Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [81]
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” His voice was simultaneously panicked and robotic. “I had to bring the horses back. I haven’t talked to the doctor . . . I’ve got to get down there . . .”
“I’m on my way.”
Cathy and I drove to the hospital, terrified, and trying to convince ourselves that it wasn’t serious. As soon as we rushed into the emergency room, we asked the nurse in charge what was going on.
After checking her notes and heading back to talk to someone, she rejoined us.
“Your mother’s in surgery,” she said. “They think she ruptured her spleen. And her arm might be broken.”
I sighed with relief; I knew that though the injuries were serious, they weren’t necessarily life-threatening. A moment later, Mike Marotte, an old friend from high school who was on the cross-country team with me, hurried through the door.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I was running on the trail when I saw a group of people and recognized your dad. I helped him get the horses back, and came straight to the hospital from there. What’s happening with your mom?”
Mike, like all my friends, loved my mom and seemed as frightened as I was.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They said she ruptured her spleen, but no one’s come out to talk to me. You were there though? Was it serious? How was she?”
“She wasn’t conscious,” he said. “That’s all I know. The helicopter got there just a couple of minutes after I did.”
The world seemed to be whirling in slow motion.
“Is there anything you need me to do? Can I call anyone?”
“Yeah,” I said. I gave him the phone numbers of relatives on both my mom’s and dad’s sides. “Tell them what happened, and tell them to call everyone else.”
He jotted down the numbers.
“And find Micah,” I said. “He’s supposed to be flying in from Cancun this afternoon. He’s coming into San Francisco.”
“What airline?”
“I don’t know.”
“What time is he coming in?”
“I don’t know. Do what you can . . . And find Dana, too. She’s in Los Angeles with Mike Lee.”
Mike nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
My dad arrived a few minutes later, pale and shaking. I told him what I knew, and he burst into tears. I held him as he cried, and a moment later he was mumbling, “I’m okay, now. I’m okay,” trying to stop the tears.
We took a seat, and minutes passed without a word. Ten. Twenty. I tried to look through a magazine, but couldn’t concentrate on the words. Cathy sat beside me, her hand on my leg, then she moved closer to my father. He sat and rose and paced, then sat again. He rose and paced, then sat again.
By then, forty minutes had gone by, and no one knew what was going on.
Micah had just stepped off the plane when he heard his name being paged over the public-address system at San Francisco International Airport, requesting him to answer the courtesy phone.
“Please go directly to UC Davis Medical Center,” the voice on the other end told him.
“What’s going on?”
“That’s all the message says.”
Suddenly panicked, he jumped into a limousine—no cabs were available—to take him to a friend’s house, where he’d left his car for the week.
He was two hours from Sacramento.
After an hour, a soft-spoken man wearing a suit came out to greet us.
“Mr. Sparks?”
We all rose, wondering if he was the doctor. He said that he wasn’t.
“I work with the hospital as a counselor,” he said. “I know this is hard, but please come with me.”
We followed him into a small waiting room; we were the only family in the room. It seemed it had been set aside for us. It was oppressive; I felt my chest constrict, even before he said the words:
“Your wife has suffered a cerebral hemorrhage,” he said to my father. His voice was gentle and ached with obvious sympathy.
Tears welled again in my father’s eyes. “Is she going to be okay?” my dad whispered. His voice began growing softer; I could hear the plea contained within it. “Please . . . please . . . tell me she’s going to be okay . . .”
“I’m so sorry,” the man said, “but it doesn’t look good.”
The room began to spin; all I could do was stare at him.
“She’s not going to die, is