They were kind and soft-spoken as one of them helped me to my feet while the other began to administer to Ruth. I begged them to help her, trying to elicit promises that she was going to be all right. They put her on oxygen and loaded her onto the stretcher, allowing me to sit in the ambulance as Ruth was rushed to the hospital.
When the doctor came out to speak with me in the waiting room, he was gentle. He held my arm as we walked down the corridor. The tiles were gray and the fluorescent lights made my eyes hurt. I asked if my wife was all right; I asked when I would be allowed to see her. But he didn’t answer. Instead, he led me to an empty patient room and closed the door behind him. His expression was serious, and when he cast his eyes toward the floor, I knew exactly what he was going to say.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Levinson, but there was nothing we could do…”
At these words, I gripped a nearby bed rail to keep from falling. The room seemed to close in as the doctor went on, my vision telescoping until I could see nothing but his face. His words sounded tinny and made no sense, but it did not matter. His expression was plain – I’d been too late. Ruth, my sweet Ruth, had died on the floor while I dozed in the other room.
I do not remember leaving the hospital, and the next few days are hazy. My attorney, Howie Sanders, a dear friend to both Ruth and me, helped with the funeral arrangements, a small, private service. Afterward, the candles were lit, cushions were spread through the house, and I sat shiva for a week. People came and went, people we had known over the years. Neighbors, including the man who’d cut down the maple tree. Customers from the shop. Three gallery owners from New York. Half a dozen artists. Women from the synagogue came every day to cook and clean. And on each of those days, I found myself wishing that I would wake from the nightmare that my life had just become.
But gradually the people drifted away, until no one was left at all. There was no one to call, no one to talk to, and the house descended into silence. I did not know how to live that kind of life, and time became merciless. Days crept by slowly. I could not concentrate. I would read the newspaper and remember nothing at all. I would sit for hours before realizing that I’d left the radio on in the background. Even the birds did nothing to cheer me; I would stare at them and think to myself that Ruth should have been sitting beside me, our hands brushing as we reached into the bag for birdseed.
Nothing made any sense, nor did I want to make sense of it. My days were spent in the quiet agony of heartbreak. Evenings were no better. Late at night, as I lay in the half-empty bed unable to sleep, I would feel the dampness trickling off my cheeks. I’d wipe my eyes and be struck anew by the finality of Ruth’s absence.
21
Luke
I
t all went back to the ride on Big Ugly Critter.
The one he’d had nightmares about, the one that had kept him away from the arena for eighteen months. He’d told Sophia about the ride and a bit about the injuries he’d suffered.
But he hadn’t told her everything. As he stood in the barn after his mother had left, Luke leaned against the mechanical bull, reliving the past he’d tried hard to forget.
It was eight days before he’d even known what had happened. Although he knew he had been hurt and, after some prompting, could vaguely remember the ride, he’d had no idea how close he’d come to dying. He’d had no idea that in addition to fracturing his skull, the bull had cracked his C1 vertebra and that his brain had swelled with blood.
He hadn’t told Sophia that they didn’t reset the bones in his face for almost a month, for fear of causing additional trauma. Nor had he mentioned that the doctors had returned to his bedside to tell him that he’d never completely recover from the head injury – and that in a section of his skull, there was now a small titanium plate. The doctors told him that another similar impact to his head, with or without a helmet, would most likely be enough to kill him. The plate they had grafted onto his shattered skull was too close to the brain stem to adequately protect him.
After that first meeting with the doctors, he’d had fewer questions than anyone anticipated. He’d decided right then to give up bull riding, and he’d told everyone as much. He knew he’d miss the rodeo and that he’d probably wonder forever what it would have felt like to win the championship. But he’d never entertained a death wish, and at the time, he’d thought he still had plenty of money in the bank.
And he had, but it wasn’t enough. His mom had offered up the ranch as collateral for the loan she’d taken out to cover his monstrous medical bills. Though she’d told him repeatedly that she didn’t care about the fate of the ranch, he knew that deep down, she did. The ranch was her life, it was all she knew, and everything she’d done since the accident had confirmed her feelings. In the past year, she’d worked herself to the point of exhaustion in an attempt to forestall the inevitable. She could say whatever she wanted, but he knew the truth…