Page 70 of Hello Handsome
I half expected his eyes to flutter open, but they didn’t. He lay peacefully, like his body wasn’t battered, bruised, and broken.
I smoothed his blanket up around him, wishing desperately this was a wound I could kiss away.
But someone saying, “Are you his parents?” broke me out of my thoughts.
I turned, seeing a young woman in dark green scrubs and a white lab coat entering the room. “I’m his mom,” I said.
She looked to Gray, but when we didn’t offer additional commentary, she said, “I’m the hospitalist finishing up the night shift rounds. Is this the first you’re here?”
I nodded, desperate for answers, desperate for anything I could do to wake up my baby and get him on the path to healing.
“Let me update you on his case,” she said, flipping through the pages of her clipboard. “We did a CT scan and found significant swelling in his brain and a fracture to his skull. Right now, he’s in an induced coma to help the swelling go down. His femur, fibula, and tibia on the right side are each broken and will likely require a series of surgeries. No broken bones on the left side, but there was a tear to his ACL, MCL, and LCL, whichwill also require surgery to repair. His upper body has severe bruising but no broken bones.”
I looked over at my baby, those words not making sense with my strong young man. He’d suffered so much, and I wasn’t here for him.
Gray spoke up for me. “Will there be long-term effects to his brain?”
The woman pressed her lips together. “With a concussion of this nature, it’s probable there will be short-term memory loss. He won’t remember his fall or likely his first week or so in the hospital. He’ll need to work with a neurologist to develop a concussion protocol, which will likely include low lighting and no screens for several months up to a year.”
My throat squeezed tight.A year?
“How long will he be in intensive care?” Gray asked.
The woman, her name tag said M. Garvin, looked over at Enzo. “I’m not sure, but typically they’ll keep patients in ICU to monitor brain activity until they’re removed from sedation.”
It was all so much… I kept looking from her to my son, my brain struggling to process.
Gray squeezed my hand and asked, “When will we get to see the doctor monitoring his case?”
“He has a team assigned to him. They will be in around ten this morning.” A glance at the clock showed it was only five. “Do you have any other questions I can help you with?”
I shook my head numbly, and Gray did as well. We sat in two hard chairs in the corner of the small room while she began testing his vitals and examining the screen readouts I couldn’t come close to understanding.
Watching her care for him, I felt so weak and powerless. If I could have switched places with him, I would have. But I couldn’t even drive safely to the airport. Thank God Gray was here.
I glanced over at the man beside me, worry lines deep in his skin, his eyes on my son like Enzo was the most important thing in the world.
My heart swelled for Gray and cracked painfully. This must have brought back so many memories for him.
But he had braved it to be here with Enzo and me.
44
GRAY
Being in the hospital,smelling the antiseptics, hearing the constant buzzing of fluorescent lights and beeping of machines–it took me back twenty years. Maya had an episode that brought us to the hospital, and they ultimately discovered the cancer had spread too much to be cured.
I brought her home, knowing she would die.
I was thankful for therapy over the last several years, giving me the tools to breathe through this moment I had learned was a trigger for my PTSD. I used to think it was just something for soldiers, but Dr. Benson had told me it was something anyone could get when they went through an especially traumatic time.
Looking over at Aggie, her chair drawn next to Enzo’s bed as she held his hand and whispered healing words to him… I wished I could save her from it all. This moment of watching her son suffer, the emotional fallout that would come after. I wished I could trade places with Enzo, taking away the young man’s pain.
The last time I’d seen him, his brown eyes were so bright, just like his mom’s, as he talked about his job on base. Would his eyes carry the same light when he woke up?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t think about it. I just knew I had to support Aggie so she could be there for him.
So when the doctors assured us they wouldn’t be removing sedation until the next day, I finally convinced Aggie to go to a hotel I booked for some rest.
