio, but if she landed hard or bumped her left foot, she was sure that she would faint. No matter how painful it was, she knew she had to take the stairs.
She washed her face with cold water, brushed her teeth, started to brush her hair and decided not to bother. She hopped back to where she had kicked off her right shoe when she went to bed and put it on. The left one had flown off when she fell. She didn’t bother with it since her foot was too swollen to get the shoe on anyway. She made her way to the stairs and went down two flights on the circular metal staircase, inching her way along, on her bottom. It was a painful process. She hopped from there to her office on the main floor, ordered an Uber, grabbed her bag and a jacket, and slowly hopped to the front door, stopping every few feet when she felt dizzy. It seemed to take forever, and she was almost ready to faint by the time she got to the front door, slammed it behind her, and waved to the Uber driver waiting for her at the curb. He lowered the window and she called out and asked him to help her. He got out of the car and came over to her, and she gratefully grabbed his arm as he helped her to the car. She cried out in pain as she got in.
“Why didn’t you call 911?” he asked as he slid behind the wheel to take her to NYU Hospital.
“I’m sure it’s nothing serious. I didn’t have a heart attack or anything,” she said through gritted teeth.
“It looks serious enough to me,” he said sympathetically. “What did you do?”
“I fell off a ladder,” she said, feeling stupid again and fighting back tears.
“Maybe you broke your leg,” he said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“I hope not. I think I just twisted my ankle and sprained it,” she said hopefully.
“It must have been some twist. You look kind of green to me.” She was praying she wouldn’t throw up in his car at that moment.
“It just hurts a lot. They say a sprain hurts more than a break.” He didn’t comment but went to get an attendant in the ER when they got to the hospital. A nurse came out with a wheelchair and got Maddie into it with some difficulty. She gave the Uber driver a big tip, and thanked him. He wished her luck and got back in the car and drove away.