Four
Sarah
Tears streaked my face as I hurried through the bowels of the emergency room, my phone’s incessant rings drowning in the plethora of hospital sounds. They’d brought Peter through the trauma bay in an ambulance and he’d already been triaged.
My chest, tight with fear, threatened to crack as the nurse pulled back the curtain around his bed, allowing me to step inside.
A sob, ugly and uncontrolled, ripped through my throat at the sight of him.
I slapped a hand over my mouth. My husband’s beautiful face and neck were black and blue, his lips cut and swollen.
Bandages wound around his head and left arm and were wrapped around his torso.
A nasty abrasion spanned over the breadth of his chest and long diagonal bruising created a clear picture of exactly where his seatbelt caught him.
Thank goodness he was wearing it.
From everything the officer relayed to me before my frantic drive across town, a truck t-boned Peter’s car right in the middle of the intersection.
The impact occurred on the back door of the driver’s side.
This turned him to face oncoming traffic and another vehicle hit Peter’s front bumper, but they had decelerated enough that the second impact didn’t have nearly as much force as the first. None of the other drivers were seriously injured—just Peter.
I breathed his name and rushed forward, falling into the chair beside his bed.
His dark lashes caressed the tops of his cheeks.
“Is he in pain?” I whispered to the nurse.
“Not right now.” She approached the computer and clacked her fingers over the keyboard. “He’s on fentanyl and a sedative. The best thing he can do right now is stay as still as possible and sleep while we wait on his CT scan. We’ve got orders to move him to radiology in five to ten minutes.”
“Wait. Why did he get sedated?” I glanced up as her gaze cut away.
“I’m going to get Dr. Abrams for you. It might be best to direct all your questions to him.”
My stomach bottomed out. Why did she not want to tell me?
“Okay,” I croaked.
As if summoned by the mention of his name, an older gentleman with a long white coat bustled into the room. The nurse smiled. “Perfect timing. I was just about to page you.”
Rubbing disinfectant onto his hands, he smiled at me. “You must be Peter’s wife.”
I nodded. “Sarah.”
He sat on a rolling chair a few feet away.
“I’m Dr. Abrams. I know you’ve got a lot of questions, so let's get right to it.” He braced his hands on his blue-green scrub pants.
“First of all, he looks worse than he is. From what we understand, he got jostled around pretty hard but his condition is completely stable. His heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen all looked great. Exactly the kind of thing we hope to see after a collision. So you can take a deep breath knowing that.”
Finally given permission to breathe, I cleansed my lungs with oxygen, moving my hand to cover Peter’s.
“CT will show what his bones look like. If I had to guess from the bruising, he probably popped a couple ribs. But the major concern I have right now is the knock he took to his head. During the transfer, Peter kept asking the medics to turn the lights on—he was pretty panicked about the fact he couldn’t see well.
So they administered a sedative to calm him down and keep him still and he’ll be sleeping that off for a bit. ”
I couldn’t breathe as I hung on to the doctor’s every word.
“Why couldn’t he see?”
“There’s a lot of potential reasons.” He nodded to reassure me.
“Shock, nerve issues from the whiplash, swelling, confusion—all of which are temporary reasons. His pupils are responsive to light which is a good indicator that the eyes themselves are healthy. CT will be our first line of defense to make sure it’s nothing serious.
Of course, our concern after an accident is traumatic brain injury but we’ll rule that out as quickly as we can. ”
“When will he wake up?”
He made a clicking sound with his cheek. “That sedative usually wears off in two or three hours. He’ll be groggy for a while though.”
“What if he still can’t see when he wakes up?”
He smiled. “We’ll just do our best to keep him relaxed and reassure him that it’s most likely temporary.”
Most likely.
I could hardly bring myself to ask. “But, it is temporary?”
“Again, most likely. Even if there are some brain contusions, most of the time they heal up after a while. Best thing you can do is encourage him and stay positive. After his scans, we’ll admit him to observe overnight at the very least.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll also see about getting his neurologist in to see him in the morning since it sounds like we need to get his epilepsy back under control.”
“Peter is a lucky man. A lot of collisions like that go straight to ICU. Overall, I think he’s going to be just fine.”