Lucas had been in an ICU himself as a patient on a couple of occasions and had learned to hate the odor, which he could have identified anytime, anywhere: a mixture of the coppery smell of blood, raw meat, urine, several kinds of disinfectant, and what he thought might be iodine, a stink he remembered from his rough-and-tumble childhood.
He sat, leaned toward Weather, took her free hand, and muttered, “I’m here.” He got no acknowledging squeeze, but her eyes moved toward him, and she said, through sandpapery lips, “Was I in an accident?”
A nurse behind Lucas whispered, “She keeps asking that.”
Lucas said to Weather, “Yes, but you’ll be fine. The docs say you’re doing great.”
Weather closed her eyes and seemed to drift away. Lucas sat holding her hand, and, a few minutes later, her eyes opened again, turned fractionally, and she again asked, “Was I in an accident?”
She asked three more times, and after the third Lucas tucked her hand under the covers and stepped outside the curtain and said to a passing nurse, “I need to talk to her doc.”
“He’s here, I’ll get him.”
Del had been waiting in the lobby, and he walked up and asked Lucas, “What’s happening?”
“Gonna talk to the doc.”
The doc showed up two minutes later, carrying an iPad. He was a tall man, thin, in a white physician’s jacket, gray slacks, and steel-rimmed glasses perched on a beaked nose. “Mr. Davenport?” he asked, and, looking at Del, said, “Mr. Capslock, nice to see you again.”
“Is she going to be okay?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. Most likely,” the doc said, turning back to Lucas. “We’ve got all the obvious stuff handled, the open question at this point is the neck injury, which we can’t fully assess until we can talk to her. The head injury appears to be a moderate-to-serious concussion.”
“She keeps asking if she’s been in an accident.”
“That happens. There’s no reason to believe it will continue, it should clear up. She may have some residual amnesia, and that might go away or may never go away. Typically, she could lose the few minutes before the collision or part of the day, or she might lose some of it and get it back later. Or she might not lose anything at all.”
“Bottom line?”
“Bottom line is, she should be fine. The neck is the thing I’m most worried about—but it could be that there’s nothing there. We know there’s some swelling of the muscles on both sides of the spine, which means she’s going to have some pain. But the specifics? We don’t know yet.”
“When will you know?”
“Best guess? Tomorrow. I expect that after she’s had some good solid sleep, she’ll be able to talk to us, and we can do some tests and get some responses.”
“What can I do for her?” Lucas asked.
“Not much. What she needs most is physical rest. One thing—and this is hardest for doctors—she needs cognitive rest. Don’t bring in magazines or her tablet or laptop. She’ll be here for a few days, and we don’t even want her watching TV. She needs to keep her brain quiet. For people like her, that’s difficult. She’s gonna get very bored.”
“Bored is okay,” Lucas said. “We can handle bored.”
“That’s what they all say,” the doc said, with a smile. He turned to Del. “How are you doing?”
“I’m back at work, but it still hurts,” Del said. “Can’t run all that well.”
“That’ll take some time,” the doc said. “Are you still doing the PT?”
“When I can . . .” Del’s eyes shifted away from the doc.
“Hey! Do it all the time. Every time. Goddamnit, Capslock . . .”
“I know, I know,” Del said.
The doc turned back to Lucas. “I had Capslock after his adventures down in El Paso. I can tell you, he was hurt a lot worse than Weather. And look at him now.”
Lucas: “Do I have to?”
“I know it’s hard.”
Del had gone out to his car while Lucas was behind the curtain with Weather and now he handed Lucas a plastic shopping bag. “I went to Barnes and Noble while I was waiting for the plane to come in,” he said. “Magazines. You owe me seventy-seven dollars.”
“The doc said I can’t give her magazines.”
“They’re for you,” Del said. “When I was in here, my old lady almost went nuts from the boredom. Man, you sit there and stare at each other, and, every once in a while, a little pee trickles into the bag. That’s about it for excitement.”
“Take the magazines,” the doc said.
* * *
—
LUCAS TOOK the shopping bag and sent Del home. “No point in both of us going nuts.” As Del was walking away, Lucas called to him, and when Del turned, Lucas said, “Hey, you da man.”
Del waved, and Lucas went back behind the curtain, and a second later Weather’s eyes opened, and she asked, “Was I in an accident?”
Lucas said, “Yes,” and she closed her eyes again, and he picked up a copy of Outside magazine and started with the last page.
She asked again, and again, and again—“Was I in an accident?”—and after the last time, Lucas said, “Yes,” and she asked, “Was anyone else hurt? Did I hit somebody?”
Lucas dropped the magazine: “Holy shit, you’re back. Don’t go anywhere, I gotta tell the nurse.”
* * *
—
WEATHER’S BRAIN was working again, and she asked a hundred questions, and she was still asking questions when Letty pushed through the curtain, looked at Weather’s bruised face, and blurted, “Oh my God.”
“Just what I would expect from a college student,” Weather said. “Oh my God.”
Letty turned to Lucas. “She looks bad, but not so bad she can’t give me a hard time.”
Lucas said, “She’s not good. She’s gonna hurt a lot, and she’s going to be bitchy for weeks.”
“What about the asshole who hit her?” Letty asked. She was a lanky young woman, with striking dark hair and eyes.
“He’s dead,” Lucas said. “He shot himself. Had a whole string of DWIs, just got out of prison for the last one.”
“Good,” Letty said. “That keeps me from the inconvenience of killing him.”
Weather said, “Letty, we need to get you some serious therapy.”
* * *
—
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, Weather drifted off to sleep, and a nurse said she’d be down for a while. “We get lots of concussions here. She’s worn out, and she’ll probably sleep until noon or later. You’d best go get some sleep yourselves.”
They were inclined to stay, but the nurse, and then the incoming doc, shoved them out the door.
They were both back at noon, though Weather didn’t wake until two o’clock, when she asked for her laptop. “I know all about concussions and I don’t want to browse, I just need to notify patients . . .”
“That’s all been taken care of,” Lucas said. “You ain’t getting a laptop until the doc says so.”
“What am I supposed to do? Lay here until I go insane?”
“Exactly,” Letty said. “Besides, they’re planning to kick us out of here and do a lot of tests with you. You’ll be busy until dinnertime.”
* * *
—
LUCAS SPENT the next two days suffering a mix of stress and boredom. Weather’s spine looked good, but she had several pulled muscles in her neck, chest, and rib cage, and she would be stuck with the neck brace for a while . . . “a while” being undefined. She couldn’t cough or laugh without suffering a spasm of pain, her broken arm ached, but she said she could ignore it.
“Not being able to move my neck is driving me crazy. It makes my eyes hurt, looking around without moving my head. Not being able to read is worse . . .”
* * *
—
LETTY BEGAN TO TALK about going back to California—classes were about to start again—and Weather told her to go. Letty said she would . . . in a few days. She wanted to see Weather at home.
Lucas brought Sam and Gabrielle down to see Weather every afternoon; Weather fell into a routine of sleeping late in the morning, taking a nap in the afternoon, and staying up late with Lucas. She’d already determined that she wouldn’t be working again for at least six weeks, and two months was more likely.
On the sixth day after the accident, they sat up talking until two in the morning. Lucas, the night owl, was still restless when he got home and spent another hour reading. At eight o’clock the next morning, he was sleeping soundly when there was a knock on the bedroom door, and Letty called, “Dad?”
He struggled to sit up. “Yeah?”
“There’s a lady here to see you,” Letty said.