Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Twelve

JOSIE – SIX YEARS OLD

The hospital was big and bright, with endless tiled hallways and ugly blue curtains for walls. Behind every curtain Josie could hear hushed voices and sometimes cries of pain. Nurses dressed in periwinkle scrubs rushed up and down the halls and in and out of the curtains. After a long, agonizing wait while her whole head throbbed, one of them stopped by her cubicle, snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and prepared a smelly, folded piece of gauze to clean the wound on the side of Josie’s face.

“This is gonna sting, hon,” the nurse told Josie. She beckoned for another nurse to hold Josie to the bed before pressing the wet pad against her jawline.

It felt like her skin was ripping open and they were setting it on fire. The more she squirmed against their big hands, the harder they pressed her against the plastic mattress. The nurse holding her head loosened her grip for a moment to check the wound, and Josie looked down at her blood-soaked nightgown. Her heart did cartwheels in her chest. Had she died?

No, she thought. She hadn’t died.

She hadn’t died because Needle had shown up just at the moment her mother’s knife had sliced down the side of her face. Needle wasn’t his real name. Josie didn’t know what he was really called, only that he came to the trailer when her daddy was at work, and he always brought sharp, dangerous needles. He wasn’t a nice man, but when he’d walked in that night, he had looked scared, and that terrified Josie more than her mother’s white fury, and more than any blade.

It was Needle who’d prized the knife away from Josie’s mother. It was Needle who’d insisted that Josie needed to go to the hospital, scooping her off the floor and carrying her to the car. Josie couldn’t remember if he had come with them, but she definitely hadn’t seen him at the hospital. Needle was gone.

She couldn’t be dead if Needle had made her mother stop. But the blood. There was so much blood. She struggled against the nurses, fighting for her life.

“Josie, honey, you have to hold still.” Her mother’s voice came from somewhere beside her.

“I’m sorry, hon. I know it hurts. We’re almost done,” said one of the nurses.

She wanted her daddy.

Finally, they stopped. Her breath came in heavy gasps. Gently, one of the nurses turned her onto her back. “I’m real sorry, hon,” the nurse said, a pained smile directed down at Josie. The big light behind the nurse’s head burned Josie’s eyes.

The other nurse turned to her mother. “She’s gonna need stitches. You wanna tell us what happened?”