“Just save our son,” she whispered as she looked at the doctor. “We can handle anything else.”
I had watched Lee as the doctors had spoken to Mama D and Mama K. His face was almost white with fatigue. I knew that being in the hospital couldn’t have been fun for him, not after all the time he’d spent there after he had been injured in Afghanistan.
The noise in the lounge was fucking annoying. There were televisions set up all around the waiting area, and it was driving me crazy.
I glanced over at Nicki, trying to find something to distract myself. He was pale, too, his red hair falling over his eyes. He brushed it back automatically then grinned at me as he caught me watching him.
“How are you holding up?” I heard Nicki ask me.
“Okay, I guess,” I said. “I’m starting to fucking hate these chairs, and if I have to listen to cartoons for five more minutes…”
Nicki laughed and looked around the waiting area. Seeing no one else paying attention to the set, he walked over and turned it off.
“Problem solved,” he said, coming back to sit down next to me.
I grinned at him.
“My man of action,” I teased.
He blushed.
“I don’t know about that, but I was done with the cartoons, too,” he said.
We looked up as a man in a white coat approached us, standing next to one of the nurses we’d been getting updates from.
“Devereaux family?” I heard him call.
My parents stood, and the rest of us joined them as he walked over to the grouping of chairs we had claimed.
“I’m Dr. Walgate, the attending physician for both of your sons,” he told my parents, sitting down next to them.
“The neurosurgeon, Dr. Parker, will give you an update in a little bit as well. Hudson is still in surgery, but Hicks is settled in the ICU and can have visitors, but only two at a time right now. Once Hudson comes out of surgery, if you want to move to the central lounge area, we can get you updates a little bit faster.”
“Do… do you have a prognosis, yet?” Mama D asked.
The doctor looked at her, his brown eyes gentle as he looked at her. “I’m sorry, it’s too soon to tell, really,” he said. “With Hudson, we’re still waiting on the orthopedic surgeon to give us an update. He should be out soon. For Hicks… it’s just too early. The blood clot on his brain is causing him problems. The body’s natural response to injury is to swell, which is what happened to him. Unfortunately, when it swells, it puts pressure on other parts of the brain, and starts to cause even more damage. To relieve the pressure, we had to remove a portion of his skull to keep his brain from causing further damage to itself. It’s called a decompressive craniectomy.”
I heard one of my parents sob, but I didn’t know which one.
“Will he have to have a plate inserted or something?” Bishop asked, his eyes glued to the doctor.
“No, but I’m going to be very straightforward with all of you,” he said, looking around at the circle of family and friends gathered. “Both of your brothers have experienced serious trauma. Barring further complications, even if the orthopedic surgeon decides he doesn’t have to amputate, Sonny is going to need a lot of support to allow his body to heal. Hicks… Hicks is going to have a more complicated recovery, we just don’t knowhowcomplicated until we are able to assess him after he wakes up.”
“What should we expect, Dr. Walgate?” Mama D asked.
“The area of the craniectomy was along the back of his head and is a very small area. He’s not going to be shrouded in bandages like you might see on television, but we also don’t want him injuring himself further. Please be aware, he could have some paralysis, speech or memory problems. We won’t know exactly until he wakes up. You can go back to see him two at a time, but when he wakes up, we’ll need you to do everything you can to keep him calm. It’s common for people with a traumatic brain injury to be frightened and confused.”
Dr. Walgate excused himself and the nurse who came out with him offered to take two of us back to see Hicks. He answered a few more questions, then the nurse offered to take back the first visitors.
“Moms, why don’t you two go back and see him first?” Bishop suggested immediately. They both nodded and stood hastily, following the nurse.
I sat down with a sigh, and Nicki sat down next to me. I must have looked as bad as I felt, because he wrapped his arms around me again.
“They’re fighters, both of them,” he said. “They’re going to make it through and be putting corn starch in your hairdryer before you know it.”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. The twins were the practical jokers through and through. They’d pulled the “which twin is it?” joke multiple times throughout our lives. I’d always remember the look on Bishop’s face when he’d turned his hairdryer on one morning before school and gotten a face full of cornstarch. That had earned the twins dish duty for a month, as well as having to replace Bishop’s hairdryer.
“Well, I guess if they have to amputate, we won’t have a problem telling them apart anymore,” I said, sighing.
