Page 59 of Last Hope
Victoria wandered around the hospital gift shop looking for something she could take to Savvy at his bedside. Although,lookingwasn’t exactly the correct word, no, in fact she washiding.Hiding from Savvy, hiding from the truth of what she’d done.
She had avenged her best friend, sure but a part of her couldn’t help but feel...well, she couldn’t describe what she felt. All she knew was that she felt like a piece of shit, especially since she hadn’t been able to escape the paperwork that followed in the days after in order to go visit Savvy.
She looked around now at the overly happy painted gift shop. It was a sense of false hope, filled with teddy bears and cards that read “get well soon!” and balloons and flowers that gave the hospital a sickeningly sweet smell of rubber and nature. But nothing could hide the scent underneath: death and decay.
Victoria grabbed the closest thing to her and said “Fuck it,” she was going to have to face Savvy; she was going to have to see him, to tell him what happened. Even though he was immobile and wouldn’t be able to respond that didn’t matter to her. She hadn’t been to visit since the day of the attack and she missed him dearly, even if he couldn’t be his usual quirky self.
She quickly paid for the ugly pink teddy bear tied to a balloon and made her way up to Savvy’s room. Her way there was torturously slow, all the while she thought of what she was going to say to him about why she hadn’t gone to see him, about why she was avoiding him, about why she felt so shitty about killing Azizi.
She sighed as she made her way to Savvy’s room and opened the door.
She froze at the entrance.
She had expected to see Savvy, wrapped in gauze from head to toe, connected to beeping machines and immobile. But what she saw nearly stopped her heart. Savvy was still wrapped in gauze and bandages; they were wrapped around his forehead and temples, but he wasn’t immobile. In fact, he was sitting up and causing a ruckus with the nurses.
“Savvy!” Victoria exclaimed as she rushed into his room. He looked at her and flushed a deep shade of scarlet before going quiet. Victoria looked at the angry nurses. “What’s going on here?” she asked them.
“Your friend here is causing a fuss,” one of them complained.
“I can see that,” Victoria said. “My question iswhy?” The two nurses looked at each other with a funny expression that Victoria couldn’t decipher. “What’s going on?” she asked, suddenly worried. There was something the nurses weren’t telling her.
“We’ll go get the doctor and he can explain it to you,” the nurses said. One of them huffed off and the other one laid Savvy down gently on his bed, told him to sit still and then left.
Victoria glared at them as they went then turned her attention to Savvy. “Savvy, my God!” Victoria was suddenly happy again as she rushed to his side and sat down on the bed. But Joshua didn’t reply. He bit down hard on his bottom lip and stared off to the side. Victoria eyed him quizzically. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but still he remained silent. “Are you mad at me because I didn’t come and visit you for a couple of days?” He stared off to the side without responding. She opened her mouth to say something when the door opened and the doctor came in.
“Hello,” he said. “The nurses tell me that there’s a problem in here?” He walked over to Victoria, hand held out. “Dr. Monroe, pleased to meet you.” He was an attractive sort of man, with a strong build, neatly combed brown hair and the most piercing green eyes.
“Agent Victoria Phillipe. And they won’t tell mewhatthe problem is. They just rushed off and Savvy here won’t talk to me.”
The doctor turned his attention to Savvy. “Joshua, what’s all the fuss about?” But Savvy didn’t reply to him either. The doctor sighed then turned back to Victoria. “He’s been stubborn for days,” he said.
She smirked. “He’s been stubborn his whole life. What happened? When did he wake up? How?” So many questions racked her brain.
“He woke up about a week ago. We don’t know how, or why. All we know is that his system suddenly rebooted and he sat up and started causing chaos for the nurses.”
“So why isn’t he talking now?” Then a sudden thought gripped her. “Oh my God,” Victoria dropped the teddy bear and fell into a seat herself. “Does he not remember me? I heard stories about people in coma’s waking up and not remembering anyone. Are his memories still intact?”
“He’s fine, don’t worry, Ms. Phillipe. Joshua’s memory is perfectly intact but there are a few problems with his recovery.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What kind of problems?”
The doctor looked at Savvy sadly then back to her. “Well first you need to understand that after the attack he suffered, it was a miracle he survived. A lot was damaged since the blow he received was directly in the brain; it’s what landed him in a coma in the first place. We aren’t able to predict what will function when he wakes up and what will not. Unfortunately, the damage he suffered affected the right side of his temporal lobe in the brain as well as his frontal lobe and his spinal vertebra.
“Joshua suffered damage to the right-side temporal lobe. What does this mean? Well, the temporal lobe is what is in charge in our brains of hearing, perception, verbal communication, visual memory, etc. It being on the right side, involves hearing and communicating melodies, tones, sounds, etc.
“The damage he’s received on the right side has hurt his ability to speak. Hecanspeak, just not the way he used to. The left side of his brain is still intact, so he understands everything perfectly fine, but without the full function of the right side of his brain and more specifically, the temporal lobe then the melody in his voice and speech and even histonguefor that matter won’t be the same.”
Of course, having studied criminology, Victoria had taken psychology and medical classes so she knew what all of this meant. “Does that mean he won’t be able to say certain words, or he’ll stutter, or what?” She wasn’t an expert.
“Sometimes when the lobe is affected there’s the possibility of a stutter, of mispronunciation of certain words or letters, inability to comprehend anything verbal or written, alterations in the tone of his voice, murmuring, among others.”
So, that’s why he didn’t want to talk to her? She thought. “Okay, so what happened to his frontal lobe?”
“The frontal lobe has to do with emotions, logic, feelings, sex and motor functions. The damage he received to his frontal lobe along with the damage to his spinal vertebra have left him immobilized from the waist down.”
Victoria sucked in a painful breath. “So, he’s paralyzed?”
The doctor shook his head. “He isn’t paralyzed, since he still has feeling in them and can wriggle his toes around a bit. The problem is he can’t walk right now.”
