Page 4 of The Doctor's Promise
Noemi went through a mental inventory of what she would have to do when she got to the hospital. She knew Thomasina would have been informed and was probably already in theater, ready for Noemi to arrive. Thank God, Tomi…
She never saw the SUV that was trying to overtake her. All Noemi felt was the shuddering, world-changing shock of being hit—and rolling, rolling, rolling—her scream, her first thought for the precious organ in the plastic cooler beside her, the crippling pain, the smell of gasoline, and her own blood, not dripping, but pouring from her head and then…
…nothing.
3
Chapter Three
Her throat was tinder dry. That was the first thing Noemi registered as she crept back up into consciousness. She opened her eyes and saw a window. Bright sunlight. Too bright for winter. She closed her eyes again, smacking her dry lips together.
“Here you are, honey. Ice chip.” Something small and cold was slipped into her mouth, and she sucked at it gratefully. Somebody took her hand.
“Sweetheart? Noe?”
Her adoptive mom’s voice. “Mom?”
“We’re here, darling. Try not to move too much… your father has just gone to fetch Lazlo.”
Lazlo. That name meant something, and yet another name was in the front of her mind.
“Thomasina… is she okay? Did she get the heart?” Her voice was so rough—could they hear her?
No one said anything. No, she wasn’t making sense. She struggled to sort out what had happened: Car. Heart. Pain.
She blinked some tears away, then felt someone dab at her face. “Momma?” She hadn’t called Marian that for years.
“Baby, I’m here. Lazlo is coming… Oh sweetheart.”
Noemi could hear her mother’s muffled sobs. “I’m okay, Momma.”
But she knew she wasn’t. There was a commotion, and then Lazlo’s kind face moved into view.
“Hey, kiddo, decided to rejoin us?” A bright light was shone in her eyes, and she winced.
“What happened, Laz?”
“You were in a car wreck, kiddo. Drunk driver in an SUV blindsided you.”
“Have you done a CT?”
Lazlo half-smiled. “We’ve done every test, Noe, the full gamut.” He was feeling her neck, and she now heard the bleep-bleep of the machinery.
“I didn’t have to have surgery. Good. Was it just cuts and bruises?” Her mouth felt like cotton wool. Lazlo glanced across her at her mother.
He cleared his throat. “Noemi… no. It wasn’t just cuts and bruises.” He took her hand. “Kiddo, you were seriously injured—a traumatic brain injury. We had to operate to relieve the pressure in your skull, and you suffered three serious strokes. You lost nearly half of your blood volume.”
He paused, and Noemi tried to understand what he was telling her. “I’m… How long?”
Lazlo drew in a deep breath. “Five months, Noe. You’ve been in a coma for five months.”
Slowly Noemi digested allthe information they were telling her. Five months. Five months since that accident. Her long dark hair was gone, shaved off completely, but she didn’t care about that. When Lazlo told her the worst of it, she knew she would have much, much bigger battles to fight.
They had no idea whether she could walk, and certainly she didn’t know if she would ever be able to perform surgery again. Her hands, although she could move all of her fingers, shook when she held them up, and her legs felt numb.
“Thomasina…” She had asked again but, in her heart, she had known.
Thomasina was dead. The heart that Noemi had harvested had been destroyed in the accident. “She simply ran out of time,” Lazlo told Noemi gently, but it didn’t help.
