"He's her brother. Give it to us straight, doc. We want to know everything."
He looks me straight in the eyes. "When Tera was brought in, she was barely hanging on. She coded but we were able to bring her back. She sustained a fracture to her skull which is the most critical of injuries because when she did, we can only assume they hit her head onto the concrete which caused her brain to do this," he explains, showing us with his hands. "When forcefully pushed forward, your brain doesn't automatically move with the body so it shifts backward as you would if you were in a car and someone hit the gas hard. And the opposite if they hit the brakes hard. The back and forward motion caused the brain to swell and there's an area that was also bleeding. We created what we call a skull flap."
My dad jerks upright, running his hands through his hair and pulling on it.
"We remove a piece of the skull in order to give the brain more room to accommodate the swelling. We stopped the bleeding but we don't know if she'll have more bleeding. We just don't know what to expect at this point."
"Jesus," Linc mutters.
"What about the rest?" I ask, wanting to know, yet wanting to just run and hide. Is this really happening?"
"We had six doctors operating on her at the same time. Me, for neurology. An orthopedic surgeon, a plastic surgeon, a general surgeon, a gynecologist," his eyes flick over to Linc then back to me, "and a proctologist."
"No," I whisper. I shake my head. "No. Dear God, no!" I bend over at the waist, the pain lancing through me, knowing now that my girl, my wife, my love, has been brutalized in the worst possible ways.
Dad rests his hand on my back.
"The general surgeon, gynecologist, and proctologist should be coming to talk to you shortly. They were finishing up as I scrubbed out," he informs us.
"And the others? She's still in surgery? Is she strong enough for that?" Dad asks.
"The plastic surgeon is doing what he can for now to repair the damage to her face. I'm not sure the extent of all of the damages and I'm not going to speculate. I can assure you, she's in the best hands possible. Our best doctors are working hard to help Tera."
Dad rubs my back and I straighten slowly, wanting to drop to my knees and shout at the world, scream from the top of my lungs, cry and wail until I no longer can. But I do none of that. I hold strong for her.
"Ah, here we are," Dr. Levine says when three other doctors walk in. Christ. Every one of them looks so bleak and that tells us everything before they say a word.
"Thank you, Dr. Levine," I say.
"You're welcome, Xander. I'll be monitoring her in ICU when she's out of surgery, as will the other surgeons. We'll take care of Tera for all of you," he says, looking at everyone in the room before making his exit.
A young doctor, maybe in his thirties, holds out his hand in greeting. "I'm Dr. Morris, general surgeon."
A woman close to my dad's age introduces herself as well. "I'm Dr. Leslie, OB/GYN surgery."
And, finally, a male, also close to my dad's age, holds out a hand. "Mr. Mackenzie. I'm Dr. Mitchell from Proctology. I can see you're all on edge, so I'm just going to cut to the chase."
I breathe out a sigh of relief. "Thank you."
"I'm Tera's brother," Linc says. "Give it to us straight, doc."
Dr. Mitchell nods. "All right. When Tera was brought in, I was called in to repair some tearing in and around her rectum." He dips his head so his eyes are right on Linc's this time. "It was extensive, but everything has been repaired. It's going to be a little while before she's going to be comfortable using the restroom normally, so for now we have a colostomy bag attached."
I must make a noise, because he looks at me.
"It's just for comfort. She will have completely normal function once everything is healed properly," he reassures.
I nod.Thank God.
"I'll be monitoring her until she's ready to have the bag removed," he finishes, then steps back to let Dr. Leslie step up.
"There was much of the same type of damage to Tera's vagina, internally as well as externally. Initially, I was worried there would be damage deeper inside including her cervix and uterus, but fortunately, that wasn't the case."
Now I do blow out a breath of relief and a lone tear falls. Then another. And another.
"That doesn't mean she won't be without reproductive issues. Once everything heals, we'll need to do some testing to see if there was deeper damage done than is visible to the eye," she tells us.
I nod, unsure how to feel about that.
