Sudden Impact - Lesley Choyce [4]
Inside I saw a little kid crying as he got stitches in his forehead. Nearby an old flabby guy with no shirt on was taking a deep breath while a doctor held a stethoscope to his chest. Then I saw Kurt, stretched out on a hospital bed. He was still unconscious. Two doctors and a nurse were bent over him. They appeared serious and desperately concerned.
The nurse inserted a tube into Kurt’s arm as I sidled up. The tube was connected to an elevated bottle of clear liquid. “Is he going to be all right?” I asked her.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” she said, sounding like a cold-hearted mother disciplining a bad child.
“Is he going to be all right?” I demanded.
The doctors were trying to ignore me. One nodded to the nurse to remove me from the room. She tried to grab onto me, but I shook her off. “I’m staying,” I said defiantly. Maybe I was wrong to be so stubborn, but I had a feeling that if I walked out of that room I might never see Kurt again.
One of the doctors, a young guy with glasses, turned to me. He acted like this was no big deal, like it happened all the time. In a cool, clinical voice, he said, “I’m Dr. Bennington. Could you describe the accident please?”
I told him what I had seen and he nodded. “Was he all right before the game?”
I remembered the way he had been looking. “No,” I said. “I think he was feeling bad. He said he was feeling a little nauseous. His mother didn’t want him to play. But he did anyway. He said it was nothing.”
“Did he say he had any pain?”
“No. But during the game he was holding his side.”
He turned to the other doctor. “Almost certainly the liver. Internal bleeding. Given his skin color, there’s a good chance there was already a problem. If his liver was already compromised, a sudden impact could have caused the liver to fail. Let’s get him stabilized and run some tests. Right away. There’s no time to fool around.”
“What’s his name?” the doctor asked me, again talking like this was all matter of fact.
“Kurt,” I said.
The doctor bent over the patient, shined a tiny light in his eyes. “Kurt, can you hear me?”
“No response,” said the other doctor. “Let’s get him upstairs.”
chapter five
The door opened and the nurse from the front desk came in with Kurt’s parents. Both of them were visibly shaken when they saw Kurt passed out on the bed. His mother picked up his hand and seemed shocked by the feel of it. It was cold and clammy. I knew because I had held his hand during the ambulance ride. It was scary.
Kurt’s father started to talk to the doctors in a shaky, almost angry voice. “Do what you have to do.” Then he looked at them suspiciously. “Are you guys the best available?” he continued. “I only want the best for my son.”
“Look,” the young doctor said. “We have to get him upstairs right away. We think there’s damage to the liver. No time to waste. Will you go out front and fill out the permission form?”
They began to wheel Kurt out of the room. The nurse pulled Kurt’s mother’s hand away from her son, and Kurt’s mom turned and saw me for the first time.
“What’s she doing here?” she screamed hysterically, glaring at me as if I was somehow responsible for this.
I tried to say something, but my voice still wasn’t working right. I ignored Mrs. Richards and tried to follow Kurt to the elevator. I was grabbed by an orderly and pulled back. He led me away from Kurt’s parents toward a small waiting room.
Right then I didn’t trust anyone. That expression on Kurt’s mother’s face was still burning a hole right through me. I wrenched free of the orderly and ran for the front door. Outside, I kept on running until I was six blocks away and my eyes were so filled with tears that I couldn’t see enough to keep going.
When I phoned the hospital later, the switchboard lady said that I couldn’t be connected to Kurt’s room.
“Well, then let me speak to the doctor,” I insisted.
“Your name