Chapter Four

Sam burst into the chapel a few minutes later, as they were standing the candlesticks upright and picking up the hymnals Tony had thrown. "Sam!" Tony's heart jumped up into his throat.

Angela ran down the aisle to meet his daughter halfway. "What's going on? Good news or bad?"

"Neither," said Sam, backing away from them nervously. "The receptionist just has some forms she needs you to fill out."

Paperwork. That was good. Filling out paperwork was something Angela had a lot of experience with, and it would calm her nerves. Tony placed one arm around his daughter and the other around Angela and shepherded them out of the chapel.

As they emerged into the uncomfortably bright hallway, Tony spotted a pair of familiar figures in peaked caps and blue jackets, facing away from him. "…I still say one of us should have stayed with him," Officer Gomez was saying.

"And I still say I'm not ordering food for you ever again!" Officer Bier ranted. "Nothing I pick out is ever good enough for you, and I'm not gonna listen to any more of your whining! You're hungry, you come to the cafeteria with me and get your own damn sandwich!"

"Hey, you don't have to bite my head off!" said Gomez defensively. "I just don't want to get into any trouble. I think we should try to go by the book—"

"And I think we're on the ass end of a twelve-hour shift and haven't eaten since dawn, you damned rookie! The guy's high as a kite and chained to a hospital bed. He's not going anywhere."

Tony and Angela didn't say a word. They just looked at each other over Samantha's head, confirming they were of one mind, and nodded. "Sam, honey, could you be a pal and follow those cops to the cafeteria? We all missed dinner, and it sounds like we're gonna be a while," Tony improvised. "So we'll need some drinks and snacks to get us through."

"I don't have much of an appetite, Dad." Sam rubbed her stomach uncomfortably. "My stomach's all tied up in knots."

"Mine, too," Angela confessed. "And I'm pretty sure your father's is, as well, though he's too macho to ever admit it out loud. But we've got to stay fed and hydrated. Jonathan needs us at our best." She handed over a twenty. "Here, you know what we all like."

"Yeah." Sam's face took on a determined look. "While I'm there, I'll get some of those peanut M Jonathan likes. For when he wakes up."

"That's my girl." Tony kissed her and sent her on her way, then took Angela's hand as they set off in the general direction the cops had been coming from. "Too bad they didn't mention the room number."

"The ER doesn't seem very busy," Angela observed. "And there are only twenty or so exam rooms. It can't be that hard to hunt him down."

"Too bad I didn't get his name," Tony mused. "We could find a payphone, call in pretending to be his relatives, and get the room number."

There were only four exam rooms with lights on. Tony peered into the first and found a pasty white-haired woman, eighty years old if she was a day, in the process of tying her gown closed. "Hey, eyes to yourself, you pervert!" she barked.

"Sorry, lady!" Tony hastily slammed the door shut, blushing furiously.

"Tony, maybe you'd better let me handle the next one," Angela gently suggested, crossing the hallway and opening another door. Her hackles rose upon finding a man lying on the gurney inside. "Tony, is this him?"

"Are you my nurse?" the patient snuffled sleepily, his gaze clearing as he looked her over. "Ooh. If so, I think I'm ready for my sponge bath."

Tony poked his head over her shoulder angrily. "You could use a bath, you dirty dog, but you ain't getting it from Angela!" He pulled her back, out of the stranger's line of sight, and slammed the door.

"Not him?" Angela asked.

Tony shook his head. "And it's too bad, because I would have loved a good excuse to punch that horndog in the face.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, they found who they were looking for at the next occupied room. "This one has cuffs on," Angela reported, peering through a small crack in the door. "Tony?"

Tony opened the door a bit wider to confirm the patient's identity. His blood boiled at the sight of the unkempt young man chained to the gurney, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. "Yeah, that's him."

The patient stiffened as they entered his room, the cuff on his right arm rattling as he struggled to sit up in bed. "I remember you. The kid's dad. Is he gonna make it? Is he awake?"

"I'm not his dad," Tony snapped, wishing with his entire being that he could make his own heart believe that. If only he could, this ordeal would be a whole lot easier.

The guy gave him a skeptical look. "Could have fooled me." His eyes flicked to Angela. "You must be the mom. You look like the kid. Or he looks like you. Is he okay?"

Stop asking that! I'm trying to stay angry! Tony had been enjoying the raw rage that had flared up inside of him at the prospect of confronting this loser. It was warm and invigorating, and a pleasant distraction from all the fear and guilt.

"We don't know," Angela sighed wearily.

The driver's eyes moistened. "I know me saying I'm sorry doesn't do any good, but just so you know, I am. I'd give anything to be able to take it back."

"Oh, will you just shut up?!" Tony growled. Stop expressing remorse! Come on, be a jerk! he silently wished. Mock our pain or try to blame the victim, so that my beating you to a pulp while you're chained up won't feel unsportsmanlike!

"You can't take it back," said Angela flatly, her voice devoid of pity or understanding. "You have to live with it, and so do we. And if our…my son is very lucky, so will he."

"I never meant for anything like this to happen!" the junkie sobbed, burying his face in his hands. As he lifted his forearms, Tony could see the telltale track marks running along them. "I never wanted to hurt anyone!"

"There's a reason driving under the influence is illegal, you jackass!" Tony growled at him.

"I couldn't help it, man! I've been jacked up for so long that I'm too sick to think straight when I try to go without. I figured I was better off trying to drive with a little bit of a buzz than while I was puking, sweating, crapping my pants, and having hallucinations." His gaunt body curled in on itself, looking absurdly like a tetherball with the chain hanging off his arm. "Please, God, if you save this poor kid, I promise I'll never touch the stuff again! I'll do whatever it takes! I swear to you on my mother's grave."

"Stop that," said Tony uncomfortably. Praying for Jonathan's welfare was his loved ones' job, not this jerk's. And knowing that this young man, barely out of his teens by the look of him, was motherless, was giving Tony a very faint twinge of sympathy that he didn't care for at all.

The junkie shook his head frantically, tears streaming down his greasy, stubbled cheeks as he aimlessly rocked back and forth. He was staring vacantly into space, now, and Tony wasn't sure whether he was talking to them, God, or himself at this point. "I always promised myself that no matter how low I sunk, I'd never be like him. That I'd never hurt anyone."

Oh great. Now I find out the guy's got some violent abuser in his past. Who was it, a father? Stepfather, maybe? Tony concentrated on the memory of Jonathan, lying breathless and unmoving on the cold, hard pavement, trying to hold on to his rage.

"And now I'm no better than he is! Oh, God! Please don't let him die!"

As he focused on the memory of Jonathan's lifeless body, the memory of this idiot cradling Jonathan's head in his hands and then taking over the rescue breathing crept in with it. Damn it.

Angela could see the exact moment when the fight went out of Tony. His shoulders sagged and his head bowed as if he'd just suffered a terrible and shameful defeat. Perhaps, deep inside, she had an even hotter temper than he did. Or maybe, since she was normally a less contentious person than he was, she had a backlog of anger and hate built up inside her. Whatever the reason, the honest, downright naked remorse this young man was showing did nothing to ease her rage. Good. He feels remorse. This is a weakness I can exploit, the cold, logical part of her brain that she usually reserved for matters of business recognized.

She plucked Jonathan's most recent school portrait from her wallet and handed it to the disheveled creature on the bed. "His name is Jonathan. He's my only son. For seven years, until our little family grew, he was my whole world. He's also my mother's only grandson. She adores him, though she's not the sentimental type and would never admit it to your face."

The junkie shook his head hysterically and tried to push the photo away. "No. Don't make me—"

"Look at him," she hissed, pressing the picture into his hand, grabbing his chin, and forcing him to look at it. "He loves animals and wants to be a herpetologist when he grows up. He worries about all the species of amphibians that are disappearing around the world, and wants to help find a way to save them. It upsets him that so many people ignore their problems, just because they happen to be ugly and slimy."

The junkie bit his lip, long and hard, as if hoping the pain would distract him from her monologue. A trickle of blood flowed down his chin, but she didn't let that stop her. "He has a pet iguana named Spike, a salamander named Goldie, and two rhinoceros beetles named Wink and Blink. If he doesn't make it, they'll probably die, too, because no one else in our family has the slightest clue how to care for them."

The junkie closed his eyes. His nose was running, but he made no move to wipe or blow it. Good. He didn't deserve to breathe easily. His victim certainly couldn't. "His father left us three or four years ago and has shown little to no interest in him since. Or before, for that matter. So Tony, here, moved in to help me take care of him. The two of them have nothing in common, but somehow, that didn't keep them from bonding with each other right from the start. Tony's been teaching Jonathan how to shoot hoops, and Jonathan taught Tony the difference between a turtle and a tortoise."

The junkie held the photo back out to her beseechingly, as if he were hoping she would take it back. She shook her head and backed away, looking him in the eye without mercy. "Tony has a daughter, Samantha, who's been like a sister to Jonathan. She's an only child, just like him, who lost her mother to cancer at the tender age of six. Thanks to you, she may now be facing the second tragic death of an immediate family member in her short lifetime."

She glanced at Tony. The pain in his eyes was unbearable to look at. It was a shame he hadn't managed to stay angry, as she had. Anger was so much easier. "My son is small for his age, so you may not believe this, but he just turned eleven last Friday. The bicycle was a birthday present. You destroyed it, but I suppose it doesn't matter. It's not likely he'll ever be able to ride it again."

The loser had turned away from her, and was staring at the photo as if it were his own death warrant. "I didn't want to hurt anyone," he told it. "I swear I didn't."

"And I don't want to lose my son. But we don't always get what we want in life," she spat at him, turning to leave.

As they left the room and made their way back down the hallway, toward the waiting room, Tony couldn't tear his eyes from Angela's face, and it caused him to trip a couple of times. "What? she finally asked. "Do you think I was too hard on him?" Her tone dared him to say yes.

"No," Tony denied, quickly and truthfully. "He needed to hear that, and I'm glad one of us stuck to their guns. I just can't believe it was you." Her rage had been both beautiful and terrifying, like an electrical storm or a mushroom cloud. He'd thought he'd seen her angry before. Apparently, he'd been wrong. The time he'd walked in on her naked, the time he'd had her car painted red, even the time he'd gotten her fired had been mere shadows of what she was truly capable of. As impressive as it had been, he hoped never to find himself or anyone he cared about on the receiving end of it.

She lowered her hackles and leaned against him heavily. "It took a lot out of me. I don't think I can get that angry again for a while. I hope Sam found me a beverage with caffeine in it."

Sam didn't disappoint, presenting them both with cups of steaming hot coffee when they returned to the waiting room. "Where have you guys been?"

"I suppose making out in the supply closet is too much to hope for from a couple of cold fish like you?" Mona teased.

Sam gave her a grateful hug. "Your zingers are showing improvement, Mona. Keep working on it."

"Nowhere important," said Tony, in answer to his daughter's question. "Just having a little chat with someone we bumped into. Trying to take our minds off everything." That wasn't a lie, at least. It just wasn't the whole truth.

Angela squeezed his hand gratefully as the receptionist, a young woman with a poofy perm and far too much makeup, walked over with a stack of paperwork. "You're Jonathan Bower's parents, right?"

"Right," said Angela, tired explaining their family structure, as she had been for years now.

"Excellent. Sorry, I know this is a difficult time, but I've got some homework for you, here. Nothing difficult, just tedious." She leafed through the multicolored forms one by one. "This is consent to treat, this one is patient demographics, these are for medical history, this is insurance information, and this is patient rights and responsibilities.

Angela waded through them with her usual efficiency, and after that, there was nothing left to do but wait. Nicole kept popping in once an hour, as promised, but it wasn't until after just after one in the morning that she had anything much to report. "Tony? Angela?"

She and Tony had been taking turns as the family spokesperson, and it was her shift, this time. She rose on stiff legs. "Any news for us, Nicole?"

"Actually, yes."

Mother jumped to her feet as if expecting to have to flee from an attack at any moment. Samantha tensed, as if anticipating a punch in the gut. Beside her, she heard Tony breathe a sigh of relief. She knew how he felt. She, too, had started to wonder if this empty, featureless room was actually Limbo and they were going to be trapped in it for the rest of eternity. "How is he?"

"I won't lie to you, he's not out of the woods, but things are looking up. The sutures we've placed in his aorta, his temporal artery, and his pulmonary artery seem to be holding. His blood pressure has stabilized at around ninety over sixty."

"Ain't that kinda low?" Tony asked.

"It is," the nurse admitted, "but that's by design. We're going be medicating him to keep it low for the next few days, until the sutures have had a chance to heal up a little. We don't want them popping open, after all."

Sam laughed, and the adults in the room eyed her worriedly. "Sorry. I just had this weird picture in my head of Jonathan popping a leak like a water balloon."

"You've been too long without sleep, honey," Tony lamented, placing an arm around his daughter. "Sorry, Nicole, she didn't mean to interrupt. We're all a little on edge."

"I can imagine. But the good news is, your son's biggest problems have been solved. The immediate threat to his life is minimal. The bad news is, we've discovered some smaller problems along the way."

Angela tried to focus on the first part of the nurse's statement to keep the anxiety threatening to consume her at bay. "What are those?"

"Well, while working on the pulmonary artery, we discovered a puncture to his left lung."

"Oh no," Tony moaned. "Was it from the chest compressions? Did I push a rib into it or something?"

"No, the puncture's on his side." The nurse indicated her own left side, just under the armpit. "It would have been from the initial impact. Though he does have some pretty nasty fractures from the chest compressions, and tears to his costal cartilage. We're going to pin the bones back together and stitch up the cartilage before we close him up, but first, we've got to put the lung back together." She caught a glimpse of Tony's face, ashen and horrified, and gave him a stern look. "Stop beating yourself up, Tony. We would have had to break them to get to his pulmonary artery anyway, and he'd still be getting the wires and pins."

"Oh. Right." Tony began to breathe again.

Samantha and Mother were cringing as if in pain with every word out of Nicole's mouth. "Pins? Wires?" Sam stammered.

"Punctures? Breaks? Tears?" Mother shuddered. "Please tell me he's doped up to his eyeballs and will be for the foreseeable future?"

"He's not in any pain," said Nicole vaguely. "As for the foreseeable future, the doctor is going to need to talk with you about that when all this is over. We're guessing about two or three hours. After that, we'll move him to our pediatric ICU."

"Thank God," Angela murmured. It was ridiculous, to be relieved that your child was going to intensive care, but it was certainly a step up from actively bleeding to death.

Tony nodded in agreement. "And thank you, too, Nicole. Keep keeping us posted, huh?"

The family collectively collapsed back into the hard plastic chairs where they had spent the first half of the night, like a quartet of marionettes whose strings had been simultaneously slashed. "Mother, Samantha, why don't you two head home?" Angela suggested. "Now that the worst of the danger is over, you may as well get some sleep."

"Who can sleep?" groaned Samantha.

"Not me," said Mother. "I've had six cups of coffee."

Tony rested a worried hand on her upper arm. "Mona—"

"AAH!" her caffeine-addled mother screamed, elbowing him in the belly.

Angela pried cup number seven from her hand while Tony had her distracted. "No more coffee! You're going to give yourself a heart attack, and possibly commit manslaughter while you're at it." Angela proceeded to finish off the coffee herself before tossing the cup in the trash, though. No need for it to go to waste.

Tony followed her over to the wastebasket. "Did you ever get ahold of Michael?"

"No. I've called him six times. His answering machine is full, but with all the time he spends on the road, it usually is. I don't know when he'll be back. I don't even know for sure if he's in this hemisphere. I tried Heather's private line, too, and I even tried his publisher's office, but by then they were closed."

Tony did some counting on his fingers. "It's only nine thirty or so in California. Don't assume the worst. He and Heather could just be out on a date, or working late at the studio, or out running errands."

Angela had never hated her ex-husband so much in all her life. Not when he'd cheated on her with that Brazilian flight attendant. Not when he'd missed Jonathan's birth to videotape the birth of a panda cub at some wildlife sanctuary in Sichuan. Not even when he and that bimbo of his had threatened to take her son away from her. This, this topped them all. This was the worst day of her life. How dare it not be the worst day of his? He should be suffering, damn it! That was the first rule of parenthood! When your child is in pain, you're in pain! And that rat bastard had found a loophole. All he'd had to do was be conveniently absent-

"Angela!" Tony's hands were gripping her shoulders, shaking her roughly. "It ain't his fault! He doesn't know."

Angela's righteous indignation fled her. Tony was right. She wasn't being fair, or logical, or even coherent. But she had already dressed down the worm who had injured her son, so she needed a new target to point her rage at. "Sorry. You're right. I'll try him again."

Tony shook his head and placed himself between her and the hallway leading to the payphone. "Let me try him. The guy's gonna be upset when he hears about this. You're already upset. It ain't a good mix." Jonathan had enough to contend with. The last thing he needed right now was to have his parents at each others' throats again, or kicking off another pointless custody battle.

Angela frowned, and for a moment, he was afraid she was going to fight him on it. But in the end, she just sighed, and handed him her address book, along with a quarter. "For the record, I'm not a complete basket case. But I really, really don't want to talk to him right now, so I'm not going to fight you for the privilege."

"You're a class act, Ange," said Tony. He made his way to the row of payphones, lined up near the entrance, and looked up Michael's home number. The phone rang several times before circling back to the same overfilled answering machine. Tony already felt completely useless, and he wasn't about to double-down by going back to Angela with the news that he hadn't been able to get through. So he took a quarter from his pocket and tried again. When the answering machine greeted him again, he popped his last quarter into the slot. Don't make me call you collect, Bower. I'll do it, I'm crazy! Luckily, this time, after four or five rings, an elderly, feminine voice came on the line. "What?!" it demanded angrily.

Tony wondered if he had dialed incorrectly. Or did Michael live with his mom, maybe? Or maybe Heather had really let herself go. "Um, hello? May I speak with Michael Bower, please?"

"Michael's out of town right now. This is his neighbor, Mrs. Kitzler. I'm just over to water the plants, but I couldn't take any more of that racket. What the blazes is so important that you had to call three times in a row?"

"Michael's son was hit by a car."

"You must have the wrong Michael Bower. My neighbor doesn't have a son."

What in the world was he supposed to say to that? "Um, yeah, he does!"

"Are you absolutely sure you have the right guy? This one's a documentarian, originally from back east, who makes nature films."

"That's the guy," Tony confirmed. "Tall, dark hair, kinda pasty, runs around with a bimbo half his age on his arm?"

"I've lived next door since he moved in, and I've never seen a child in his house." The woman sounded truly baffled. "Or even a sign of one. No toys, suspicious stains, or half-eaten lollipops covered in hair."

Spoken like a true mother. "Well, Jonathan doesn't see much of his old man. He lives in Connecticut with his mom."

There was a short pause on the line. "Is he a blond boy, about eight years old, with big brown eyes?"

"He was the last time his father saw him." Three long years ago. Marone a mi, had it really been that long?

"Oh, okay, then." Mrs. Kitzler seemed a little less confused now. "There's a picture of him in Michael's office, right next to the ficus plant. I always thought it was a nephew or a godson, maybe."

One picture? Seriously? Tony rolled his eyes. The man spends his whole life pointing a camera at bugs and lizards, but he can't be bothered to snap more than one of his only child? Well, at least he knew he had the right guy.

"Dear me, is the little fella going to be all right?" the old woman asked, her voice full of concern.

"The doctors are doing their best, but they've got their work cut out for them. The kid's got injuries to his brain, spine, and lungs, and he's been in surgery for the last seven or eight hours. He actually died for a few minutes, though he came out of it eventually."

"The poor little dear! No wonder you were being so persistent. Yes, yes, whatever differences they've had, I'm sure Michael would want to be there for his son."

"Ay-oh, there were no differences," Tony was careful to stress. Michael was going to have enough on his plate with a critically ill child. He didn't need the neighborhood gossiping about him being a deadbeat. And Tony certainly didn't want to create any added hostilities between the two sides of the family. Not when Jonathan had just suffered a terrible injury in his mother's custody, and Jonathan's father had proven himself willing to sue for custody on little-to-no pretext. "Jonathan loves his father and his father loves him. Their lives have just gone in different directions, is all."

"Of course, I didn't mean to slight father or son. But unfortunately, Michael's out of town right now."

"How out-of-town?" Tony persisted. "Out-of-town as in, out-of-state? Out-of-country? Or out-of-continent?"

"Just out of town, thankfully. He's up in Redwood National Park, making some kind of movie about endangered banana slugs for the Sierra Club."

Damn you, Michael, you're off trying to save slugs while your only child is fighting for his life? Tony tamped down the urge to scream the silly words out loud. The man could hardly be expected to spend his entire life sitting beside a phone, waiting for news from the other side of the country. "I don't suppose any of his crew have a cellular phone? Or a car phone? Or a pager?"

"They're filmmakers, dear. Not doctors or CEOs."

Tony hadn't really expected a yes in answer to that question, but he'd had to ask. He fed another quarter into the phone to keep it from cutting off the call. "What about Heather? Is she with him?"

"Oh, goodness, no! They've been separated for months."

"What? Why?" They'd seemed so disgustingly, irritatingly happy together.

"I never asked. It's none of my business. But…"

Tony had suspected there was a "but" coming. "But?"

"I think she might have been cheating on him. She and the pool boy always seemed awfully friendly. And he was the one who picked her up, the night she packed and left."

"Oh, jeez. Poor Michael."

"I know. Being left is bad enough, but being left for the help?"

"Lay off, lady! I'm sure he's a terrific guy with a lot to offer!" Tony huffed, feeling strangely protective of the philandering pool technician. For some unknown reason. "Don't hate him just because girls can't resist his scintillating Mediterranean good looks, chiseled body and down-to-earth working-class charm!"

"Okay, calm down! Good grief, whose side are you on, anyway?"

"Jonathan's side," Tony replied without question. "Is there anyone I could talk to who might know how to get ahold of his old man?"

"No one but God and the slugs, as far as I know."

He sighed heavily. "All right. I'll try something else. Could you leave a note by his phone, letting him know Jonathan's hurt, and to call as soon as he gets home?"

"Of course! And I'll keep an eye out for his car, too. He's due back in three days, so it won't be longer than that. Can you give me the phone number for the hospital?"

"203-385-5000," Tony read off a sign above the front desk. "He'll be in the pediatric ICU."

"Got it. And who should I say called? Are you the boy's stepfather?"

"Just tell him Tony called. He'll know who I am." He'd better, after he commended his only son into my incompetent hands, Tony lamented inwardly. "Thanks for your help, Mrs. Kitzler."

As soon as he'd hung up with her, he reached for the phone book dangling from a chain under the phone kiosk. Thumbing through the government pages, he tore out a page, folded it up and tucked it into his pocket for later. Defeated, he returned to the stark white sensory deprivation tank this hospital was trying to pass off as a waiting room. Sam was slumped against Angela's shoulder. His daughter's body language indicated she was tired, but her eyes were abnormally wide, rather than being heavy or closed. Mona's high heels were tattooing a series of beats on the linoleum that were so rapid they could have passed for Morse code. Angela sat between them, munching on a bag of Doritos that was supposed to be his own.

Well, this was progress. The compulsive eating meant that Angela was stressed and/or depressed. That was a small, but definite step down from being too shell-shocked to blink. After finishing off the Doritos, she moved on to the sandwich that Sam had brought for Mona. Once she'd polished those off, she went back to the cafeteria and found it closed. Undeterred, she swung by the vending machine for a Baby Ruth and a pack of Oreos, which she devoured in succession. "I hate hospitals," she mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.

"Ditto," sighed Samantha. "My mom died in one."

"So did mine," said Tony, remembering those last visits to his mother's bedside all too vividly. By the end, the lupus had reduced her to little more than a hideous caricature of her former self, her familiar face mottled with a lumpy red rash, the hands that had once brushed away his tears knobby and twisted from arthritis, her hair thinning, her lips stained with blood. And for all that he'd been older, and supposedly stronger, Marie's death had been no easier to watch. The cancer had eaten her alive before his very eyes, shrinking her build to skinny, then emaciated. When she had breathed her last, there had been nothing left but a seventy-nine-pound husk, dry skin hanging from her bones like an oversized set of pajamas. In those final days, he'd kept his eyes focused on her own, as much as he could—those beautiful eyes he'd fallen in love with had never lost their warmth, and were the only thing about her that had remained unchanged to the very end.

"I wish mine would," Mona grumbled.

"Mother!" Angela protested. "That's a terrible thing to say about a family member, especially at a time like this!"

Mona leaned around Angela to address Tony and Samantha. "She's a little keyed up. Understandably so. We lost her father in a car accident." The redhead shook her head in disbelief. "That husband of mine never drove more than five miles over the speed limit. Before mandatory seatbelts became a thing, he made a point of having them installed in every car we owned. He'd constantly count two Mississippis to make sure he wasn't following the car ahead of him too closely."

"It drove you nuts," Angela recalled. "Especially when I got old enough to start counting along with him."

"Don't remind me. Then one day, he hit a patch of black ice on the way home from work and slammed headlong into a tree, and none of that was worth diddly-squat."

"He went right through the windshield and tore his jugular." Angela shuddered. "They took him to the hospital, but by the time they got him there, it was too late. He'd lost so much blood, it looked like he'd been bleached from head to toe."

Before the family's tailspin of bad memories could descend any further, Isabelle made her appearance, along with a steely-haired, steely-eyed older gentleman who must have been Dr. Adams. Their scrubs were stained with blood and sweat, and they smelled like a butcher's shop on a hot summer day. "Angela!" Isabelle ran to meet her friend with open arms, then stopped short, looking self-conscious. "Sorry, I forgot what a mess I am for a minute."

Angela closed the distance between them and threw her arms around Isabelle without hesitation. "For this, I'd hug you if you were drenched with raw sewage!"

Dr. Adams screwed up his face in disgust, at that image. "Ugh. Sepsis ready to happen."

"How is Jonathan, Doc?" Tony inquired.

"Better than when I met him," the surgeon replied with a hint of a smile.

"How many stitches did he get?" Sam asked, flashing a scar on the back of her elbow. "My record's twenty-two."

"Ninety-seven. I'm afraid your little brother comes out the winner this time, young lady," Dr. Adams apologized.

"Whoa. Did you use a sewing machine?" Mona inquired facetiously.

"Nope, just good old-fashioned needle and thread," Isabelle replied. "Your grandson is still one hundred percent handcrafted, Mona."

"Seriously, though, the good news is that he's going to live," Dr. Adams reported. "I can say that much with confidence."

Angela's knees shook with relief. She stiffened them stubbornly. "Thank God." Beside her, Mother let out a whoop, raising her hands like a sports fan whose team had just scored the winning point. On her other side, Samantha began to cry. Tony took the girl into his arms and stroked her hair gently, crooning soft words of comfort. Angela fought off an irritating surge of longing for the same treatment. Her eyes met Tony's over their—his daughter's head and they shared a smile of mutual elation.

"Come on, you look like you're going to be the next patient admitted, if you don't get off your feet." She dragged Isabelle to a chair and sat down beside her. "Come on, tell us everything."

Isabelle hesitated a bit. "Well, I'm not sure exactly how much Nicole has told you. We have his bleeding under control. His vital signs have stabilized. He had five broken vertebrae, which we glued back together and replaced. There was some damage to the cartilage between the vertebrae, and to correct that, it'll require customized prosthetics that we don't yet have. So he's going to need at least one additional surgery on his back. The lower lobe of his left lung was punctured, but not badly enough to cause collapse. Its capacity will be diminished, but with the right combination of respiratory exercise and oxygen therapy, he should eventually regain the ability to breathe more or less normally."

"How's the ribs I broke?" Tony asked anxiously.

Isabelle groaned, sounding truly exasperated. "Tony, those are the least of his troubles, but we got them pinned together and they should heal normally. Now, please, will you quit stressing about the stupid ribs?"

Tony hung his head like a kicked puppy. "Sorry. So, what are the worst of his troubles, then?"

"Well, for one, his spinal cord has suffered some damage. It was swollen from the force of the impact, and the hematoma from his ruptured aorta caused additional compression, and long periods of compression cause loss of circulation, which can lead to tissue death."

""Can?'" Angela repeated. "But not necessarily will?"

Isabelle pursed her lips and looked at Dr. Adams. He just shrugged helplessly. "It's impossible to say with any certainty until he wakes up. There could be loss of sensation, paralysis, bowel and bladder incontinence, all of the above, or none of the above.".

"Will he be able to have sex?" Mother piped up.

"Ewwww!" Samantha shrieked, hiding her face in her father's shirt. "Dad, make her stop!"

"Mother!" Angela protested, placing protective hands over Samantha's ears. "That's what you're worried about? He's eleven years old!"

"He won't be forever," her mother pointed out.

"I don't want to think about my baby doing…that!" She wrinkled her nose. "It's bad enough I have to hear about your escapades."

"I dunno, Angela, I think Mona's got a point," Tony cut in. "I mean, Jonathan's already started showing an interest in girls, so he might want to know, for the future. And anyway, don't you wanna be a grandma someday?"

Angela placed a hand to her mouth and gasped. She hadn't stopped to consider the potential impact on her child's future fertility. "Oh, I do hope that's still a possibility! It would be terrible for Jonathan if he didn't have the chance to be a father when he grows up. He's got such a nurturing personality…"

"Yeah," Tony agreed with a bittersweet smile. "The way he's always looking out for animals, no matter how ugly, hostile or poisonous."

"And his lack of squeamishness," Angela chuckled. "I always thought his high tolerance for the disgusting would come in handy for changing diapers, wiping snotty noses, and cleaning scraped knees."

"On the other hand, there's more than one way to become a dad. I mean, there's always adoption," Tony reminded her. "Or maybe the person he falls for will come with a ready-made family." The words, like we did hung unspoken in the air between them as they held each other's gaze intently.

"Again, there's really no way to be certain, at this particular juncture," Dr. Adams cut in. He gave Isabelle a bemused glance, as if to ask, are these people for real? She nodded, as if to reply, yeah, see what I've got to deal with when I'm not chopping up trauma victims with you? Dr Adams just shrugged wearily, his body language conveying the message, I'm too worn out to probe, so I'm just going to go with the flow. "I suspect the ICU is going to be keeping him under for at least a day or two. The left hemisphere of his brain is still significantly swollen, and a good, long nap is usually the best way to fight that."

"So he'll need another surgery to repair his spinal discs, and another to plug up the hole in his head," Angela summarized. "Is there anything else we should be bracing ourselves for?"

"He'll also need a procedure to remove the wires and pins from his ribs, once they've knitted together." Isabelle gave Tony a warning look. "And Tony, if I hear one word out of you about that, so help me, I'm going to put you in the ICU alongside Jonathan."

"Yes, ma'am," Tony sighed unhappily. "I'll shut up."

"Good. Because that one's going to be a fairly minor procedure, all told," Isabelle stressed. "Other than that, we can't really make many predictions. Our function here in the ER is to get the patient stabilized, and I can safely say we've done that. From here on out, it's the ICU's job to make sure he stays stabilized, and from there, he'll have a neurologist, an osteologist, and a pulmonologist, among others, who will be in charge of getting him back to normal."

"Or as close to normal as possible," Dr. Adams put in. "It's time to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. With a traumatic brain injury, there are all sorts of possibilities. Seizures, personality changes, loss of vision or hearing, lack of balance, muscle weakness. He could have diminished intellectual capacity ranging anywhere from a permanent vegetative state to slight forgetfulness."

Tony flinched with every word out of the guy's mouth. Angela, on the other hand, had barely heard anything Isabelle and her colleague had said since they had told her Jonathan was going to live. Those had to be the most beautiful words she'd heard in all her life. And after eight long hours of having to visualize a future without her son, the relief hit her addled nerves like some sort of wonderful drug. "Can we see him?"

"Yes," Isabelle replied. "He's in the recovery room right now. I'll take them, Stan," Isabelle volunteered.

Before Dr. Adams could turn to leave, Tony grabbed his hand and pumped it vigorously. "Thanks, Doc. I mean, for coming in on your day off and everything. You've got no idea how much that boy in there means to us."

"I think I do. I'm a father myself." The trauma surgeon gave him a weary smile. "I'm glad I could be here to help, truly. Now, please give me my hand back."

"Oh. Right." Tony released him sheepishly.

"Thanks for your help, Stanley. I couldn't have done it without you," Isabelle called after her colleague. She rose to her feet, joints creaking in a painful-sounding manner as she stretched out her overworked limbs. "Let's go, Angela. Your son's waiting."