The Call and the Return
The pay phone was more difficult to use than Ivy expected. Her fingers kept slipping on the receiver. She misdialed twice. By the time the call finally connected, she was close to tears from panic.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
The words tumbled out of her in a rush.
“There’s been a motorcycle crash on Copper Hill Road by the old station, and a man is really hurt and bleeding and you have to come now.”
The operator tried to steady her, asking her name, her age, whether she was safe.
Ivy looked back toward the ditch where Grim lay hidden beyond the bend.
“I have to go back to him,” she said.
“Stay on the line with me, sweetheart.”
But Ivy had already ended the call.
When she ran back, he was still conscious, though barely.
She dropped to her knees and pressed the ruined jacket down again.
“I called. They’re coming. I came back.”
He looked at her through unfocused eyes.
“You came back,” he repeated, as if that surprised him more than the pain.
“I said I would.”
He swallowed with difficulty.
“You don’t know who I am.”
Ivy glanced at the patches on his vest, then back at his face.
“I know enough.”
“That should make you leave.”
Instead she said, “Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Anything. So you stay awake.”
He stared up at the sky.
Then, very quietly, he said, “I have a daughter.”
Ivy blinked.
“Do you see her?”
The silence that followed lasted too long.
“Not the way I should.”
“Why not?”
His expression shifted, not into anger, but regret.
“Because I kept choosing the wrong things and telling myself I still had time.”
Ivy pressed the jacket down harder as the bleeding worsened again.
“That was a bad choice.”
A weak breath of humor escaped him.
“Yeah. It was.”
“Then say sorry.”
“Life’s not that simple.”
“Maybe not,” Ivy said, “but not saying it makes it worse.”
His eyes met hers then, and for the first time she saw something in him that didn’t belong to the patches, the rumors, or the fear tied to men like him.
Sadness.
Heavy, old, and real.
