Page 59 of Gravity
The hospital walls blur. My back hits the wall, and I slide to my ass as I bury my face in my hands. Etienne and the nurses are arguing, something about whether we have the right to be there and if we're family or not. Valery and the security guard are nose to nose, and the guard's eyes dart over Valery's shoulder to me. He's wary. I’m covered in blood. I look like I just killed someone.
Bryce is everything to me, I want to say. He's everything, fucking everything, to me, and that might have been the last time he and I—
Bryce. Oh my God, Bryce.
* * *
Eventually,someone puts the pieces together, and we're brought to the surgical waiting room outside the operating theater. Someone gives me a towel and a pack of wet wipes, but I sit and stare at them in my useless hands. I have Bryce's blood under my fingernails. Bryce's blood on my knuckles.
Valery cleans my face with the wipes. He murmurs in Russian the whole time, something soft and lilting that I can't translate. His voice makes my eyes close, and I lean into his touch.
In front of us, Etienne paces, flexing his fingers against his palms as his face twists and contorts. He's frantic energy come to life, all of his nerves exposed and dangling on the outside of him. When a nurse walks too close to the waiting room, he pounces, begging her for information. “Don't tell me you can't tell us anything,” he pleads. “We need to know.”
She escapes, and we're alone again.
Etienne crawls the walls. Valery stares at the floor. In my mind, I replay the tears that slipped from Bryce's eyes after I told him I loved him.
An hour later, the sounds of an invading army crash down the hallway. Sixteen hockey players and Coach Richelieu are jogging toward us.
Etienne meets them halfway, shaking his head. MacKenzie shouts, “What do you mean there's no fucking news?” Slava turns around and paces down the hallway, marches back, then paces away. The rest of the team drifts into the waiting room, where they all take a seat surrounding me.
One by one, they reach out. Everyone squeezes my shoulder or my thigh, or lays their hands on my arms or my back. I'm too fractured for this right now. Their care is going to break me. I'm holding on to reality by my fingernails.
Valery stays at my side, stalwart and silent. I slump against his shoulder and he doesn't move. He goes back to murmuring in Russian as I lean on him.
Finally, a weary looking man in surgical scrubs pushes through the double doors separating the operating theater from the waiting room, and he makes the long walk down the empty hall toward us alone. He's tall and thin, with a long face that resembles an exhausted hound dog. His head is bowed and his shoulders are slumped.
Everyone around me stops breathing.
MacKenzie goes so still I wonder if somehow the world has stopped spinning and I won't have to endure these next few moments.Please, please, please. Bryce, I love you.
Coach meets the man at the entrance to the waiting room.
“I'm Doctor Antoine Morin. I operated onMonsieurMichel.”
“How is he?” Coach folds his arms while shifting his weight from foot to foot. “What's going on?”
“MonsieurMichel is badly injured.” Dr. Morin speaks slowly, emphasizing his words. His hands are clasped in front of him. “He has a complex fracture of his laryngeal plate, and his cricoid cartilage was crushed. He has significant soft tissue trauma. Bone fragments impaled his trachea. Oxygen and carbon dioxide penetrated his tissues, and his left lung collapsed. We had to perform an emergency tracheostomy.”
“But he’s… He’s going to be okay, right?” Coach is nodding like he's trying to convince himself he's speaking the truth. Or like he's trying to convince Dr. Morin.
“He's stabilized. And, he is breathing,” Dr. Morin says. “He's breathing on his own, which is, frankly, a miracle. We were expecting such significant levels of brain damage that he would not be—”
“Wait.” Coach holds up his hand. “Wait.” Coach's eyes drop to the floor. He takes three deep breaths as his shoulders tremble and droop.
“There's a significant possibility of neurological injury,” Dr. Morin continues. “It's a possibility, not a certainty. He's breathing on his own, and that's an excellent sign for his prognosis. We're in a waiting period right now. We won't know if there's any neurological damage until he wakes up.” Morin hesitates. “If he wakes up.”
“When can we see him?”
“You can see him now, but he's unconscious. The sedation we gave him for surgery will wear off over the next six hours. We expect, if he's going to wake up, he'll do so when the sedative is out of his system. It would be good if he comes back to familiar surroundings. But—” He pauses. “You need to prepare yourselves.” His gaze settles on each of us, one by one. “This is going to be very difficult.”
“Take us to him. Now.”
Dr. Morin nods. “Follow me,s'il vous plaît.”
Coach waits for me. Valery helps me to my feet, and he and MacKenzie glue themselves to my side as we join Coach. The rest of the team walks in my shadow, and we follow Dr. Morin down the hall and into the surgical intensive care unit.
Bryce is alone in his room. He looks small and still on the hospital bed. Unnaturally still. When we sleep together, he's like a cat. Always trying to move closer to me, or slide into my arms, or nuzzle against my shoulder or my chest or my cheek. He likes to sleep on his belly or his side, and he throws his arms around my waist so he can hold on to me all night. He never sleeps like this.
