The day kept dragging on and on. Joan wouldn't have gone to school, even if her parents had wanted her to. She had gone to her room and had ended up looking at the box with all the stuff that Adam had given back to her after she had handed it to Adam when she had been mad at him after their break-up. She had both cried and smiled at the various gifts from Adam, his miniature sculptures out of what others would consider junk, the drawings and sketches he had made for her, the little gifts he had given her. Every now and then a family member would poke his or her head in, seeing if she was okay or asking if she needed anything. She had somehow gotten through the day, her thoughts always with Adam.
Mr. Rove had called in the afternoon, telling them that there was no change. Adam was still unconscious, but his condition had been stable, if not slightly improved. Everyone felt it was good news, under the circumstances.
In the night, Joan had slept fitfully, waking up every few hours with images of a broken, blood-covered and dirt-smeared Adam lying at the bottom of a slope lingering in her mind. She kept telling herself that if there had been any turn for the worse, Mr. Rove would have called them. She finally got up at half past six after having lain awake for the past one and a half hours.
When she got down to the kitchen, her mom was also up, sipping on a mug of coffee and eating jam on toast. She handed Joan a piece of toast, which Joan ate without thinking about what she was doing. She poured herself a glass of milk from the fridge. Before she could even ask the question, her mom interjected, "I'll take you to the hospital if you want."
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In the hospital, they were met by Mr. Rove, who told them that Adam's body temperature was back to normal and things looked promising. They had taken him off the ventilator early in the morning, Adam was now breathing on his own.
Joan had to put on a sterile gown over her clothes and a green cap to cover her hair when she entered the ICU. She was guided to Adam's room and his bed by a nurse. There were lots of machines surrounding Adam's bed, a heart monitor that gave off regular beeps and showed a zigzag curve on a screen along with the beeps. Bags with fluids hung at the top of the bed, drugs and saline being fed into Adam's veins. His right arm was in a white cast that reached up to underneath his elbow. Red and blue bruises covered his face and he looked so pale and lost, lying unmoving in the hospital bed. Joan went to stand next to him on the right side of the bed.
She looked questioningly at the nurse. "Can I touch him?"
The nurse looked at her and said in a comforting voice, "Sure you can. Talk to him if you want, he might hear you." With that, she quickly checked one of Adam's IVs, scribbled something on his chart and left the room.
Joan was still standing next to Adam, staring at him. Afraid to touch his face that looked so fragile, she reached out tentatively and held his left hand, the one without the cast. Feeling a bit foolish to speak to her lifeless seeming friend, she overcame her embarrassment and did so nevertheless. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm gonna talk to you anyway." Not knowing how to carry on, she stuttered, "I ... You ... Adam, please wake up, I need you to be with me." She waited a few seconds in silence, as if hoping Adam would answer her calling, but he did not move.
She squeezed his hand a little, which was feeling limp in hers. "How could you be so stupid? Going hiking in the mountains on your own in the pouring rain? You really scared me. All of us. They say it looked like an accident, but was it? Why, Adam?" Her eyes were filling with tears again that flowed down her cheeks and dropped onto the white bed linen, making a faint plopping noise as they hit the starched cloth. "Adam, I need you to wake up, I can't lose another friend, not now, not again."
But the only answer she got was the regular beeping of the heart monitor. She heard the nurse softly rapping on the glass observation window to Adam's room, signaling that it was time she left Adam to get his rest. She gently stroked his hair and whispered, "I'll be back, hang in there," before she left the room.
Outside the ICU, Helen and Mr. Rove waited for her. Mr. Rove again reassured her that he would call if there was anything to report, good or bad, before Helen drove Joan home. Joan was late for school because of the trip to hospital, but she didn't care, Adam was more important now.
--...---...----...--
"That's good news, right?" Grace asked in a whisper.
Joan had just entered the classroom and sat down next to Grace at her desk, classes had already started. Joan had scribbled a quick note for Grace, telling her that she had seen Adam and how he was doing.
Joan was now whispering back, "Yeah, I guess it--"
They suddenly heard a sharp voice. "Miss Girardi, would you mind enlightening us what's so fascinating to tell Miss Polk that it can't wait until class is over?" Mr. Bunman, their maths teacher, did not sound particularly forgiving, but Joan figured she had nothing to lose, so she said with confidence, "I was just telling Grace how Adam was doing."
Clearly, everyone in the classroom must have heard about Adam's accident by now, because almost all her co-students now looked at her, most of them with curious or concerned looks. They, too, wanted to know how their co-student was doing. Even Mr. Bunman realized there was need for information, so he said, "So, how is Mr. Rove doing?"
Joan told them what had happened and what she had heard and seen at the hospital. Some of her co-students looked shocked, others sad, others indifferent. Murmurs grew louder among the students, so Mr. Bunman cut in, "Thank you, Miss Girardi, for the heads up, but now that we know that Mr. Rove is in good hands, can we please go back to concentrate on curve sketching..."
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