Part Eight: The Hospital
The surgery consultation happened the following morning.
It confirmed what the paramedic had described. The rotator cuff had been partially torn at the point where a specific force had been applied at an angle the joint was not designed to absorb. The orthopedic surgeon was thorough and direct and said the words that needed to be said: this was not the result of a pre-existing weakness or a movement my mother had made. It was the result of force applied to a joint from outside.
My mother listened to all of this with the attention she had always given to information that she intended to use.
I sat beside her in the consultation room and I did not say much because there was not much that needed saying yet — the time for the things that needed saying would come, but it was not in the surgical consultation room while the orthopedic surgeon was explaining the repair options.
After the surgeon left, my mother sat for a moment looking at her arm in the sling.
“Forty-one years,” she said, to herself as much as to me.
“What?”
“Forty-one years of walking into rooms where someone expected me to be less than I was,” she said. “Courtrooms, depositions, negotiating tables. Forty-one years.” She looked at the sling. “I have never had someone put their hands on me.”
The sentence was not theatrical. She said it with the specific, careful quality of someone recording a fact.
“We’re going to deal with it,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “We are.” She looked at me. “How is the airline?”
“I grounded the aircraft,” I said. “The flight was delayed approximately four hours. They put passengers on alternatives.”
“And Kelsey Raines?”
“Removed from duty pending investigation,” I said. “The chief flight attendant did it on the spot.”
My mother nodded.
“The footage,” she said.
“It’s online,” I said. “Has been since this morning.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“What are they saying?” she said. “The airline.”
“They called me last night,” I said. “An executive. He apologized. Then he offered money. Then he offered more money.”
My mother looked at me with the expression she had used, I was sure, in many negotiations across forty-one years — the expression of someone who has heard an offer and has already determined that the offer is not the conversation they intend to have.
“What did you tell him?” she said.
“I told him I’d be in touch when I was ready.”
She almost smiled.
“Good,” she said.
