She’s loaded onto a stretcher, with the paramedics still performing CPR and they take her upstairs. I want to get in the ambulance with her, but they won’t let me. They need to work and they’re afraid I’ll interfere. Barry has a conversation with one of them and in the end, they allow me in the back of the ambulance. I sit to the side, out of the way, and hold her hand.
“I’m here, Daisy, I’m here. I’ve got you. All you have to do is breathe.”
The ride to the hospital seems to take forever. The ambulance doors open and there is a team of medical staff waiting. She’s rushed out of the ambulance and into ER where I’m stopped and told I can’t go any further.
“She needs me. She needs to know I’m here.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t come back here. We have to concentrate on the patient and we can’t do that if you’re there and we have to be worried you’ll interfere.”
“I…”
“Please, Mr. Hutchinson, let us do our jobs.”
She knows my name?
Hockey. Of course she knows my name.
I nod woodenly and let her lead me to a private waiting room across from the ER.
Then it’s quiet.
No more shouting.
No more watching her chest rise and fall as air is pumped into her lungs.
It’s not long before Collin, Dylan, and Barry arrive. They followed the ambulance but must not have been allowed to come through the ambulance bay entrance.
“I called Mama Kathleen. She’s on her way.”
I nod as Collin sits beside me.
“They wouldn’t let me go back with her.”
“I know. I argued too. Even Barry couldn’t get back there.”
“Christa and Jenny are coming. Maybe some of the other girls as well. I’m not sure.” Dylan sits on my other side. “Did they get her heartbeat back in the ambulance?”
I shake my head as a whole new fear enters my thoughts. What if they do get a heartbeat back but there’s brain damage due to a lack of oxygen or blood flow? I don’t know how long she laid there before we started CPR.
“Don’t borrow trouble,” Dylan says.
“Huh?”
“You said you were worried about brain damage…I said not to borrow trouble.”
“I said that out loud?”
“Yeah.” He squeezes my shoulder. “We’re going to stay strong. She’s going to be fine.”
He doesn’t mean it, but I understand why he’s saying it. Dylan and Daisy have become good friends. He doesn’t want to believe she’ll die any more than I do.
Please, baby, just breathe. If you breathe it’ll be fine.
I keep repeating that over and over as the minutes tick by and more and more people fill up the room. Jenny and Christa come over and talk to me, but I don’t hear anything they say. Mom sits next to me at one point, but again, I hear nothing.
Please, breathe. Please.
“Her brother!” The words slip out unbidden, more of a shout than anything.
