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Chapter Three
FOUR'S POV:
After what seems like a very long time, the door finally opens. I have been staring at it so firmly that I'm caught off guard by this sudden movement and I jump back in surprise. A middle-aged doctor slowly emerges looking very tired. Before he's quite finished opening the door, I am on him.
"How…" my voice breaks. My throat is dry from standing there motionless. I swallow painfully and try again, "How is she?"
The doctor seems surprised. I see behind him that this door doesn't lead into a patient's room as I had suspected but into a short hall with another door on the other side. I think this is the entrance to an operating room. He scratches his balding head and clears his throat.
"You're Tobias Eaton, right?" he says, as if he hadn't been watching my life avidly on those screens all this time.
"Yes," I answer impatiently.
"You've been informed of what happened?" he asks.
"Yes," I repeat, the strain of remaining civil fraying at my nerves.
He scratches his head again. Somewhere deep within me I sympathize with this man that has spent the past 10 hours in an operating room trying to save my girlfriend's life, but my despair overwhelms this feeling of compassion.
"She has been… stabilized. The first few hours were a real battle, we didn't know if she would survive. We nearly lost her several times, and once her heartbeat stopped for nearly four minutes. Now she has entered a state of coma. Her vitals are weak but constant. We've done all we can to stop the bleeding and repair the most serious damage. The rest will have to wait until she's had some time to rest and her body can recover a bit." He stops, seeming to be finished. I remain where I stand. His words have immobilized me.
The doctor squints at me slightly, then sighs. He seems to think I need more explanation, so he goes on, "Three bullets entered her body from a close range, so it was quite a lot of damage. One bullet entered her back, near the ribs." He points to a spot on the left side of his own body, just below where the ribcage begins above the kidney. "It made its way through her and exited at the front." Again, he points at his body, at a spot on the left side of his stomach where the ribcage ends. "Luckily, or rather, miraculously, no organs were pierced. Another bullet entered her back near her shoulder." He points again to his own body, struggling to show me the spot just below his shoulder blade. "That bullet caused the most damage because it grazed her right lung. It missed her heart by inches. That bullet we managed to remove. And the third bullet entered her right leg." He points to the back of his upper thigh. "It will remain there for the time being. That she is still alive is incredible, but we really can't say what will happen from here. We still don't know if she'll survive or if she will ever wake from this coma, and if she does, we have no idea how much permanent damage there may be. We don't know if her brain is still functioning properly because of the lack of oxygen when her heart stopped. We don't know if her lung will be able to recover and if we'll be able to remove her from the respirator. There's just a lot that we don't know. All I can say is that she is stable for the moment. The next 48 hours will be crucial to determine her chance of survival and after that…" he shrugs. "We'll just have to see."
He peers at me again, seemingly unsatisfied with my lack of any reaction. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Eaton?" he asks in a gentle tone.
It takes a while, but slowly I nod. I clear my throat, "Thank you, doctor."
He seems satisfied. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. "It's good for her if you're nearby. I can't explain it, but I've always felt that patients in critical condition can feel the presence of their loved ones. As soon as she is moved into her room, you should join her. Just hang in there." He squeezes my shoulder again and walks away.
This short conversation (or maybe it was the six hours standing in front of the door) has left me feeling drained. I feel like I can no longer stand upright. My muscles are stiff and aching. I lean against the wall, resisting the sudden urge to vomit.
In the time since I have taken up my post there has been little movement in this hall. Christina came with Caleb after some time. She cried and he cried and I stared stoically at my door. They tried to speak to me, to comfort me, but I was unwilling to accept it, so they finally gave it up and stood next to me for a while. Finally they gave that up too and left. Once, a doctor came out of a door farther down the hall and passed me, and two nurses did the same. They gave me odd looks but carried on. Now, after all my waiting, I finally got what I had been waiting for – some more information. And somehow that only made me feel worse.
I imagine my Tris, small and pale, in a sterile room surrounded by machines and doctors, bloody cloths everywhere. I ball my hands into fists so tight my arms start to shake. She is strong but she is also so small – will her body be able to handle this? How can I stand here like this while she is in there in such a state? I breathe deeply through my nose, trying and failing yet again to calm myself.
Suddenly the door opens again, this time wider. Several people are walking out of the short hallway and I can see the door beyond is also open, leading into a surgery prep room. The nurses and doctors are removing their dirty surgery clothes and throwing them into large trash bins and then walking out. It seems it's time to move her already. My heart leaps. Soon I'll be able to see her!
The doctors and nurses all look nearly as tired as the first doctor. I see pity in their eyes as they pass me. I hate them for it because I know it means that they have given up on Tris already. Some murmur quiet words of solace, one nurse touches my arm and says not to lose hope. I thank her quite honestly.
She sees me looking anxiously into the room and tells me, "She won't be coming out this way. This is the staff entrance. There is another door on the other side; from there they'll take her straight into her room."
I look at the nurse, while probably failing at hiding my desperation. "Where can I find her?"
She explains the way to the patients' rooms in intensive care briefly and tells me her room number, I thank her and take off running again. Despite how exhausted I was just feeling, I run fast and hard, energy surging through my body. Soon. Soon I will be able to see her and hold her hand. Soon.
I turn the last corner and enter the hall at a walk. The rooms here are large and filled with machines and devices. They all have wide windows facing the halls with blinds to cover them. Most of the blinds are open and the rooms empty. I walk down the hallway, looking at the room numbers as I pass. C104 is the one I need. Finally I know I am getting close: C98, C100, C102… I start to tremble. I don't have the courage to raise my eyes from the room number sign in front of me, fearing what I might see. Then, there is movement coming from the end of the hall. I look up and I see three people entering the hall rolling a bed between them. They're still too distant to see who it is, but I know.
I want to run to her. I want to run away. I am frozen in my spot. This is my greatest fear coming to life and here I cannot fight it like in the simulations, I can't manipulate reality to make it end. I close my eyes.
"Sir, please stay back. This woman is in critical condition." The nurse walking ahead of the bed calls to me.
Another nurse looks at me more closely and says, "Mae, that's the Eaton kid. He's her boyfriend."
The first nurse sniffs. "All the more reason to stay back, I say. He'll probably try and hug her or kiss her or something and then get her killed, Tom!"
I make a strangled noise and take several steps back. The nurse nods with satisfaction and they roll the bed into the room. Finally, finally, I get a glimpse of her. She is covered from toe to neck with a thin blanket so I can't see the mess her body has become. I am thankful. But I see her face, her beautiful face. Her hair is lank and dull behind her head and she is oh so pale, there are tubes and wires coming out of her everywhere and she is connected to a respirator which the third person, a doctor by her clothes, is wheeling along behind the bed, but she is alive. I have never seen a more beautiful sight. I try to swallow her with my eyes, try to gather up every inch of her I can. Then she is in the room.
Thankfully the nurses and doctor leave the blinds open, so I slowly walk to stand in front of her window. I watch them adjust her to this new room, moving about her, detaching and attaching tubes left and right. The doctor scribbles furiously in a clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed.
Finally, they seem satisfied and leave the room.
The nurse, Mae, looks at me sharply and says, "You, sir, have to come with us."
Panic takes a hold of me. I will not even consider leaving Tris's sight. I'm beginning to contemplate my possibilities: beg, simply refuse to leave, even violence, when the doctor places her hand on Mae's arm and quietly says, "It's ok Mae. He's afraid for her. Let him stay. What harm can it do at this point?"
The nurse squints at the doctor and then directs her glare towards me and lifts a finger under my nose. "Mr. Eaton, your little girlfriend has gone through terrible trauma. What she needs now is rest. She is in critical condition. You are, under no circumstances, to go in there. Do you understand me?" I nod at her, too frightened and too relieved to even be angry at her patronizing tone.
The doctor pulls Mae by the arm and the three of them leave.
After one shaky breath I return to where I was, my nose nearly touching the window. I look at her, somehow thinking that if only I stare hard enough, she will awake and she will be fine.
This is where I will stay.