Page 38 of The Launch

The smile vanishes from Dr. Chavez’s face and he turns and walks towards triage without another word.

Jo watches him go, his white coat flapping behind him and his shoes squeaking importantly down the length of the hall.

SIXTEEN

jo

Jo goesabout her afternoon as usual, but the thought of a young woman with a head injury lingers in the back of her mind. She’s about to put her cart away in the closet where she stores it when she sees a familiar figure standing at the nurse’s station with Dr. Chavez: it’s Vance Majors, Jude’s husband.

Jo takes her time putting her cart back and gathering her purse and lightweight cardigan, then closes the door behind her and waits unobtrusively for Dr. Chavez to walk away.

“Vance,” she says, approaching him carefully. “Is everything okay?”

Vance turns to her with surprise. His eyes are tired. “Oh, Jo. Hi.” He runs a hand through his hair and exhales. “Things are not really okay.” He looks like he might cry. “Jude slipped today and hit her head.”

Jo inhales sharply; she never imagined for one second that the young woman with the head injury could be a friend of hers. “Oh, Vance. Oh, I’m so sorry. How is she?”

Vance’s eyes follow Dr. Chavez as he sets a clipboard down on a desk and walks into another patient’s room. “I’m not sure, to be honest. They think she fell into the water and was there for a minute or two before our neighbor could get over thereand pull her out. She’s had a pretty good knock to the head, and being in the water for a minute or two wasn’t good. She hasn’t woken up yet, but her heart and brain activity are normal so far. They think there might be some swelling to her brain…we just don’t know.”

“Oh my god, the children,” Jo says on a sharp inhale, putting one hand to her chest. Where are Hope and Faith?”

Vance’s eyes look incredibly tired. “The neighbor girl is watching them. Our parents and siblings are all in New York and Texas—like you, we don’t have anyone here.”

Jo makes a snap decision. “I’m done with my shift now. I’ll stop and get the girls, and they can come to my house. I’ll watch them until you know more, or until you can come get them. They can sleep over if they need to.”

“Jo, that’s really kind of you…I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking.” Jo puts a hand on his arm.

“But Bill is sick—won’t he mind?”

Jo is momentarily puzzled. She’s about to say that Bill isn’t sick when she remembers that he’d told her Arvin North had approved his absence for a few days with the excuse that a doctor has told him to take the time off.

“Right, right,” Jo says, thinking on her feet. “No, he won’t mind. He’s shut himself away, and I’ll keep the kids busy. I’ll go get the girls right now if you want.”

Vance appears to relent. “Okay, if you think it’ll work for your family. That would be so helpful. It would take one thing off my plate.”

“Absolutely,” Jo pats his arm. “I was going to do something easy for the kids tonight for dinner, so I’ll just make a few more fish sticks and then let them swim. Don’t you worry about a thing, and call me if you need anything.”

With that decided, Jo drives over to Vance and Jude’s and collects Hope and Faith, along with enough provisions that they can swim and even sleep over at the Bookers’ house, if necessary.

The evening is almost made easier for Jo with the addition of two more children; the change in dynamic makes her three behave differently—better—and Nancy takes on the informal role of babysitter to her younger sister and to Hope and Faith. For his part, Jimmy largely ignores them all. As the kids are playing, Jo cleans up the dinner dishes and calls Frankie.

“No!” Frankie shouts immediately. “Jude fell into the pool? Oh my god!”

Jo recounts the entire story to her, ending with the fact that Hope and Faith are currently at her house, and that she hasn’t heard any updates from Vance as of yet.

“I wonder what happened. Have the girls said anything?”

Jo looks out the window to the spot in the thick-bladed grass beneath a tree where all four girls are tossing a ball back and forth, giggling each time one of them misses it. Jimmy is laying under a different tree with a comic book, ignoring them all.

“No, they seem kind of unaware, to be honest,” Jo says as she watches them. “I went to pick them up, and the teenager from next door was watching them. They haven’t said anything at all about their mother.”

“So then maybe they weren’t there when it happened?”

“That’s a possibility. But where would they have been? And, Frankie,” Jo says, interrupting her own train of thought, “how lucky is Jude that a neighbor happened to be close enough to rush over and save her?”

Frankie flicks her lighter on the other end of the phone line and Jo can hear her take the first inhale of a fresh cigarette. “Indeed.” She’s quiet for a moment. “It’s all very mysterious, but of course, terribly tragic.”

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