I had her convinced that I was fine right up to the point where she asked me to put my hand on her head. "Which one?" I asked.
There is quite nothing like walking into a door. I have had my share of fists connecting with my face in those fifteen years you keep hearing me repeat so that I can impress you that I am a tough guy, but coming up against a wooden door reminded me what it felt like to get knocked out. I must have been out for a couple of minutes, give or take a couple, I suppose. Consciousness returned defying the laws of physics - sound preceding light. I heard my daughter calling out my name, asking me if I was alright, and I was telling her that I was perfectly fine when I remembered that I had to open my eyes.
It was only then that I discovered that we had two roofs, two doors - didn't I just bump into one, I asked myself - and two Nikkis. Ergo, my statement. Ergo, Nikki's insistence that we go see a doctor whether I might have a concussion. Ergo, me riding shotgun with ice pressed to my forehead as she deftly maneuvered my car through the traffic towards the hospital.
It was only when she stopped that I realized that we had come to the Memorial, and not the Community Hospital, which was where Rachel worked as a nurse. The Memorial was approximately the same distance from our home, but exactly on the other side of the circumference. I asked her why we had not gone to her mother's hospital.
"'Cos she is there," Nikki replied curtly as she pulled up in front of the trauma centre. An orderly rushed out with a wheel chair and seemed disappointed when I said I could walk. Nikki gunned the car as if she were in a race and headed towards the parking lot. She was by my side a minute later, giving us a precious few seconds just before the doctor showed up. She pulled my hand away from the bump on my forehead, wincing at the color. "How do you feel, handsome?" she asked me tenderly.
I reached out with my free hand and encircled her waist. "You take good care of me, kid." She smiled just as the doctor, a young, competent-looking, no-nonsense chap, announced his presence by gripping my wrist. The next few minutes went by in a blur as he went through the diagnostics I was already familiar with - pulse, pupils, heartbeat, breathing, response and balance. He spoke only after he had administered the morphine shot. "There's nothing a good nap shouldn't take care of," he said as he scribbled a note to my daughter. "It was your head that took the impact, but you certainly have a hard head, Mr. Kane."
"Yes, he does," my daughter agreed before I could say anything. "I think he cracked the door." The doctor smiled at her joke. Since I have a good sense of humor, I did not grudge the fact that the joke was actually on me - but what surprised me was the sudden irritation that my daughter should flirt with another man. For some reason, I knew immediately then that it was not the kind of feeling I would have as a father but rather as someone more... intimate. Was I actually getting jealous? Nah, I told myself, it was just her way of releasing stress. It meant nothing.
We were advised to remain at the hospital, however, for another hour, "just to be sure." I did not want to stay there any longer, but the doctor persisted and Nikki prevailed. The only compromise that I was able to wring from them was that I would not occupy any room other than the Visitors' Lounge. After I seated myself in the middle of one of the couches - Nikki was afraid I would fall off - I sent her off to fetch us something to drink. I had just picked up a Readers' Digest from the table in front and was about to read an article on household safety when I heard her say, "Oh, God, are you all right?"
Rachel had her hand on my head before I could actually register the fact that my wife was here. Her hand brushed against the welt on my forehead, which caused me to wince sharply. "Sorry," she said, taking her hand away as if my face was on fire. "Sorry, didn't mean to hurt you."
"Forget it," I told her, wanting her to put her hand on me again. That touch felt so good, so natural, but there was a part of me that was still instinctively angry with her, even though her allegations were not on my immediate recall. "How come you got here so quickly?"
"I was on the way when Nikki called," she said, setting her purse down on the table and reaching once again, hesitantly this time, for my face. "I asked the cabbie to turn around and floor it. What happened?"
"You slammed the door in his face," Nikki answered for me. Her hands were empty, which told me that she had seen her mother arrive before she had gone too far down the corridor. She stepped protectively between us and dropped down on the couch right beside me, one arm around my shoulder, the other on her thigh. "You did this to him."
Rachel just stood there and absorbed the accusation. She did nothing to stop our daughter. Her hand, which had been reaching out to me, dropped limply at her side as she said, once again and in a lower voice, "I'm sorry."
"Why are you here anyway?" Nikki asked. "Want to see the damage you've done?"
I laid a warning hand on her, whispering, "Nikki, cool it," but she did not heed me. "What's your problem anyway, you bitch?" The invective was hurled with almost frightening intensity, so loud that a couple of visitors who had been trying to ignore us reflexively looked at us. I have this mental image, a snapshot of the scene - me, with a book on my lap, sitting beside Nikki, her face raging, her wrist white and quivering, glaring at her mother who stood wordlessly, hands at her sides, eyes cast downward, accepting of all that her daughter had thrown at her.
"You called me," she said after a while. I wanted to reach out for her but found myself unwilling to do so. For some reason, I believed Nikki would see it as a betrayal - and of the two women in my life, I seemed to have made my choice clear. Rachel seemed to know it already. Nikki dug her fingers into my shoulder, as if acknowledging it. Rachel continued to speak, directing her words at our daughter. "You were the one who sent me a message saying that he had had an accident and was being admitted here."
"So what?" Nikki asked, still as belligerent as ever. "Why do you care?"
"I thought it was because of me."
