The End of Forever Read online

  Dr. DuPree took one of her hands. His palm was warm, and she noticed that his fingers were long and immaculate. “Theres a waiting room next to Neuro-ICU for families of critical patients. All of you can stay there tonight.”

  Erin’s dad said he’d talk to Inez and Travis, then meet them upstairs. Her mother kept firing questions at the doctor during the ride up the elevator to the seventh floor. Erin steeled her body and emotions with her dancer’s iron discipline.

  Hospitals and doctors help people, she told herself as she approached the solid door of the Neuro-ICU area. Amy will be out of here in no time. She stared at the door, while behind her Dr. DuPree and her mother waited for her to push it open.

  “People come out of comas don’t they, Dr. DuPree?” she asked. Erin shoved open the door, not waiting for his reply, because deep down she was too terrified to hear his answer.

  Chapter Eight

  Neuro-ICU was a large room with seven beds and a central desk where nurses kept close watch over patients who had head and brain injuries. It was a netherworld of shadows illuminated by green and amber blips, of machines linked with lines and tubes, and of hissing sounds and electronic beeps keeping perfect cadence. Erin met the night nurse, Laurie, who took her and Mrs. Bennett to a more private room, separated only by a glass partition from the larger area.

  “We have three other patients up here now,” Laurie said, but Erin only half heard her because she couldn’t take her eyes off her sister. Amy’s head was swathed in gauze, and a tube protruded from her mouth. Too overwhelmed to speak, Erin stood by the bed and blinked back tears. Her hand reached out, then drew back.

  “Don’t be afraid; you can touch her,” Laurie said.

  “She doesn’t even look hurt. She just looks like she’s asleep.”

  “The only damage is to her brain. By tommorow you’ll be able to see swelling in her face. Her eye area will probably turn black-and-blue.”

  Erin gently stroked Amy’s cheek, careful not to brush against the apparatus. She hoped to see her sister’s eyelids flutter, knowing that Amy hated being tickled. “What are all these tubes and wires for?”

  “The oral tube is her ventilator. That wire is taped to her chest and leads to her heart monitor, and that tube in the back of her hand is an IV. She has a catheter too.”

  “My poor little girl,” Mrs. Bennett whispered from the other side of Amy’s bed. Erin swallowed hard and tried not to look at her mother. If she did, she knew she’d lose it.

  “You can stay with her for now,” Laurie said softly. “The waiting room is right down the hall. You can come in and out of here to check on your daughter whenever you want ”

  “I’ll wait here for my husband,” Mrs. Bennett said.

  Erin trembled, unable to hold in her feelings any longer. “I’ll go down there now,” she said, suddenly desperate to get out of the machine-driven world of Neuro-ICU. “So you and Daddy can be alone with Amy.”

  She followed Laurie to a very large room that looked more like a luxury hotel suite than a hospital waiting room. The carpet was dove gray, the furniture light oak wood with burgundy upholstery. “It’s brand new,” Laurie explained. “We’ve tried to make it comfortable because families like to be near each other through these crises.” The lights were dim, but Erin could see people piled in oversized chairs with pillows and blankets. “Our only rule is that you can’t sleep on the floor,” Laurie whispered. “Local church groups bring in the food. There’ll be fresh pastry and coffee here in the morning.” Laurie pointed to a wall where three pay phones hung. “Give out the numbers to friends, and they can call and talk to you.”

  Erin realized she should call and tell Ms. Thornton something. She glanced up at a wall clock. It was three A.M. “I’ll call everyone tomorrow.”

  Laurie gave her a skimpy pillow and a thin blue blanket and left. Erin dropped into a chair, careful not to make too much noise. She felt exhausted and numb, as if she were trapped in a bad dream and couldn’t wake up. She told herself that once this terrible night was over, they’d all go back in to see Amy, and she’d be awake.

  Erin consoled herself with the image of Amy sitting up in bed and eating breakfast. “Amy …” she pleaded in a whisper. “Please wake up, Amy. If you do, I’ll be your best friend.” Erin buried her face in the blanket and wept.

  Throughout the remainder of the night, Erin catnapped, unable to relax in the foreign surroundings. Her parents settled near her, and she heard her mother leave often to check on Amy. Early the next morning Erin called Ms. Thornton, who promised to start the phone chain and pass along information about Amy’s condition, which hadn’t changed during the night. Erin also asked her to tell friends to stay away for the time being. She knew she couldn’t stand visiting with a lot of people, no matter how good their intentions.

  Erin called Travis, but his mother said he was asleep and promised to have him call her later. Erin hung up, realizing that, like her, he’d been up half the night and probably had slept no better than she had.

  Inez came for a visit and so did a few neighbors. Shara stopped by late Sunday afternoon but didn’t stay long. “Dad delivers a lot of babies at this hospital,” Shara told Erin with a wave of her hand, “so I know my way around the red tape. Let me know if you want anything.” Erin told her thanks but was too bewildered and overwhelmed to know what to ask for.

  By afternoon the strangers in the waiting room were beginning to look familiar. Erin wondered who they all were and what patients they were waiting for, but she resisted talking to anyone. She didn’t want to meet new people. She only wanted to get out of there and take Amy home.

  In the light of day, Neuro-ICU didn’t seem quite so formidable. The machines appeared less intimidating, and the sounds less hostile. Overhead TVs played softly despite the fact that the patients couldn’t react to the programs. At the nurses’ station Erin toyed with a plastic model of a human brain, tracing her fingers along the convoluted surface of the cerebrum and down to the dark mass of the cerebellum at the base of the model. She found it hard to comprehend that Amy’s brain was so hurt that it had shut down.

  “Fascinating isn’t it?” a tall man standing beside the main desk said to her. He was dressed in a dark blue suit and had black hair and a mustache. “The average human brain weighs only three pounds, and yet it has the capacity to elevate mankind to the stars.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Erin asked.

  “No. But I work with the staff here.” His eyes were brown and kind. “Is that your sister back there?” He motioned with his head toward the glass wall.

  “Yes, she was in an accident.” Erin held up the plastic model. “Her brains hurt and she’s in a coma. She can’t even breathe by herself.”

  “This unit is the best,” the man said. “And the staff is tops.”

  Erin didn’t find any comfort in his words. If everything was so medically advanced, then why didn’t Amy wake up? If the human brain was so superior, then why hadn’t it found a way to bring sixteen-year-old girls out of comas? She set the model down on the desk. “I’m going in to be with my sister,” she told the man and walked away.

  A nurse named Ellie was monitoring Amy’s vital signs and making notations on a chart. Erin watched as Ellie performed several procedures. “What are you doing?” Erin asked, afraid that the nurse might try to hide something from her.

  “Charting the results of her latest Glasgow test.”

  “What’s a Glasgow test?”

  Ellie showed Erin the paper with numbers neatly written in small boxes. “It’s a standard for measuring a comatose patient’s progress.”

  “Progress? But she never moves.”

  Ellie smiled. “Let me explain. We take temperature, pulse, and blood pressure. We check respiration—in Amy’s case she’s on a ventilator—and we do a few neurological tests and grade her on a scale.”

  “Like what?”

  “For instance, we chart whether or not her eyes open. ‘Spontaneously’ equals a four, w
hile ‘none’ equals a one.” Ellie pointed to the bottom of the chart where the criteria was printed. “On ‘Verbal Response’—you know, whether she reacts when you talk to her—there’s a scale of one to five, with five being ‘oriented’ and meaning fully conscious, and one meaning ‘no response.’ For ‘Motor Response’ a five means she ‘obeys commands,’ and a one means ‘no response.’ ”

  She paused, and Erin examined the neat rows of charted numbers. “So where’s Amy?”

  “Right now she’s a one-one-three.”

  “That’s not good, is it?”

  “The higher the score, the better.”

  “But she’s a three on ‘Motor Response,’ Erin said hopefully.

  “Yes, she reflexes to pain.”

  “You hurt her?”

  “Not really. It’s an automatic reaction of the muscles to stimuli. Like when a doctor hits your knee and it jerks. It’s the way we can judge the depth of her coma and her brain-stem functions.”

  Erin pointed to the paper on the metal clipboard. “And what’s ‘Pupil Reaction’ mean?”

  “How well her pupils react when we shine a light into them. Another way of gauging brain-stem functions.”

  Erin’s head was swimming with information and starting to ache. “The numbers will go up, won’t they?”

  “Thats what we’re hoping.”

  Erin wanted to ask, “And what if they don’t?” but lost her courage. Of course they would go up. Amy was a fighter, and their whole family was going to stand by her and help her fight.

  Later she went to the cafeteria with her parents to discuss a schedule for the upcoming week. “I don’t want Amy alone,” Mrs. Bennett said. “When she wakes up, I want to be sure that one of us is there with her.”

  “I can come after classes and stay till midnight or so,” Mr. Bennett said. “We’ll trade off the night shift, Marian, so that every other night we each get to go home and sleep in our own bed.”

  “And Inez can handle the shop in the mornings, so I can stay from midnight till about ten A.M. That way I can go into the boutique at noon and stay until closing.”

  “Spring break starts this Thursday, so I can be up here during the days,” Erin offered. “In fact, I’m positive I can get excused absences through Thursday.”

  “All right,” Mr. Bennett said. “Erin, you and I’ll go home tonight. In the morning we’ll go to school, and you can get your books and assignments. I’ll work my regular class schedule so that the headmaster doesn’t have to find a substitute at the last minute.”

  “We’ll need another car,” Mrs. Bennett said, and Erin felt guilt sear through her like a hot iron.

  “I’ll, rent one for us,” Mr. Bennett told her. “Erin can use our station wagon.”

  Mrs. Bennett said nothing more about the car situation, but Erin felt her resentment. After all, if she’d driven instead of Amy, there might never have been an accident. Then another thought came to her. What if she had been the one in ICU instead of Amy? That idea so terrified her that she felt sick to her stomach.

  What would it be like to be trapped in a coma? To be—where? Where was Amy anyway? Her body was in the room, but where were her thoughts? Did she dream? Did she think? Was it like being asleep? Or was it worse? Erin had no answers. All she had was fear. It lodged inside her heart like a monster with tentacles and began to squeeze.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning Erin rode to school with her father. Outside the world seemed perfectly normal. A bright March sun made the day feel balmy, and azaleas bloomed in profusions of fuchsia, white, and pink in neighborhood yards. She wondered how everything could look so normal, so ordinary, and yet be so irreversibly changed at the same time.

  “This is going to be rough on all of us,” Mr. Bennett said with a deep sigh.

  “Well make it, Dad,” Erin said, not at all convinced.

  “According to Dr. DuPree a coma can be unpredictable. Sometimes a patient can be in one for years.”

  “Well, not Amy,” Erin said with determination. “By the end of the week, shell be awake and complaining.”

  “A physical therapist will come in soon and start exercising Amy’s arms and legs to keep her muscles toned. Otherwise they can atrophy and waste away.”

  Erin stared out the car window and struggled for composure. It was hard to think of Amy being so silent and still. “Maybe I can learn how to exercise her and help out,” she said.

  “There’s—uh—also the possibility of brain damage.” Mr. Bennett said the phrase carefully, and Erin felt her fathers eyes cut to her. “Even after she wakes up, it may take a long time for her to be all right again.”

  Or she may never be all right again. He hadn’t said it, but Erin knew that’s what he was trying to tell her. “She’ll be fine, Daddy. No matter how long it takes, Amy’s gonna be fine. If we all work together, she’ll be just the way she was before.” Amy is only sixteen years old, Erin thought. She has to be all right.

  At school Erin was mobbed by concerned classmates and teachers as she collected her books and assignments. She forced herself to answer the same questions over and over, anxious to leave and go back to the hospital. She was almost out the front door when Miss Hutton hailed her.

  The teacher with the high, funny voice Amy loved to imitate rushed up and said, “I’m so sorry. How could such a thing have happened to our little Amy?”

  Erin gritted her teeth. Her sister wasn’t Miss Hutton’s “little Amy.” “It was an accident,” she said.

  “Oh you poor dear! What a horrible, horrible ordeal for you all. And to think that this Saturday she’d planned to come with me to the Children’s Home and play a clown for their big Easter party.”

  Erin recalled how Amy looked bobbing around her bedroom wearing the bulbous nose and floozy red wig. “She was looking forward to doing it.”

  “Well, when she wakes up in the hospital, you tell her not to worry about it. And you tell her that all the children will miss her terribly, but that she can come to next years Christmas party and play the clown.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “I’ll find someone to fill in for her, but I’ve never had a nicer clown than Amy. And the kids are just crazy about her.” Miss Hutton rested her briefcase on a nearby water fountain adding, “Before I forget … here’s some of Amy’s papers—assignments, tests, reports and such. They’re graded, and I thought you might show them to her when she’s recovering. The grades are good, so they might cheer her up.” The older woman smiled broadly and handed over a sheaf of papers.

  Erin mumbled “Thanks,” and shoved them into her duffel bag, then left the school pondering Miss Hutton’s words. She’d often thought of Amy as “scatterbrained” and “silly,” as a show-off who could never say no. But she realized how warm and giving Amy was too. Erin told herself that she had much to share with her sister when she came out of her coma—and a lot to make up for.

  At the hospital Erin relieved her mother, who looked about ready to drop. “You call me at home if there’s any change,” Mrs. Bennett told her before leaving. Erin promised, then settled in for the long afternoon vigil.

  In the sun-filled waiting room Erin recognized a few faces from the night before, but she kept to herself, too tired to socialize or make friends. She snuggled into a chair. A television soap opera droned in the background. The chair felt soft and cozy. Erin’s eyelids drooped, and her head nodded downward.

  She dreamed that she and Amy were unwrapping gifts, but Amy had a long hose attached to her mouth, and she couldn’t laugh. Erin tried to reach over and pull the tube out, but her hand kept knocking against an invisible glass wall, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get through it.

  The warmth of the dream gave way to anxiety, and Erin’s heart began to pound. She reached out toward her sister, who kept busy and was oblivious to her. She heard someone calling her name. From far away the voice beckoned, “Wake up, Erin. Wake up.”

  She jumped, suddenly awak
e, and found her arms wrapped around Travis’s neck.

  Confused, and then extremely embarrassed, Erin let go of Travis and pressed hard into the back of the chair. She mumbled his name, still trying to separate the dream from reality. What was he doing here in the middle of a school day?

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I think so.” Her face burned. “I–I guess I fell asleep.”

  He rose from his crouched position and dropped into the chair next to her. “You look tired.”

  “What time is it?”

  He looked up at the wall clock. “One o’clock. I—uh—didn’t go to school today. I called the hospital, but they only said Amy was in fair condition, so I decided to drive over and check things out. What’s happening?”

  “There’s no change. She’s still in a coma. My folks and I are taking turns staying round the clock until Amy wakes up.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “The doctors don’t know.”

  Travis’s expression fell. “That stinks.”

  Erin shifted and straightened out her leg, which had cramped. She got a sudden idea. “Would you like to go in and see her?”

  “I—uh—I thought only family could go inside.”

  “They’ll let you in if I ask them.”

  He looked hesitant and wary. “Gee, Erin, I don’t know.…”

  She wanted him to come with her. Somehow she felt she owed it to Amy because Amy cared about him so much. “Please, Travis. When she’s better, she’ll ask if you came. You know how Amy can be if she thinks someone isn’t thinking about her one hundred percent of the time.”

  “I’ll never hear the end of it,” he said, his smile softening the look of panic on his face. “After I took you to the concert and after I told her the details, all she asked was, ‘Did you miss me?’ As if I thought about anything else all night.”

  His confession stung Erin, making her realize how one-sided her feelings for him really were. She stood up. “Come on, Travis, come see Amy with me. Talk to her. The nurses said that it’s important to talk to people in comas. They told me that patients often wake up and tell them that even though they couldn’t respond, they remember hearing someone talking to them and encouraging them.”