Page 20 of The Baxters
One day they were playing at Lake Monroe, tossing a Frisbee, toes in the sand, while their families grilled burgers nearby. Life was good and sweet and the future was perfectly planned. And the next day, Ashley was doing the most mundane task. Driving to the store for milk and eggs.
Just to get out of the house.
Her brother, Luke, had a friend over that day, and the kid asked Ashley to give him a ride home. Just down the country road and a few blocks from Main Street. Not far from the grocery store. But before she could make the turn, a truck crossed the centerline and headed straight for them.
The kid in the passenger seat leaned over and jerked the wheel, forcing a sharp left turn and taking Ashley out of the direct hit. That’s what the reports showed. A witness had seen it all. And so the truck missed Ashley and slammed into the kid instead. Jefferson Bennett. A sixteen-year-old sophomore wrestler at Bloomington High.
The drunk driver died at the scene, and Ashley and Jefferson were airlifted to Bloomington Hospital, whereAshley’s dad worked as a doctor. For three days Ashley and the kid fought to survive on life support.
Landon barely left the hospital.
He took turns sitting beside her bed or waiting in the hall. He visited Jefferson, too. The kid was in a coma, but Landon liked to believe Jefferson knew when a friend stopped by.
All during that terrible time, her medical team believed the worst: Ashley had a brain injury. Her brain had swollen upon impact and it still wasn’t back to its right size. They drilled a hole in the back of her head to relieve the pressure, but there were no certainties.
No guarantees.
One afternoon Ashley’s dad, Dr. John Baxter, pulled Landon aside. “You understand the situation, right, son?”
Landon wasn’t sure what the man meant. “She’s… very sick. I know that.”
“More than sick.” Tears welled up in the man’s eyes. “She might never be the same. Her brain… We don’t know how damaged it is.”
If John Baxter had been trying to give him a pass, a reason to leave the hospital, it didn’t work. Landon straightened himself. “She’ll be okay.” His words rang with conviction. Nothing would make him leave Ashley’s side. Strength filled his voice. “She’ll wake up and she’ll walk out of here. I know she will.”
“Landon.” Dr. Baxter put his hand on Landon’s shoulder. “It means the world to me… to our entirefamily… that you’re here. That you won’t leave.” His voice cracked. “But she might never get out of that bed. Never be the same. You have to know.”
After that Landon was at the hospital more often, not less.
He sat by her bed and prayed and when he couldn’t stay there, he held vigil in the waiting room. He tried to imagine Ashley in a vegetative state. The spunk and spark in her eyes, forever gone. Better she stay in a coma asleep than wake up as someone none of them recognized, he would tell himself.
But even then Landon didn’t waver.
He remembered one particularly bad day, an afternoon when Ashley’s lungs had filled with fluid and she was battling a fever. John Baxter found Landon in the waiting room and sat beside him. “It doesn’t look good, son.” The man’s eyes were red. “She has pneumonia. It’ll be a miracle if she makes it through the night.”
“So… we pray for a miracle.” Landon hadn’t cared about the tears that spilled onto his cheeks that day. “Ashley is a fighter. She’ll pull through.”
The two of them had joined the rest of the Baxters and formed a prayer circle. Right there in the waiting room. And by some miracle of God, the next day Ashley opened her eyes. Landon was in the room when it happened and from the moment their gazes met he knew.
She was the same Ashley. Something in her eyes told him that. Her brain might’ve been through a lot, but theaccident hadn’t taken her memory or depth or all the things that made her Ashley Baxter.
Landon sat beside her in the hours that followed, long after her mother and siblings came and went home, and even as Dr. Baxter was making rounds to see other patients. While Ashley slept, Landon sat there not moving a muscle, afraid to say or do anything that might cause her to struggle.
Anything that would get him kicked out of her room.
When she woke up again, her medical team surrounded her. They checked her vitals and asked her basic questions. Her parents spent time with her, too, while Landon waited in the other room. When it was finally his turn to see her, he walked in and their eyes locked. He took his familiar seat beside her and after several seconds, his first question came. “Hey, Ash… are you okay?”
All of time stood still as he watched her, waiting for her response. With slow determination she nodded. No one else might’ve recognized the movement, but Landon knew her. She was nodding.
“I love you, Ashley. Do you know that?”
The corners of her mouth lifted a fraction of an inch. Just enough to tell him that somewhere beneath the bandages and wires, far beyond the machines working to keep her alive, she was back.
Just like he had known she would be.
Landon was there the morning Ashley said her first word since the accident. “Home.” That was all. She had looked into her mother’s eyes and said the wordhome. As if there was no place she wanted more to be.
An hour later down the hall, Jefferson Bennett suffered a stroke. He died before sundown.
