Page 134 of Tiny Fractures

Frank nods. “Thank you.”

Doctor Roberts flashes a little smile, making sure to make eye contact with each of us before leaving the room in her clean scrubs.

***

The next hours seem endless.

Frank paces the room, too restless to sit, making several phone calls, his voice clipped, tense. He makes Steve and Zack retell the story multiple times. Steve makes it through the first part of the story, but his voice constricts and he’s unable to continue every time he gets to the part where he sees his mother standing over Ronan’s broken body curled up on the floor, desperate to shield himself from her relentless violence. The way Steve describes his mom, it doesn’t sound like she’s human. According to Steve, all compassion was gone from her eyes when he rushed over and shoved her away from Ronan.

“Steve pushed her down and she just sat there, not moving a damn muscle,” Zack explains, his voice strained and cracking here and there. “He yelled at me to call an ambulance, and I did. Ran was coughing up blood and he was having a hard time taking a breath. Steve kept talking to Ran, telling him to keep breathing, to look at him. And Ronan tried so hard, he fucking fought for his life, but I could tell he was losing, and then he stopped breathing. And the 911 operator told Steve to do CPR, and she walked him through it and he fucking did it until the EMTs got there and shocked Ran’s heart…. This is all so fucking surreal,” Zack says as my chest tightens around my already-aching heart.

Frank wants to know whether we had any knowledge of issues between Ronan and his mom, and even though a couple of us mention that the relationship seemed strained, we all deny knowledge of any physical altercations. Everyone except Steve and Shane, who admit they knew that Ronan had been hit before.

Steve explains that when he was a lot younger, he had witnessed a few altercations between Ronan and his mother, but that had been years ago. Shane, though, seemingly collapses into himself, utterly devastated as he tells Frank of the times over just the last few months when Ronan confided in him, told him that his mom had hurt him, showed him his bruises.

“I kept telling him he needed to tell someone, but he always fought me on it. God, I should have told someone,” Shane says, running his hands roughly across his face.

It hits me then that I was already with Ronan when his mother was hurting him, and I rack my brain for clues, hints, and signs of the abuse he was enduring while we were together. Moments flash before my mind when I noticed a bruise here, a cut there, and suddenly everything falls into place—the way he looked when someone brought up his mother, the random injuries for which he always seemed to have an explanation, his reluctance to bring me home with him, the sharp tone in which his mom spoke to him.

She had been hurting him all along, and I had no idea.

I’m angry at myself for not checking in with him. I’m also angry at Ronan. Angry that he never told me. Why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t he trust me? There’s anger at Steve for not knowing, anger at Shane for knowing something was wrong and not saying anything, anger at Frank for not protecting his son, and so, so much overwhelming anger at Ronan’s mother for doing what she did. But what’s more potent than the anger is the fear, the worry, the sadness, the pain residing in my head and heart as the seconds, the minutes, and hours tick by. God, I need him to be okay; please just let him be okay.

A nurse comes in periodically to give us updates, scaring the shit out of us when she informs us that Ronan’s heart stopped beating, but they were able to resuscitate him. She says he’s stable—for now.

Shane calls his dad, letting him know what happened. Then he hands the phone to Frank, who speaks with Shane’s dad for a long time while Shane tells me that his dad and Frank are close friends. Even Vada and Zack’s dad, Jay, stops by to see if Frank needs anything. He tells Steve to stay at their house for a while so he doesn’t have to go home and Frank can stay with Ronan at the hospital for as long as he needs. Vada immediately informs her dad that I’ll be staying with them, too, since my mom won’t return from North Carolina until tomorrow morning.

I’m beyond grateful for my friends right now. I don’t want to be alone tonight.

I call my mom and break the news to her. She is devastated, and of course wants to drive back home immediately. I assure her that I’ll be with Vada tonight and that she should drive home, safely, tomorrow.

At around four o’clock, two police officers show up and talk to Frank, Zack, and Steve in private. When Frank returns to the waiting area, he briefly informs us, matter-of-factly, that Steve and Ronan’s mother has been arrested. The mood in the waiting area shifts as the time passes, anxious energy turning to somberness and eventually restlessness.

***

By the time Doctor Roberts finally comes back to give us a status update, it’s almost midnight. Ronan has been in surgery for close to eleven hours and everyone’s nerves are frayed. The past twelve hours have felt surreal and I feel very on edge, my body under tension, my muscles wound like guitar strings. Every time someone dressed in scrubs passed by the glass door to the waiting area, everyone’s heads snapped up just to be disappointed that we still hadn’t had any news.

Doctor Roberts looks tired when she enters the waiting room, dressed in fresh scrubs. I grab and squeeze Shane’s hand, jumping up from my chair at the sight of the doctor, my heart beating more rapidly, my hands tingly and clammy with nerves. Oh god, please let it be good news.

“How is he?” Frank asks, ceasing his back-and-forth pacing. His shoulders and jaw are tight, and there’s a look on his face only a parent in this type of situation can have.

“He’s doing okay,” Doctor Roberts says intently, pulling out a new set of X-rays and pinning them to the light board.

“He made it through?” Shane asks, apparently in need of plain-language confirmation that Ronan is still alive, still breathing.

Doctor Roberts nods, and the smallest of smiles appears on her lips. “He made it through.”

Shane exhales audibly. His hand is still in mine and probably drained of all blood by now because I’m squeezing it so tightly.

My throat is painfully dry when Doctor Roberts flips the switch of the light board and the LED lights illuminate the pictures of Ronan’s bones. I scan them with hectic, untrained eyes, feeling the pressure in my chest decrease a little when I notice that the fractures no longer appear ragged and displaced. Instead, what appear to be metal plates and screws adorn Ronan’s ribs and his right knee.

“We were able to internally fix a good number of his ribs. A few of them will have to heal on their own. Luckily only two ribs splintered, which greatly decreases the chance of any additional internal bleeding,” she explains, pointing at Ronan’s rib cage.

Okay, one concern down; a million more to go.

“His lungs are both functioning again, although he gave us a bit of a scare during the surgery.”

What kind of scare? Did he stop breathing again like Zack said Ronan did after his mom broke his ribs? Was this the moment the nurse informed us about—the moment Ronan’s heart stopped beating?

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