Chapter 19
Facing the Future
Robert’s room was mostly empty. He had been out of the coma for two days and had improved so much that he had a decent chance of being released the next day, just as soon as the doctors were sure that his head injuries would not be a problem. Doctor Blankenship was leaning over the bed shining his penlight into Robert’s eyes. “Good,” he said as he waved the light into each eye then clicked it off. “Excellent responses.”
Robert smiled. Charles did too; he was lurking in the far corner, doing his best to stay out of the doctor’s way. No one else was in the room.
“What does that mean?” Robert asked.
“It means your head is fine. No outward signs of any lingering damage that might cause long-term problems. To be frank, I’m shocked at how little bruising there is, much less than just yesterday. The way you’re healing, you’ll have black eyes for a couple of weeks, but you should be looking fairly normal in a month or so. You’ve obviously taken care of yourself to snap back so fast. ”
“Does that mean I can go home?”
“Not yet,” Blankenship replied as he picked up his clipboard and Robert’s file, pulled a pen from his pocket, and scribbled some notes on a chart in the file. “But you’re close. I want to do a CT scan to make sure we’re out of the woods. We’ll take care of that this afternoon. We’ll shoot for tomorrow, at the earliest.”
Robert lay in silence for a few moments as his thoughts lingered on his most pressing concern. “What about my shoulder and arm?”
Blankenship, still standing at the side of the bed making notes in the file, dropped the clipboard to his side and looked up at Robert. He sighed impatiently. “You realize that you almost died, right?
“Yeah.”
“And that you’re lucky to be alive?”
“I know,” Robert weakly replied.
Charles stirred in the background, growing tense as a result of Blankenship’s insensitivity. To go from hopeful to more pessimistic so quickly was surprising to Charles, who always did his best to follow up his own “hard reality” talks with his clients with optimism, the opposite of what this character seemed to be doing. He walked to the other side of Robert’s bed and stood, looking down at Blankenship, who was much shorter and smaller than he. “It’s a fine question,” is all Charles said.
What’s with these people? Blankenship thought as he looked up at Charles and then back down at Robert, consternation etched on his face. We save the kid’s life and you want more? “The point is,” he said, “the most important thing, your brain, is intact. That is more than we could have expected given the extent of your injuries. To be frank, I’ve never seen someone recover as quickly and as totally, at least as far as your head injuries are concerned. Everything else is gravy. Will you be able to use your arm and shoulder again? Of course. They’re still attached, and most of the muscles and tendons work fine.”
“That’s not why he asked,” Charles said. “He’s a baseball player. He’s got a scholarship, and that’s his throwing arm.”
Blankenship’s face grew grim. He was never much of an athlete, and he had to admit to himself that he tended to be a little jealous of such people. Concern was there, too, at least in the context of the doctor-patient relationship, regardless of how insensitive they might think he was. “I can’t tell you much about that,” he said, telling them a half-truth. “Time heals a lot, but only an orthopedist could tell you for sure. There’s nerve damage, to be sure, and while the tendons and muscles that were torn from the bone have been reattached, the extent of your injuries tell me that you will experience lingering affects for years to come. I’ll have one look at the charts and X-rays. A new CT scan and MRI will tell us more. Who knows?”
Why did I say that? Blankenship thought to himself. A question means there’s hope, and he honestly didn’t believe this kids had any chance of playing peewee baseball again let alone college-level ball. He usually shot straight with his patients, just told them the facts. He had always believed that putting off the inevitable just got their hopes up, and that led to a very violent and emotional crash back down to earth when recovery did not come as promised. So what had come over him? As Charles and Robert perked up with words that were very un-Blankenship-like, he continued to fight the temptation to shoot straight. Instead, he followed up his open-ended question with a profound statement he seldom used, “There’s always hope,” then left the room.
Once he left, Charles grinned in Robert’s direction and said, “Nice guy.”
“Yeah,” Robert agreed as he looked down at his numb right hand, which was now in a soft cast with only the tips of his fingers exposed. He looked back up at Charles. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “If I never throw another baseball, it’s okay.”
Charles stumbled back a few inches, looked back in search of the nearest chair, and sat down. He didn’t cry, but wanted to. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know why I chose UTA over the others?”
“No. I did wonder, though. It didn’t make much sense to me. You could’ve gone and played baseball almost anywhere.”
“God wants something else for me,” Robert said. “I’m not sure what, maybe the ministry. I don’t know for sure. But it’s certainly not baseball, football, or anything like that.”
“It’s not Janie?”
“I’m still not sure who she is, to be frank. I only know that God was leading me to Texas. The rest is hazy.”
“You want to pray about it?”
“Sure.”
So they prayed—for physical healing, for direction, for Robert’s memory to be restored—and then sat in silence as Robert drifted off to sleep and Charles considered where they’d both be at that moment had he not defended the guy who caused this mess. Charles knew the family had forgiven him. Indeed, they hadn’t even seen anything to forgive him for, at least that’s what everyone told him, yet he still felt responsible. He felt like he’d wasted his entire career putting guilty people on the streets to victimize more innocents. Before Robert got injured, they would come back time and again in need of more legal help, and he’d take their money, or the state’s money for the court-appointed ones, which he still took on occasion. But although those cases sometimes involved innocent victims injured by repeat offenders, they were nameless, faceless strangers.
Now it was different; his own flesh and blood was paying the price for what was beginning to seem like an abominable vocation to him. Charles, the unassailable Rock of Gibraltar in the courtroom, was now unsure of who he was, of what he’d become over the years. He even doubted his Christianity, doubted whether any true Christian would do what he had done over the years: defend those he knew to be guilty. It was time to reevaluate, to go in a new direction. Charles smiled for the first time since breaking the news to the family. Tomorrow was a new day, and he was determined to make it a better one.