Page 219 of Falling Backwards
Gently, I turn her towards me but keep scanning the ground for any culprits.All I see is a bit of loose gravel littering the asphalt.Pretty close to us, there’s a pothole-type thing and more gravel is surrounding it, so maybe some spread over to this spot from there?
I tell her, “The best I can guess is that you slipped on this gravel.Must’ve just hit it at a bad angle when we were walking.”
“Okay.”I think I hear the threat of tears in her voice.“My knee feels like I really scraped it.It really hurts and stings and….Oh no, my leggings!”
Indeed, I was just noticing how that one knee of her leggings is now boasting some damage.The fabric isn’t completely ripped open, but it’s torn up enough for me to worry about how the flesh underneath looks, especially since Maggie is in pain and not mere discomfort.
Half of my brain plans while the other registers her pinched expression and the little sounds she makes as she tries to adjust her footing.A decision quickly comes to me.
“Okay.”I start picking dumbbells up.“I’m gonna put all these back in my car and figure out what to do with them later.Then we’ll get you upstairs and look at your knee.”
She groans.“There’s no way it’s not bleeding.You know when you get hurt and you don’t have to look at the place to know it’s gross?”
I shudder and hiss my understanding.“Ew, yeah.But maybe it’s nottoogross?Maybe it feels worse than it looks?”
When I glance at her, she’s nodding with hope touching her features.“Yeah.Maybe.”
I hang on to that hope with her while I get our many dumbbells put away and help her hobble along.Her ankle is okay, she says, but putting weight on that leg is not.We talk about how grateful we are that she at least didn’t hit her head or drop any of the dumbbells on herself—even in her pained state, she’s able to sigh in relief that she doesn’t have to contend with broken toes or anything on top of however badly she might’ve scraped her knee.
Once we’re in the building and away from all gravel, I’m done making her walk, so I scoop her up into my arms bridal-style.She gasps in more protest than pain and says she’s too heavy for me to carry around, but I assure her she’s not.And I mean it.She’s heavy in that she’s a grown-ass person and I’m unaccustomed to hauling those around, not in that she weighs more than she should.It chills her out a bit when I put her back down for the duration of our elevator ride, but she gets right back to worrying when I pick her up again as the doors open on her floor.
“Magnolia, quit,” I say.I start my steady pace down the hallway.“Do I look like I can’t handle carrying you?”
“Well, no, but what if you’re pretending?”
I’m laughing before I can stop myself.
She insists, “I mean it,” and the threat of tears is definitely in her voice now.The pain of her injury is weakening any guard against self-consciousness that she has.
Still, I can’t help continuing to smile.“You’re okay,” I promise her.“If you were too heavy for me to walk with, there wouldn’t be a waytopretend otherwise.Remember earlier when you picked up that fifteen-pound dumbbell and you couldn’t hide that you instantly had trouble with it?There’s no faking how much weight a person can handle.If doing this was a huge strain on me, it would be obvious.”
That reduces her to a quiet sniffle and a mumble I can’t discern.Then, as I’m setting her down outside her door, she says where I can hear, “Okay.Thank you for carrying me.It really helped.”
One of my hands squeezes her waist.“No problem at all.”
She gives me a slanted-lips look of doubt and sweetness together.
I nod at the door.“Come on, you.You’ve got a knee that needs at least a little bit of tending to.”
At that, her expression shifts into nervousness, and she starts digging into her purse for her key.
And it soon turns out she was right to be nervous—and right about having scraped her knee badly, and about it bleeding, and about it being gross.While she limps away from her bedroom towards where Emma and I are waiting near the bathroom, I look at the ugly wound on her knee, which is now in full, bloody view since she changed out of her leggings and into shorts.
“It’s bad,” she wobbles out unnecessarily, her eyes widening beneath a frown.
I wince as I go to her, offering my arm for the rest of her trip to the bathtub.“Aw, God, Maggie.Holy hell, I know that hurts.Come sit on the edge of the tub so we can get a good look at it.”
Emma groans from where I left her.“Oh no.Sister, I hate to say it ’cause I wanna help, but the blood—I don’t do so well with—”
Maggie nods.“Oh, Em, of course.It’s okay.Do you think you can just see if we have any big bandages?”
Her friend jumps to checking that; I think I hear her exhaling heavily as she goes, perhaps to fend off nausea.
I’m glad I don’t have a problem with blood.I both need and want to help Maggie clean the wound.This is a lot worse than when she saw to my tiny scrapes after I fell in that very parking lot, and I’m not going to leave her to suffer through it by herself.
Once she’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, I kneel and peer at her knee.I still don’t feel ill as I inspect the torn-up flesh through the blood, but I do once again shudder and wince.
“The good news?”I say.“This isn’t enormous.The bad news?It’s still close to two inches long down your knee, if I had to guess, and it looks fairly deep for a scrape and like you might’ve taken a couple tiny chunks out.Hope you didn’t have plans to dance around to random songs anytime soon, ’cause that ain’t gonna happen.”
