As I held my sister’s hand, I stared at the numbers on the digital machine, unsure whether they were normal or worrisome. I went to the nurses’ station and asked to speak to one of her physicians, but no one was available, since morning rounds had already been completed.
I found the silence of Paige’s room oppressive. Instinctively, I started to chatter inanely, regaling her with the same lighthearted stories that I’d told my aunt. She didn’t stir, nor did she register any awareness of my presence.
Stepping outside the hospital, I called Morgan from the parking lot. She answered on the first ring, and I updated her on my visit with my aunt. I couldn’t summon the courage to tell her about my sister. Nor did Morgan ask; somehow, she sensed that I wasn’t ready to talk about Paige just yet.
“How are you doing?” she asked, sounding genuinely worried. “Are you holding up?”
“Barely,” I admitted. “I didn’t sleep much.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“I know you’re not asking,” she said. “I’m suggesting it.”
“I thought you were supposed to fly home today.”
“I am. I’m almost packed, and we’ll be heading to the airport in an hour or so.”
“Okay, good,” I murmured.
“I went by Bobby T’s last night,” she added. “I told Ray what happened. I wasn’t sure that you remembered.”
“Thank you—you’re right, it totally slipped my mind,” I admitted. “Was Ray upset?”
“I think that’s the least of your worries right now, but he said he understood.”
“Okay,” I said, my mind suddenly flashing to Paige. After a prolonged silence, I heard Morgan’s voice again.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Colby?”
After hanging up, I returned to my aunt’s room. She was sleeping when I got there, and I let her rest. When she woke, I helped her sit up and cautiously fed some ice chips into the right corner of her mouth, making sure she was able to swallow. Her speech was distorted, as if her tongue were an unfamiliar presence in her mouth, but with some effort she was gradually able to recount what happened.
When she had gone to the office that day, she noticed that the fingers on her left hand felt oddly numb, and then her vision started to blur. The room spun and tilted, she said, making it impossible for her to keep her balance. That was when Xavier came in. For some reason, he couldn’t understand what she was saying. Not long after that, Toby arrived, then Paige, and they couldn’t understand her, either. She suspected she was having a stroke—she’d seen the signs on some medical drama on television—but she had no way to tell them, which made it even worse. The entire time she was being loaded into the ambulance, she fretted over whether the effects would be permanent. I gave her left hand a soothing squeeze; her fingers curled but there was hardly any strength.
“You’ll be good as new soon,” I assured her, trying to sound more confident than I felt. I told her nothing about Paige.
“I don’t want to be paralyzed,” she mumbled, the last word almost unintelligible.
“You’re going to recover,” I found myself saying.
When she finally dozed off, I went back to Paige’s room.
Then I visited my aunt again, and that was how I spent the rest of the day. Going back and forth from one room to the other.
In all that time, Paige never regained consciousness.
Right before I left the hospital for the night, I finally managed to connect with the physicians. First up was my aunt’s neurologist, to whom I’d spoken on my drive back from Florida.
While the stroke was serious, he reiterated that it could have been much worse. Based on her recovery to that point, he still planned to release her in a couple of days but said she would likely need assistance once she got home, since walking, dressing, and other basic activities would be difficult. If I couldn’t do it—or if another family member couldn’t—it was recommended that I hire a home-healthcare worker. He added that after her release, she would also need extensive physical therapy and that he was already making arrangements for just such care. Despite all of that, he remained relatively positive about her prognosis.
I next met with the critical-care specialist who’d been called in to help treat Paige while she was in the emergency room. I was lucky to speak with him in person, as he’d returned to the hospital only by chance to retrieve something he’d forgotten, and the nurse pointed him out to me.
“It was touch-and-go for a while,” he admitted, echoing what the other doctor had warned me about. Though prematurely graying, his alert gaze and youthful energy suggested he was only in his early forties. “Since she’s still unconscious, it’s hard to know the full extent of any possible impairments,” he qualified, “but now that her vitals have begun to improve, I’m hoping for the best.”
Until that moment, I realized, I’d been expecting the worst.
“Thank you,” I said, exhaling.
Suddenly ravenous, I stopped at a drive-thru to pick up some cheeseburgers and fries, wolfing everything down on the short drive to the hotel. Again, I fell asleep almost immediately, too tired even to remove my clothes.
I slept for more than twelve hours and woke feeling almost human again. I showered, had a huge breakfast, and returned to the hospital.
I went directly to my sister’s room but, strangely, found it empty. After a few moments of panic, I learned that she’d been transferred to another floor. When the nurses explained why, I understood, but my heart filled with dread as I made my way there.
When I arrived at the room, she was awake and no longer intubated. Her face was still sunken and gray, and she seemed to be struggling to bring me into focus, as if willing me into existence. Finally, she cracked a weak smile.
“You cut your hair,” she said, her voice so soft I had to strain to make it out.
Though I’d known it was coming, I nonetheless felt something plummet inside me. “Yeah,” I lied.
“Good,” she said through dry, cracked lips. “I was just about to fly home and cut it myself.”
Her old joke, I thought. Though I knew she was trying to be funny, I couldn’t help eyeing the restraints on her wrists. I took a seat beside her and asked how she was feeling.
Instead of answering my question, she frowned, visibly confused. “How did you find me?”
As I searched for an answer to soothe her rising anxiety, she shifted in her bed. “Did he send you?” She scanned my face. “Gary, I mean?” Twisting the sheets in her bony hands, she went on: “I had to plan for months, Colby. You don’t know how bad he got. He hurt Tommie….”
And then she launched into a story that I’d suspected would be coming. As she rambled, her agitation grew, until her shouts and the rattling of her bed rails began to attract the attention of a nurse, who came into the room. The nurse told me over my sister’s strenuous pleas that the psychiatrist wanted to speak with me.
Not any psychiatrist. Paige’s psychiatrist, a man I knew well.
He arrived within twenty minutes and led me to a room where we could have a private conversation. I told him everything I knew. He nodded as I described my inability to reach Paige, the frantic drive home, and the state of the house when I arrived, but he sat up sharply when I told him about my aunt. He hadn’t known she was in the hospital, but now I could see him putting all the pieces together in the same way I had.
He recommended that I avoid visiting Paige for the rest of the day, maybe even the day after that, and told me why. I nodded, understanding and accepting his reasoning. After all, none of this was new.
Afterward, I went to my aunt’s room and finally told her about Paige. Her eyes welled with tears, and I saw the same anguished guilt in her expression that I felt, the same helplessness.
When I finished, she pinched the bridge of her nose, then wiped away her tears.
“Go home,” she said, fixing me with a stern glare. “You look exhausted.”
“But I want to stay,” I protested. “I need to be here.”
She forced a lopsided scowl, only half of her face cooperating.
“Colby, you need to take care of yourself right now.”
She didn’t bother to point out how pressed I would be at the farm for the next few weeks or that I’d be no good to either of them if I collapsed. We both already knew those things.
At the hotel, I repacked my things, feeling like my days in Florida were a distant dream. As I drove home, I could still feel lingering tension in my neck and shoulders, and memories of Paige’s terrified pleas as I left her hospital room only made things worse.