Sudden Impact (2 page)

Coach Kenner yelled at me to get off the field. He and Jason both came chasing after me. They thought I'd lost my mind
.
A kid falls down in a soccer game, big deal.
But I knew better.

The ref had his hand on Kurt's shoulder, and the other players had moved back. Kurt was gulping for air and let out a terrible moan like he was trying to cry but couldn't. I put my face close to his and saw that his skin was clammy and pale. I tried to hear what he was saying and could finally make out the words, “Help me.”

Coach Kenner pulled me away and was still acting like it was no big deal. Jason, that
is to say, the nasty version of Jason, started ranting and raving, “Look at this guy. He takes a fall, gets the wind knocked out of him and acts like he's dying. What a joke.”

Maybe Jason thought he could shame his teammate into getting up and back into the game. I gave him a look that would have made any intelligent creature run for cover.

“Call an ambulance,” I said, my voice shaking.

The other players all looked at me like I was crazy. Jason played it for all it was worth. “What is this? Kurt has to have a girl come to the rescue every time he falls down? Is this the sort of weakling we want on our team?”

“Call an ambulance,” I said louder this time.

No one paid attention. The ref, however, bent over Kurt, pushing me out of his way. He looked up at Kenner. “She's right. Call an ambulance.”

The coach asked if anyone from the team would volunteer to go with Kurt to the hospital.

“I'll go,” I said, but he looked right past me like I didn't matter.

Jason said, “Yeah, let her go. We need our team players here. We've got a game to play.” He was still treating this like it was nothing. And it was funny because no one on the team did volunteer. Either they had
got a good look at Kurt and were too scared to go along, or they wanted to get back to their game. I don't know which.

“I'm going,” I said, looking straight at the coach. “Get out of my way.”

The guys from the team just stood there and stared at me. Fortunately there was a woman inside the ambulance, a black woman who took control of the situation. She realized that they weren't going to move unless I was inside. “Get in, honey,” she said. “Just sit tight and let us do our work.”

I got in. The man driving the ambulance fired up the siren, and we sped off across the soccer field and past the high school. As we went out the driveway, I looked at the brick school building through the back window, and it all looked different. I had a feeling that things would never be quite the same. Kurt was unconscious. His skin looked awful. The ambulance lady put an oxygen mask over his face. She carefully studied Kurt's breathing. She looked up at me and tried to fake a smile. “What's your name?” she asked.

“Tina.”

“I'm Martha. You know this guy?”

I tried to talk but couldn't. Nothing came out
;
I was that scared. Martha seemed to understand right away what Kurt meant to me.

“Hang onto that strap,” she said, pointing to a rope loop above me head. I grabbed it. Then she yelled to the driver, “I think this calls for a little more action, Vince.”

Vince hit the siren again and punched the gas pedal to the floor. We flew around a corner and I held on to the strap. Martha smiled at me again. It was a warm smile this time. “Vince likes it when he gets to drive fast,” she said, pretending that it was all a game—that Kurt wasn't as bad off as I knew he was.

At the hospital, I was pushed out of the way by the two orderlies who helped wheel Kurt into Emergency. Kurt was still unconscious. I wanted to keep asking,
What is it? What's wrong? Will he be okay?
But I had given up. Nobody was going to answer my
questions because nobody knew what exactly was wrong with Kurt.

They wheeled Kurt down a long hallway, and I tried to get a good view of which room they took him into. A nurse took me by the sleeve, sat me down and started asking me questions about Kurt. “We have to call his parents,” she said. “Do you know the number?”

I gave her Kurt's phone number, and she left to make the call.

I sat down and tried to relax but couldn't. Martha came in and found me sitting on the edge of the chair. “I wish I could hang around and keep you company, Tina, but I've got another call.” She handed me some change. “Go get Coke,” she said. “Everything will be okay. Things usually aren't as bad as they seem, believe me.” She gave my hand a squeeze and then turned to go.

I was in a funny haze, and I almost thought I was going to pass out. I took a deep breath and stumbled up the hallway to the pop machine. I popped the quarters in but stood there looking at the choices. I
couldn't think straight. I needed to see Kurt right then and make sure he was alive.

I made a fist and smacked it hard onto the side of the machine, then ran down the long hallway. An orderly grabbed me and said, “You can't go down there,” but I pulled away and kept going until I saw a sign over a door that said EMERGENCY.

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.”

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 please?” she asked.

“Tina Wright.”

“You're not a member of the immediate family?”

I didn't get it. Why was she putting me off? “I'm his friend, okay?” I snapped.

“Sorry, I can't help you. Only immediate family can talk to the patient's doctor,” she said and the line went dead.

It drove me crazy all night, not knowing if Kurt was going to be okay. I kept thinking about all the good times we'd had together. I couldn't believe that things might never be the same again. Kurt was the only guy I had ever known who treated me like I really
mattered. I had other friends, but none like Kurt. He was different.

I kept thinking about when my parents had been fighting and I was so upset I couldn't think straight at school. It seemed like everybody in town knew about the loud screeching battles between my mom and dad. It was hard to live with everyone knowing about it. Kurt used to sit in the cafeteria with me sometimes, through lunch, and right into the afternoon. One day, he stayed there with me after Mr. Findlay told us to go to class. Even after Mr. Findlay gave us both three days detention, Kurt kept his cool because he knew how upset I was. Then he walked over to Findlay, said something to him, and Findlay left. Kurt sat back down and stayed with me until I was human again. That's the kind of friend he was.

After school that day we didn't go to detention, even though we both knew we would be in big trouble. Instead Kurt took me to Point Pleasant Park and we hiked up to a place he called the Ledge. We sat there on a rock overlooking the Northwest Arm.
We talked and watched the setting sun. After that I knew I could handle the crap my parents were throwing around.

Finally, at about three o'clock in the morning, I gave up trying to fall asleep. I got dressed and sneaked out of the house.

There was no bus, so I had to walk the two miles to the hospital. I ran part of the way. It was really weird going through Halifax alone in the middle of the night.

A couple of cars went by and one lady even stopped to ask me if I was okay. “You need a ride somewhere or something?”

I wasn't sure what to do, but I said no. “I'm fine,” I said.

“Are you sure? It's awful late. Maybe you should get in.”

She was probably trying to help, but I was feeling scared. I didn't trust anyone, especially a stranger. So I ran. It was a good thing that I had been practicing with Kurt. I had good lungs and strong leg muscles.

I knew they weren't going to welcome me at the hospital. I tried to calm myself down, but I know I looked frazzled when I reached the front desk.

“I need to see my brother, Kurt Richards,” I lied to the nurse. “He had an accident and he's here somewhere.”

She checked through some lists. “He's in intensive care. You can't go in.”

“But there must be something somebody can tell me,” I pleaded.

She could see I was desperate. “There's a waiting room on the third floor. A doctor will be around.”

“Thanks,” I said and ran for the elevator. When the door opened, I saw Kurt's
parents huddled together on a vinyl sofa. I didn't care what they thought of me.

“How is he?” I asked.

Mrs. Richards looked up at me and said, “Leave us alone. You have no business here. He's our son.” She turned away but then looked back at me. “What are you doing here, anyway? Where are your parents? Do they even know you're here?”

I stood my ground, still trying to figure out what I had done to get this lady so down on me. It was so stupid. She thought I was a bad influence on her son just because my parents fought sometimes. It wasn't like their family didn't have a few problems too.

Kurt's father patted her on the shoulder and got up. He walked me to the other side of the room and whispered, “Now's the time Kurt needs just his family. You shouldn't be here.” He was trying to sound cool and unemotional.

“Yeah, but I am.”

He sighed. “Okay. Here's what we know. There's some sort of damage to … one of his organs … his liver.”

I think I squinched up my face thinking about it. But I swallowed hard and tried to look serious.

“It's not functioning properly. He'd been to the doctor with a liver problem before and was treated. But the problem must have come back and we didn't realize it. When he got kicked in the game, it made things … well, a lot worse.” Mr. Richards rubbed his hand across his face.

“How much worse?” I asked.

“We're not sure. Everything is under control.”

“Is he going to live?”

Suddenly Mr. Richards seemed angry with me for asking. “Live? Tina, everything is going to be all right. This is just … one of those things … it's not a life or death situation. Kurt will be fine. It's all under control.”