Mercy

CHAPTER 12

The furniture in the modest waiting room on the first floor of the Saunders Building was upholstered in fabric but not very comfortable to sit on. The tissue boxes were equal in number to the dog-eared magazines. Off to the side were small consultation rooms where distraught family members could speak privately with a patient’s surgeon. Sam had been in surgery for six hours. In that time, Julie had seen a number of people go into those rooms and emerge looking utterly destroyed.

What sort of expression will I have? Julie asked herself. No big smiles, certainly; Sam was too badly injured for that. She still hoped for good news, though the odds were not in their favor.

C4 burst fracture! Julie could not stop hearing Dr. Benton’s voice.

The wait was unbearable. No matter how much water she drank, Julie’s throat was persistently dry, her chest drum-tight. The guilt came and went in waves.

If only she had honked in time. If only she had agreed to be home for Trevor an hour later, like Sam had wanted. If only they had taken a different route. If only she had made any number of other choices, they would have been someplace other than behind that Civic. Of course, Sam would tell Julie it was not her fault. He’d tell her that, if only he could.

Julie had showered and changed into scrubs, but felt no better for the effort. She could still smell Sam’s blood in her hair, on her skin, even though all traces had been washed down the drain. The knots in her stomach made it impossible to sip from the second cup of coffee a thoughtful nurse had brought her.

Paul and Trevor were with Julie in the waiting area, and had been there for the past several hours. When they first arrived, Trevor’s baffled expression had made it clear he did not understand why his parents embraced with such emotion. It was understandably strange for him to see his mom and dad being at all affectionate. It would come up later in conversation, and Julie would explain that while she no longer loved Paul as a husband, she regarded him as a friend and appreciated his support at a time of great need.

“Is Sam going to be okay, Mom?” Trevor had asked. His dark eyes were a little watery.

Julie was touched by his emotion. “We’ll see. I don’t know. I’m being honest.”

“Don’t ride motorcycles anymore. Please.”

“I have no plans to,” Julie said.

For the most part, Trevor was quiet now, reading the book he’d gotten from the library before any of this had happened.

“Tell me what I can do for you,” Paul said to Julie. His eyes, brown and clear, brimmed with compassion. He liked Sam, and had encouraged Trevor to embrace him as a stepfather. Sam’s last birthday had fallen on a day when Trevor was with Paul, but Trevor phoned anyway and sang “Happy Birthday.” That had been entirely Paul’s doing.

Julie saw so much of Paul in Trevor. One day, her sweet-faced son would be the spitting image of his father. Paul was a tall, handsome man, with lustrous brown hair that could be unruly but today was pulled into a tight ponytail. He wore a faded brown leather jacket with a black T-shirt underneath, and a worn pair of blue jeans flecked with metallic paint from whatever sculpture he and Trevor had been working on. His craggy face was dappled with the trademark scruff that somehow managed to keep from blossoming into a beard.

“Let me get you something to eat,” Paul said. They sat on adjacent chairs. Her hands were trembling, and Paul had noticed. “You look a little pale.”

“I can’t, Paul. I couldn’t get down a bite.”

“Jell-O, then. It’s not even real food.”

Julie almost managed a laugh. “Okay, Jell-O. Cherry. And maybe an apple.”

Paul stood and put his hand on Julie’s shoulder. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.

Julie swallowed hard, and her face twisted. “I don’t think so.”

“Are they going to arrest whoever caused it?” Trevor asked.

“I honestly don’t know. Why don’t you go with your father and get something from the cafeteria.”

Trevor stood his ground. His sweet nature shone through like a beacon. He wanted to stay by his mother’s side and help guide her through these treacherous waters.

“Go, honey. Go with Dad. Get something to eat. I’ll be fine on my own for a bit.”

Trevor followed his father out of the waiting room just as Dr. Lucy Abruzzo came walking in. Lucy, in her white lab coat, was visibly upset. She moved quickly toward Julie, and the two women embraced long enough for those pent-up tears to fall.

“I’m so sorry. I was down in the lab and didn’t see your text until just now. Julie, what happened?”

The two friends talked together in hushed tones. No particular event had brought Lucy into Julie’s life. They were colleagues at the same hospital who had struck up a conversation one day, and found in each other a dislike for bureaucracy, a love of science, and a passion for medicine. They would eat lunch together whenever possible and sometimes Julie would join Lucy, a seasoned marathoner, for a jog, which always turned out to be a humbling experience.

A prolonged silence followed Julie’s account of the day’s tragic events.

“I’m at a loss for words. I’m so sorry, Julie.”

“What am I going to do?” Julie said, biting at her lip, trying to redirect the pain in her heart to someplace else.

“We won’t know the extent of his injuries until after the surgery.”

“Burst fracture, C4,” Julie reminded her.

Lucy was not going to take the bait. “It’s not a death sentence.”

“A lot of my patients are on the verge of becoming your patients. I know the odds.”

Lucy was too professional to offer false hope, but still did not seem as convinced as Julie.

“We’ve both been around this business long enough to see remarkable recoveries. Sometimes it takes months, years of rehab, but we’ve seen it happen.”

Julie mulled this over. “We don’t see it very often.”

Lucy took Julie’s hand and gave a squeeze. “Just have faith,” she said.

“I know what I would want,” Julie said.

“Don’t get on your soapbox about death with dignity just yet. Sam is still in surgery, and you’re projecting the worst.”

“I’m not projecting, I’m protecting myself,” Julie said.

“I understand completely,” said Lucy. “And if I had any feelings-which according to the other department heads around here, I don’t-I’d be doing the same damn thing.”

The automatic doors opened with a whoosh. Dr. Benton appeared, dressed in a fresh pair of scrubs, her surgical cap still in place. Dr. Riya Kapoor, the surgical resident, was at her heels.

Julie jumped up, closing the distance between them in seconds.

Dr. Benton’s cheerless eyes, glazed from hours of surgery, fixed Julie with a look of compassion.

“Hi, Julie. Let’s go to one of the conference rooms.”

The conference room was for long conversations. Julie had been hoping for something that could be said while standing-something like, “He pulled through surgery like a champ.”

“Is he dead?” Julie spat out the words, her voice shaky. The world was turning black.

“No,” Dr. Kapoor said.

Julie motioned for Lucy. They followed the two surgeons into the windowless conference room, which held a small table, a few chairs, and nothing more.

“Sam has stabilized and he’s being taken to the ICU now,” Dr. Benton began.

Julie tried to recall the shift schedule, wanting to know who was on the floor and would be looking after her Sam.

“You know that his injuries are severe. We found the hemopericardium. The cause was a small tear in his aorta. He was placed on bypass, and we repaired it easily in under fifteen minutes.”

So Sam had died, if only for a few minutes. They had placed him on a cardiopulmonary bypass, stopped his heart, and rerouted his blood so they could repair that tear in the aorta.

Julie held her stony expression, knowing the bad news was yet to come.

“He sustained numerous injuries due to the high-speed impact of the crash,” Dr. Benton continued. “Ortho cleaned up the wound from the open fracture. They plan to set it in a day or two, when he is more stable. His wrist and elbow are splinted, and will also need pinning. We’ll try to have two ortho teams in the OR to minimize time spent in surgery.”

That’s not it… there’s something else. I can see it in her eyes.

“He also suffered a pelvic fracture, and is in traction now.” Dr. Benton reached across the table for Julie’s hand.

Oh, no… here it comes… A pit opened in Julie’s stomach.

“The major concern now is that the burst fracture of C4 splintered into the spinal column.”

Julie visualized fragments of bone moving with enough velocity to shear the delicate strands of nerves embedded in the spinal column, the way shrapnel can shred flesh.

“Dr. Weinstein has been involved, and Sam is on the spinal cord trauma protocol.”

High-dose steroids to try to help the swelling, Julie knew. It was like using aspirin to try and cure a cancer.

“Now we want to give him some time to stabilize and give you time to see him before we take him for an MRI.”

“What’s the prognosis?” Julie asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“Give her your personal opinion, Wendy,” Lucy said in a stern voice.

“I’m sorry, Julie,” Dr. Benton said. “The injury was bad, as bad as I’ve ever seen. There’s no easy way to break this news gently. My personal opinion is the accident is going to leave Sam permanently quadriplegic.”