I knelt by his side, held his hand, and waited for a siren. I covered him with a blanket, because that was all I could think of. Now, I was just trying to hang on and wait for somebody to get here, somebody who’d know what to do.
I wanted it not to be true. I wanted to go backward, to start over, but there’s no rewind button for life.
When he opened his eyes, I nearly dropped his hand.
He looked straight at me, but his eyes didn’t focus, and his voice, when it came, was cracked and dry. “Fell . . . down. Got to get up. Get . . . Hope. Hope’s coming.”
“I’m here, Koro.” The tears I’d suppressed until now were trying to choke me. “It’s Hope. I’m here. You fell, but you’re going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. Help is coming right now.”
Finally, I heard the wail of the ambulance, and then Tane was in the doorway, big and solid as Hemi. I hadn’t remembered until that moment that he and June lived up the hill. I’d run the wrong way. I scrambled to my feet, and as we watched the paramedics settled Koro gently onto a gurney, I asked, “Could you take me to the hospital with you? Please?”
Tane looked at me as if I were insane. “Course you’re coming. But you’ll need to change first.”
It took me long seconds to realize what he was talking about. That everything I wore was soaked, all the way down to my underwear and boots, and I was shivering.
I changed once again, nearly passing out at the smell when I opened my suitcase, hardly believing that being airsick had mattered a few hours before. I called Hemi on the way to the hospital, which was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. And then we ended up someplace that was all too familiar, even though I’d never been in this particular waiting room before.
After that . . . after that, the hours wore by, sitting without news while family came and went and, mostly, stayed. Men and women, old and young, babies and children, many of whom I’m never met, until there were nearly a dozen people filling the chairs. Being introduced as “Hemi’s Hope,” and not knowing if it was true. Or maybe it was just that my brain still seemed to be outside my body, that I was running way past empty now, barely able to process.
One person, I did remember from before. Matiu, Tane’s younger brother. As tall as Hemi, but slimmer and finer-featured, with eyes that gleamed with intelligence and humor. He sat beside me during the hours that followed, his long legs stuck out in front of him, and did something on a laptop. He had that in common with Hemi too, I guessed.
Me? I just sat, stared ahead of me, and thought, Koro, please don’t die. Also, Poor Hemi, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Not exactly the world’s most productive thoughts.
When the doctor finally came out to see the family, it was Matiu, not one of the elder Te Manas, who went to talk to him while the rest of us waited, the anxiety level cranked up another notch as we looked at Matiu’s back, the doctor’s serious face.
When Matiu came back, he announced, “He’s had surgery in his shoulder, but he’s come through it OK, the stubborn old bugger,” and there was a scattering of relieved laughter, and then some eyes briefly closed, lips moving in silent prayer. “Got a pin in his upper arm,” Matiu went on, “but that’s not too bad. Had an MRI on his brain, and that’s the one they’ll be watching, checking for swelling. Badly concussed, but he’s a tough nut, eh. To last through the shock like that? Yeh, I’d say so. And that he doesn’t have a bleed now—that’s good. Not out of the woods yet, but lucky it wasn’t a stroke after all, just an accident. And that Hope found him before he was worse.” Making me feel better, probably, than I deserved.
Thank God, I thought, and not in that casual way you say it. In the real way. From down deep. What would it have done to Hemi to lose his grandfather? Koro was Hemi’s father figure, his rock and his conscience and his stability. I knew it.
“Can we see him?” Tane asked.
“Soon as he’s in recovery. One person. Reckon that should be you, Auntie,” he told a sixtyish woman. Flora, I thought. “And then, when he’s in a room, you can take it in turns to sit with him, whoever can stay. No kids. Just quiet, eh. Touch his hand. Have a word. Let him know you’re there.”
The talk swirled around me. I was getting that fading-in-and-out thing again, and Matiu came back to sit beside me and studied my face before saying, “He has his whole whanau with him. I’d say your bit’s done. Why don’t you go home for the night? I’ll give you a lift.”
“Oh.” I was extraneous, I realized. Not family. Maybe I shouldn’t have come in the first place. “Sure. I’ll just . . . I’ll go.”
He smiled at me, something sweet in it that reminded me of Hemi at his most open, and I realized yet again why Karen had been so taken with him during our previous visit. “Nah,” he said. “It’s not that you’re not welcome, just that you’re knackered. Come on. I’ll drop you. I have to go to work anyway.”
“Where do you work?” I asked him when I was in his car, heading north toward the much smaller settlement of Katikati. I was trying to focus, to make conversation instead of sitting like a lump. “It’s a night shift?”
“Tauranga Hospital.”
“Oh. Wait. Isn’t that where we just were?”
A flash of white teeth through the dark for that. “Nah. That was Grace, the private hospital. That’s your boy Hemi. I knew he’d have said ‘only the best for Koro,’ and Grace is all about the orthopedics. I told Tane to bring him straight there. Me, though . . . nah. I’m on the sharp end where the excitement happens. ER.”
“Oh. You’re a . . .”
“Doctor. What, you thought Hemi was the only one of us with anything to show for himself? We don’t quite measure up, maybe, but we don’t do so badly.”
“I never . . . I didn’t . . .” I stumbled over the words.
“Never mind.” He pulled up to the house. “Twelve hours tonight, for my sins. No rest for the wicked, eh.”
When I went into the house again and flipped on the lights, feeling as if I’d left it days, not hours earlier, I saw what I’d missed then. A vase of lavender roses on the dining-room table, and in the midst of them, a tiny white envelope held on a stick.
Hope, it said, and when I opened it, it said more.
E te tau, toku aroha. Please rest now. If you need me, call me. I love you. Hemi.
My darling, it meant. My love.
I knew he must have arranged to send them before he’d known about his grandfather. The flowers had to have arrived the day before, in fact. And all the same, it felt as if he could see me. As if he’d been listening to me after all. I held the note, looked at my flowers, and cried at last. From relief. From fatigue. From confusion and longing and aching need. From everything.
Now I was in bed, and none of it would leave. I should have eaten, but I’d only managed some crackers and cheese, and a shower had seemed about the limit of my capabilities. The thoughts came and went as if I were caught in a whirlwind, and I couldn’t escape them. The sheets felt cold, and I couldn’t warm up, even though I was wearing pajamas. Finally, I got out of bed, pulled on socks and a sweater from the suitcase I’d finally managed to unpack, crawled back under the covers and pulled them tight around me, and curled into a ball for warmth.