Frank tore off his own shirt, not wanting it to weigh him down, and wished he had time to take off his heavy boots. Hoping desperately he wouldn't get dragged down, drowning them both, he jumped into the water.
He very nearly was paralyzed by the shocking cold that suddenly doused his body when he plunged. He gasped, and for several seconds, he fought panic as he tried to convince his nearly numb limbs to move! After the first frozen shock, Frank's desperation compensated enough for him to be able to swim after his brother, knocking aside crumbly chunks of ice.
The current was not so strong here, Frank was thankful to realize, for Joey was not moving very fast. Frank lunged to grab Joey's shirt, and nearly cried with relief when he got a good handful of sodden flannel. He never could have imagined how strong such a seemingly mild current could be when one was trying to fight it carrying nearly twice the weight one was used to. Frank kept a vice grip on his brother's shirt as he fought with his feet and his free hand to gain the opposite bank.
The two boys drifted towards the thicker ice, and Frank shot a hand out to try and pull them up onto it, but it broke, plunging them both back in the water.
It took nearly every ounce of Frank's strength to drag himself and Joey to the bank, and then up away from the water. Too cold even to cry, shivering almost too much to be able to move, Frank crawled over to Joey and began panicking when he saw he wasn't breathing. "Joey!" he yelled "Joey, breathe, you gotta breathe!" The awful sight of the smaller boy's dead-white face and still body made Frank whimper in fear.
The phone! Frank had the cell phone! Stumbling, barely able to keep his feet, Frank ran along the stream to where he had thrown his bookbag and fumbled until he could get the zipper open.
Dialing the number with his numb fingers was no easy feat, and for one horrible minute, he thought no one was home, for it rang four times. Though only twenty seconds passed, it seemed like they would never answer!
And then: "Hello? Frank?"
"J-Joey fell in the stream, it was icy, an' he t-tried to step on it an' I wan too late he fell in, I got him out but he's not breathing!" Frank was stammering so badly from the cold he almost could not be understood.
There was a shocked silence, and then Fenton was suddenly all business. "Laura! Call an ambulance, Joey's fallen in the river, he's not breathing! Okay Frank, calm down...are you hurt?"
"N-no j-just cold!!"
"Where are you?"
"B-by th-the stream...it-it's-" Where was it? What direction? Frank closed his eyes, trying to force his chaotic mind to remember what direction they had gone in. "North! We went north, a-an' an' kinda west too! Come quick, please, please come quick!"
"Okay, okay, Frank calm down and do exactly as I say, okay? Do you remember how to feel for a pulse?"
"Y-yes but I'm not there I h-had t-to run back for the phone! Hold on I'll run there!" Gripping the phone tightly in his fist, Frank ran back to where he had left Joey lying on the ground, stumbling and falling next to the boy's still form. He grabbed Joey's arm, terrified at how icy the skin was, and closed his eyes, his fingers feeling Joey's wrist for a beat. For one horrible moment, he thought there was none, until he shifted his fingers and felt a weak, slow pulse beneath the skin. "There's one!" he yelled over the phone. "There's a pulse, there's one, it's real slow!" That was bad, right? Didn't pulses slow down right before people died? Frank's own heart felt like it was pounding at the speed of light; compared to that, Joey's seemed even feebler.
"Okay good, now listen closely, Frank." Fenton's voice was calm and quietly but even Frank could tell that he was very scared. "He's not breathing? Are you sure?"
"I-I'm sure!"
"Okay I am going to have you do some rescue breathing, all right? Just like on TV, when they help someone who's almost drowned start breathing again."
"O-okay." He listened as carefully as he could while Fenton carefully described mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Not even stopping to think, Frank did exactly as he was told, praying that whoever might be up there would let Joey start breathing again. Rotating between his first aid and the cell phone for directions, Frank hoped with all his being every minute that it would work.
When Joey coughed weakly, and a bubble of water gurgled from between Joey's lips, Frank almost didn't notice. But when he went back to give another breath, his eyes widened, and he roughly shoved Joey over on his side, so the water didn't just go back in and choke him again.
Joey did not wake, but with the help Frank had given, his lungs were beginning to expel the water he had taken in. Frank watched, shaking, as Joey coughed up muddy water. He recoiled slightly when the younger boy vomited as a reaction to the water and the mouth-to-mouth.
Frank picked up the phone from where it lay on the ground and shakily reported what was happening.
"Well done, Frank! No, it's all right, people sometimes throw up when this happens, it's okay. Just...make sure he stays on his side so he can bring up whatever he needs to. Well done, good boy...just...just watch him okay? There are paramedics on the way, and your mother is also on her way there with blankets. Just stay right where you are, okay?"
"O-okay. D-daddy, I-I'm c-cold, I-I'm s-scared..."
"I know son. I know. You'll be all right, just hold on. You've shown great courage so far. Just hold on a little longer. Is Joey still breathing?"
Frank looked, squinting his eyes to catch the rising and falling of Joey's chest. "Y-yes, b-but i-it's slow."
"That's okay, he's breathing, that's the important part. Is he shivering?"
Again, Frank looked. He was finding it difficult to talk. Was it because his mouth was frozen? "N-no...B-but I am." He didn't know that the fact that Joey wasn't shivering anymore was not a good sign.
"Okay, I bet you are. Just hold on, keep talking to me, okay? Do you two have your jackets on?"
"N-no, they w-were off...I think... I - I took off my shirt. So - so I wouldn't s-sink."
"That was good thinking. It wouldn't have kept you too warm, and would just be extra weight."
Before Frank could say anything else, a rustle in the bushes nearby made him snap his head in that direction, his heart leaping painfully in alarm. But then Laura Hardy's worried, white face peered around a tree and her eyes widened.
"Mommy!" Frank shrieked, trying to stand to run to her, but his feet were numb.
Laura Hardy's arms were laden with blankets, and Frank caught sight of his sleeping bag, too. She clenched her teeth and dropped to her knees beside the boys, wrapping a blanket around Frank, and then laying a thick blanket and the sleeping bag on top of Joey. She wrapped the little boy as well as he could without moving very much, then put the remaining blanket around Frank. She held her oldest son to her, rocking him back and forth.
Neither one said anything. Frank was too weak from the ordeal and from relief, and Laura could not find the words to speak. She only rocked her son, holding him in the blankets, wiling his body to warm up. For had Frank not been sitting up and making noise, Laura could have sworn he was dead, pale as he was.
The paramedics were quick. Not five minutes after Laura reached the boys, Fenton came running up to them with three medics in tow, two men and a woman, who carried a small stretcher and white blankets. One man knelt next to Joey and felt his pulse rate, frowning a bit as he did. He motioned to the others, one of whom handed down what looked to Frank like a thick slab of wood. They carefully slid Joey onto this and transferred him onto to the stretcher, covering him with the blankets and strapping him gently on so that he didn't fall.
"I-is h-he g-gonna die?" Frank whispered to them.
"I don't think he will, son," said one of the men, as the other two bore the stretcher quickly away. Frank saw that the other two were a man and a woman. "Did you also fall in the river?" the medic asked.
"I j-jumped i-in a-after J-Joey."
"Very brave of you. You look very cold...we should bring you with us and have you checked out, too."
Laura nodded at this. "We'll follow right along in the car. Fenton is going to ride with Joey if that's possible."
The man winced. "There won't be room, I'm afraid, it's small back there. But if you want to follow, we can take one of you right to where they're treating them."
Laura nodded. "Okay." She picked Frank up and held him close, following the party out of the woods.
Fenton drove; Laura sat in the back seat with her bundled up son, holding him as he shook. She spent most of the trip telling him how well he had done and how proud she was of him, and that they were both going to be okay.
The hospital was a very scary place. They were fairly busy, though fortunately there were very few urgent emergencies. Still, when Frank was carried inside and Fenton had gone to the counter to give their information and to find out where they were taking Joe, there were a lot of people bustling back and forth. Frank heard some kind of beeper going off, and someone coughing in a nearby room. Once Fenton had given all of their information, Laura was told to take Frank into a little room off the main hallway, which was curtained off from view.
Frank looked around as he was carried in, and saw a teenage girl on a bed with a strange thing in her mouth that had steam coming out of it. It was to help her breathe, Laura told her son when he asked. There was no one else currently in the little area, and Laura sat on a bed with Frank in her lap.
"Wh-where's Joe?" Frank asked.
"They probably took him somewhere with more equipment so that they could make sure he's all right. Make sure his lungs didn't get hurt, make sure that he'll keep breathing, make sure they can get him warmed up."
"Oh. I-I didn't know he was gonna t-try an' step on the ice, I didn't tell him no fast enough!"
"Shhh, it's all right sweetheart. We know, it's not your fault, it was an accident. I expect Joey didn't understand that even though the ice looked solid, it wouldn't hold his weight."
Frank nodded, and slumped tiredly against his mother, clutching the blankets around himself. He didn't think he would ever get warm. And it was cold inside this room!
They had not waited long before a nurse came in and smiled at him in a way that would have thoroughly irritated Frank were he in any better condition. As it was, he didn't care how condescending the nurse was, just so she helped him get warm. "I'm going to have to borrow your arm there," she chirped. "Gotta get your blood pressure."
Frank let her extract his bare arm, his shivering increasing a bit as the cold air his it. "That's okay, we'll get you warmed up here in a hurry." The nurse said nothing else as she inflated the blood-pressure cuff and pressed a stethoscope to the crook of his elbow. He wondered at this, but hadn't the energy to ask. "Are you having trouble breathing?" the nurse asked while taking his temperature, using a device that she pressed into his ear to do it. Frank had never heard of such a thing.
"N-no."
She took the thermometer when it beeped. "Ninety-two point three, goodness. Gotta get you warmed up there, young man. Got blurry vision?"
"N-no."
"Slurred speech?"
"A-a little."
"Numb extremities?" At Frank's blank look, she clarified: "Toes, fingers? Hands and feet?"
Frank nodded. "M-my f-fingers an' toes. M-my feet an' hands were but not anymore."
"All righty. I'm just gonna take a look at your hands, okay?" Frank nodded, and out came his arm once more. The nurse took a look at his fingers, which were red. She tapped one of them and asked if he could feel it.
"Y-yeah."
"That's good, that's a good sign. No frost bite, or anything." She did the same with his toes, which Frank could also feel, though not as well. "That's all right, the feeling'll return. Now, I'm going to get you a dry blanket, this one's heated, so it'll feel nice and warm, okay?"
Frank nodded, and the nurse left. She came back only once, to give him the blanket (which was warmed, and felt wonderful wrapped around Frank's shivering body) and to tell them that a doctor would be over to talk to them soon.
"Is that better, sweetheart?" Laura asked Frank.
"Yeah...I-I'm not as cold now...I-I like this blanket."
"I bet you do, it's nice and hot. They keep them in a sort of heater, which keeps them warm."
"For when people fall in the river or ice?"
"Well, I'm sure they use it for that, but its for anyone who gets cold. They keep it pretty chilly in most hospitals."
"Oh."
It wasn't a minute later before a woman with red hair and glasses walked up, smiling in a friendly way. "Good evening. You must be Frank and Laura Hardy?"
Frank nodded, and Laura said, "Yes...are you the doctor?"
"I am Doctor Senderson, yes. First of all, little Joey, is it?" Frank nodded. "He is going to be all right." Laura let an exhausted sigh of relief, much like the one Frank let. "Because of you, I am told, young man." The doctor smiled at Frank, who returned a sick smile of his own. "Now, the nurse said that your temperature is quite low, but not enough that we need to keep you here overnight. We just need to get your temperature up a bit more, then we can send you home. Once you've warmed up enough, you can go home, take a hot bath, drink some hot chocolate. But for now I have to ask you a few questions. You feeling up to it?"
Frank nodded his head, deciding he liked this woman a lot better than the nurse. The doctor was friendly, but her voice did not have the patronizing chirp that the nurse's did.
"All right, why don't you go ahead and tell me what happened, when your brother fell in the - stream?"
"W-well I-I dunno if it was a river or stream...I dunno how big it has to be. But he fell in the water. We were in the woods, exploring, an' there was some ice on the w-water, Joey was looking at it I-I didn't know he didn't know you can't step on ice unless it's really thick."
"Oh, I see. So he stepped on the ice, and fell through. What happened then?"
"He went under, an' I saw him, an' his head came up a couple of times but then it didn't. I tried to grab him but misses, a-an' so I ran, and then jumped in an' grabbed his shirt. Then I tried to swim out of the w-water... It was really hard."
"I bet," said the doctor quietly. "It's very hard to save someone from drowning, you did very well. You got him on the banks, then. What then?"
And so Frank told her about leaving Joey to get the phone, about the phone call and how Fenton had coached him through rescue breathing.
"Hmmm. Did you know what time it was when he fell?"
Frank frowned, and thought a few minutes. "It...it was after one. But not one-thirty yet...I-I think."
"Wonderful. That helps us know how long he was under. And when you called, that was right after you pulled him out?"
"Yes."
"All right, one more thing. He's got some bruises and a split lip. How did that happen?"
Frank scowled darkly. "He got in a fight yesterday. Two kids bigger than him were bein' jerks, an' they beat him up."
"Yes," said Laura. "I'll be having some words with some parents when these two get back to school."
"Oh my. Yes, I would say so; good luck with that." The doctor smiled, and briefly grasped Frank's shoulder. "Thank you for your assistance."
"Y-you're welcome. Can Joey come home with us?"
"Well, we're gonna keep him here tonight, do some tests on him, make sure that his insides didn't get hurt by the cold, or the water. And we want to make sure he's completely all right before sending him home. If everything is all right, he'll go home with you tomorrow." Seeing Frank's disappointed expression, she sighed quietly. "I know how it is, having someone you love in the hospital. They're not very fun places to be, huh?"
Frank shook his head.
"He'll be home with you tomorrow, if all goes well. Have faith, okay kiddo?"
Frank nodded wearily, and the doctor left.
An hour later, Frank was declared well enough to go home. The nursing staff had kindly taken the wet blankets and put them in the dryer, so that Frank could bundle up for the trip home. Fenton was being allowed to stay the night in the little room Joey was staying in, and so it was just Frank and Laura who drove home from the hospital.
Once arriving back at home, Frank was very nearly dead on his feet. Laura got him to eat a light supper and carried him upstairs. She helped him change into warm pajamas and tucked him into bed, adding another blanket. Then she sat on the edge of his bed for a while, softly rubbing his back, and thanking God that both of her boys would be all right.
.
The next morning, Laura called her sons' school and explained the circumstances of their absence, saying that Frank might be back on Tuesday, possibly Wednesday, but Joey might be out for longer than that. When Frank woke and wandered downstairs, she went over and hugged him. About half of Frank's color had returned, and though he was still clad in his flannel pajamas, he wasn't shivering. "Morning, sweetheart. We're going to have a bit of breakfast, then we're going to go pick up Joey from the hospital."
"He can come home?" Frank said, waking up a bit at this revelation."
"Yep! The doctor called this morning, and he doesn't have any internal injuries. None of his insides were hurt except a little bruising maybe. He'll have to do a lot of resting, but he'll be okay. Thanks to you." She kissed the top of his head. "Are you feeling okay?"
Frank nodded his head. "Yeah."
"Good. Let's get some food in us then, eh?"
Frank wasn't about to argue; he was very hungry.
Once breakfast was done, he dressed in unseasonably warm clothing to ward off the lingering chill, and followed Mom out the door.
The trip to the hospital seemed very long; Frank was actually fidgeting by the time they got there. The paperwork seemed to take forever to finish, and then finally, Joe was led out of a room looking pale and tired, but mostly all right. Fenton was right beside him. Frank grinned on seeing him and got a rather feeble one in return. He ran to the younger boy and hugged him, heeding Fenton's admonition to be gentle, and got a hug back in return.
When they got home, Laura made a round of hot apple cider, which was savored by her family with great pleasure. She had taken the day off of work, and Fenton said that he would check the messages on his voice mail another time. Today, the family would spend together.
Frank went back to school the next day, though the teachers were given a copy of the doctor's report, which said that Frank would need to be kept inside for recess, as he was still susceptible to the cold. Joey went back two days later with the same report, telling everyone that he had a hero for a brother. When that got back to Frank, he did a great deal of blushing over the next few days, as he told everyone what happened. He was very flattered that his little brother was calling him a hero.
Two weeks later, after they were both recovered and back to their usual selves, Fenton and Laura Hardy noticed quite a change in how the boys interacted with each other. While before, Frank was trying very hard to tolerate his new brother, now he welcomed him in most anything he did. And as for Joey, he adored Frank, sometimes to the point that Frank had to remind Joey that he was just human, not a super hero. It flattered Frank greatly, but it also embarrassed him.
The other noticeable difference was that Joey did not seem to be smothering Frank as much, even though he was closer to him. They had found a perfect balance between respecting privacy and becoming very close brothers.