Laura was trying very hard to concentrate, but her mind kept lurching at the mention of certain words: “bleed,” “immediately,” “successfully.” She was grasping for meaning, an understanding of the seriousness of what they were telling her, so she could arrive at a point where she could stop thinking the worst.
“He’s now recovering in intensive care—”
“So he’s okay?” blurted out Laura.
Dr. Raina smiled kindly. “The operation was a success. He’s stable and now we give him time to recover. In order to help him do this, we are keeping him anesthetized, so that his brain can have a better chance of healing.”
“Healing?So it’s . . . damaged?”
“I was referring to the fact it’s taken a knock and he’s been insurgery. In terms of brain damage, the scans do not indicate that this is the case.”
She almost cried with relief. “Can I see him?”
“Yes, of course. We’ll take you and your husband there now. Remember, he won’t be awake and he’s going to look a bit different from the last time you saw him. We’ve had to shave off some of his hair so we could complete the surgical procedure, and he’s going to be attached to a lot of machines that are helping monitor him while he recovers. He’s also on a ventilator.”
“So he’s not breathing?”
“Not independently. We’ll keep him like this for a couple of days and then work to get him off ventilation.”
Suddenly to Laura, what had seemed horrific, but manageable, was a whole lot worse. The gangly redhead shifted forward in his seat. “He can’t breathe independently because he’s sedated to a level that the brain is resting.”
“Did you have any questions before we take you up to the unit?”
Laura looked bleak and Howard took her hand. “Not at the moment. We’d just like to see our son.”
Dr. Raina smiled. “I’ll take you to him now.”
They followed her to a unit with busy nurses full of low-key banter and practicality, too upbeat, too normal, for the seriousness of the situation. Then they were introduced to Daniel’s nurse, a woman who received them with a quiet, unfazed confidence as if she dealt with loved ones’ serious head injuries every day, which, of course, she did.
Laura braced herself just before the nurse pulled back the white divider curtain that separated Daniel from the other beds on the unit. She could hear the beeps that foretold of her son’s presence and knew it was going to be bad, but the sight of him still hit her like a concrete brick against her chest. Machines held on to him, the wires and tubes entering his body like a plague of alien parasites. It was difficult to see where he ended and they began; they were one mass of flesh and plastic. One side of his head had been shaved completely, the exposed skin deathly white.His face was pale, almost grayish in color, and swollen as if he’d been in a fight, but without the bruising. The ventilator was fixed into his mouth, making his tongue protrude grotesquely; the plastic and bands that held the ventilator in place cut lines across his cheeks. Across his forehead was a red welt. He lay still, his eyes shut; and after a moment’s shocked hesitation, she ran to him and tentatively took his limp hand, touching him the way she would a fragile newborn. She tried to speak, to say his name and let him know she was there, to reassure him, but her voice cracked and she had to stop, not wanting him to know she was losing it. She just let silent tears roll down her face.
“Can he hear us?” Howard asked the nurse.
“We’ve got no reason to believe he can’t,” said the nurse. “In fact, we encourage you to talk to him, offer him comfort, even though he can’t communicate back.”
“I’m okay now, I’m okay,” said Laura, through deep breaths, as she pulled up a chair without letting go of Daniel’s hand. She sat, without taking her eyes off him.
Howard took a chair on the other side of the bed.
“I’ll leave you alone for a while,” said the nurse, and she drew the metal rings around the rail until they were enclosed, the three of them in a white, beeping bubble.
After a few seconds, Laura heard a stifled choking sound; she looked up to see Howard crying, his hand in a fist and pressed against his mouth, trying to suppress the noise. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes between finger and thumb as he wiped away the tears.
* * *
The last time she’d seen him cry was the night Daniel had been born. He’d finally come into the world at six in the morning after twenty-four hours of excruciating labor, complicated when Daniel’s heart rate had dramatically dropped, which had resulted in an emergency caesarean. She’d lain exhausted, dazed, and Howard, sitting in the chair by her bed, held tiny Daniel while tears suddenly streamed down his face.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said, embarrassed, as he hurriedly tried towipe them away, but they kept on coming. “I thought . . . I thought you were going to die, or he . . .”
Laura had known what he’d meant. It couldn’t happen again.
“Hush, we’re fine now,” she’d said, and it had been a moment of closeness, of the three of them, Howard at his most raw. It was a Howard that she knewonly shewould see, and that no one could take away from her.
“I’m just so happy,” he’d managed to spill through his tears and she’d smiled, full of love for him.
* * *
“Are you okay?” she said softly over the bed.
