21
By midnight, Amanda felt numb. Mentally, emotionally, and physically drained, she’d been simultaneously exhausted and on edge for hours as she’d sat in the waiting room. She’d flipped through pages of magazines seeing nothing at all, she’d paced back and forth compulsively, trying to stem the dread she felt whenever she thought about her son. As the hours circled toward midnight, however, she found her acute anxiety draining away, leaving only a wrung-out shell.
Lynn had rushed in an hour earlier, her panic evident. Clinging to Amanda, she’d peppered her mom with endless questions that Amanda couldn’t answer. Next she’d turned to Frank, pressing him relentlessly for details about the accident. Someone speeding through the intersection, he’d said, with a helpless shrug. By now he was sober, and though his concern for Jared was apparent, he failed to make any mention of why Jared had been driving through the intersection in the first place, or why Jared had even been driving his father at all.
Amanda had said nothing to Frank in the hours they’d been in the room. She knew that Lynn must have noticed the silence between them, but Lynn was quiet as well, lost in her worries about her brother. At one point, she did ask Amanda whether she should go pick up Annette from camp. Amanda told her to wait until they had a better sense of what was happening. Annette was too young to comprehend the full extent of this crisis, and in all honesty Amanda didn’t feel capable of caring for Annette right now. It was all she could do to hold herself together.
At twenty past midnight on what had been the longest day of her life, Dr. Mills finally entered the room. He was obviously tired, but he’d changed into clean scrubs before coming to talk to them. Amanda rose from her seat, as did Lynn and Frank.
“The surgery went well,” he said straight off. “We’re pretty sure Jared is going to be fine.”
Jared was in recovery for several hours, but Amanda wasn’t allowed to see him until he was finally moved to the ICU. Though it was normally closed to visitors overnight, Dr. Mills made an exception for her.
By then Lynn had driven Frank home. He claimed to have developed an intense headache from the blow to his face, but he promised to be back the following morning. Lynn had volunteered to return to the hospital afterward to stay with her mom, but Amanda had vetoed the idea. She’d be with Jared all night.
Amanda sat at her son’s bedside for the next few hours, listening to the digital beeps of the heart monitor and the unnatural hiss of the ventilator slowly pushing air in and out of his lungs. His skin was the color of old plastic and his cheeks seemed to have collapsed. He didn’t look like the son she remembered, the son she’d raised; he was a stranger to her in this foreign setting, so removed from their everyday lives.
Only his hands seemed unaffected, and she held on to one of them, drawing strength from its warmth. When the nurse had changed his bandage, she’d caught a glimpse of the violent gash that split his torso, and she’d had to turn away.
The doctor had said that Jared would probably wake later that day, and as she hovered at his bedside she wondered how much he would remember about the accident and his arrival at the hospital. Had he been frightened when his condition suddenly worsened? Had he wished that she’d been there? The thought was like a physical blow, and she vowed that she would stay with him now for as long as he needed her.
She hadn’t slept at all since she’d arrived at the hospital. As the hours passed with no sign of Jared waking, she grew sleepy, lulled by the steady, rhythmic sound of the equipment. She leaned forward, resting her head on the bedrail. A nurse woke her twenty minutes later and suggested that she go home for a little while.
Amanda shook her head, staring at her son again, willing her strength into his broken body. To comfort herself, she thought of Dr. Mills’s assurances that once Jared recovered, he would lead a mostly normal life. It could have been worse, Dr. Mills had told her, and she repeated that sentiment like a charm to ward off greater disaster.
As daylight seeped into the sky outside the ICU’s windows, the hospital began to come to life again. Nurses changed shifts, breakfast carts were loaded up, physicians began to make their rounds. The noise level rose to a steady buzz. A nurse pointedly informed Amanda that she needed to check the catheter, and Amanda reluctantly left the ICU and wandered to the cafeteria. Perhaps caffeine would give her the energy surge she needed; she had to be there when Jared finally awoke.
Despite the early hour, the line was already long with people who, like her, had been up all night. A young man in his late twenties took his place behind her.