Doctor Sleep

robe and headed for the kitchen, where she intended to make her morning coffee.This was a trip she had made thousands of times before, and she had no reason to believe this one would be any different. Certainly it never crossed her mind to think it would prove to be the first link in a chain of malignant events. She didn’t stumble, she would tell her granddaughter, Lucy, later that day, nor did she bump into anything. She just heard an unimportant snapping sound from abouthalfway down her body on the right-hand side and then she was on the floor with warm agony rushing up and down her leg.
    She lay there for three minutes or so, staring at her faint reflection in the polished hardwood floor, willing the pain to subside. At the same time she talked to herself. Stupid old woman, not to have a companion. David’s been telling you for the last five years that you’re too old to live alone and now he’ll never let you hear the end of it.
    But a live-in companion would have needed the room she’d set aside for Lucy and Abra, and Chetta lived for their visits. More than ever, now that Betty was gone and all the poetry seemed to be written out of her. And ninety-seven or not, she’d been gettingaround well and feeling fine. Good genes on the female side. Hadn’ther own momo buried four husbands and seven children and lived to be a hundred and two?
    Although, truth be told (if only to herself  ), she hadn’t felt quite so fine this summer. This summer things had been . . . difficult.
    When the pain finally did abate—a bit—she began crawling down the short hall toward the kitchen, which was now filling up with dawn. She found it was harder to appreciatethat lovely rose light from floor level. Each time the pain became too great, she stopped with her head laid on one bony arm, panting. During these rest stops she reflected on the seven ages of man, and how they described a perfect (and perfectly stupid) circle. This had been her mode of locomotion long ago, during the fourth year of World War I, also known as—how funny—the War to End All Wars. Thenshe had been Concetta Abruzzi, crawling across the dooryard of her parents’ farm in Davoli, intent on capturing chickens that easily outpaced her. From those dusty beginnings she had gone on to lead a fruitful and interesting life. She had published twenty books of poetry, taken tea with Graham Greene, dined with two presidents, and—best of all—had been gifted with a lovely, brilliant, and strangelytalented great-granddaughter. And what did all those wonderful things lead to?
    More crawling, that was what. Back to the beginning. Dio mi benedica .
    She reached the kitchen and eeled her way through an oblong of sun to the little table where she took most of her meals. Her cell phone was on it. Chetta grabbed one leg of the table and shook it until her phone slid to the edge and dropped off.And, meno male, landed unbroken. She punched in the number they told you to call when shit like this happened, then waited while a recorded voice summed up all the absurdity of the twenty-first century by telling her that her call was being recorded.
    And finally, praise Mary, an actual human voice.
    “This is 911, what is your emergency?”
    The woman on the floor who had once crawled after thechickensin southern Italy spoke clearly and coherently in spite of the pain. “My name is Concetta Reynolds, and I live on the third floor of a condominium at Two nineteen Marlborough Street. I seem to have broken my hip. Can you send an ambulance?”
    “Is there anyone with you, Mrs. Reynolds?”
    “For my sins, no. You’re speaking to a stupid old lady who insisted she was fine to live alone. And bythe way, these days I prefer Ms .”
    2
    Lucy got the call from her grandmother shortly before Concetta was wheeled into surgery. “I’ve broken my hip, but they can fix it,” she told Lucy. “I believe they put in pins and such.”
    “Momo, did you fall?” Lucy’s first thought was for Abra, who was away at summer camp for another week.
    “Oh yes, but the break that caused the fall was completely spontaneous.Apparently this is quite common in people my age, and since there are ever so many more people my age than there used to be, the doctors see a lot of it. There’s no need for you to come immediately, but I think you’ll want to come quite soon. It seems that we’ll need to have a talk about various arrangements.”
    Lucy felt a coldness in the pit of her stomach.