She exhales. “I know, and I’m trying, Teddy. I really am. But you’ve got to understand this isn’t easy for me.”
“This isn’t easy foryou?” My voice raises an octave. “Mom! I eat all my meals with you, exercise in front of you, swim in the lake while you and dad sit on the dock like I’m a five-year-old who doesn’t know how to swim on her own, for crying out loud. It’s all I can do to stretch my five minutes in the shower into ten just so I can breathe.”
Tears well in her eyes, then her bottom lip begins to quiver. She looks away from me when she whispers, “But it’s a road,” and her voice cracks on the last word just like it did the day I woke up in the hospital.
“It’s been seven days,” my mom urged a man in a white lab coat. “How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait?”
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand as they fought to adjust to the noon-day sun pouring through the bent slats of a set of blinds. A soft hum vibrated from a machine to my right, the sound of a drip from a bag strung up behind my bed. A mask covered the lower half of my face, sending a gust of oxygen through my nose every time my lungs expanded. My head felt like a morning fog had descended over every thought, making it impossible to decipher the true center.
Where am I? Seven days since what? What exactly is she waiting for?
“Severe traumatic brain injuries from blunt force trauma to the head always include some form of unconsciousness,” the man continued. “The intracranial pressure Teddy showed when she was brought in here was severe. Her body needed time to heal, and the medically induced coma was the right call. I know it’s hard to believe, seeing your daughter in this condition, but she’s lucky that her skull didn’t fracture or that she needed surgery.”
My mom covered her sob with her hand, and the man comforted her with a palm to the shoulder.
“The brain is a complex organ, Mrs. Fletcher. It takes time to heal and unfortunately, I can’t give you the answer you’re looking for. But I can assure you, we are doing everything possible. Based on her MRI results from this morning, the oxygen, IV fluids, and medication are doing their job. The swelling has decreased.”
My mom’s head nodded furiously, acknowledging his good news and letting out a shuddering breath.
I tried to sit up, but my lungs were being compressed. Almost as if a pair of pliers crimped my airway closed. I scanned my body with my palms, half expecting to find a cast somewhere amongst the skeletal structure that ached with every movement, but the only outer bandage I found was the one woven around the crown of my head.
Above and below the thick bandage I felt matted clumps of hair. One in particular was crusted on the right side. The side that hurt the most. With the realization that I was, in fact, injured, the fog became more of a haze, and I could finally string two thoughts together.
I was in a hospital room, and something happened to me.
My confused eyes met my mom’s desperate ones as she pushed open the door to the room. She gasped and came running toward my bedside.
With how hastily she moved, I expected her to fling her body over mine for a full embrace, but she just laced her fingers with mine and whispered through her tears, “Oh honey, you’re awake.”
My mom looked broken, almost beyond repair. It wasn’t even the purple rings under her eyes that suggested she hadn’t slept in weeks, or the greasy knot on top of her head that alluded to the fact it’d been even longer since she’d washed it. It was the agonizing relief that sculpted every line of her face that told me something tragic happened.
“Archie, come quick!” she called out, and my dad rushed into the room.
“What is…” he started to say, but froze in the doorway, and then crumpled in a heap on the floor.
I watched them both grieve at the same time, a life they thought they were going to have to live without me. It was devastating to see.
The man in the white lab coat followed them in the room and approached my bedside.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Spalding. Can you tell me your first name?” he asked as he flashed a bright red light at my right eye.
I swallowed, and it felt like cotton balls packed my esophagus.
“Teddy,” I croaked.
A smile graced his lips. “That’s good.”
He flashed the other eye and tipped his head to the side as he asked me his next question. “Do you know why you’re in the hospital? Do you remember what happened?”
My eyes darted back and forth across the far wall of the room, trying to make sense of the missing information inside my head.
Why couldn’t I remember what happened to me?
Nothing came.
The brief light ignited in my mom’s eyes moments before was promptly snuffed out.
“That’s okay,” Dr. Spalding assured. “Give it time.”
