Pascal's Wager by Nancy Rue

difficult until you see my mother’s reaction to the suggestion that she go into therapy. I was just going to drop the hint today that maybe she ought to see a counselor, and I was sweating bullets over that. You’d better have those paramedics standing by when I drop this on her.”
    â€œWould you rather I did it?” Ted said.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œEven though it would be in an official capacity?”
    â€œAs in, it would go in her file? You’d have to write her up?”
    He nodded.
    â€œIf you’d suggested this to me a month ago, I’d have said
you
were the one who needed the psychiatrist.”
    He stood up. “Look, if you want to talk this through with me before you approach her, you have my number. Just call me—have my answering service page me if you need to. And you might want to wait until her orthopedic doc gives you the okay. We’ll want to make sure she’s strong enough.”
    Liz McGavock not strong enough for something?
I thought when he was gone. Could the things I was now having to consider get any more outlandish?
    It was another forty-five minutes before a resident who looked as if she ought to be skipping off to her Girl Scout meeting came in to stitch up my arm. When I was finally released to go to the OR waiting room, Max was there, pacing a path in the carpet.
    When he saw me, he took the hall in two bounding leaps like he was going to scoop me up into his arms.
    â€œLook at you,” he said. “You’re white as a sheet! Should you be here? Aren’t they going to admit you?”
    â€œThey’re going to have to admit
you
if you don’t calm down.”
    â€œWhere do you want to go? The recliner? The couch? Yes, lie here on the couch.”
    I sat down on a vinyl sofa, then Max took off his ankle-length black raincoat, rolled it into a ball, and put it behind my head.
    â€œYou need something to eat. The food here is for nothing. I could probably doctor up some soup for you—what can they do to soup?”
    â€œMax, I’m fine. Stop it. Just sit here. You’re going to drive me up the wall.”
    I patted the seat next to me and he sank into it.
    â€œHave they told you anything about Mother?” I said.
    â€œThey put her under,” Max said. He rubbed his hand over his face and looked at me, red-eyed. “They called down and said they were starting the operation. God forbid anything should happen to her.”
    â€œSomething did happen to her,” I reminded him. “She may never walk again.”
    I snapped my head toward him. “They told you that?”
    â€œNo. But you know me, I always think the worst.”
    I sighed. “You don’t have to think the worst, Max. The worst may already be happening.”
    I told him about my conversation with Ted Lyons. If anybody should be made aware of it, Max should. For reasons I could never understand, he was as loyal to my mother as a St. Bernard.
    I could recall when Mother had first met him at some kind of university social soiree, though my memory was a little hazy. I’d only been about six. I knew I’d been smitten with him, though, probably because he came to the house every night after that for a while, bringing me a book or a puzzle for every bouquet of flowers or box of imported chocolates he brought my mother. Then there had been the period of time when we hadn’t seen him at all. I remembered asking Mother why “Uncle Max,” as he’d asked me to call him, didn’t come anymore.
    She’d been characteristically clinical about it. “He wanted to be my boyfriend,” she had explained. “I don’t want a boyfriend, or a husband, which boyfriends usually lead to. One husband was enough, thank you very much.”
    I’d known enough to realize she was referring to my father, whom I hadn’t seen since I was eighteen months old and obviously didn’t remember. Even by age six,