Tears sprang to my eyes. “He needs the breathing tube, Mum. He’s not strong enough yet to do it on his own.”
She reached over to pat my hand. “I know. Now listen, try not to worry. There are no plans in place; it’s just something the doctors brought up to his folks the other day. It doesn’t mean they’re actually going to go through with it.”
“Geez, I hope not.” I was dangerously close to losing it. “It would be like killing him.”
“Oh, Gus.” She glanced sideways at me, sympathy filling her eyes. “I'm so sorry you’ve had to go through this. I know it’s been awfully hard on you and Elsbeth.”
I turned to her, scrubbing a tear away from my cheek. “We were The Three Musketeer’s of Sullivan Hill,” I said. “There can’t be just two of us left. It wouldn’t work. It’s not right.”
“Let’s say a little prayer, shall we?” she offered.
“Okay.” I nodded, and we recited the Lord’s Prayer together, finishing up just as we rolled into the parking lot.
My throat felt tight when I approached Sig’s room, as if I’d start crying like a baby at the slightest provocation. I couldn’t believe they’d been talking about such horrible options, and for a minute I pictured the room being empty and him being gone because they took out his tube before I could say goodbye.
But when I turned the corner into his room, he lay there as straight and still as ever, his long legs tucked under the white sheet, his pale arms laying along side his ever-weakening body.
“Hi, Sig,” I said with false bravado. “Happy Halloween.”
I pulled up my usual chair and slid close to him, studying his strong German features and his blond hair that had actually been left to grow long enough to touch his shoulders. That was one thing his parents had decided on, knowing how very much Sig cherished and wanted long hair. It was the least they could do for a boy who couldn’t talk, walk, eat, or see his surroundings.
As I did every time, I scrutinized his face for a movement, for some change. I studied his fingers, looking for a twitch.
But he seemed the same as last time.
The breathing machine moved his chest in and out. In and out.
With a concerted effort, I removed the letter from Willy and unfolded it, flattening it on the bed sheets. “Willy sent us another letter. Do you want to hear it?”
“Okay,” I said, imagining his “Ja, natürlich,” answer.
I read through the typewritten page and got to the end, where she’d signed it Blooga meeka reezie. With emphasis, I leaned really close to him, took his free hand, and said the words the way we’d done during our voodoo ceremonies with every ounce of my heart behind it.
“Blooga meeka reezie. Siegfried, come back to us. Blooga meeka reezie. Blooga meeka reezie. Blooga meeka reezie.” My voice grew stronger and louder until I was nearly shouting, feeling all my fears and hopes and wishes coming through the words. I wanted my friend back, NOW.
Siegfried’s eyes opened.
I stumbled backwards, nearly falling out of the chair.
He blinked twice, watching me with a dazed expression.
“Oh my gosh. Sig?” My voice went up an octave and practically screeched his name. I stood, I laughed, and my face became wet with tears of joy.
He moved his lips as if he was trying to speak, but the tube was in the way.
His brilliant blue eyes questioned me, confused, afraid, and uncertain.
I took his hand and squeezed. “Sig. It’s me, Gus. Your best friend.”
He squeezed back.
“I’ll be back in a flash,” I shouted, spinning around to race into the hallway. “He’s awake!” I screamed to anyone and everyone. “Siegfried’s awake! Please, come help him.”
A nurse and doctor ran toward me, pushing past me as if they didn’t believe what I’d just announced, as if these things just never happened in this dead-to-the-world facility.
My mother emerged from the waiting room with a coffee cup in her hand. Instantly, it dropped to the floor and I thought maybe she was about to faint.
“Mum! He’s awake! His eyes are open.”
She recovered and ran toward me, capturing me in her arms. This time, she too couldn’t hold back the tears. “Oh, Gus. Oh, can it be true?”
“We have to tell Elsbeth,” I shouted, jumping in place. “And her folks. And Willy. And everyone.”
“But of course,” she half-laughed, half-cried.
We hurried back to the room, where the doctor made us wait by the door. “Please, folks. Let us take a proper look at this young man.”
“His name’s Siegfried,” I said defensively.
“Of course,” the doctor repeated. “Siegfried.”
He leaned over him, performing a series of tests, but I couldn’t tell what they meant. Sig’s eyes caught mine a few times, and I felt the old connection. He was in there, all right. My old friend was still there.
The doctor glanced at my mother. “Are you family?”
I couldn’t believe him. We had been coming to this place all the time for two months and he should have known us by name and how we were related to Sig. How could he be so dumb?
“No,” she said. “My son is Sig’s best friend, Doctor. But I can call his folks and have them up here in no time.”
“Please do,” he said. “This is a momentous occasion. We’ll need to run many more evaluations to see where he is on a functional scale. I’ll have the respiratory therapist up to see if we can safely remove the tube, but all indications are that it will be our next step.”
I slumped into a chair with a goofy smile on my face.
In my head, all I could hear was Willy’s magic words.
Blooga meeka reezie.
Chapter 47
Our Halloween had fallen on a Monday, so it was torture having to wait all week to see Siegfried until Saturday. Elsbeth was excused from school and stayed the whole week at the hospital with her parents, who spent hours in conferences with a slew of doctors, each who boasted his own specialty. I hadn’t spoken with Elsbeth since the initial phone call where my mother let me telephone their house from the nurse’s station. I’d barely been able to get the words out when she answered, I was so excited, and then she’d screeched and called for her parents, and I’d handed the phone to my mother to speak with them. That night, I’d written to Willy with the news.
I missed Elsbeth, and couldn’t wait to see her again to compare notes about Sig’s progress and talk about our life together again. We’d be whole once more. The three of us would be back on horses exploring the woods, riding the bus together in the mornings, laughing, joking, and sharing our innermost thoughts again. Oh how I’d missed that camaraderie. Life just hadn’t been right, but now we’d get back on track, I was sure of it.
My father drove me up this time, because he always scheduled his weekends off. His pharmacy was open on Saturdays, but he routinely hired a pharmacist from the next town over to fill in for him, so he could have time with us on the weekend. It was also good for him to have a backup for summer, and this way Mr. Tooley was always up to speed with my father’s customers. My father called it ‘keeping a finger on the pulse of his business,’ and it seemed to work out just fine.
“Son,” he said as we rolled out of our driveway and headed down Sullivan Hill. “I know you haven’t been briefed yet on Siegfried’s condition. I wanted to give you a heads up.”
“What condition?” I said, unconcerned. All I cared about was that he was awake, and that he knew me. I figured everything else would come in time.
He cleared his throat. “Well, um, he will have to relearn some things after being asleep for so long.”
“Oh, okay. Like what?”
He didn’t give me specifics. “I’m probably not the best person to explain it, but when we go in today, one of the nurses said she’d explain the whole thing to us.”
I smiled and rested my elbow on the open window. “Okay.”
He seemed a little more worried than h
e should be, but I wasn’t going to let it bother me. I was just too excited to see Siegfried. They’d taken the tube out of his mouth, so hopefully now he could talk. I had so much to tell him.
We got a good parking spot and headed up to Sig’s room. Nobody was at the nurses’ station, so we went right inside. My father glanced around the room. “Hmm. I’ll go hunt for the nurse. Why don’t you stay here and visit while I’m gone. I’ll be back soon.”
“Sure thing, Dad.” I hurried to Siegfried’s side.
He lay still in his bed, eyes closed. For a minute, I was afraid he’d regressed and gone back into the coma. But when I whispered his name, his eyes snapped open. They searched mine, as if looking for something he couldn’t find.
“Hey, buddy.” I reached for his hand. “Look at you. You’ve got that tube out. I’ll bet that feels a lot better?”
He nodded, and the pleasure that flooded me knowing he had actually heard and responded to me was immeasurable.
His lips moved, but no words came out. I thought he was saying, “Who?” but wasn’t sure.
“You know me, right, Sig? You remember I’m your best friend?”
He stared at me blankly.
“I’m Gus.”
A flicker of recognition filled his eyes and a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
“I knew you’d remember,” I said. “But you can’t talk yet?” I asked.
He shook his head, looking morose.
“Well, it might take some time, right? Your voice hasn’t been used since you had the accident. Do you remember that? Remember you got hit by Mr. Baker’s boat?”
Again, he shook his head.
“Wow, really? Have you got, like, amnesia or something?”
He looked confused and I didn’t want to upset him.
“Well, no worries. I’ll just fill you in on everything. You won’t believe what happened after you went into the coma. It’ll probably take me forever to tell you, but you’re gonna flip out when you hear about Pierre and the fire and Willy’s past…”
I noticed he still had the tube coming out of his sheets that took care of his bodily needs. Why couldn’t he just get up now and use the bathroom? Why did they still have that awful thing in him?
A nurse came in with my father, wearing her crisp white uniform and perky little hat. I recognized her as Shirley, one of the regulars.
“Well, good morning, Gus.” Her eyes crinkled when she smiled. She reminded me of my Grandmother Odette.
“Morning,” I said. “Hey, how come he can’t just walk to the bathroom now? Why is he still hooked up to that darned thing?” I pointed to the catheter.
My father raised an eyebrow as if I’d committed a cardinal sin of rudeness, which I probably had, but he didn’t say a word.
Shirley gave me a sympathetic smile. “Well, dear, your friend has a lot of work ahead of him.”
“What kind of work?” I asked.
“The trauma of the accident and resultant surgery have affected his brain and all of his faculties. He needs to relearn how to talk, walk, speak, and eat. Today we worked on drinking from a straw, and your friend did brilliantly. You would have been very proud of him.”
I stared at her. He didn’t know how to walk or talk anymore? “But how long will it be until he comes back to school? He’s going to be way behind.”
Again, the sympathetic smile. “Well, dear, these things take time. We’re going to take it one day at a time. He’ll need extensive therapy for speech and movement, and in time, we hope to get him back to a fully functioning young man.”
My father listened quietly, and then asked, “What about the mental capacity, Shirley? I heard there was some possible intellectual damage.”
She nodded. “I’m afraid so. It could be substantial, based on what the surgeon said when he operated. There was significant damage to some of the core tissue. The young man you knew before may never return in full, but in his place there will be a fresh new personality who will grow and learn like a young child does. We won’t know for sure until he can talk or write on a piece of paper, and of course, that could take months.”
“Months?” I gulped and felt panicked. “Seriously?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said kindly.
“I’ll help him remember,” I said. “I’m going to tell him about everything we used to do together, remind him about everything he loved.”
“That’s perfect,” she said. “You and Elsbeth will be an important part of his therapy.”
His therapy. The words chilled me. Here I was thinking my old pal was back because he’d woken up. Yet now there was a chance I’d be getting to know a new Sig, a changed Sig.
But how fundamentally changed could he be? He had the same soul inside, didn’t he? The same heart? Maybe his brain would be a little different. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to do complex math sums in his head anymore. But he was the same boy with whom I’d spent my whole childhood.
Wasn’t he?
My father stood and thanked Shirley, who had risen to leave. “Any questions before she leaves, Gus?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I just want to talk to Sig. I have so much to tell him.”
We thanked her again and my father followed her out to get a cup of coffee and wait in the lounge for me, per usual.
I turned to Siegfried, who still looked confused and possibly even a little scared. I took a deep breath, realizing I’d have to start from the beginning.
“We met when you were four and I was five,” I began. “You and Elsbeth became my instant best friends, and nothing has changed since then. Now, let me tell you about our summer...”
Chapter 48
Siegfried struggled down the hall on the walker, one slow step at a time. His right foot still dragged, and I had to remind him to lift it higher.
“Good job,” I said, holding his elbow every once in a while to steady him. He’d made excellent progress over the past month with his motor skills. Now he could hold a fork, and he even cut his Canadian bacon at breakfast.
He shot me a grateful smile. “Danke,” he said, his lips carefully forming the words.
“You’re almost to the end of the hall. Once we get there, we can rest for a bit on the benches, okay?”
“Ja, okay.”
My parents had let me spend all of spring break at the hospital with Siegfried, sharing some of the time with Elsbeth, who was the best coach in the world. She pushed him even harder than I did, and the therapists on the floor said someday they’d love to hire her because she had such spunk and never let her brother give up.
The hardest part had been the speech recovery. For some reason, Sig’s brain had reverted to German after the deep brain surgery that had repaired the massive internal bleeding. When we spoke to him, he hadn’t understood us very well, and after Elsbeth finally puzzled it out by alternating between English and German, as she was apt to do, the light dawned. He’d regressed to his childhood language.
The retraining with the multilingual speech therapist had been slow and arduous, but now Sig could form many English sentences and his understanding of the language seemed to be flooding back. His first word was “okay,” which he used all the time. And his second word was “Gus,” which pleased me to no end.
He’d seemed to grow about a foot in height since he’d been admitted, which was kind of funny. Here I was, a full year older than him, and now he towered over Elsbeth and me like a college kid. The doctors couldn’t explain it, said it was sort of a delayed growth spurt, and that he was likely going to end up very tall, anyway.
We shuffled to the benches at the end of the hallway, and I helped him maneuver onto the seat. I glanced at my watch, which I’d used to time him every day.
“Better and better every time,” I said. “Well done! You’ll be out of here before you know it, Sig.”
He turned to me with a half smile. “Ja?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. The doctors said that if you continue to improve the way you a
re, you might be able to come back to school around Memorial Day.”
An expression of fear crossed his face. “I…don’t…remember school.”
Surprise flooded me, but I tried to act natural. “No? Well, don’t worry. It’ll come back to you. And because you missed most of the year, they’ve got this lady who’s gonna be your private tutor. She’ll stick by your side during the day, work with you in her room, and help you get back up to speed.”
A single tear slid down his cheek. “Ich habe Angst.”
“It’s okay to be afraid,” I said. “I would be, too. With everything so muddled and unfamiliar, it’s going to take time for you to adjust. But buddy, listen.”
He tilted his head toward me.
“Elsbeth and I will be with you the whole way. I’m your best friend in the world. You will always have me beside you, so there’s nothing to worry about, okay?”
His face blossomed into a grateful smile, and somehow he reminded me of an angel. There was something so new about his personality; it was distinctly different from the clever, analytical, quiet boy I’d known in the past. This new Sig was innocence, purity, and yes, even angelic with his childlike trust and willingness to accept whatever was put in his path. He didn’t know the meaning of doubt, or rejection, or sarcasm. Somehow, he reminded me in all good ways of a sweet, loyal puppy who instinctively offered unconditional love and friendship without questioning it. And as much as I missed the old Sig, this new version was growing on me fast.
One thing I knew for sure, I was going to have to be Sig’s protector, maybe for life. He just wouldn’t understand the taunting of nasty schoolboys. But I’d be there to see to it they got a bloody nose if they even dared to hurt my friend.
“Tonight the schedule says roast beef and mashed potatoes,” I said with a grin. “You love that meal, don’t you?”
His eyes lit up. “Ja. And I will ask them to bring you a tray, too.”
Voodoo Summer (LeGarde Mysteries Book 11) Page 21