Page 90 of Light in the Dark
Eventually, the chaotic flurry of attention stops and the nurses scatter to tend to other emergencies. The doctor, a good-looking man in his late forties with salt and pepper hair, strips off his bloody rubber gloves and washes his hands, addressing me while drying them.
"Mr. Crowe, your girlfriend is stable."
I exhale a sigh of relief. "What about her head?"
“Well, her pupils are equal and reactive, but she's still unconscious, so it's hard to say. We've got her scheduled for an MRI. Ortho will be here at some point soon to put a cast on her leg."
"Her lungs?"
"They'll re-inflate on their own. The puncture was small enough that it’ll resolve without surgical intervention. We'll leave the tube in for a few days, but for right now, the biggest question mark is her brain. Once we get the MRI results back, we'll know more." He glances at a cell phone, and then at me. "I have to go. For now, just sit tight. They should be here within an hour or two to take her back for the scan."
"Thank you, Doctor," I say, moving to the hard plastic chair in the corner.
He nods, offers me a brief professional smile and then bustles out, yanking the curtain across the opening to provide us with some measure of privacy.
I move the chair closer to the bed and take her hand. Kiss the back of it, not caring about the dried blood. "I'm here, Ember. You're gonna be okay."
I'm hoping for a hand squeeze or something, but there's nothing. Just the beep and hiss of machines and the chaos on the other side of the curtain.
I rest my cheek on her hand, and I'm lulled into sleep by the steady beep of the heart monitor.
* * *
Groggily,I follow the gray scrub-wearing orderly or nurse or whatever as he pushes Ember's bed through the maze of hospital corridors, into an elevator and up several floors—confusingly, when we emerge from the elevator, we're only a floor two above ground level despite having gone up several levels.
I wait on the other side of a wall of windows as Ember is moved to a machine that retracts her inside it. There's a lot of clanking and banging for a long time. The nurse moves her back to the bed and then it's back to the room.
More waiting.
* * *
"Mr. Crowe?"
I blink awake—my first instinct is to look at Ember. She's still asleep—or comatose.
I peer at the nurse. "Mmm?"
"We're here to put a cast on Ms. James."
"Okay."
It's a strange, complicated procedure. When they're done, she has a cast up to her hip on her left leg. As this is finishing up, the doctor returns with an iPad in one hand and a small paper cup of coffee in the other. "MRI results are back," he says, setting his coffee down beside the sink.
My heart palpitates. "Okay, and? Is she okay?"
He shows me the iPad screen and I recognize the shape of the brain, but the images otherwise mean nothing to me. "There are no signs of damage to the brain tissue. She's very, very lucky."
"But she's still unconscious."
He nods, sighing. "Yes. It's her body's way of helping her heal. She suffered what we call a moderate TBI—a moderate traumatic brain injury. With these kinds of injuries, it's not uncommon for the individual to remain unconscious for up to twenty-four hours. But from what we can see here, there's every reason she should wake up without any deficiencies."
I frown. "Deficiencies?"
"Well, it's her brain, Mr. Crowe." He takes a sip of coffee, lifting it afterward. "My apologies for this, but I'm at the end of a thirty-hour shift."
I pull a shocked face. "Damn, that's a long shift."
He shrugs. "Emergency medicine." He sets the cup down. "Deficiencies can mean any number of things and come with more severe injuries. Mood swings, personality changes, sensitivity to noise and lights, cognitive difficulties, memory loss, the list is long. But as I said, I don't foresee Ms. James experiencing too much of this. That said, however, the human brain is the most mysterious and complicated organ in the human body, so until she wakes up there's just no way to know."
