A Sister's Forgiveness (8 page)

“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 over 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.

The faith of her childhood had taught Jeannie to turn to God—even for small things, and this surely wasn’t small. Surely a loving God would understand her cry for help now. She was a mother, and her only child was even now surrounded by strangers—strangers holding scalpels and attaching machines to keep her breathing.

Please
.

Chapter 9

Lars

A
s Lars and Emma had driven Geoff to the hospital, Lars had resisted the urge to squeeze his brother-in-law’s shoulder once he and Emma were in the car. Everything about Geoff’s posture showed that he wanted—needed—to be alone, but Lars couldn’t resist offering some encouragement. “Tessa will be all right,” he said as he kept both hands on the wheel and focused on the road.

To his surprise, Geoff nodded. “There wasn’t a scratch on her—no blood at all,” he murmured. “I think she hit her head. Just dazed maybe.”

“We’ll all pray that you’re right,” Emma said. No one spoke again until they reached the hospital. Lars drove all the way hunched forward, squinting at the road the way he always did, as if operating a motorized vehicle were still foreign to him.

They arrived just behind the second ambulance that carried Dan and Sadie. Geoff leaped from the car and ran into the hospital.

“Where is she?” he demanded of the desk clerk as soon as they were inside the emergency reception area. “My daughter—Tessa Messner—fifteen—just brought in.…”

The gray-haired woman glanced toward the double doors and then back at Geoff. “Your wife is with her. I need to get some information.”

Geoff tossed his wallet to Emma. “Take care of this,” he said and headed through the doors.

Emma looked from Lars to the paramedic wheeling Sadie through the doors. She was holding an ice pack to her lip. Not ten seconds later, Dan Kline was escorted into the small reception area. His parents arrived a moment later, and Dan’s father brushed past Emma, demanding to see the person in charge immediately.

“Dad,” Dan moaned, but his mother took his protest for a cry of pain and began to cry as well.

“You need to wait your turn, sir,” the receptionist said even as she indicated that Emma should take a seat at her window. “And you are?” the exasperated clerk asked Emma.

“Tessa Messner’s aunt and godmother.” Emma rifled through Geoff’s wallet to produce insurance cards and other identification. “My daughter, Sadie, is—”

“One patient at a time,” the woman said. She made copies of Geoff’s cards and passed them back to Emma. She typed in bits of information on her computer and finally turned to Emma. “Now, what happened?” she asked, nodding toward Sadie.

Although Lars understood that the receptionist was looking only for information about Sadie’s condition and not seeking details of the accident, he also understood that this was a question they were all going to face time and again in the days to come. His wife gave the only answer she knew to be absolutely true.