Part 5
Haugen came within ten minutes. She watched Wes without touching him for a long time, then lifted each arm in turn and let it fall, pressed her thumb into each palm, and stroked the side of each foot with the end of a pen. Caleb watched the left foot fan and curl a half-second after the right.
“There’s a difference,” Haugen said. “It’s real, and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t. It could be from the IV that was in his left arm for two days. It could be swelling that settles. It could be an injury in the part of the brain that controls movement on that side. The MRI will tell us more. I’ll get it moved up to tomorrow morning.”
“And if it’s an injury?” Jenna asked.
“Then we’ll know where it is and how big, and we’ll start working on it early. That matters. I’ll tell you more when I can see it.”
Bev left without saying goodbye. Caleb found her thermos still on the waiting room chair an hour later and set it on the nurses’ station with a note.
At eight he drove to Ray’s place out on Rice Lake Road. The freezing rain had started, fine as mist, and the birches along the ditches already wore thin sleeves of glass. Marlys answered the door in an apron and pointed down the hall without a word.
Banjo was lying in front of the Kettunens’ back door with his nose pressed to the gap at the bottom. He lifted his head when Caleb came in, looked past him at the empty doorway, and laid it down again.
“He ate fine Wednesday and Thursday,” Marlys said. “Today it’s two bites of egg and part of a slipper.”
Ray was at the kitchen table sharpening his climbing gaffs with a file, as he had before every storm for thirty-six years. His harness hung on the back of a chair. “You look like a guy who hasn’t slept since Monday.”
“I slept.”
“In a chair.” Ray drew the file down the steel in one long stroke. “I’m going to say something and then you can go back to being stubborn. After your girl, you took every call. Every one. I let you. I thought it was helping. Marlys told me it wasn’t, and I told her to mind her business.” He blew the filings off the blade. “She was right. You’re off my roster tonight.”
Caleb crouched beside Banjo and put a hand on his back. The dog turned and tucked his nose into Caleb’s sleeve and kept it there.
“I’m on,” Caleb said. “That’s my crew.”
Ray looked at him for a long time. Then he slid the gaffs across the table, handles first. “Check my edge.”
They had done it for each other before every storm since Caleb was an apprentice, each running a thumbnail along the other man’s points and saying whether they’d hold. Caleb picked them up. He tested each point against his nail, turned them to the kitchen light, and set them down.
“They’ll hold.”
“Good,” Ray said. “Your call, foreman.”
Banjo didn’t want him to leave. When Caleb stood, the dog got up too and went to the coat rack and pulled down the work glove Ray had carried in from Caleb’s truck along with the dog, and took it back to the door, and lay down on top of it.
By ten Caleb was back in the NICU with ice crusted on his shoulders. The freezing rain had thickened into the real thing, and through the window he could see it falling at a slant under the parking lot lights. Jenna was in the recliner beside the isolette with a blanket over her legs and the yellow hat folded on the armrest. Wes was asleep. The nurse had dimmed the lights over their corner.
His phone buzzed at 10:41.
“Feeder Fourteen’s down,” Gary said, no hello. “Whole east hillside’s dark, two thousand customers out, and the ice is still coming. I need my foreman. How soon can you be at the yard?”
Caleb looked at the isolette. He looked at Jenna, who was not asleep. Her eyes were open, and she’d heard every word, because Gary had never learned to hold a phone away from his mouth.
She sat up slowly. – “Go,” she said. “I mean it, Cal. I’m not going to ask you twice…”
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