Read The Fives Run North-South for Free Online Page B

morning. Today was Thursday, so this would turn into a long weekend. As unsettling as it was to leave at this juncture, I also recognized that Friday was a difficult day to capture all the ears I would need to have listening to me.
    Before leaving, I’d scanned my desk, making sure I brought with me every critical document. This couldn’t have come at a worst time, and I’d strongly considered calling Suze and letting her know that I had to stay behind. But I knew that wasn’t right. So even now, as I drove up there, I still had the guilt chewing at me: what kind of father did I picture myself to be if I felt a stronger desire to stay at my desk than at my son’s hospital bedside?
    Of course it’s all a balance. On one side of the scale, that all - too - familiar guilt. The counterweight: all the advantages he and Suze enjoyed from the fruits of my labor. It’s a juggling act, but I was comfortable that the two were of equal weight. As I’d often said to Suze, you can’t have it all. We like our stuff. Peter’s in a top school. Paid in cash. Not many have that opportunity. It anchors me to places — both physical and in my mind and attentions — that are at a distance from them. That’s the case with me, and frankly, with just about everyone I sit across from every day. They don’t let the guilt in. They don’t leave space for it. Neither, in the end, can I.
    So as I pulled out from the parking lot, feeling layers of discomfort, I realize that Suze has to forgive me (and I have to forgive myself) if the first, deepest layer is the sense that I’m abandoning my company and my primary duties with FMP.

    So what happened to Peter is this. And it’s silly, really. Kind of stuff we all did in college, and only through dumb luck with no bad consequence (really, who doesn’t think back on some of the things we did as kids and breathe a sigh of relief that we didn’t end up broken or even dead?).
    It was a nice, sunny Saturday. Late afternoon. Peter and some of his frat brothers wanted to enjoy the atmosphere, so they climbed out the second - story windows in their fraternity house onto the porch roof to drink beer and listen to music. Peter went in to get more beer and when climbing back out of the window and onto the roof to where the gang was sitting, he lost his footing and slipped. He slid down the porch roof and over the edge. Luckily, the fall wasn’t too far. Unluckily, it was broken by the wrought - iron fence that surrounds the property. He caught his hand, just above the wrist, on one of the iron spires atop the fencepost. It speared his hand, making his land on the ground in a grotesque imitation of a Nazi giving their infamous salute. Peter’s toes did manage to touch the ground stopping his fall, which they tell me saved his hand. Had he been a few inches shorter — or the gate a few inches taller — the force of his fall would likely have torn his hand off his arm.
    But the damage was still substantial. The spire ripped some key blood vessels, shattered small bones, and risked permanent nerve damage. Two emergency surgeries were needed within days of the fall, with no guarantee that Peter would have full - functional use of his hand. When I arrived at the hospital, they’d told Suze that a third surgery might be necessary and that some fairly intensive physical therapy was all but guaranteed.
    One thing was clear: the driver of the red SUV wasn’t there to push him off. I’d be fooling you if I didn’t admit that the thought crept in for a few seconds during the drive up.
    Kids being kids, simple as that. Peter had been the fortunate son; his luck simply took a tumble this time. Either way, I was there to make sure he had only the best care from this point forward. At least I could give him that.

    His eyes fluttered open.
    “Hey,” I said. “How you doing, Scrapper?” Scrapper: his nickname from back when he was eight or so. He hated it then. Judging from his expression, I guessed he