Chapter 6 - The Weight of the Stone
The rehabilitation unit at Greenwich Hospital smelled of rubber mats, sweat, and the sharp scent of wintergreen ointment. For three hours every morning, a physical therapist named Marcus—not Tyler’s friend, but a broad-shouldered man with a Jamaican accent and an unyielding disposition—would slide my lifeless legs into heavy leather braces and lift me until I was upright between the iron bars.
“Hold the bar, Bridget,” Marcus would say, his hands steady on my hips. “Don't look at the floor. The floor is old news. Look at the mirror.”
In the mirror, I looked like a broken doll held together by screws and straps. My legs looked long, thin, and completely disconnected from the brain that had spent twenty-six years guiding them through the world.
“I can’t do it today, Marcus,” I whispered, my forehead pressed against the cool steel of the bar, tears of pure exhaustion dripping onto my knuckles. “There’s no signal. It’s like trying to call someone on a phone with no battery.”
“The battery is there, child,” Marcus said softly, his voice a steady, rhythmic warmth behind my shoulder. “The wires are just cold. You have to shout down those nerves until they remember how to answer you.”
One afternoon, my mother walked into the rehab unit. She didn't bring flowers or a card. She wore a Chanel suit and a large pair of sunglasses, her heels clicking loudly against the green linoleum floor. She stopped at the edge of the mat, looking at my leather braces with an expression of deep, aristocratic distaste.
“Bridget,” she said, her voice dropping into that low, dramatic whisper she used when she wanted to discuss a family scandal without the servants hearing. “Tyler’s arraignment is on Thursday. The state's attorney is refusing to offer a plea deal because of that... that paramedic woman’s report. They’re talking about three to five years at York Correctional.”
I didn't stop my exercises. I pulled my weight up onto the bars, my shoulder muscles burning with a new, raw strength I hadn't known I possessed. “Then Tyler should start practicing how to fold his linen napkins in a cell, Mother.”
“How can you be so heartless?” she gasped, taking off her sunglasses to reveal eyes that were red and sunken from lack of sleep. “He’s your brother, Bridget! He made a mistake! He was drunk, and he was hurt that Rose had betrayed him! If he goes to prison, his son Mason will grow up without a father! The family name will be dragged through every tabloid in New England!”
I let my body drop back into the wheelchair with a heavy thud. I looked up at her, my face entirely cold. “Where were you when I was lying on the river rocks, Diane?”
She blinked, stepping back. “I... I was trying to manage the guests—”
“You told me to stop making a scene,” I said, the words coming out of my mouth like chips of ice. “My spine was broken in three places, my legs were dying, and your primary concern was that the neighbors might see an ambulance in your driveway. You didn't check my pulse. You didn't hold my hand. You helped Tyler clear the glass so the police wouldn't see where his hands had pushed me.”
“We were trying to protect the family!” she cried.
“Tyler is not the family,” I said, leaning forward, my fingers gripping the wheels of my chair until they turned white. “I am the family now. I run the company. I pay the taxes on your house in Greenwich. And if you come into this hospital again to ask me to lie for the man who tried to kill me, I will have the independent trustee evict you and Harold from that limestone house by the end of the month.”
My mother stared at me as if she were looking at a stranger. For twenty-six years, I had been the quiet daughter, the one who took the scraps of their affection, the one who did the books in the dark while Tyler spent the gold. She had never seen the Rose in me.
She turned and fled without another word, her heels clicking a frantic, broken rhythm down the corridor.
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Dr. Cross stepped out from behind the curtain, a medical chart in his hand. He looked down at me, his dark eyes serious behind his glasses. “Your blood pressure is up, Bridget.”
“I’m just shouting down the nerves, Doctor,” I said, reaching down to touch the cold leather of my leg braces. “And I think they’re finally starting to listen.”
