Page 92 of The One for Me
“When I last checked, they were still in surgery. I’ll see if I can get any updates.”
My father pulls my mother and me into his embrace. I can feel the slight ebb of relief through the room. Austin will be okay.
He’ll recover, and now we just need to hear good news about Jasper and Hazel.
The minutes tick by, but no one comes out. I watch the door, feeling anxious in my too-tight skin. The metallic taste in my mouth grows as fear does as well.
Twenty minutes pass.
Thirty minutes.
Then an hour and still no news.
“What is taking so long?” I ask to no one.
“I’m sure they’re working and can’t come update us,” Dad says as he checks the door again.
Mom takes my hand in hers. “No news is good news.”
Maybe, or it’s about to be horrible news. Either way, my mind goes down a million paths of what-if. Each time I start to spin out, I try to refocus on the fact that Austin is well and maybe that means it wasn’t too long before their car was found. I know every minute matters, and I have to hope that time was on our side.
My father paces while I seem to shrink into myself with every passing second I watch tick away on the clock. There is something soothing about watching the hand jump from second to second.
Every sixty seconds, it will move.
Every sixty minutes the small hand will follow.
It’s the only thing concrete in this room right now.
We have no idea how bad my brother or sister-in-law’s injuries were or if they will survive. We don’t know if they are fighting or giving up, but I have to believe, for Austin, they won’t ever stop trying. They love him more than their own lives.
The big hand moves again, and I count.
One. Two. Three . . .
When I get to fifty-six, two surgeons enter the waiting room. Their eyes are cast down, fatigue clearly set in the slump of their shoulders, and dread fills me so heavily that I can’t stand.
Their eyes meet ours, sweat beads on their foreheads, and they both look—dejected.
Everything seems to happen in slow motion. They stand in front of us, heads shaking back and forth, and one of the doctor’s rests a hand on my father’s shoulder. I watch my mother’s legs give out, and Dad pulls her to him as a sob breaks. I take note of the way the doctor’s lip quivers slightly as his regret saturates every molecule in the room.
I can hear the sound of the automatic door opening and closing as people exit.
All of it engrains itself in my mind.
Each detail becomes clearer as my world adjusts.
“We tried,” the first doctor says. “They were in very bad condition, and we did everything we could.”
The next one tries to console my mother. “The blood loss was too great, and the damage to Jasper’s spleen was too extensive to repair. The brain damage that Hazel sustained during the ejection was severe.”
My father continues to fall apart as I sit, unable to move or speak.
Mom’s sobs are muffled against his chest as she holds on to him.
The worst has happened.
My brother is dead.
