Author's Note: Hello everyone! I'm still here! I feel like I've apologized for the lateness of my postings for this story at the beginning of every chapter for months now… but here we are again. Honestly, I was flying a little blind with this chapter, because while I had carefully planned and outlined most of this story, I hadn't planned much passed when they get Soda out of the truck. So please bear with me as I work through this part. I wrote three other versions of this chapter before scrapping them all and starting over… and I'm really hoping this version does what I'm trying to do justice.
I thank you all for your patience and I hope you like it! We are getting to the end here, probably only one or two more chapters left!
Chapter Twelve
Three days.
Sodapop was confined to the Intensive Care Unit for over three incredibly long days.
Even though he was only allowed visitors for short periods of time, the four Greasers barely left the hospital over the course of those three days. They had claimed a corner of the waiting room as their own and camped out there day and night, waiting to hear news of Soda.
They weren't the only ones either. Tim Shepard as well as members of his gang stopped by a few times, looking for news. Also, other friends from their neighborhood made appearances. Obviously, news of what had happened had passed around the neighborhood quickly. Even some girls who frequented the gas station visited to deliver well wishes.
The ideas of work and school became foreign concepts to the four boys. Nothing outside of that hospital seemed to matter anymore. It was well into Tuesday, two days after finding Sodapop in that ditch, when it dawned on any of them that they should call in to work and school respectively since they wouldn't be showing up any time soon.
It was late in the afternoon on Tuesday the first time that Sodapop crashed. No one had been in the room with them at the time, but a doctor came out to inform them that Soda had been rushed back into surgery after his heart stopped. It was hours before they heard that he was out of surgery and stabilized again, though he was still in serious condition and no one was allowed in to see him that night.
Early the next morning, Soda was weaned off the ventilator and was breathing on his own. They all thought this was a good thing, a clear sign of Soda's improvement. But the doctor didn't appear as encouraged, rather delivering the news with a grim reminder that Soda was still in very serious condition.
This was understood better about an hour later when Darry and Pony were visiting their brother, and he crashed right in front them.
Flat lines and other emergencies were not at all uncommon in the ICU, so Darry hadn't even realized the wailing machine was Soda's at first. They had been watching Soda carefully, looking for some sign of change, and had seen none. It wasn't until the nurses were surrounding their brother's bed that either of them realized anything was wrong. He and Pony were pushed back away from their brother in the flurry of motion, people talking loudly and giving orders.
It had been especially jarring to see a doctor using a defibrillator on Soda, causing his body to jump up off the bed with each electric jolt. It was the longest few minutes of Darry's life, watching as the staff tried desperately to bring his brother back to life. He held Pony – who had buried his head into his chest, unable to watch – tightly, gasping for breath as tears flowed freely down his face, convinced he was about to watch his brother die.
He hadn't even realized when the heart monitor had started up again with a steady beeping noise. When the nurses started walking away, he was afraid at first that they had given up, before he realized that in fact Soda's heard had started beating again. He looked down at Ponyboy, who was shaking with tears still streaming down his face. They both had to be led out of the ICU and when Steve and Two-Bit saw the state that they were in, they were both convinced that Soda had died until Pony was able to find his voice and tell them what happened.
Darry wasn't proud of what he did next. It would haunt him for years to come. But that was the last time he went into the ICU. He couldn't do it any longer; he couldn't sit by and watch Soda go through all of this. He came up with flimsy excuses every time he was offered a visit to Soda, and he was pretty sure everyone knew what he was doing, but thankfully no one said anything.
Three days of watching Soda fight for his life was taking its toll on all of them.
They had become familiar with Soda's main doctor, a man name Dr. Reynolds. It was late into the night on the third day when he came out to talk to them, something he did usually twice a day.
"How's he doing?" Darry asked flatly as the doctor approached. He wasn't expecting much after everything that had happened.
"I have good news," Dr. Reynolds said with a small smile. Darry could barely comprehend what those words meant, looking at the doctor blankly. "We've seen great improvements in his cognitive functions over the past couple hours. We are getting ready to move him out of the ICU and are very hopeful that we will see him begin to regain consciousness over the next couple hours."
"What?!" The exclamation came staggered and at varied volumes from all four boys as they tried to absorb this information. Four boys who had been desperate for good news for the first two days Soda had been here, but had since had that hope violently torn away from them.
Darry was suddenly on his feet without any memory of how he had gotten there. "But… but how?" he stuttered, taken completely off guard. There had been no improvement for three days; he couldn't understand what had changed.
"Everybody heals in their own time," Dr. Reynolds told him. "You should know that even if he does wake up the road ahead of him is still long. Waking up after being in a comatose state can be complicated. Simple things like speaking might not come back to him right away."
"But… but he's gonna be okay?" Darry asked, still struggling to get his mind around the sudden turn of events.
"I cannot completely rule out the possibility of future complications," the doctor hedged. "Really only time will tell. But as of right now his vitals are steadily improving and his body is beginning to respond to outside stimulus. All this is very good news at this point."
"Can we see him?" Darry stammered, suddenly very aware that he hadn't been in to see his brother all day, despite given several opportunities to visit him. Guilt gnawed at him.
"After we get him settled in his new room I will have someone bring you back," the doctor assured them. "It shouldn't take too long."
Darry nodded vaguely. "Thanks."
As the doctor walked away, all four Greasers stared after him blankly. It was so hard to believe that after everything that had happened, and after days of no improvement with his condition and nothing they could do for him but wait and see, that they had finally gotten some truly good news. There was hope within reach again. Hope that their family could be whole once again.
Hope that could be ripped away from them again.
It was so difficult to really comprehend how they should be feeling with all these ups and downs since Soda's original disappearance. The past week had taken a huge toll on all of them, to the point where when they were handed this bit of hope they all took is wearily, mindful of the fact that it could be snatched away again at any moment.
True to the doctor's word, about a half hour later a nurse came out looking for them. She led all four of them back through a series of hallways and the up two more floors. They were in a completely different part of the hospital now than the ICU. The farther away from the ICU they went, the more Darry felt weight being lifted off of his shoulders. They wouldn't have moved him so far away from the Intensive Care Unit if they were still concerned about his condition being unstable… right?
As they entered the hospital room, Darry was immediately aware of a difference from where Soda had spent the last three days. There was much less tension in here than had been in the ICU. Soda's was the only bed in the room and the only noise was the slow but steady beeping of his heart monitor. Even the lighting seemed much less harsh in this room.
All this was begging him to let hope in. But he had been hopeful before and it had hurt that much more when things had taken a bad turn.
Soda looked… the same. As they crowded into his room – the first time in three days that they had all been able to all visit him at once – it was clear they were all desperately looking for obvious signs of improvement. But the truth was, there were none. He still lay completely still in the hospital bed, pale as a ghost and hooked up to several machines that helped regulate all his bodily functions. He wasn't on the respirator anymore, but a clear tube wound its way around his face just under his nose, feeding him oxygen.
"They're sure he's gettin' better?" Steve asked skeptically as he took in the scene in front of him.
"They wouldn't have moved him here is he wasn't," Pony said slowly. But then he looked up at Darry, uncertainty in his eyes. "Right?"
Darry nodded, though he wasn't so sure that the gesture had any confidence in it. "Yeah, that's right," he said, aware that his voice hadn't sounded steady in days.
There were several minutes of the sound of chairs scrapping across the floor as they brought in a few more from the hallway and arranged them around the room. Darry couldn't help but glance over at Soda every so often, hoping to see some kind of reaction to the noise. But he lay completely still, with not so much as a twitch.
It wasn't as encouraging as Darry had dared to hope.
As they settled themselves into their seats, Darry couldn't help but feel himself begin to detach from the situation. He felt like they were being dragged through all this, with nothing that they could do to affect the outcome. How long could they go on like this?
As the night progressed, sleep slowly overtook each of the worn Greasers against their wills. Pony slept doubled over in his chair with his head resting on top of folded arms at the foot of Soda's bed. Steve and Two-Bit had both retired to the floor, sleeping sitting up and leaning up against the wall.
It was past one in the morning and Darry was the only one in the room still awake. It had been hours since Soda had been moved out of the ICU and he still had shown no signs of life. Darry couldn't help but wonder if the doctors had been wrong about his improvement, much like the false hope they had been given when he had been weaned off the ventilator.
There were nurses in and out several times an hour checking on him. For several hours it was the same two nurses taking turns, but there must have been a shift change because one that Darry didn't recognize entered the room. She was older than the other nurses he had seen, perhaps in her late thirties or early forties, with dark brown hair she had pinned up into a very severe bun on the back of her head. Still, he didn't think much of it. The nurses were usually all business on their rounds, checking Soda's vitals and making notes on his chart before moving on to their other patients. There had been a very similar routine in the ICU, and Darry had learned days ago that it was pointless to pose any questions to the nursing staff, as they would deflect having to answer by telling him that it was a question for Soda's doctor.
So after she was done scribbling on Soda's chart, Darry was surprised to see this particular nurse linger, looking over at his brother with sympathy. Then, furthering his surprised, she turned to him acknowledging him as no nurse had yet to do.
"Have you seen any sign of waking from him yet?" she asked, keeping her voice at an undertone so as not to disturb the sleeping boys in the room.
Darry shook his head. "There's been no change."
The nurse looked at him for a minute and he shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of her gaze. She almost seemed to read something in him, something that Darry himself hadn't been able to decipher.
"Have patience," she said gently. "After how long he has been unconscious, it'll take him some time to find his way back, even as his body is healing. Things will come back to him slowly. He might hold your hand but won't open his eyes. Or will open his eyes but won't be able to speak yet. Do not be discouraged… your brother is strong and in time he will come back to you."
Darry could only stare for a moment, in awe of how easily this woman he had never met before was able to read all his fears and doubts in him just by looking at him.
The woman smiled knowingly when Darry didn't respond. "I was here when he was first brought in," she told him. "I saw him before he went into surgery and I was in the ICU on and off for the first forty-eight hours he was there. He's come back from what most of us who have been here for a while know to be practically a lost cause. It's hard to tell by looking at him, but the improvements his vitals have made since he got here are incredible. We started calling him the miracle boy over in the ICU. I asked to be transferred over to this wing for the night so that I could check up on him." She looked back down at his chart. "He's shown so much improvement in his vitals, it's hard to believe how bad off he was when he got here not even four days ago. Honestly, not many people would have made it this far, all things considered. And I'll tell you this; he hasn't come this far just to give up now. Trust me. Just give him time and don't give up hope."
Darry nodded mechanically. "Thank you," he croaked, unable to think of anything else to say in his shock.
"One thing I truly believe after all my years of working here," she went on, "is that on some level, coma patients can hear you. Speaking to him might help him find his way back." She replaced the chart on the foot of the bed before walking over to Darry and putting a hand on his shoulder. "Have a little faith, honey. He'll get better, you'll see." And with one last kind smile, she turned and left.
Darry stared after the nurse for a good long while, so sleep deprived that he had to wonder if the exchange had actually happened at all, or if he had just imagined the whole thing. Finally he turned back to Soda, looking at his unconscious brother carefully. Could what she said really be true? Could his unconscious brother really hear him? It seemed hard to believe with his brother showing no signs of life for so long.
He reached out a hand and very carefully put it on top of his brother's hand, cupping it gently for fear of hurting him somehow. His skin was ice cold to the touch. Then he looked up at Soda, taking several long minutes before he could even figure out what to say.
"Hey, Pepsi Cola," Darry said softly, leaning in in hopes of being heard better. "I'm sorry I haven't been talkin' to you much these last couple days." He paused, looking down at the floor as he felt the familiar guilt gnawing at him. "I guess I'm not always as strong as everyone thinks I am." He looked over his little brother. "I'm not as strong as you. I don't know how you've hung in there all this time since the accident. I can't even imagine what you went through being trapped in that truck all that time." He had to stop and compose himself for a minute. "We've been falling apart without you, Soda," he went on hoarsely. "I don't know what we'd do without you little buddy. So please… please… if you've got it in you, if you've got anything left in you at all, please keep fighting. Please find your way back to us."
He lapsed into silence, searching for any sign in Soda's face that he had heard him. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Some sort of miracle where Soda would hear his voice and suddenly wake up? No, that kind of thing only happened in those movies that Pony liked to watch. Soda's eyes remained closed. His heart monitor continued with it's slow and steady beeping.
Darry sighed heavily. He knew it had been too much to hope for such a sudden change just after speaking to him for a few minutes. But those few minutes seemed to have taken a lot out of him. He vowed to try again later as he leaned back in his seat, thinking that he could probably use some shuteye himself, as his eyelids were becoming heavy.
But as he went to move his hand from Soda's, he found that it didn't come as easily as he had expected. He looked down curiously; slow to understand what had happened. He looked down at his hand, seeing the way Soda's fingers wound deliberately and firmly up and around his palm with slow comprehension, his heart beginning to beat wildly in his chest as he realized what had happened, realized that this was exactly the kind of the sign of life that he had been hoping to see from his brother for days.
Soda was holding his hand.
