But the minute she tried to shift her legs, she knew she was not fine. The pain in her hip was white hot and excruciating. She felt a bulge where there shouldn’t have been one, right where the ball of her titanium hip joint was supposed to snap into the pelvis.

The blurry figure that descended over her had to be Brian. He barely touched her, and she screamed in pain. Then the world went mercifully black.

Chapter Thirty-seven

As Evie’s taxi drove up the East Side on the way to the hospital, meter ticking, Evie called Ginger to tell her that their mother was in intensive care; then she scrolled through her calendar of meetings for that day and the next and sent out regrets that she’d be unable to attend.

“Ma’am?” the taxi driver said. Evie looked up. The driver was looking back at her. The taxi had pulled up in front of the hospital. “That’s fifty-six dollars even.”

Moments later she was inside, following the signs to intensive care.

The glass double doors of the intensive care unit were locked. Hanging on the door was a clipboard with a sign-in sheet. Evie wrote her mother’s name and her own. Then she pressed the nearby buzzer. A nurse came to the door. She looked tired, her eyelids puffy and sagging.

“I’m Sandra Ferrante’s daughter,” Evie said.

The nurse led her to one of the beds in the back where Evie’s mother lay completely still. An IV tube was attached to her arm, and what looked like an oversize clothespin was clipped to her index finger.

Evie pulled up a chair to her mother’s bedside. “Mom?” she said. Her mother’s closed eyelids quivered. “Can she hear me?” Evie asked the nurse.

“Maybe. It’s always a good idea to assume they can.”

Evie looked at one of the monitors to which her mother was attached. There were numbers—85 and 72—on the readout. Evie had no idea if that was bad or good, but the steady iridescent-green wave pattern that laid itself out over and over again on the screen was reassuring.

“That’s showing us her oxygen levels and her heart rate,” the nurse said. “Right now she’s good. Much better than when they brought her in a few hours ago. An alarm will sound if—”

A high-pitched alarm sounded from a monitor several beds away. “That’s my cue,” the nurse said, hurrying off.

Evie turned back to her mother. “Mom? It’s me, Evie. I’m right here. And Ginger is on her way.” She touched her mother’s arm and gently brushed hair off her forehead. Her mother’s eyelids didn’t even flicker.

Evie had never been in an intensive care unit before. She glanced at the bed closest to her mother’s. A very old woman lay there, her cheeks and eyes sunken into her skull. She was hooked up to a ventilator that wheezed and hissed and thumped as she breathed in and out, along with an entire bank of additional monitors. No one was by her side except a nurse, bending over her and raising her eyelid.

Evie looked away, then around at the rest of the unit. Every other bed was occupied, every patient connected to devices in what felt like some kind of purgatory. How long did the hospital keep patients here before giving up? she wondered. How many of these people would bounce back?

Chapter Thirty-eight

“Easy does it,” a woman’s soothing voice said. As Mina was turned over and lifted onto a stretcher, she gasped for breath. The pain in her left side was excruciating. The world around her shorted out and went dark.

“I’m sorry. I know it hurts.” The same voice pulled her back. Mina blinked up at the figure who was blocking a pulsing light. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Mina managed to gasp out. She could feel the woman gently wiping grit from the side of her face.

“Good. Hang on now.” A sheet was tucked under her arms. “You’ve dislocated your left hip. We’re taking you to the hospital.”

Something was being wrapped around her upper arm. Tightening. A blood pressure cuff.

“You’re going to be fine.” The woman’s voice again as the cuff was removed.

They were moving now. Into an ambulance? A hand came down over her face. Mina fought it. Pushed it away.

“It’s oxygen. It will help you breathe.” That woman, this time with the pressure of a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Your blood pressure is dropping so we want to be sure you’re getting enough. Don’t worry, I’ve got your purse and your cane.”

Mina grabbed the woman’s arm. She tried to say, “My glasses.”

“Excuse me?”

Mina stared up into the face bending over her, just able to make out the features. She tried again. “Glasses. Please.” She could feel the woman’s long hair tickling her face. “I can’t see.”

“Hold on.” The woman raised her voice. “Hey, watch where you’re stepping. Anyone find this woman’s glasses?”

After a pause, Mina heard a man’s voice growl, “Yo. Got ’em.”

A few moments later, Mina’s glasses were slipped over her face, and she could see sky. There was a small break in the clouds and the fresh, unlined face of the young woman standing over her. Long dark bangs hung over her eyes. Mina resisted the urge to push the hair back. How could the girl see? Mina craned her neck to find the waiting ambulance. A police officer was standing by its open doors, talking to Brian.

Mina didn’t struggle this time when an oxygen mask was fastened over her face. The stretcher she was on started to roll. Every bump felt like an electrode jabbed into her hip.

Through a blur of pain, Mina could hear Brian’s voice. “Y-e-t . . .” He was spelling her name for the police officer. “Ninety.” She was ninety-one, but she didn’t have the strength to correct him.

The stretcher stopped at the back of the ambulance. The sky and parking lot disappeared as Mina was lifted inside. It was warm and dry and quiet, and she could just hear Brian’s voice. “No, I didn’t get the license plate, but I saw it peel out of here. I don’t think the guy even realized he’d hit her.”

The policeman’s response was barely a rumble.

Brian’s voice again: “I got a pretty good look. It was a dark red Dodge minivan.”

“But it wasn’t,” Mina said, the words caught in the oxygen mask. It had been a truck, a black pickup truck that was parked next to the red van.

The EMT was crouched beside Mina. She put her hand on Mina’s arm. “Shhh. Just try to relax. We’ll be at the hospital in a few minutes, and soon you’ll be right as rain.”

The ambulance doors slammed shut, and a moment later, the siren started to wail, and they were in motion.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Evie sat back and closed her eyes. The smell in the ICU was pure hospital, but with all the clanking and hissing and beeping, and beneath that the rush and squeak of rubber-soled shoes, Evie could easily imagine she was in the belly of some huge machine. She’d been there for less than an hour when Ginger arrived.

“I got here as fast as I could,” Ginger said. She was wearing a stretched-out T-shirt and yoga pants, and her hair was damp, like she’d come over right after taking a shower.

“She’s been unconscious since I got here,” Evie said. The numbers on the monitors were still frozen at 85 and 72.

Ginger bent over and kissed their mother on the forehead once, twice, three times. As she did so, one of the numbers changed. 74. 75. 76.

“Look at that!” Evie pointed to the readout. “I think that’s her heart rate. It jumped when you kissed her.” As she and Ginger watched, it dropped back to 74.

“She knows we’re here,” Ginger said, pulling over another chair. “Mom?” she said, taking their mother’s hand, her eyes glued to the numbers. “It’s Ginger and Evie. Can you hear me?”

But nothing happened. Evie sat there with Ginger, taking turns talking to their mother and trying to make the number spike again. Minute after minute dragged by, but Sandra Ferrante just lay there, her eyes half closed, unmoving.