Howard touched the child’s temples. His own breathing had slowed.
“I think he’s supposed to feel this way right now,” he said. “He’s in shock, remember? That’s what the doctor said. The doctor was just in here. He would have said something if Scotty wasn’t okay.”
Ann stood there a while longer, working her lip with her teeth. Then she moved over to her chair and sat down.
Howard sat in the chair next to her chair. They looked at each other. He wanted to say something else and reassure her, but he was afraid, too. He took her hand and put it in his lap, and this made him feel better, her hand being there. He picked up her hand and squeezed it. Then he just held her hand. They sat like that for a while, watching the boy and not talking. From time to time, he squeezed her hand. Finally, she took her hand away.
“I’ve been praying,” she said.
He nodded.
She said, “I almost thought I’d forgotten how, but it came back to me. All I had to do was close my eyes and say, ‘Please God, help us—help Scotty,’ and then the rest was easy. The words were right there.
Maybe if you prayed, too,” she said to him.
“I’ve already prayed,” he said. “I prayed this afternoon—yesterday afternoon, I mean—after you called, while I was driving to the hospital. I’ve been praying,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said. For the first time, she felt they were together in it, this trouble. She realized with a start that, until now, it had only been happening to her and to Scotty. She hadn’t let Howard into it, though he was there and needed all along. She felt glad to be his wife.
The same nurse came in and took the boy’s pulse again and checked the flow from the bottle hanging above the bed.
In an hour, another doctor came in. He said his name was Parsons, from Radiology. He had a bushy moustache. He was wearing loafers, a Western shirt, and a pair of jeans.
“We’re going to take him downstairs for more pictures,” he told them. “We need to do some more pictures, and we want to do a scan.”
“What’s that?” Ann said. “A scan?” She stood between this new doctor and the bed. “I thought you’d already taken all your X-rays.”
“I’m afraid we need some more,” he said. “Nothing to be alarmed about. We just need some more pictures, and we want to do a brain scan on him.”
“My God,” Ann said.
“It’s perfectly normal procedure in cases like this,” this new doctor said. “We just need to find out for sure why he isn’t back awake yet. It’s normal medical procedure, and nothing to be alarmed about. We’ll be taking him down in a few minutes,” this doctor said.
In a little while, two orderlies came into the room with a gurney. They were black-haired, darkcomplexioned men in white uniforms, and they said a few words to each other in a foreign tongue as they unhooked the boy from the tube and moved him from his bed to the gurney. Then they wheeled him from the room. Howard and Ann got on the same elevator. Ann gazed at the child. She closed her eyes as the elevator began its descent. The orderlies stood at either end of the gurney without saying anything, though once one of the men made a comment to the other in their own language, and the other man nodded slowly in response.
Later that morning, just as the sun was beginning to lighten the windows in the waiting room outside the X-ray department, they brought the boy out and moved him back up to his room. Howard and Ann rode up on the elevator with him once more, and once more they took up their places beside the bed.
They waited all day, but still the boy did not wake up. Occasionally, one of them would leave the room to go downstairs to the cafeteria to drink coffee and then, as if suddenly remembering and feeling guilty, get up from the table and hurry back to the room. Dr. Francis came again that afternoon and examined the boy once more and then left after telling them he was conning along and could wake up at any minute now. Nurses, different nurses from the night before, came in from time to time. Then a young woman from the lab knocked and entered the room. She wore white slacks and a white blouse and carried a little tray of things which she put on the stand beside the bed. Without a word to them, she took blood from the boy’s arm. Howard closed his eyes as the woman found the right place on the boy’s arm and pushed the needle in.
“I don’t understand this,” Ann said to the woman.
“Doctor’s orders,” the young woman said. “I do what I’m told. They say draw that one, I draw. What’s wrong with him, anyway?” she said. “He’s a sweetie.”
“He was hit by a car,” Howard said. “A hit-and-run.”
The young woman shook her head and looked again at the boy. Then she took her tray and left the room.
“Why won’t he wake up?” Ann said. “Howard? I want some answers from these people.”
Howard didn’t say anything. He sat down again in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. He rubbed his face. He looked at his son and then he settled back in the chair, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
Ann walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot. It was night, and cars were driving into and out of the parking lot with their lights on. She stood at the window with her hands gripping the sill, and knew in her heart that they were into something now, something hard. She was afraid, and her teeth began to chatter until she tightened her jaws. She saw a big car stop in front of the hospital and someone, a woman in a long coat, get into the car. She wished she were that woman and somebody, anybody, was driving her away from here to somewhere else, a place where she would find Scotty waiting for her when she stepped out of the car, ready to say Mom and let her gather him in her arms.
In a little while, Howard woke up. He looked at the boy again. Then he got up from the chair, stretched, and went over to stand beside her at the window. They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn’t say anything. But they seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way.
The door opened and Dr. Francis came in. He was wearing a different suit and tie this time. His gray hair was combed along the sides of his head, and he looked as if he had just shaved. He went straight to the bed and examined the boy. “He ought to have come around by now. There’s just no good reason for this,” he said. “But I can tell you we’re all convinced he’s out of any danger. We’ll just feel better when he wakes up. There’s no reason, absolutely none, why he shouldn’t come around. Very soon. Oh, he’ll have himself a dilly of a headache when he does, you can count on that. But all of his signs are fine.
They’re as normal as can be.”
“It is a coma, then?” Ann said.
The doctor rubbed his smooth cheek. “We’ll call it that for the time being, until he wakes up. But you must be worn out. This is hard. I know this is hard. Feel free to go out for a bite,” he said. “It would do you good. I’ll put a nurse in here while you’re gone if you’ll feel better about going. Go and have yourselves something to eat.”
“I couldn’t eat anything,” Ann said.
“Do what you need to do, of course,” the doctor said. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that all the signs are good, the tests are negative, nothing showed up at all, and just as soon as he wakes up he’ll be over the hill.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Howard said. He shook hands with the doctor again. The doctor patted Howard’s shoulder and went out.
“I suppose one of us should go home and check on things,” Howard said. “Slug needs to be fed, for one thing.”
“Call one of the neighbors,” Ann said. “Call the Morgans. Anyone will feed a dog if you ask them to.”
“All right,” Howard said. After a while, he said, “Honey, why don’t you do it? Why don’t you go home and check on things, and then come back? It’ll do you good. I’ll be right here with him. Seriously,” he said. “We need to keep up our strength on this. We’ll want to be here for a while even after he wakes up.”
“Why don’t you go?” she said. “Feed Slug. Fee
d yourself.”
“I already went,” he said. “I was gone for exactly an hour and fifteen minutes. You go home for an hour and freshen up. Then come back.”
She tried to think about it, but she was too tired. She closed her eyes and tried to think about it again.
After a time, she said, “Maybe I will go home for a few minutes. Maybe if I’m not just sitting right here watching him every second, he’ll wake up and be all right. You know? Maybe he’ll wake up if I’m not here. I’ll go home and take a bath and put on clean clothes. I’ll feed Slug. Then I’ll come back.”
“I’ll be right here,” he said. “You go on home, honey. I’ll keep an eye on things here.” His eyes were bloodshot and small, as if he’d been drinking for a long time. His clothes were rumpled. His beard had come out again. She touched his face, and then she took her hand back. She understood he wanted to be by himself for a while, not have to talk or share his worry for a time. She picked her purse up from the nightstand, and he helped her into her coat.
“I won’t be gone long,” she said.
“Just sit and rest for a little while when you get home,” he said. “Eat something. Take a bath. After you get out of the bath, just sit for a while and rest. It’ll do you a world of good, you’ll see. Then come back,”
he said. “Let’s try not to worry. You heard what Dr Francis said.”
She stood in her coat for a minute trying to recall the doctor’s exact words, looking for any nuances, any hint of something behind his words other than what he had said. She tried to remember if his expression had changed any when he bent over to examine the child. She remembered the way his features had composed themselves as he rolled back the child’s eyelids and then listened to his breathing.
She went to the door, where she turned and looked back. She looked at the child, and then she looked at the father. Howard nodded. She stepped out of the room and pulled the door closed behind her.
She went past the nurses’ station and down to the end of the corridor, looking for the elevator. At the end of the corridor, she turned to her right and entered a little waiting room where a Negro family sat in wicker chairs. There was a middle-aged man in a khaki shirt and pants, a baseball cap pushed back on his head. A large woman wearing a housedress and slippers was slumped in one of the chairs. A teenaged girl in jeans, hair done in dozens of little braids, lay stretched out in one of the chairs smoking a cigarette, her legs crossed at the ankles. The family swung their eyes to Ann as she entered the room.
The little table was littered with hamburger wrappers and Styrofoam cups.
“Franklin,” the large woman said as she roused herself. “Is it about Franklin?” Her eyes widened. “Tell me now, lady,” the woman said. “Is it about Franklin?” She was trying to rise from her chair, but the man had closed his hand over her arm.
“Here, here,” he said. “Evelyn.”
“I’m sorry,” Ann said. “I’m looking for the elevator. My son is in the hospital, and now I can’t find the elevator.”
“Elevator is down that way, turn left,” the man said as he aimed a finger.
The girl drew on her cigarette and stared at Ann. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, and her broad lips parted slowly as she let the smoke escape. The Negro woman let her head fall on her shoulder and looked away from Ann, no longer interested.
“My son was hit by a car,” Ann said to the man. She seemed to need to explain herself. “He has a concussion and a little skull fracture, but he’s going to be all right. He’s in shock now, but it might be some kind of coma, too. That’s what really worries us, the coma part. I’m going out for a little while, but my husband is with him. Maybe he’ll wake up while I’m gone.”
“That’s too bad,” the man said and shifted in the chair. He shook his head. He looked down at the table, and then he looked back at Ann. She was still standing there. He said, “Our Franklin, he’s on the operating table. Somebody cut him. Tried to kill him. There was a fight where he was at. At this party.
They say he was just standing and watching. Not bothering nobody. But that don’t mean nothing these days. Now he’s on the operating table. We’re just hoping and praying, that’s all we can do now.” He gazed at her steadily.
Ann looked at the girl again, who was still watching her, and at the older woman, who kept her head down, but whose eyes were now closed. Ann saw the lips moving silently, making words. She had an urge to ask what those words were. She wanted to talk more with these people who were in the same kind of waiting she was in. She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common. She would have liked to have said something else about the accident, told them more about Scotty, that it had happened on the day of his birthday, Monday, and that he was still unconscious. Yet she didn’t know how to begin. She stood looking at them without saying anything more.
She went down the corridor the man had indicated and found the elevator. She waited a minute in front of the closed doors, still wondering if she was doing the right thing. Then she put out her finger and touched the button.
She pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wheel for a minute. She listened to the ticking sounds the engine made as it began to cool. Then she got out of the car. She could hear the dog barking inside the house. She went to the front door, which was unlocked. She went inside and turned on lights and put on a kettle of water for tea. She opened some dog food and fed Slug on the back porch.
The dog ate in hungry little smacks. It kept running into the kitchen to see that she was going to stay. As she sat down on the sofa with her tea, the telephone rang.
“Yes!” she said as she answered. “Hello!”
“Mrs. Weiss,” a man’s voice said. It was five o’clock in the morning, and she thought she could hear machinery or equipment of some kind in the background.
“Yes, yes! What is it?” she said. “This is Mrs. Weiss. This is she. What is it, please?” She listened to whatever it was in the background. “Is it Scotty, for Christ’s sake?”
“Scotty,” the man’s voice said. “It’s about Scotty, yes. It has to do with Scotty, that problem. Have you forgotten about Scotty?” the man said. Then he hung up.
She dialed the hospital’s number and asked for the third floor. She demanded information about her son from the nurse who answered the telephone. Then she asked to speak to her husband. It was, she said, an emergency.
She waited, turning the telephone cord in her fingers. She closed her eyes and felt sick at her stomach.
She would have to make herself eat. Slug came in from the back porch and lay down near her feet. He wagged his tail. She pulled at his ear while he licked her fingers. Howard was on the line.
“Somebody just called here,” she said. She twisted the telephone cord. “He said it was about Scotty,” she cried.
“Scotty’s fine,” Howard told her. “I mean, he’s still sleeping. There’s been no change. The nurse has been in twice since you’ve been gone. A nurse or else a doctor. He’s all right.”
“This man called. He said it was about Scotty,” she told him.
“Honey, you rest for a little while, you need the rest. It must be that same caller I had. Just forget it.
Come back down here after you’ve rested. Then we’ll have breakfast or something.”
“Breakfast,” she said. “I don’t want any breakfast.”
“You know what I mean,” he said. “Juice, something. I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Ann. Jesus, I’m not hungry, either. Ann, it’s hard to talk now. I’m standing here at the desk. Dr Francis is coming again at eight o’clock this morning. He’s going to have something to tell us then, something more definite. That’s what one of the nurses said. She didn’t know any more than that. Ann? Honey, maybe we’ll know something more then. At eight o’clock. Come back here before eight. Meanwhile, I’m right here and Scotty’s all right. He’s still the same,” he added.
“I was drinking a cup o
f tea,” she said, “when the telephone rang. They said it was about Scotty. There was a noise in the background. Was there a noise in the background on that call you had, Howard?”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Maybe the driver of the car, maybe he’s a psychopath and found out about Scotty somehow. But I’m here with him. Just rest like you were going to do. Take a bath and come back by seven or so, and we’ll talk to the doctor together when he gets here. It’s going to be all right, honey.
I’m here, and there are doctors and nurses around. They say his condition is stable.”
“I’m scared to death,” she said.
She ran water, undressed, and got into the tub. She washed and dried quickly, not taking the time to wash her hair. She put on clean underwear, wool slacks, and a sweater. She went into the living room, where the dog looked up at her and let its tail thump once against the floor. It was just starting to get light outside when she went out to the car.
She drove into the parking lot of the hospital and found a space close to the front door. She felt she was in some obscure way responsible for what had happened to the child. She let her thoughts move to the Negro family. She remembered the name Franklin and the table that was covered with hamburger papers, and the teenaged girl staring at her as she drew on her cigarette. “Don’t have children,” she told the girl’s image as she entered the front door of the hospital. “For God’s sake, don’t.”
She took the elevator up to the third floor with two nurses who were just going on duty. It was Wednesday morning, a few minutes before seven. There was a page for a Dr Madison as the elevator doors slid open on the third floor. She got off behind the nurses, who turned in the other direction and continued the conversation she had interrupted when she’d gotten into the elevator. She walked down the corridor to the little alcove where the Negro family had been waiting. They were gone now, but the chairs were scattered in such a way that it looked as if people had just jumped up from them the minute before. The tabletop was cluttered with the same cups and papers, the ashtray was filled with cigarette butts.