"How is he?" Zed demanded the second Elle appeared in the doorway nearly five hours later, dark circles under her eyes and blood staining her white lab outfit.
"It isn't good," Elle whispered as she looked at Jay and Zed. She wanted to collapse in tears. She was so exhausted from her own struggles in the flood and from the complicated surgery that she had just performed. She forced herself to stay on her feet, though. There was still too much that she had to do, procedures that had to be performed if Kay was going to have any chance of recovery. She didn't have time to collapse.
"Is he going to be alright?" Jay asked. He still couldn't quiet believe that his partner had been so badly injured. It all seemed like some kind of strange dream.
"Let me tell you what I found first," Elle said as she led them to some chairs and sat down beside them. "His spleen was ruptured and he had a laceration of his liver. I was able to repair that but I had to go ahead and remove the spleen. No way that it could be fixed. His stomach was ruptured too. Even though I was able to fix that damage, there's a real danger of infection from all of the foreign material and the stomach acid that was released into the abdominal cavity. I also found a flail chest with some injury to the underlying lung that had to be repaired."
"But he's going to be alright, isn't he? I mean, you were able to fix everything!" Jay said.
"I was able to fix his injuries, well, the physical injuries anyway but there are some other problems that I can't do anything about. When I found Kay, he wasn't breathing and he didn't have a pulse. I have no idea how long he had been without oxygen, but if it was too long, he may have suffered a degree of brain damage."
"What are his chances?" Zed asked quietly. This still didn't seem real to him.
"I can't really tell you right now. He's in a very deep coma at the moment," Elle whispered as she struggled to hold back tears, "and we're running tests to try to determine whether or not he suffered any brain damage and if he did the extent of it."
"When can we see him?" Jay asked. A coma? That was something that happened on those television soap operas that his Aunt Rose used to watch, not something that happened to your best friend.
"I'll come and get you as soon as we're finished with the tests. I think it would really help if he had friends with him right now," Elle said as she started to stand.
"Will he wake up?" Zed asked. "Surely you know that!"
"It depends on whether or not he's suffered brain damage and the extent of it," Elle whispered. "Best case scenerio would be for him to wake up in a few hours as soon as he's a bit more stable. Worst case scenerio, he has severe brain damage and never wakes up."