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37 – CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – 1,103^37
Although they knew that they would not, with all probability, learn anything new, those left behind were waiting anxiously for Don's return.
"You should go home and get some rest. All you've done is work for the last four days. I'll notify you at once if something happens here."
It was as if Alan had only wanted to try if his voice still obeyed him, since his offer didn't even have a chance of approval.
That was also Megan's point of view, "That's really nice of you, Alan, but unnecessary. I hardly think that we're gonna find it more restful at home than here."
Alan nodded, lowering his head again, and they fell back into the silence.
It lasted until Don returned. He was pale and his face wore a scary, cold expression. Wordlessly, he sat down with them. Alan glanced at him one last time anxiously before he spoke again, "So, it seems that Megan is the next one."
However, Megan shook her head. "No, I can wait. I suggest that you go next, Alan, presuming that this regulation will still be necessary. Maybe Charlie will soon be well enough so that we can all go see him together or at least for a longer time than ten minutes."
Alan nodded and, together with the others, clung to the useless hope that Megan's prognosis might be correct.
The second time, the sight was familiar and that was what scared Alan the most. It was kind of like coming home. Maybe that was why he had been so impatient when he'd had to wait for a moment in the anteroom of the ICU earlier. Her colleague was just giving Charlie an antibiotic to make the pneumonia retreat, a nurse had told him. Alan had nodded without really listening. He'd wanted to go in there, had wanted to be with his son again.
He'd noticed that the nurse had been about to say something several times. He was, however, glad that she eventually had refrained from trying to converse with him. He knew that at that moment he wasn't really up to being sociable. He was an emotional wreck.
Maybe Charlie was too. But on top of everything else Charlie was a physical wreck. And maybe they would never be able to restore him again.
Alan pressed Charlie's hand more fiercely. He had done it again. He had again given up hope. He had again let those damned pessimistic thoughts creep into his mind. The thoughts gradually made him livid.
And still Alan knew that he was right. Even if Charlie survived this – and Alan forced himself not to allow any doubts in this regard – there was still the question of whether his son would be the same as he'd been before. Would he be able to just throw off everything that had happened? Or would he be marked by what he'd suffered for all his life?
Alan was well aware that with all probability the latter would be the case, hope or no hope. However, even in this case there was a chance that Charlie might be able to live a normal life again. He would be marked by what had happened, yes – but maybe positively? Maybe he'd become stronger by the catastrophe?
Stronger. Alan didn't know what made him think of strength, looking at his son lying there so helplessly. Then, however, with a trace of joy, he noticed that he had to revise the image of his memory: Charlie wasn't that weak. Alan thought he could see his ribcage raise and fall. That had to mean that Charlie's breathing had become stronger. And also the beeping sounds, as he realized now. They followed one upon another with an increased frequency and sounded stronger.
It was in an insidious way that the joy was leaving him. Slowly, he realised that the increase in heartbeat and respiration was not stopping; was in fact becoming alarming fast.
While the panic began to rise up inside Alan several people in doctor's coats rushed into the room and pushed him aside. Charlie seemed to be hyperventilating now and Alan dimly wondered if that was even possible with the oxygen mask, while that much too fast beeping sound of the monitors hammered in his ears and his brain.
Alan tried to get a glance at his son through the many white coats, but then a nurse pushed him out of the door. He tried to make sense of what had happened, but his mind was only an empty space.
The empty space only started to disappear when he felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned around slowly. Donnie. His eldest son again had that worried, tense look that made it so clear to Alan that something wasn't going at all the way it should be.
"Why aren't you coming back to the waiting room?" Don wanted to know, staring past his father in order to catch a glimpse of what was happening in the ICU. "What are they doing? What's going on?"
"I don't know," Alan whispered. His voice was hardly audible, and only after he had given the response, it occurred to him that he indeed couldn't answer any of his son's questions.
One of the nurses suddenly came out of the room and pushed the two of them out of the anteroom so that they were now completely separated from Charlie.
"What's going on?" Don repeated his question, this time directed at the nurse.
"There are complications," was her short response before she hurried along the corridor and disappeared around the corner. And although her answer was so vague, she nevertheless managed to nip the Eppes men's still so fresh seeds of hope in the bud.
"What kind of complications?" Don called after her and just managed to stop himself from running behind her. He wasn't sure at all if he wanted to hear the answer.
Alan and Don stood for some seconds in the white corridor before they had collected enough of their senses in order to recall the others' presence. Slowly, they turned around to face them, still distraught, and it couldn't escape their notice that the three had risen from their seats and were now looking at them with worry.
"What's happening?" Amita's shaky voice finally asked. If the corridor had been a bit busier, Don wouldn't have understood her although there was only a distance of two steps between them.
"We don't know," Alan confessed.
"There were complications," Don added into the silence. It wasn't until he repeated the words that he became aware of what they really meant. Complications did not only mean nothing good, even less when they occurred with a patient who was as weak as Charlie was; it was more than not good, it was frightening, horrifying.
That was the conclusion the others also seemed to come to. In any event their silently shocked gazes spoke volumes.
They didn't know how much, they only knew that too much time had passed until finally something happened. And then everything happened so fast that the five's heads, put on standby, had difficulty in processing the events quickly enough to react appropriately. Don's train of thoughts rattled slowly and ponderously: a person stepped out of Charlie's room. The person was a nurse, so she had to know what was going on in there, and now she hurried away, although she had the information Don needed so urgently. He had to get that information, that meant...
"Hey!" When Don had finally grasped the thought, the nurse had already covered some distance between herself and Charlie's room. Don ran behind her before she could disappear around the corner. "Hey, wait!"
With a bit of surprise, the nurse turned around, and it occurred to Don how young she was. Her gaze was insecure and looked from Don's face to over his shoulder. Don briefly turned around and found himself strangely encouraged in his plan when he saw the others standing behind him. It was as if he had been sent by them in order to ask for something on behalf of all of them.
However, also without their support, the words would have stumbled out of his mouth. "What about Charlie?"
The young nurse knitted his eyebrows, and the look in her big eyes increased with insecurity. "I believe I'm not allowed to tell you." Her voice was low and cautious, nearly a whisper. "Are you family members?"
"Yes," Don answered and repeated his question. "What about him? What are those complications?"
"I really don't think –"
"Listen, that man in there is my brother!" Don could feel that he was on the verge of losing control, but he struggled to maintain his calmness. "Please tell us what's going on with him. What did they mean when they said complications earlier? Will he… live?"
"Well, at least we were able to start his heart again, but..." She stopped short. The features in front of her clearly showed her that she shouldn't have said that. Facing her, there were five shocked faces in whose eyes had entered panic. It was too late when she put her hand over her mouth as if she wanted to hold back the words she had already spoken aloud.
She had already turned halfway round when she called a, 'I've really gotta go now' over her shoulder.
"Stop! What d'you mean –"
The nurse had already turned around the corner with rushed steps, though. However, even if she hadn't, Don would probably hardly have managed to ask his question. His brain needed all its energy in order to understand her words.
On the one hand, eternities must have passed before the door opened anew. On the other hand, in that case Don would have been dead for a long time for he couldn't remember having breathed even once. When this time some nurses and a doctor stepped out of Charlie's room, Don merely stood, though didn't take the initiative. He was too terrified to hear the answer.
Therefore it was Alan who asked the so hoped for and so feared question, "How is he?"
He directed his words at the doctor who seemed to have already expected something like that and while the nurses disappeared. He shook Alan's hand inquiring, "His father?"
Alan nodded. The doctor glanced fleetingly at the other four people and before any more time was wasted with questions, Alan quickly said, "They can hear what you've got to tell me."
This time, it was the medic's turn to nod. His facial expression was as earnest as those on the staff every time they spoke to them about Charlie's condition , and it was this look that began to ruin Alan's nerves.
"Your son reacted badly to the antibiotic we gave him. This reaction is called SIRS." The doctor looked into worried, but questioning faces. "That's an abbreviation for systemic inflammatory response syndrome," he explained readily. "The organism defends itself against foreign matters introduced into the human body that are supposed to help him to fight the infection. In this process the heart and breathing frequencies increase."
Alan had knitted his brows. "And what are you doing to stop it?"
"At first we treated the symptoms and now we're leaving the body some time to regenerate itself. Then we'll give your son another antibiotic."
"And if the body reacts against that as well?"
"We hope that things won't get so far. If they do however, we'll have to try another antibiotic and then another until we find the right one. I'm afraid, but there's no other way."
Alan nodded, breathing deeply. "Can we see him?"
The medic briefly glanced at the floor. "I'm sorry, but no. For the next twenty-four hours we'll be observing to see if he can handle the new antibiotic and if it's able to fight the infection. Any kind of foreign matters would be an unnecessary danger at this stage." He let his gaze wander across the tired and exhausted faces. "You should go home now and get some a rest. If anything unpredicted happens, we'll notify you at once."
In the end, all of them had understood that the most sensible thing they could do was to follow the doctor's advice. And eventually they had been able to convince Alan by making it clear to him that it was only about a ten minute drive from the Craftsman to the hospital.
Don let himself fall into the bed in his former bedroom, exhausted. He was weary. And it seemed so unreal to him that he was here, here, while Charlie was lying unconscious in the hospital. The house seemed to be so much bigger and especially emptier without him.
Although, according to the laws of nature he should have fallen asleep anyway, Don took a sleeping pill. He couldn't bear seeing Charlie's death-pale face every time he closed his eyes.
However, the sleeping pills didn't prevent him from jerking up in bed in the middle of the night. He had dreamed of Charlie and they'd been at the beach, swimming. They had swum out further and further until the waves had become higher and a storm had come. And at some point in time Charlie hadn't been there anymore. Don had still been holding his hand, had clung to his brother, but Charlie had already been under water. Don hadn't been able to pull him upwards and his brother's hand had slipped out of his and Charlie had sunk down into the depths and Don hadn't been able to save him...
He shuddered then looked at his alarm clock: Saturday morning, half past four. He had slept for a surprisingly long period. That was it, though, he couldn't sleep any longer.
Quietly, he crept out of his room and was just about to go downstairs when he heard sounds coming from Charlie's room. Slowly he drew nearer to the door until through a crack he could see his father, illuminated by Charlie's bedside lamp.
For an instant, Don was rigid with surprise and didn't know what to do. Then he heard the quiet sobbing that came out of the room, and was even more clueless.
He stood helplessly in the doorway. He knew that there were no words to console his father and he was just about to creep back into his bed as quietly as possible in order to at least pretend as if nothing had happened, when a floorboard screeched under his feet. Alan whirled around.
For a second Don didn't move, but he knew that now he had no choice anymore. With a few steps he arrived at his father and embraced him at first cautiously, then, when Alan hugged him back, as strongly as if he was fighting for his life. And all of a sudden he realized that he wasn't offering selfless help, but that he too could use the help of closeness offered by a family member.