what I just said to you, calmly. Can you do that for Brandon?”
She nodded again. “Yes.” Her hands shook, but she dialed.
I drove fast and carefully while Sloan made calls. I scanned the road and went twenty over the speed limit on the freeway. I zipped around cars using my blinker and hand waves. When we got to the hospital, I dropped her off at the emergency room entrance and parked, then ran with her bag to meet her at the front desk.
“He’s in surgery,” she said tearfully when I jogged in through the automatic doors of the ER, my shoes squeaking on the white shiny floors.
I looked at the woman behind the check-in desk, like a robot gathering data. I could see everything. The age spots on her forehead, the gray wisps along her hairline. The sterile, white countertop and the shimmer in the petals of pink roses in a vase behind the desk. “Where can we wait? And can you inform the doctor that his family is here?”
We were sent to a private waiting area for the neurology department on the third floor. Brightly lit, plastic potted plants tucked in the corners of the room, serene blue walls, uniform gray tweed upholstered chairs, magazines and boxes of tissues on every end and coffee table.
Sloan scanned the room. Maybe it was the finality of it—the cessation of forward movement—but this was when she officially broke down. She buried her face in her hands and wept. “Why is this happening?”
I wrapped her sweater around her and put her in a chair. “I don’t know, Sloan. Why does anything happen?”
I knew what things had to be done, what I had to do to make her comfortable. But I couldn’t feel any of the panic or grief that I saw in Sloan. I felt like I was watching a movie with the sound off. I could see what was happening, but I couldn’t connect to the characters.
We waited. And waited. And waited.
A police officer came in and asked Sloan some questions. Confirmed Brandon’s name and address. Then he told us that the woman who had caused the accident had been arrested for driving under the influence.
Sloan sobbed again when she heard that.
I covered her with her blanket and got her a coffee. I plugged in her phone, made her eat half of a tuna sandwich.
Family began to show up and they huddled around the waiting room, whispering and crying. Brandon’s mom prayed in Spanish over a rosary.
I sat next to Sloan, feigning emotion, doing all the motions. Looking somber and rubbing her back but feeling empty and removed because my crisis response was still in effect.
Now that the rush was gone, the velociraptor paced. I couldn’t shut off my brain and the need to be doing something. But the only thing to do was wait. I bounced my knee and picked at my cuticles until they bled. I texted Josh and kept him posted. They’d found a replacement for him at work, but he couldn’t leave until 8:00 p.m.
Then, ten hours after the accident, the doctor came out.
Sloan bolted from her chair and I followed, ready to absorb what he said with an accuracy that I would be able to transpose onto paper, word for word, two days later.
Brandon’s mom wrapped her sweater tighter around herself and stood shoulder to shoulder with Sloan. Brandon’s dad put an arm around his wife.
I tried to figure out the outcome from the doctor’s lined, angular face, but he was unreadable.
“I’m Dr. Campbell, the resident neurosurgeon. Brandon is out of surgery. He’s stable. We were able to stop the internal bleeding. I had to remove a large piece of his skull to alleviate the pressure on his brain.”
Sloan gasped and started sobbing again. I put an arm around her, sandwiching her between Brandon’s mom and me as she breathed into her hands.
The doctor went on. “The good news is there’s brain activity. Now, I can’t say what his recovery is going to look like at this juncture, but the tests we ran were promising. He’s going to have a long road ahead of him, but I’m feeling optimistic.”
The room took a collective deep breath.
“For now we’re going to be keeping him on a ventilator in a medically induced coma to allow the swelling to go down and give his brain a chance to heal itself. We won’t know the extent of his injuries until he comes out of that coma. But again, I feel optimistic. He’s