“Hey there! My name’s Collette and I’m a junior here at Rice and I’ll be your guide for the day. I want to show you how beautiful our campus is, the organizations you can become involved in, and introduce you to some of the freshmen currently living in the dorms. Now, where would you like to begin?”
The tour lasted the entire day. Both of them were pleasantly worn out when they thanked Collette and hugged her goodbye.
“See you in a few months, Ren!” Collette flashed her dimples before she turned to bounce away.
Karensa shook her head. “Ren? I was afraid to ask, but I’d bet ten bucks she’s a cheerleader.”
Beth chuckled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, honey, this is such a lovely campus and I envy you, getting to go to school here. But I sure am going to miss you!” She hit the keyless entry button of the car. For just a moment, Karensa looked pensive as she buckled her seatbelt.
“Yep, I’m going to miss you, too, Mom. But your little girl’s all grown up now. It’s time to head out into that big old world—”
“All grown up, huh? Oh, baby girl, when you truly are grown up, you’ll realize that seventeen years is far from being an adult, but it’s a start!” She laughed as she leaned across the console to hug her only daughter. “What do you say we stop by Red Lobster to celebrate your first step into adulthood, hmm?”
Karensa chuckled, “Okay, whatever, Mommy.”
“Oh, so that’s the way it’s going to be, huh? Okay, just for that, I’m listening to my Milli Vanilli CD and I’m going to crank that puppy up!”
“Oh, no, Mom, please! I’ll do anything you ask, just don’t do that to me, I’m begging you. Hey, I’ll even listen to The Bangles if I have to. Anything but the Phony Balognies!”
“What about a compromise, kiddo? How about we listen to Adele? We both like her.”
“See? You’re just the coolest mom, ever!”
“Don’t you forget it, either, Sistah!”
“Sistah? Oh, that’s like, saWeet, dude!”
“Okay, okay, I have to stop before I get nauseated with teenalogue!” Karensa groaned as her mother laughed.
“Okay, cheddar-cheese biscuits here we come!”
After Beth paid the bill, they walked to the front of the building kidding about needing to unbutton their pants.
“Next time we go to Red Lobster I’m wearing a dress with lots of room. Oh, I just love their food!”
Karensa held the door open for her mother. Beth groaned when she saw it had not only started to rain while they ate, but it had become a torrential downpour.
“It never fails, does it, kiddo? But if you hadn’t had that piece of cake …”
“Oh, Mom, are you going to try to act as if that chocolate-chip lava cookie wasn’t worth a few raindrops?”
“Honey, this is more than a few raindrops. But you’re right, that dessert would be worth going down with the Titanic!”
They ran the last few feet to the car, threw themselves inside and laughed with the joy of being together, having a good day, and enjoying a wonderful dinner. Life was good, even if it was wet.
Eyeing the traffic swarming along the expressway, calculating a maneuver that would allow them to slide smoothly in and blend with the rush hour traffic, Beth allowed a chuckle. “We might not be sinking with the Titanic over that dessert, but we’re being flung into the last lap at NASCAR. Remind me again just how good that chocolate-chip lava cookie was, Honey.”
Beth saw a break in the line of rushing traffic and pressed the accelerator to join the other commuters, all the while glancing at her rearview mirror to make sure she had plenty of room.
“It was, without a doubt, the absolutely bestest dessert in the entire …”
What had been a three-car gap in traffic was cut in half by a red Hummer that was closing the gap with lightning speed.
Beth knew it was going to happen before the Hummer reached them. She threw her arm in front of her daughter, as if to forcefully protect her from the nightmare force barreling toward them much faster than the 55 mph speed limit allowed.
“Oh, my God …”
“Mom? What’s wrong? What is …”
Beth looked into the eyes of the young woman behind the wheel of the Hummer. Her face had time to register the shock and the fact that she hadn’t even seen the car she was about to decimate until the second she glanced up from texting on her cell phone.
Just before impact, Karensa heard the scream of the Hummer’s tires on the wet pavement, clutched her mother’s hand pressing against her chest, and whispered, “Mom?”
Inside their car, the world blurred as everything around the mother and daughter spun past in dizzying circles. The blow from the Hummer threw the car into the guardrail, back into the line of traffic, sending it flying into the side of a car driven by man out of town, causing it to fishtail into the path of an eighteen-wheeler. The last thing Beth and Karensa heard were the squall of massive air brakes that failed to stop the mammoth truck’s momentum.
Beth woke up in the hospital. Both legs were in traction and her left arm was held in place with what felt like a massive cast. She touched her forehead to find a bulbous, throbbing knot beneath bandages. The second she flinched from the painful touch, Karensa!
“Hey! Help! Nurse? Somebody, please!” She thought that her strident cries would bring half the staff but if anyone even heard her, they weren’t responding fast enough. Her only thought was her daughter.
The nurse caught her trying to reach the traction device to free her legs.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, little lady. You can’t get out of bed!”
“Karensa! My daughter! Where is she? I have to go see her now!”
“Beth, Honey, you can’t get out of bed for any reason right now. You’ve been in a car wreck and have been injured …”
“I know all that! The knot on my head didn’t cause amnesia. I want to know about Karensa. I have to know if she’s alright. I have to know … Oh, God, is she dead?”
The nurse pressed her patient back against the pillows and talked as she smoothed the sheets.
“Karensa is not dead, Beth. She was pretty banged up in the accident, too. They put her in ICU to keep a close eye on her. Her injuries were more severe than yours.”
“How much worse is she? Please, please, you have to tell me.”
“Beth, your daughter isn’t one of my patients and I don’t have a report on her, so I can’t answer your question. What I can do, however, is put in a call for Karensa’s doctor to come talk to you now that you’re finally awake.”
“Finally?”
The nurse gently patted one of the legs in a cast, as if Beth could feel it and take comfort. “You’ve been unconscious for three days.”
“Three days? Oh, Lord, what all has happened while I was out? Do you know where my husband is? Will you hand me the phone, please? I have to find someone to tell me what’s going on!”
“Beth, you need to calm down a little.” She pulled a syringe from her pocket, removed the cap and inserted the needle into the IV line. “This will just help you relax until I can get your family and Karensa’s doctor in here to talk with you.”
“No! I don’t want a shot! I want to know what’s going on with my daughter! I want to...”
Beth didn’t see the expression of pity on the young nurse’s face because she’d gone to sleep.
Their voices seemed to come from some sort of deep tunnel. Beth opened her eyes to see figures standing around her, surrounded with fog and murmuring in a language she didn’t understand. It took nearly twenty minutes for her to become fully conscious from the aftereffects of the sedative she’d been given two hours earlier. The first voice she recognized was Mac’s.
“Honey, can you hear me? Beth? You awake yet, Sweetheart? We need to talk to you.”
Beth groaned and tried to turn over, away from the intrusion but the leg casts wouldn’t allow movement.
Casts. My legs. I’ve been hurt. The wreck. Where was
I? When did it happen? Who was …
“Karensa!”
Mac sighed, then smiled. Even in her medicated state, Beth recognized the fake “everything’s going to be alright” smile. You get to know a person, their voice, their step, the mannerisms, well after twenty years of marriage. The smile might have been phony, but the red-rimmed eyes and the bruise-colored circles under his eyes were all too real.
The doctor stepped closer to the bed but Mac held up his hand to stop him. Without taking his eyes off his wife’s face he spoke in a husky voice.
“Karensa’s in ICU and she’s not doing very well, Honey. You both were hurt very badly in that wreck but her injuries were more extensive.”
Beth’s eyes welled and her voice was faint, hushed. “How bad is she, Mac?”
Dr. Anderson again stepped forward, this time refusing to be dissuaded by his patient’s father.
“I’m James Anderson, trauma surgeon, and just one of your daughter’s many doctors. I hate to intrude but you need to hear this from a medical point of view. Afterward, if you have no further questions, I’ll leave you fine people alone to come to grips with this.”
His voice brooked no argument and was authoritative but also held enough compassion to make bad news a bit more bearable. Beth looked at Mac who nodded his head, then turned her gaze back to the doctor.
“From the police report and what we saw of Karensa’s injuries, we’ve put together a logistical timeline of events. When Ms. Vonn struck your vehicle …”
“That’s her, the girl who nearly murdered us because she simply couldn’t wait to send a text? The girl who cared more for her next message than she did the lives she was about to take out?”
Mac laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“No! I won’t calm down and I know that’s what you’re trying to get me to do, Mac. I saw her face the minute she looked up from her phone, when she realized she was about to …”
“Beth. Please. Let that go for now …”
“Let it go? Let it go! No, I will not let it go, Mac! I want that girl arrested for attempted murder, or something! I want her …”
Dr. Anderson’s response was spoken softly but Beth heard him clearly, “Stacy Vonn died at the scene. A gentleman in another car, in town on a business trip and on his way home, was killed. The one seemingly immovable object, the tractor-trailer rig, flipped onto its side and caught fire. The driver was pinned inside and no one could reach him in time. Mrs. Wilson, you and Karensa were the only survivors of this terrible tragedy and I’m still trying to figure out how that happened.”
Beth remembered the smooth, yet unlined face of the young woman staring back at her in horror and began to sob. Mac sat on the edge of her bed, trying to find a place to touch her that wouldn’t cause pain, just so he could offer comfort. He’d had three days to work through this and that wasn’t long enough; for Beth it had just happened.
The doctor gave her time to cry until she was reduced to sniffles before he continued. “Though I’m not a CSI like on one of those popular TV shows, I can envision the actions inside your car. Both you and Karensa were inside a whirlwind. It would be the equivalent to being trapped inside an industrial washing machine. The breaks you have in your bones are clean, even breaks and will heal quickly, though not, I’m sure, quickly enough for you. Your right leg has two breaks in the femur and one in the tibia. The left leg is broken in four places. Your arm is broken and is in a cast and a brace because your shoulder was twisted out of the socket and the rotator cuff was torn so badly it has to be kept totally immobilized for a few weeks. You’re going to have a rough and bumpy road ahead but you will heal, in your own time.”
“And Karensa?”
Dr. Anderson pulled a chair from the side of the room and sank slowly into it. Beth’s eyes followed his every move.
“Now, Karensa …” The sigh came from deep within. “Karensa was hurt very badly. The passenger side of the car was the side that hit the guardrail with all the force a speeding Hummer could put forth. Karensa’s door was shoved inward, into her body which, in response, twisted around on its spine. With each repeated assault from different vehicles after that, more and more of her body was broken.”
“Her head?”
“Strangely enough, that was the only part of her body that didn’t have a mark on it.”
“So there’s no brain damage? Once she gets well, oh, I know that’s going to take a long time but, once she heals, she can …”
Her words ground to a halt when she saw her husband’s head lower. His breathing became ragged as the doctor answered her unasked question.
“Beth, we’re not sure Karensa will survive. The injuries are just so severe and medicine can only do so much …”
“Nooooooo! She’s going to be okay! You said yourself that she had no head injuries, Dr. Anderson!”
“Head injuries are not the only thing to take a life, Beth. Karensa lost a lot of blood, so there still may be brain damage due to that. In fact, it’s most likely the case. Her liver was torn and half of it had to be removed, along with her spleen, a kidney and …”
Mac groaned, “And all her reproductive organs had to be taken.”
Beth sputtered, “I don’t care! I don’t care if she never has children. I know she wanted a houseful but I don’t care if she never has one single child as long as she lives! Dr. Anderson, what happens next? What do we have to do to save our girl?”
“Her back is broken in so many places it’d take a hardware store to furnish enough plates and screws to put her back together. Even with that, she’ll never walk again, that is, if she has no brain damage. All the plates and screws could do is put her back in one piece. Because of the extent of her injuries, all we’re doing now is keeping her comfortable, waiting for you to wake up and give you time to discuss this with Mac.”
“Discuss what? What’s there to talk about? Do everything you can to fix her, get her back as close as she used to be and we’ll take care of the rest. I can exercise her legs and arms after we take her home. I’ll help her to move, to walk, again. You evidently underestimate the power of a mother’s love, Doctor.”
Mac put an arm across Beth’s stomach and looked into her face, trying to impart some sort of warning about what was coming next.
“Mrs. Wilson, I’ve spoken to your husband. I’ve taken him in to see Karensa and he understands that …”
Beth pushed Mac’s arm away. “You understand what, Mac? Just what is it you know, that I don’t?”
Mac couldn’t speak for sobbing. Dr. Anderson replied for him.
“We suggest that you let her go. If you wish, we can discuss organ donation but …”
Her scream could be heard at the other end of the hallway. Mac held her then, crying with her as she kept gasping, “No, no, no, no!”
“Honey, Karensa is gone. Our little girl isn’t there anymore. We have to let her go.”
“Get out of here, both of you! GET OUT!”
A nurse in the room injected the contents of a large syringe into the tubing of Beth’s IV. The mother’s hoarse screams subsided within seconds.
The next twenty-four hours passed in a drugged haze for Beth. Each time she awoke from her medicated slumber, she began to sob and pray. She then felt as if she’d run out of tears, but she still had an abundant supply of prayers left to offer. Once she calmed down to converse with God, the nurse stopped injecting sedatives.
Beth allowed Mac to come back into the room the next day. She realized she wasn’t angry with him, she was just disappointed.
“Mac, when you needed God the most, you didn’t reach out; you just gave up. God can do this. I have faith that He can and I’d like for you to be beside me when it happens. We have a daughter who needs to get well, finish school and live her life. If we both believe, really believe, it can happen.”
He hugged her. “I just needed you to wake up and remind me what an idiot I am, Beth.” He chuckled. “Okay, we’ll turn it over to Him. It’s for
sure we can’t fix Karensa, but He can.”
A week later the nurse came into Beth’s room and said she was going on a field trip. Beth laughed, “How can I go anywhere? I can’t even get out of this bed.”
“We’re going to take you, bed and all, on this trip. Hang onto your sheets, ’cause here we go!”
People stepped out of the elevator to allow the nurses to push the metal-framed bed inside. Three floors down they got off. Beth saw the sign for ICU and started to smile through a new influx of tears. Her husband moved to the other side of Karensa’s bed when he saw them wheeling his wife into the ICU. His face was wreathed in the kind of smile reserved for Christmas.
The beautiful young woman who Beth had brought into the world a short seventeen years before, the girl who was pronounced to be little more than an organ donor, called out, “Mom? Oh, Mom!”
Beth ached to jump out of her own hospital bed so she could gather her daughter in a tight hug. She wanted to hold her and never let her go again. The nurses maneuvered the beds close enough so that a mother could reach out and hold her only daughter’s hand.
They talked for over an hour, about the accident, about their injuries, about the lives that had been lost, about how life could be gone in an instant. As their energy drained away, they talked about how much they loved each other, how much their family meant to them and how much God surely loved them to save them when all else had been lost.
“Mom, I’ll be in surgery for most of tomorrow. Have you heard? They’re going to put a bunch of plates and screws in my back!”
Beth smiled at Mac and he saw the fear in her face. “Yep, Dr. Anderson said …”
They heard Dr. Anderson’s voice before he reached the room and he sounded like a different man than the one who had brought a wrecking ball into Beth Wilson’s life just a few days before.
“I said that I’d found just the hardware store that had enough supplies to fix up this young lady. I have to hand it to you, Mom, you showed me I was wrong.”
Safe in the Heart of a Miracle: More True Stories of Medical Miracles Page 6