Crash

Crash Page 6

by Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

14

  Trista

  They met at school, on the set of the comedy On the Razzle. Neil played the constable; Trista played one of the townspeople and sang in the chorus. It was her first foray into the performing arts, and, though her role was small, she lit up the stage with her endearing smile. You hear that said a lot about people who have passed away. “She was always smiling” sounds like such a cliché, but with Trista it was true.

  Her mother, Mary, gives Neil most of the credit for that smile. Neil was her daughter’s first boyfriend, and Mary has often told me that Trista believed he was “the one.” She is grateful to Neil for bringing Trista out of her shell, giving her confidence and poise. Apparently prior to Neil, her daughter was self-conscious and shy. But having a boyfriend made her glow.

  They had a lot in common. They were both very smart and liked school. Trista was on the honor roll. Neil got a perfect eight hundred on his math SATs. They both planned to be teachers—Trista in history, Neil in mathematics. They had engaging senses of humor and enjoyed teasing each other. For such a young couple, they had a lot of chemistry.

  They had only been dating for seven or eight months when she died. They were starting to talk seriously about the future. Neil would be heading off to college that fall and was in the throes of the application process at the time of the crash. But they had come to the decision that they would continue their relationship after he left.

  Neil doesn’t remember much from the night of the accident, but he told me once, months later, about the last conversation he had with Trista as he walked her home that evening. He asked her if she had noticed that now, when they talked about their future, they had stopped saying “if”’ and started saying “when.”

  “Should I be afraid?” she had asked him.

  “No,” he told her.

  That was the last thing he remembers.

  I dreamed about Trista a few nights after she died. I was seeing patients at my clinic, and when I opened the door to an exam room, there she was, sitting on the exam table, smiling at me sweetly. Her wavy brown hair tumbled around her freckled face. She was dressed in her typical funky fashion: layered red skirt, chunky boots, woolen tights. The beaded red bracelet I had given her for Christmas jangled softly around her wrist. She waved to me without speaking. It was as if she was telling me it was okay. She looked happy and at home.

  15

  POV

  Neil had been in the hospital for four days, and he still did not know what happened to him. He never asked. He knew he had a broken leg, but he never asked how he got it. He also never asked about Trista. But we knew it was just a matter of time. So we made a plan as a family as to how we would tell him. We met with the hospital social worker. She agreed to help us break the news to him when the time came. We made up rules. We would only give him information as he asked for it. We would wait until he was ready to hear it.

  We also never left him alone. The accident was all over the Boston news, and we did not want him finding out haphazardly, from the janitor, say.

  “Hey, man. Sorry about your girlfriend.”

  We made sure the doctors and nurses all knew that he wasn’t aware of Trista’s death so that they wouldn’t accidentally let something slip. We wanted it to come from us. We had the social worker’s phone number in case we needed her.

  On the fourth day in the ICU, Neil uttered his first spontaneous words. He asked for a book.

  “Mom, they say I’m going to be here for two weeks. Can you bring me my books?”

  It was astonishing. His request reflected thought. Someone had given him information. He was going to be here two weeks. He had processed that information. What am I going to do for two weeks? He had come up with a solution. I’ll read. And he had formulated a request to bring about that solution. “Mom, can you bring me my books?” It was amazing.

  But as overjoyed as I was to hear this true conversation, my heart also grew cold with the realization that, number one, I didn’t think there was any way he could actually read a book and, number two, if he could ask for books, it was just a matter of time before he asked for Trista.

  Sure enough, that night, just before seven, just as he was drifting off to sleep, he asked, “Mom, can you bring Trista to visit me tomorrow?” Saul had just left for the hotel room. It was just Dan and I. I stared at Dan, panic-stricken. He motioned for me to go ahead. Tell him. We pulled our chairs up close to Neil, one on either side of him. Neil kept his eyes closed.

  “Neil, I have to tell you about Trista.”

  “Okay.”

  “You two were both in a car accident.”

  “We were?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And her injuries were more serious than yours.”

  No response. Eyes closed.

  “They took her to a different hospital.”

  I used past tense. I didn’t lie. But I didn’t push either. I really didn’t want to feed him this information at night as he was drifting off to sleep. This awful news that could only invade his slumber and give him nightmares.

  “In that case, Mom, can you keep me updated?”

  That was the other part of our family strategy for telling Neil. Only give him what he asked for. A bit at a time. Only what he could handle.

  “Sure Neil. Just ask.” Dan nodded at me like I’d done a good job. Like that was enough. We sat there in the darkened room for a while, listening to Neil breathe, waiting for him to wake up and ask more questions. But he seemed to be out for the night.

  I stepped outside Neil’s room and called the social worker. I just wanted to update her, see if there was anything else she recommended.

  “I’m here but I’m not here,” she told me, explaining that her shift ended at seven. It was 7:05. She gave me the name of her evening counterpart, but I didn’t want to start all over with someone new. I felt abandoned. Let down. How many times had I stayed beyond my shift to see a family through a crisis?

  Dan and I kept our vigil at Neil’s bedside. We were both so tired. Neither one of us wanted to leave Neil, but there was another bed at the hotel room, and we had one more key. We argued briefly over who would stay with Neil, but there was really no contest.

  “I’ll call you if he wakes up,” Dan told me with a wink, then rolled his sleeping bag out on the floor.

  I crossed the frigid wind tunnel between the hospital and the hotel, my collar pulled up around my ears. I used the toothpaste and toothbrush the hotel provided and washed my face at the sink. I looked down at Saul, sleeping on top of the bedspread, fully clothed except for his shoes. Crow’s feet and worry lines had cropped up overnight. Our carefree existence before the accident—professional careers growing, one son in college, another close behind—seemed a million miles away.

  I kissed Saul’s cheek and lay down next to him. It seemed like I had just shut my eyes when my cell phone rang. Saul and I both were fully upright before the first ring ended.

  “Hello?”

  “He’s asking again.”

  Saul and I crossed the frigid street, the two buildings forming a wind tunnel to be forged each time.

  In the hospital room Neil lay still, Dan at his side. I pulled up a chair next to Neil’s right side. Dan was holding his hand on his left. Saul sat gingerly on the edge of the bed.

  “So, Mom. Tell me about Trista,” Neil said without opening his eyes, just sensing I was there. Something about the way he said it told me he already knew. He didn’t ask how she was doing. He didn’t ask for
an update. Just “tell me about Trista.” Like he knew there was a story there. Something he had to hear. The story I needed to finish. Dan held his hand. I put the side rail down and moved in close. I started with a recap.

  “Do you remember me telling you that Trista was in the accident with you?” He nodded.

  “And that she was taken to a different hospital in Boston?” Another nod.

  “And that her injuries were more serious than yours?” A silent yes. He still had his eyes closed, so I wasn’t sure if he had fallen back to sleep. I waited. He didn’t say anything or even open his eyes, but he moved his hand in a circle, motioning for me to go on. I was crying now. I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke quietly.

  “Trista tried very hard to stay alive, Neil. And the doctors and nurses did everything they could. But in the end, she didn’t make it.” My voice broke.

  “I’m so sorry.” Dan kept rubbing Neil’s other shoulder. Neil didn’t yell or scream or deny the reality. He didn’t even open his eyes. He just turned over and said, “Then I don’t want to get up any more.” Checked out. Done. It would be how Neil would deal with many things in the coming days and weeks. My heart broke for him.

  I watched him for a long time. I wondered how he could possibly process that information. How completely unreal the whole thing must seem in his brain-injured, time-warped, drugged-out state. One minute you’re walking down the street holding hands with your girlfriend. The next you’re being told that while you were asleep, she passed away.

  Despite our diligent preparation and all our “family rules” about how and when and where to tell Neil about Trista, Neil remembers the scene very differently—like those movies where the same story is told differently from each character’s point of view. In his world, the information came quickly and cleanly. Like a guillotine.

  “She died.”

  In mine there was forethought, a plan. A strategy worked out carefully over days, in consultation with others. Words well chosen and delivered in the warm embrace of family. I used to argue with Neil about it, tell him that’s not how it was. I wouldn’t have dropped those words like a hatchet on a chopping block. “She died.” For him to remember it that way made me feel callous and cruel.

  I once lamented to Neil that if only I hadn’t said to him that night “Why don’t you walk Trista home?” that maybe they would both be alive now. But he told me that if he hadn’t walked her home, she would still be dead, and he would feel unbearably guilty for not being there. Maybe that helps him bear his wounds sometimes. By seeing them as penance. As proof that he was there. As the least he could do to protect her.

  So maybe remembering my words the way he does is part of his healing. Maybe he has to remember them that way. Maybe he needs to feel the cruelty of the situation full on, not softened by a mother’s touch. Maybe he has to feel it like a cutter has to feel a knife against her skin. Because pain makes things real. Whatever the reason, his memory is what it is. I have finally come to realize that it has nothing to do with me. It is his reality and part of his healing and his journey back. And I have to honor it.

  16

  A Hasty Getaway

  Over the next two days, Neil became more alert. He still slept a lot, but he had more spontaneous words, more facial expression, and more eye contact. He was deemed well enough to be transferred from the trauma ICU to what they called the step-down unit. Here we had a private room with a view of the city streets. It was quieter here, away from the constant lights, the relentless noise of beeping monitors and alarms, and the ever-present eyes of the ICU nurses.

  But although Neil’s mind was clearing, the horrific reality he faced through that lifting haze haunted and depressed him. He seemed to give up. He spent his time in bed with a blanket pulled up over his head. I never heard a sob or saw a tear, but he always emerged from those covers looking weak and spent. He refused to eat. He declined physical therapy.

  “You’ll never walk right if you don’t exercise your leg, Neil,” the orthopedic surgeon told him.

  “I don’t care if I ever walk again,” he spat back.

  I asked for a psych consult—someone to evaluate his emotional stability, help him deal with his terrible loss. I told Neil someone would be stopping by to talk to him.

  “Fine,” he snarled. He aimed his one-word answers at us, hurling them like missiles in response to anything we said to him. Then, the blanket over the head.

  We continued our “never leave him alone” policy. At first it was to protect him from the news of Trista’s death. Now it was to protect him from himself.

  “Think of it as a suicide watch, Dan,” I told my oldest son, the words catching in my mouth. I didn’t really think Neil would do that. Then again he’d never lost a girlfriend before.

  We waited all day for the psychiatrist’s visit, or at least a resident. It was getting late. I finally went out to the nurses’ station to ask when the psych team was coming.

  “Oh, they’re not,” the nurse informed me, a little too cheerily.

  “Why not?” I asked, horrified that, number one, they weren’t coming, and that, number two, I wasn’t told.

  “The team won’t come unless a patient is actively suicidal,” the nurse said, her voice now devoid of cheeriness.

  “And how exactly are they supposed to make that determination without actually seeing THE PATIENT?” I asked. When the nurse took a step back, I realized just how loudly I’d raised my voice, but I was furious. I knew I’d better get a grip or someone would be calling Security on me.

  I walked back to Neil’s room and leaned against the wall outside the door, my heart pounding, my eyes stinging with pent-up tears. I tried to gather my thoughts and rein in my emotions. I felt that the hospital, my medical community, was failing us. First there was the social worker who was “here and not here,” unwilling to stay a few minutes beyond her scheduled shift to see one of her families through. And now no one was coming to evaluate my child’s mental health even though to me he was clearly at least passively suicidal. How could a world-class trauma center not recognize the emotional trauma that goes along with the broken bones and bleeding brains?

  I walked back to the nurses’ station and said in my calmest, quietest voice, “I want my son transferred back to Anna Jaques Hospital.”

  “I’ll call the residents,” she responded, her hand already on the phone before I’d even turned away from the desk to return to Neil. Here at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Neil’s care had been excellent, the staff attentive and diligent. But we knew that there were so many sicker, more critical patients here. We could see it in the halls where staff raced to silence alarms and check beeping monitors. We knew it from our time in the waiting room, listening to other families rally then grieve. We heard it in the staff’s upbeat assessment of our child. “He’s gonna be just fine.” Here a traumatic brain injury in which the patient speaks and stands was no big deal. Back home at Anna Jaques, Neil would be a very big deal. There he would be known. The son of a businessman in the community. A member of the synagogue. A classmate of the sons and daughters of the doctors and nurses caring for him. If the acute phase of Neil’s injuries was behind him—he wasn’t getting surgery on his brain; he’d had the first operation on his leg; if all he needed was rehab—I wanted to take him back to his hometown where family and friends could more easily visit and support him.

  Back in his room, Neil slept. I told Saul about my encounter with the nurse and the missing-in-action psych residents. Sa
ul sighed and shook his head.

  “We should go back to Newburyport,” he said, independently coming to the same conclusion I had. It made me feel better about my volatile encounter and my spontaneous demand for a retro-transport.

  Neil had a few visitors that afternoon. Suzanne Bryan, his drama coach, was there. We had snuck her in after visiting hours the night before as “Aunt Suzanne,” but now she was here legitimately, along with a few of Neil’s friends. Brendan brought him comic books. Neil smiled at the pile, each edition carefully wrapped in a clear plastic sleeve. But Neil couldn’t stay awake for long. So we took the conversation out into the hall.

  “Thanks, Brendan,” I told him. “You get the prize. That was Neil’s first smile since the accident.”

  Later, Neil’s friends Travis and Greg brought a movie and a VCR. The movie played. Neil slept.

  “I’m sorry I’m so tired.” He apologized each time he woke. “I’m sorry I’m in so much pain.” The boys finally went home.

  By the next morning we still did not know the status of our requested transfer back to our hometown. We asked the nurse to check on things for us.

  Soon an alarmingly young-looking resident came in to round on Neil.

  “He’s all set to go,” he proclaimed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked

  “He’s discharged,” the resident explained, still smiling, as if this were good news. But it wasn’t good news to us. Neil wasn’t ready to leave the hospital. He was weak. He had lost weight. Having refused physical therapy for the past two days, he had not even stood on his own, let alone walked or done stairs. Dan had even been carrying him to the bathroom. Then there was the issue of his fragile mental health.

  “But he’s not ready,” I stammered.

  “Oh, he’ll do fine,” the resident smiled, his teeth astonishingly white. His optimistic pronouncement reminded me of Chuck/Mitch’s one-minute ER assessment. We asked to speak with the head of the ICU, the trauma surgeon who had been so concerned about a basilar skull fracture that first night in intensive care. But the attendings had switched rotations, and the new one seemed in agreement with his resident. He showed us stable head CTs and x-rays of Neil’s newly aligned leg bones as evidence of his readiness.

 

‹ Prev Next ›