by Anna Schmidt
Tessa.
Everything that happened from the instant that Emma spotted Sadie seemed to happen in a blur. The team of emergency technical people sped past with Geoff and Jeannie running to keep up. Jeannie looked at her with eyes that seemed like those of a blind person—wide but unseeing—and Emma was momentarily torn between the call to tend to Sadie and the need to comfort her sister. Each of them needed her. Each of them was in such pain—maybe not physically but surely spiritually. She closed her eyes, praying for guidance, and that was when she heard the scream of more sirens arriving. She opened her eyes to find Dan Kline blocking her way.
“Oh Mrs. Keller, I shouldn’t have—I mean, we didn’t mean to…” His eyes were wide with fear, his blond hair plastered against his head. The boy was over six feet tall, but he was crying like a kid half his size, and he was dangerously close to a complete breakdown.
“Dan, calm down. Has someone called your parents?”
“I don’t know. I just… it was the rain and the streets and the…”
“Are you hurt?” She gently touched his cheek where the rain had thinned the blood. But she saw that it was no more than a scratch.
“No, ma’am. I don’t know… maybe a little. My side hurts.”
Then blessedly, Lars came loping toward them, kneeling next to Sadie, who remained completely incoherent in her babblings. She refused to look up when Lars called her name. “She doesn’t recognize me,” he whispered, his voice choked with panic.
Emma started to turn back to Sadie, but Dan grasped her arm. His eyes were unfocused and wild, and his grip tightened when she tried to move.
“Daniel,” she said firmly, and she was relieved when it had the desired effect of making him pay attention. “A second ambulance has just arrived. I need for you to go to them and tell them that Sadie is hurt then get yourself checked over and have them call your parents. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am, but…”
“No time for explanations now, Dan. Do as I ask.”
She waited until the boy turned away, biting her lip to keep from shouting after him, “Stop. I need to know now. What happened here? What did you do?” Just then she spotted Hester crossing the street, pausing to speak with one of the medics. At the same time, Geoff was helping Jeannie into the back of the first ambulance.
“Go,” she heard one of the EMTs yell as he slammed the double doors and raced around to climb into the passenger side of the ambulance. The shriek of the siren drowned out everything else.
“Hester, over here,” Emma shouted above the growing noise as people filled the street and yard. In spite of the fact that one of the newly arrived EMTs was attending to Sadie, Emma wanted her friend to reassure them that their child was going to be all right.
“I’m a registered nurse,” Hester explained. The young woman nodded and accepted Hester’s presence without question. The two of them knelt to either side of Sadie while Lars and Emma stood by and waited.
After what seemed an eternity, Hester looked up at Emma and shook her head. But Emma didn’t know how to interpret that. Was Hester telling her that Sadie was not hurt? That she was hurt and it was bad?
“She’s most likely in shock,” Hester said, standing up so she could talk to both Lars and Emma. “There don’t seem to be any other injuries—a couple of bruises and a pretty nasty cut on her lip. She probably bit it on impact. It’s pretty deep. She’ll need stitches.”
The paramedic helped Sadie to her feet. She continued mumbling to herself. “I thought—we were just fooling around—Dan was laughing at me. I glanced away for just a second… not even a second…” Finally, Sadie looked directly at her parents for the first time, her eyes luminous with disbelief. Then she collapsed against Emma’s shoulder, and her words were obliterated by her sobs.
Emma held Sadie and tried to comfort her as she tried to make some sense of what had happened. As if studying a jigsaw puzzle—its pieces scattered across the dining room table, Emma slowly began picking up one piece and then the next as she put together a plausible picture. She replayed every detail of what she’d seen when she and Lars arrived. She remembered first being confused by the odd angle of the car. Sadie had been crouched by the driver’s side of the car. Dan stumbling around on the other side—the passenger side.
As the sound of the siren faded, she looked down the street and caught sight of the ambulance carrying her sister and niece as it turned a corner. She closed her eyes, envisioning Jeannie inside that ambulance with Tessa.
The sisters had not exchanged a word, and yet Emma knew everything that Jeannie must have been feeling in that moment. She had seen in her sister’s blank stare mirroring the utter disbelief, that her daughter—her only child—could be the person lying on that gurney. Emma tightened her hold on Sadie and rocked her as she had when she was a baby.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “One step at a time. Tessa needs all our strength right now, Sadie. She needs our prayers.” She stroked Sadie’s hair. “Come on now. You’ve lost your prayer covering, and if ever there was a time…”
“It’s in the car. In my backpack,” Sadie said setting off a fresh wave of tears. “I took it off. I… and now God has…”
“Shush,” Emma said, pulling Sadie closer. “You know better. We’ll find your covering, and then we’ll all go to the hospital.”
“I’ll get it for you,” Lars said, clearly relieved to have something concrete that he could do.
He went to Dan’s car—the passenger side. One of the police officers was standing by the car, and when Lars reached in to take the prayer covering and the backpack, the officer stopped him. The two men had a brief conversation, and finally the officer allowed Lars to take the prayer covering, but he followed him back to where Emma waited with Sadie.
“Evidence,” Lars said when Emma raised her eyebrows in silent question. “The car needs to be examined. And Sadie will need to answer some questions.”
Of course. It was an accident like any accident. There would be questions. Sadie would be questioned. And Dan. Emma’s heart went into overdrive as her instincts to protect her child from any further agony on this morning came to the fore. “She needs medical attention,” she told the officer.
Hester was sitting on the curb next to Dan. “They both do,” she added with a nod toward Dan.
“We’ll see that they get it,” the officer assured her. “For now…”
Emma took a step that positioned her between the officer and Sadie.
Lars touched her arm. “Emma, their ways may not—”
Without a word, Emma turned and led Sadie toward the second ambulance. She was speaking with the paramedic when the officer caught up with them. But before he could reach them, Geoff grabbed the man’s arm.
“I have to get to the hospital, and your partner says I can’t take my car because we can’t move this one until—”
“You can ride with me,” Lars said, indicating his car across the street. “Emma will go with Sadie. The paramedic says that she’s going to need stitches and to be completely checked over by a doctor,” he continued, addressing the police officer.
The officer glanced toward the second ambulance. Dan was being helped into the passenger seat. “Okay, your daughter can ride along in that ambulance—in the back. My partner will ride with them.”
“I want to—” Emma began.
“Ma’am, you and your husband can follow in your car, but your daughter and her boyfriend…”
“Let’s go,” Lars said, taking Emma’s arm and guiding her across the street before she could say anything that might further antagonize the police officer. Geoff was already in the car, his head resting against the window as he stared into space.
Chapter 8
Jeannie
At the emergency room, a team of medical personnel came running toward the ambulance as soon as it pulled into the circular drive. In a flurry of activity, the EMTs delivered information about Tessa’s status at the same time they lowered the gurney
to the ground and started wheeling her inside. Just as they got past the automated doors, someone gently pulled Jeannie aside.
“Ma’am, please step over here,” the gray-haired woman said. “We need you to give us some information so the doctors can treat your daughter.”
“No. “Jeannie dug in her heels.
The woman looked a little shocked. Had no one ever dared to refuse the protocol before? Jeannie couldn’t imagine that. “My husband will be here shortly, and then one of us will be glad to give you any information you need. If the doctors need her medical history, then they need me to be nearby.”
Logic had never been Jeannie’s strong suit, but she felt certain that she was making a good case now. “So either you come with me to wherever they have taken my daughter and ask your questions, or it will just have to wait.” Jeannie patted the woman’s hand, removing it from her arm and heading down the hall and through the double doors where they had taken Tessa.
Moving quickly she checked every cubicle and room in the emergency ward until she saw a cluster of men and women in white coats and green scrubs at the far end of the U-shaped area. She heard footsteps behind her as she started running toward the doctors.
“Jeannie,” Geoff called, catching up to her. “Where is she?”
“Back here, I think.” She’d never been so glad to see Geoff in her life. He grabbed hold of her hand, and together they hurried toward the curtained area where someone had set Tessa’s backpack on a chair.
“We’re her parents,” Geoff announced unnecessarily as they pushed their way into the midst of the medical team surrounding Tessa. She was lying on her back, her hair fanned out behind her, her clothing open, exposing her thin upper body. Jeannie felt Geoff’s grip tighten. “Can we cover her? She gets cold so easily,” he said.
One of the white coats glanced at a woman in scrubs who nodded and turned to Geoff and Jeannie, taking their elbows as she gently ushered them into the area just outside the sliding glass doors of the cubicle. “The doctors need to put in a tube to help her breathe,” she said. “We’re doing everything we can. Just please wait right here and let the doctors do their job. You’re just a few feet away from her. She knows you’re here.”
Geoff and Jeannie nodded in unison, and the nurse went back inside the cubicle and pulled a curtain closed behind her. Geoff wrapped his arms around Jeannie, and she rested her cheek against his chest, feeling the strong pounding of his heart against her face. Somehow that gave her strength.
“She’ll be all right,” she murmured. “Tessa is a fighter—quiet, yes, but you always said you’d rather have a strong silent player on your team than one who—” She was babbling, and Geoff quieted her by stroking her hair and tightening his hold on her. The question uppermost in her mind—the question of what happened—could wait. For now all that mattered was that Tessa was getting the medical help that would bring her back to them. Jeannie closed her eyes and silently prayed for her daughter’s full recovery as she forced herself to ignore the mental pictures of her beautiful daughter forever crippled or living in a coma or somehow less than her smart self. The idea that Tessa might die was not allowed.
“Mr. and Mrs. Messner?”
They looked up at a short, stocky man with Albert Einstein hair and wire-rimmed glasses. “I am Dr. Morris. Your daughter is bleeding internally. We need to perform surgery immediately. Will you give consent?”
The nurse who had ushered them from the room stood behind the doctor holding a clipboard with some papers. Geoff ripped it from her hand and glanced at it, searching for the blank space to write his name. “Here?”
“And on the next page as well,” the nurse said.
Geoff scrawled his name in both spaces and handed the clipboard back to the nurse. “Can we see her before you take her to surgery?”
Dr. Morris pulled back the curtain and with a single glance cleared the small room of medical personnel. “Make it quick. We need to go now,” he said, and Geoff nodded.
“Thank you,” Jeannie said, her voice choked with fresh tears.
She and Geoff approached the gurney that held their daughter as they had once approached her crib when she was a baby, hesitant and with a certain sense of disbelief. Then it had been because they had been blessed with this beautiful new life and given responsibility for watching over her. Now their disbelief grew out of a surreal sense that everything that had happened to their little family in the last hour had been some kind of horrible nightmare.
“Hey, sweetie,” Geoff crooned, taking Tessa’s small hand in his large one. Tessa’s fingers twitched, and Geoff glanced at Jeannie, his eyes filled with fresh hope.
Jeannie moved to the other side of the gurney and took Tessa’s other hand. “We’re right here, Tess. Dad and me—right here. “Her voice broke, and silent tears dropped onto the sheet the nurse had covered Tessa with. Jeannie found herself fascinated by the polka dot pattern her tears were creating there. She had never felt more helpless in her life.
“You need to fight, Tessa,” Geoff said. “That’s the way you help the doc get you back to us. You hear me?”
He was using the voice he used in a game when he wanted to inspire his players to keep playing hard against an opponent that was much bigger and stronger than they were. Jeannie felt an inexplicable annoyance. This was their daughter, not his basketball or football team. The doctor cleared his throat, and Jeannie was aware that he had pulled open the curtain and was waiting to take Tessa away.
“How long?” she asked, her voice husky. “The surgery?”
Dr. Morris moved a step into the space. “Difficult to say,” he told her. “A couple of hours at least. I’ll send someone to give you updates if it goes past that, okay?”
Jeannie felt as if she was bargaining for time on Tessa’s behalf—two hours to bring their beautiful laughing child back to them? Or was he talking about two hours just to get her to the point where she could begin the long weeks and maybe months of recovery? Or after two hours would…? She would not allow herself to think beyond those two alternatives. “Two hours,” she whispered as she bent to kiss Tessa’s cheek and smooth her silken hair away from her face. She tucked a strand behind her daughter’s ear as Tessa had done herself that very morning—this very morning—for the large clock on the wall outside the cubicle showed the time as just a minute past nine o’clock.
She stepped away to let the aides unlock the gurney wheels and start down the corridor, but Geoff held on, walking briskly and then trotting to keep pace until they reached an elevator. The nurse gently pulled him away. A second elevator opened, and an aide exited with a young man in a wheelchair followed by an older couple. Dan Kline and his parents. If Dan is hurt, then what about Sadie? Jeannie wondered. The Kline family disappeared behind a curtain.
Down the corridor, the light above the elevator carrying Tessa was clicking off floors: 2-3-4.… Jeannie stood frozen in the now barren cubicle, her hand outstretched as if to rescue her child from a fall. Then she saw Geoff still facing the elevator. His broad shoulders slumped, and then began to shake uncontrollably. Relieved to have something to do, Jeannie picked up Tessa’s backpack and went to comfort her husband.
“Come on,” she said as she saw an aide waiting patiently by another bank of elevators and understood that the young woman was there for them.
“I’ll take you to the surgical family waiting room,” the aide said as she held the doors of the elevator open.
“There’s a chapel just across the hall here,” she continued as they exited the elevator after the short, silent ride. She indicated the chapel as if she were leading some kind of tour while Geoff and Jeannie made their way blindly down the corridor after her. “And a café just around that corner and down the hall.”
A café? Seriously? How about just a plain old, ordinary hospital coffee shop?
Jeannie couldn’t even remember what floor they had come to, but the aide seemed well practiced in her mission, and Jeannie could not help but give herself ov
er to the young woman for the time being.
“There’s free coffee and tea in the waiting room,” the aide said, continuing her tour. “And vending machines down the hall that way. Oh, and there’s also this private room you can use.” She opened a wooden door. “It’s a good place to sit down with the doctor once the surgery is over.” She waited for some response and got none. “The waiting room is just around the corner.”
“Bathrooms?” Jeannie asked as they turned a corner.
“Right here and also—”
Jeannie let go of Geoff’s hand and practically ran for the door. She locked herself inside the small room with its porcelain sink and single toilet and a mirror that Jeannie found herself staring into as she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
Who is that? The face staring back at her was nearly unrecognizable—a parody of the woman she had been just hours earlier. The mouth was twisted into a kind of silent scream, and the eyes—always so lively and filled with plans for the day—were lifeless.
Her entire body began to shake and heave as if she were caught in the riptide of a turbulent sea. Wave after wave of sheer terror crashed over her until she thought she could not breathe, and yet she was aware that the tiny bathroom echoed with the sounds of her sobbing. Guttural growling sounds interspersed with the kind of high keening such as she had sometimes heard emanating from women in Middle Eastern countries mourning the loss of a loved one. All the while her eyes remained dry. And in her mind she repeated, Please, please, please, as she continued to lock eyes with the stranger in the mirror.