“I’m Doctor Briney and I was Miss Canton’s general surgeon. To answer your question, yes, she’s alive. She’s stable, but critical and we’ve moved her to a private room in the ICU. Her injuries are severe. She had two skull fractures, both arms were broken in multiple places. She has a broken femur of the left leg. Her liver and spleen were lacerated as well as her bowel. Her kidneys are bruised and she may still lose one of them. Massive internal bleeding is our biggest problem in terms of everything outside of her brain. We were able to stop the bleeding, but we had to remove her spleen. She lost a lot of blood. We’re still giving her blood to keep her blood volume up. She also had a collapsed lung and eight broken ribs, two of which punctured her lung. I want to stress while she’s stable, she’s still critical. We’re going to take it one hour at a time.”
“I’m Doctor Sturgiss,” the other man introduces himself. “I was your fiancé’s neurosurgeon. As Dr. Briney said, she had two skull fractures. One of them caused enough damage that she would have been incapacitated as soon as the injury occurred.”
“She was defenseless, unable to fight back?” I whisper, horrified at my girl having to just lie there and suffer.
“Unfortunately, yes. When she got here, there was quite a bit of swelling and three major bleeds which I had to go in and repair. We won’t know the severity of the damage until and if she wakes up. There’s still significant swelling and if it doesn’t start to go down, we may have to go back into surgery to relieve the pressure, but we’ll take it one problem at a time.”
“I don’t know how long she lay there before we found her and started CPR.”
“The good news is she has brain function. That’s an encouraging sign. If that changes, then we’ll have a different conversation. Does she have any other family?”
“A brother who’s overseas in the military. We’re trying to get in touch with him.”
Dr. Sturgis nods. “Okay. I’ll be here all night to monitor her and will let you know if anything changes.”
“I need to see her.”
“She’s not conscious. We have her in a medically induced coma to help her heal.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I need to see my girl. She needs to know I’m here.”
“Doctors, can I speak with you for a moment?” Barry pulls them to the side and speaks quietly.
She’s breathing. She’s stable.
But critical, the devil on my shoulder laughs. She could still ,die.
Which is why I need to see her. She needs me.
The doctors come back over. “We’ve agreed that you can sit with her in the ICU, Mr. Hutchinson, but you have to be very quiet. There are other critical patients there who can’t tolerate the noise. Can you promise that?”
I agree quickly.
“What about me?” Collin asks. “I’m her brother. I need to see her to reassure myself she’s alive. I saw her. I gave her CPR. You can’t keep me out of the room.”
Dr. Briney sighs. “Fine, but only one of you is staying in that room tonight. It’s already against hospital policy to allow anyone to sit with the patients through the night.”
“That’s fine. I’ll go in, check on her, and then camp out in the ICU waiting room. I swear I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
Both doctors look skeptical. He’s not being quiet at the moment. He’s just loud normally. But they don’t change their minds and we’re told to follow them.
They lead us upstairs and before we can go in, we have to scrub down and put on gowns and gloves to make sure we’re sterile and can’t bring any type of germ or infection in with us.
The room we approach is right in front of the nurses’ station, which sets off alarm bells. Why would they put her here where they can reach her within seconds?
Stable but critical.
She’s here in case of the worst and they need to work fast.
But she’s breathing and that’s all that counts right now. And her heart is beating. She’s a fighter. My girl can come back from this. She can.
Dr. Briney stops up. “I want to prepare you both for what you’ll see.” His tone and his expression are grave. “She’s bandaged, her arms are in slings, her head is wrapped from brain surgery. Her leg is in a suspended sling. She’s on a ventilator to help her breathe and she’s hooked up to a bunch of different machines. Her face is swollen, bruised, and honestly, I doubt you’d recognize her. She will not wake up. She will not respond to the sound of your voice or your touch because she’s in a medically induced coma.”
“Can she hear us?” I ask.
It’s Dr. Sturgis who answers. “No one can agree on that, but I personally think the patient can. Those who have people here, constantly talking, those are the ones we see recover quicker. So, yes, be quiet, but talk to her. At the very least, it can’t hurt.”
I nod, understanding, and grateful for the hope.
