Here's the next chapter. Enjoy!
"Hey, Joanne, wake up," someone said quietly, shaking her awake. She opened her eyes to see Angel looking down at her with a worried expression on his face. He was still dressed in his jeans and t-shirt. "Hey, it's almost eight o'clock in the morning and your phone started vibrating. Are you going to work today?"
"What?" she whispered. "Where am I?"
"You're in the hospital, honey," Angel said gently. "You fell asleep in Maureen's room last night and we didn't want to wake you up. Roger, Mark, and Mimi went back to the loft to get some sleep. Collins is with Maureen right now. The doctor is supposed to be coming in about an hour."
"Maureen… oh, Maureen," Joanne said, sitting bolt upright as the events of the night before hit her. "How is she? She didn't… is she still…?"
"She's alive, but barely," Angel said quietly, glancing over his shoulder. "She's going back into surgery in about three hours, sooner, if the doctor has an opening. They didn't do much last night because they didn't think they could save her. The doctor is going to tell us exactly how Maureen is injured and what has to be fixed during surgery."
"I need to call into work and tell them I won't be coming in," Joanne said, pulling her phone out of her pocket to see she had missed six calls, two from her parents and four from the law firm where she worked. She quickly dialed the law firm and informed her secretary that she wouldn't be coming in. "No, there's an emergency," she said, glancing over at Collins, who was blocking her view of Maureen. "No, I'm calling my parents as soon as I get off the phone, you don't have to call them for me."
She hung up after listening for a few moments and dialed her parents' number. "Hi, mom, it's Joanne. Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't call, but there was an emergency and I fell asleep at the hospital… no, I'm fine. It's Maureen, she's in critical condition and the doctors didn't know if she would make it. No, she's doing a little better and the doctor is going to be here in about an hour, which means about double that. Yeah, I'll call you when we find anything else out."
Sighing, she hung up her phone and turned to Angel. "I'm going home and changing into clean clothes," she said. "I'll be back in about twenty minutes. Call me if anything happens, you have my number, right?"
"Um, I don't have a cell phone," Angel said. "Here, write your number on my arm and I'll just use one of the hospital's phones if anything happens. Collins has to go soon to teach his class, he can't take a day off since he got hired not too long ago. I'll be here, though."
"Thanks," Joanne said, writing her number on Angel's arm. "You have no idea how much this means to me. I just can't believe this actually happened."
"It's going to be okay, honey," Angel said, patting her on the arm. "You just go freshen up and get something to eat, too. And you should probably bring a bag with clothes and something to do, just in case you decide to stay overnight again."
Joanne nodded. "Thank you," she whispered.
That was the first time she went over the speed limit since she graduated from college. Rushing home, she quickly showered, got dressed, popped some bread in the toaster for breakfast, and packed a bag with a few changes of clothes and some books to read just in case. She was back at the hospital in exactly twenty minutes.
"Did anything happen while I was gone?" she asked as she rushed into the hospital room, setting her bag on an empty chair.
Angel shook his head. "No, the doctor hasn't come yet and Maureen's still not responding to anything I say. Hopefully after the surgery, she'll wake up."
Joanne sat down in the chair that Collins had previously occupied and took Maureen's hand in her own. "Hey," she whispered. "It's me, Joanne. The doctor is going to be coming in soon and then you're going to go into surgery to try to fix everything. You'll get a kick out of this, today is the first day I've missed work since I started at the firm. You always said you would get me to miss work one day."
She was quiet for a moment. "I just wish the reason wasn't that you were in the hospital," she said quietly.
Maureen didn't respond and a tear leaked out of the corner of Joanne's eye. Angel put a comforting hand on her shoulder and they sat that way until the doctor came in, clearing his throat.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Andrews," he said as Joanne stood up to shake his hand. "And this is Maureen Johnson, am I correct?"
She nodded. "Is she going to be okay?" she asked.
He took a deep breath. "I'm going to do the best I can to ensure that," he said. "She has some very serious injuries and will be going into surgery as soon as an operating room is open, which is in about twenty minutes."
"What is the extent of her injuries?" Joanne asked.
"Well, both of her legs are shattered," he said. "We'll have to do reconstructive surgery to put the bones back together, using small screws to keep the pieces in place. Her left arm is broken, although it can easily be set and put in a cast. What really worries me is her ribs. Several of them are broken and one of them seems to have punctured her lung. We've taken care of it for now, but we're going to have to go in and fix it by stapling it shut. She'll have to be on a breathing machine afterwards, but once she wakes up and starts recovering, she should be fine."
"When will she wake up?" Joanne asked.
"I don't know," the doctor said slowly. "That's the other main problem that's really worrying me. We don't know when, or if, she's going to wake up. She's lasted the night, so that greatly increases her chance of survival from about ten percent to maybe seventy-five percent. But we don't want her to stay unconscious for too long because it could cause brain damage once she wakes up."
"Is there any brain damage right now?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No, there isn't any damage to her brain at all as far as we can see," he said. "This is a miracle because she has quite a bump. But, once again, the longer she stays unconscious, the more chance there is of her getting brain damage. Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do to wake her up."
Joanne nodded. "Okay," she said quietly. "Will I be able to watch the surgery?"
"No," he said. "You can wait outside the operating room, though. If anything goes wrong or we find anything during the surgery, someone will come out and tell you. Now, are you a relative?"
"She's my girlfriend," Joanne said. "Or fiancée would work, too, I guess. We got into an argument at our engagement party and I haven't really talked to her since. And then this happened, and I'm regretting the fact that I refused to listen to her. I'm just hoping that she'll live."
The doctor nodded understandingly. "I've seen many situations like this," he said. "I'll do the best I can."
About ten minutes later, two nurses came in and carefully transferred Maureen onto a gurney, taking her to the operating room. Joanne followed with Angel, who had a comforting arm around her shoulders. They sat outside of the operating room, praying that everything would go as planned by the doctor.
Hope you liked it! The next update will be on Monday or Tuesday, considering tomorrow is Mother's Day! (Reminder: Say Happy Mother's Day to your moms and tell them how much you appreciate them! I know I couldn't live without mine.) Thank you all for reading and reviewing, and please continue to REVIEW. Thanks again!
ReallyObsessiveWriter
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