“These are the chest films from this morning,” Dr. Morris said, her pen tracing a line along the third and fourth ribs. “You can see the current bruising here, which is consistent with a hard fall.”
Daniel nodded quickly, his eyes still darting back to the left side of the screen. “Right, the stairs. Like I told the triage nurse.”
“But if you look closely at the fifth rib, just here,” Dr. Morris said, tapping the plastic screen with the tip of her pen. “There is a distinct calcified ridge.”
The room seemed to grow colder as the fan inside the computer hummed. I kept my eyes on the floor, watching a small speck of dirt on my right big toe.
“That is a healed fracture,” the doctor continued, her voice flat and steady. “It is approximately eight months old.”
Daniel shifted in his chair, his leather shoes scraping against the floor. “Elena has always been active. She hikes, she does a lot of yard work.”
“We also took a film of the left wrist,” Dr. Morris said, clicking the mouse once more.
A new image appeared, showing the delicate bones of my arm. Near the joint, a thick, white scar-line was visible in the bone itself.
“This fracture healed with some displacement,” Dr. Morris said. “It indicates a high-impact injury that was never professionally set.”
She turned her chair slightly, her silver-framed glasses reflecting the white light of the skeletal scans.
“Look at the screen, sir, this is your son, and these are your wife’s old injuries,” she said.
Daniel did not look at me. He kept his eyes locked on the white lines of my broken wrist, his jaw tightening until a small muscle in his cheek began to twitch.
The digital light from the monitor washed over his face, turning his skin the color of dry plaster.
Daniel cleared his throat, the sound dry and sharp in the small, enclosed room. He looked from Dr. Morris to the dark shadows on the digital screen, his shoulder twitching under his linen shirt.
“She had a bad fall on the trails up near Oak Creek two years ago,” Daniel said, his voice dropping into that smooth, practiced register he used with prospective land buyers. “We did not think much of it at the time, just a sprain, but Elena has always been a bit delicate.”
Dr. Morris did not look up from her clipboard. She held her silver-framed reading glasses in one hand, her thumb rubbing the temple piece as if measuring his words.
