It turned out that Rusty only needed five stitches. The doctor pulled the rest of the hamburger together with butterfly bandages. She did have to get a tetanus shot, which Rusty said hurt more than the initial scrape and the brown bottle solution combined.
“She can’t get her arm wet for a week,” the doctor said. That meant Rusty wouldn’t be going on the river-rafting photo shoot.
“Can’t we postpone it?” I used my best whiny voice during a private meeting that night after Rusty had gone to bed, but it did no good.
“Sorry, Honey,” Dad said. “Matt only has two weeks off, so we need to get the practice runs in, and then the shoot needs to happen right after that. We also need to leave some time in case the weather doesn’t cooperate.”
“Actually, we all have jobs we need to get back to,” Mom said.
“Maybe we should hire you on at Swiftriver so you could be our personal bodyguard,” Flip said.
“I’ll take that job,” Matt said, and he smiled at Fawn.
Fawn didn’t look like she would mind that one bit.
“My hope,” Mom said, “is that you won’t need a bodyguard. Our investigation hasn’t turned up anything.”
That’s what I wanted to hear. If we didn’t have any bad guys to hide out from, our lives could get back to normal again. Of course, I still had this shoe contract to do, and that had jolted me out of anything normal.
Mom continued. “Rusty’s dad did say that she could stay here for an extra week, as long as her arm is healing properly. Since he has to work every day, he would rather have her here with us instead of at home with nothing to do.”
I almost forgot that Rusty lives with her dad in an old apartment building in a rough part of town. That was her “normal.” I never really thought about what she did when he was at work. My parents are able to adjust their work schedules so one of them is always home with me and my brother. It’s not like I need someone to watch me every second, but I’m not sure about Brady. He’s always going to science camp where he learns how to do these risky experiments, but then he wants to try them at home. He’s smart, but kinda clumsy, so I’m pretty sure he could blow the house up if he wasn’t supervised.
“Rusty ripped her arm up pretty good,” Matt said. “Anyone hear how Sunday’s doing?”
“Well,” Dad said, “I didn’t say this when Brady was around, but they are a little concerned about his red blood count. It’s dropped a little too much —”
Flip kicked a chair with his good foot. “That poor kid! He’s already had one bone marrow transplant, and I don’t know what they’re going to do if he ends up needing another one.”
“Then, let’s pray that he won’t,” Matt said. Then he grabbed Fawn’s hand and held it. She looked up at him with adoring eyes, and he looked back and grinned. When Matt also grabbed Flip’s hand, we finally figured out that Matt wanted to pray right now, so we all joined hands.
“Dear God, we ask that you would please heal Sunday. He and his family have been through a lot of difficulties, and we would love to see the leukemia gone and his family able to return home and be normal again. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
“Normal” was starting to confuse me. For Sunday, getting back to normal would be good. For Rusty, not so good. For me . . . well, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t have to worry too much about that, because it was never going to happen.