Miracles in the ER (21 page)

She seemed okay, but the sadness in her eyes remained. We waited and hoped for the sparkle to return and for her to find some measure of peace. It was over a year in coming, but it finally happened.

I was in minor stitching the finger of a teenage boy, making small talk as the final suture was being knotted. He had been sharpening a lawn mower and the blade had slipped—and here he was. We talked about sports, about his plans after graduating that spring, about where catgut thread came from. I didn’t put two and two together.

Charlotte Turner had walked into minor and was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder at the young man on the stretcher. I had asked him a question but he didn’t answer. Intent on what I was doing, I didn’t look up, and repeated myself.

When he still didn’t respond, I rolled back on the stool and looked up at him. He was staring behind me with eyes wide, the blood draining from his face.

I twisted around to face Charlotte, and then looked back at my patient.

What in the—
My eyes shot to the chart lying on the stretcher beside him.

Bobby Green.

I should have noticed. This was the young man who was driving the night Charlotte’s son, Russell, was killed. I kept tying knots in that last stitch, desperately trying to think of what was the best thing for me to do.

“Mrs. Turner…” Bobby was struggling, his voice quiet and breaking. “I want you to know that—”

Charlotte stepped around me and over to the side of the stretcher. She looked down at Bobby and their eyes met. They stayed like that, motionless, until finally she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay.” Her voice was soft, gentle. “It’s okay, Bobby.”

His head slumped to his chest and he reached up and put his hand on hers. And then it began. His body shook with deep, painful sobs.

It was done. With those few, simple words she had released him.

And by doing so, she had released herself.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses…

“Is the coroner here yet?”

Amy Connors looked up at me from behind the nurses’ station and shook her head. “He’s on the way. Maybe another fifteen or twenty minutes.”

I turned and glanced at the closed door of major trauma. Lori Davidson was still in there with the Grissoms—and their dead son.

Officer Jody Bridges and his partner had been the first to arrive at the scene. It was a little after midnight, and pouring down rain. Visibility was terrible, and they had almost missed the twisted pile of metal wrapped around a large oak tree, barely twenty feet off the road.

Eighteen-year-old Reed Levin had been easy to find. He was trapped in the driver’s seat by the distended airbag. He was moaning, moving his arms, and seemed to be stable and largely uninjured– except for the blood that streamed from an obviously broken nose.

When Reed saw Jody’s bouncing flashlight beam approaching the wrecked car, he began calling out for Case. Over and over. “Case!”

His partner checked on Reed, trying to calm him down, while Jody played his light over the empty front passenger seat and the mangled passenger door—twisted on its hinges and sprawling open.

“This kid’s not wearing a seat belt,” his partner said. “Lucky that his airbag deployed. Looks like it kept him from being thrown out.”

Jody’s light searched for the passenger belt. It was unlatched and stuffed into the sides of the seat.

The blaring siren of EMS 1 seemed muffled by the rain as the ambulance turned a curve in the road. The two paramedics caught sight of the blue flashing lights of the patrol car, slowed their speeding vehicle, and
pulled off the road just to its side. They bolted from the ambulance, leaving the motor running and their lights flooding the eerie, rain-drenched scene.

“What have you got?” Denton Roberts, the lead paramedic, asked Jody.

The officer told him what they had found.

“Case!” Reed’s cry pierced the pitch-black darkness. “Case!”

“There must be someone else out here.” Jody scanned a full three hundred and sixty degrees with his flashlight. “But we haven’t been able to find him yet.”

Denton’s partner deflated the airbag and started to carefully remove Reed from the smashed SUV.

“Nothing obvious here,” he told Denton. “Just a busted nose. He’s moving everything and his breath sounds are good.”

“Guys, over here.” It was Jody’s partner, his voice trembling, hollow.

It had come from the other side of the SUV, near the oak tree. Jody and Denton sloshed through a shallow ditch and headed in his direction.

Jody stopped, his feet frozen to the muddy ground. Denton almost ran into the paramedic, managed somehow to catch himself, and followed the beam of the officer’s flashlight as it penetrated the darkness off to their right.

A barbed-wire fence, its bristling, rusted points wrapped around cedar posts and several small oak trees, lined the other side of the ditch. At the farthest reach of the flashlights, something was draped over the top strands of wire. Unmoving, its appendages suspended at awkward angles, it was at first unrecognizable—an amorphous, bloody—

“Case!”

Reed’s cry disappeared into the muted darkness and the men sprang as one toward the fence.

“Still no pulse?”

Jeff Ryan had his fingers on Case Grissom’s femoral artery. He shook his head. “Nothing.”

I glanced up at the clock again. We had been working with this young man for almost an hour. The right side of his chest had been smashed when he was thrown from the SUV, and his right femur was broken. There had never been any sign of life at the scene, and we all knew the chances of his recovery were small, if not nonexistent. Yet he was only eighteen years old, and we were going to try.

Ten minutes later, I called it, and we all stepped back from the stretcher and the lifeless teenager.

“His parents are in the family room,” Lori said quietly. “They want to see him.”

She began to straighten the countertop and then moved to the stretcher. She hesitated for a moment, straightened his contorted leg, then placed a sheet over his broken body, pulling it to just under his chin.

“I’ll go get them, if you’re ready.” She looked up at me and waited.

When are you ever ready for something like this? How do you prepare yourself for sharing this devastating news with total strangers?

“I think they know,” Lori whispered as she turned and moved toward the door.

The Grissoms
did
know about their son, but it didn’t make it any easier. I described his injuries, everything we had done for him, and that he didn’t suffer. He was unconscious—gone—from the moment he flew out of the vehicle.

“If only he had been wearing his seat belt.” His mother gently stroked his forehead. “How many times…”

Her voice trailed away, and her husband put his arm around her.

“Shh,” was all he could say. It was enough.

I left them in major trauma with Lori and stepped over to the nurses’ station.

Jody Bridges was writing his report and looked up as I walked over beside him.

“That’s gotta be tough,” he said, motioning with his head toward major trauma. “I still need to talk with them, when you think it’s alright.”

I nodded and stared at the countertop. It would never be alright.

“It’s a bad stretch of road.” Jody closed his notebook and leaned against the desk. “Especially when it’s raining. There’re a couple of spots where water pools on the pavement, right after you come out of that curve. I’m thinkin’ they hydroplaned, spun out of control, and hit that big oak tree. That’s when the Grissom boy was thrown out of the vehicle. Still can’t believe the other kid wasn’t hurt—at least not too bad. How is he, Doc?”

“He’s going to be fine. His nose is broken and there’s a big gash over it. One of the other doctors is sewing him up right now. But he didn’t break anything else, and there’s no head or neck injury. He was mighty lucky.”

“You can say that again.” The officer shifted his feet and rested an elbow on the countertop. “I’m still thinkin’ that airbag saved him. The passenger bag might have helped the Grissom boy, but with the door torn off, I guess it blew him out of the SUV. It sure didn’t stop him.”

“Any alcohol involved?” Amy asked from behind the desk. That was a reasonable question, and all too often the case.

“Not a bit,” Jody answered quickly. “Glad of that, for all of them. And no sign they were speeding, either. I think they just got unlucky, what with the rain and all. Wrong place, wrong time. It’s a terrible thing.”

The door of major trauma opened and I turned around. Lori was leading the Grissoms out of the room and quietly closed the door behind them. Mrs. Grissom stopped in the hallway and put a hand on the wooden door. Her head was bowed and she was sobbing. Jody Bridges cleared his throat and looked away.

“We’re going back to the family room to make some calls.” Lori’s eyes caught mine and she gave me a small nod. I stood up straight, took a deep breath, and followed them.

We were halfway down the hall, just opposite the entrance to minor trauma. Lori walked on but the Grissoms stopped dead in their tracks. They were staring into the room and they both stiffened, their arms still around each other.

Reed Levin was lying on bed B in the back left corner of the room. One of my partners was bending over the stretcher, carefully placing some sutures in the open wound over his nose.

Reed’s parents stood behind the stretcher, looking down at their son.

Silence. None of us moved. Slowly, as if he somehow knew we were standing in the hallway, Reed’s father looked up at us. An instant later his mother followed his gaze.

Lori had turned around, and her eyes widened. She looked at the Grissoms and then at me. I shook my head, and we waited.

Anything could happen. I didn’t know these people and couldn’t begin to guess how they might respond, how they might react to the loss of their son while his friend—who had been driving the car—was alive, lying on a nearby stretcher.

Reed’s mother looked into the eyes of Mrs. Grissom, and tears streamed down the cheeks of both women.

Painful seconds passed—then Mrs. Grissom walked over to the
stretcher and put her hand gently on Reed’s shoulder. Slowly, without a word, his hands came up from the bed and grasped hers. He was sobbing, and his shudders shook the stretcher.

My partner stopped sewing, sat up straight, and looked down at Reed and then up at the woman standing beside him. He looked over at me and I nodded.

We stood there in silence, unmoving, for a few precious seconds—and the healing began.

Reed’s parents stepped around the stretcher and stood beside Mrs. Grissom. Her husband walked over and the four looked at each other, tears flowing freely from every eye.

It was Mr. Grissom who moved first. His large, bearish arms reached out and pulled Mr. Levin to him. Then his wife grabbed Mrs. Levin and they all stood there together—a tangled, sobbing mass of grief and tears—and forgiveness.