On Monday morning, the birthday boy was walking to school with another boy. They were passing a bag of potato chips back and forth and the birthday boy was trying to find out what his friend intended to give him for his birthday that afternoon. Without looking, the birthday boy stepped off the curb at an intersection and was immediately knocked down by a car. He fell on his side with his head in the gutter and his legs out in the road. His eyes were closed, but his legs moved back and forth as if he were trying to climb over something. His friend dropped the potato chips and started to cry. The car had gone a hundred feet or so and stopped in the middle of the road. The man in the driver’s seat looked back over his shoulder. He waited until the boy got unsteadily to his feet. The boy wobbled a little. He looked dazed, but okay. The driver put the car into gear and drove away.
The birthday boy didn’t cry, but he didn’t have anything to say about anything either. He wouldn’t answer when his friend asked him what it felt like to be hit by a car. He walked home, and his friend went on to school. But after the birthday boy was inside his house and was telling his mother about it – she sitting beside him on the sofa, holding his hands in her lap, saying, “Scotty, honey, are you sure you feel all right, baby?” thinking she would call the doctor anyway – he suddenly lay back on the sofa, closed his eyes, and went limp. When she couldn’t wake him up, she hurried to the telephone and called her husband at work. Howard told her to remain calm, remain calm, and then he called an ambulance for the child and left for the hospital himself.
Of course, the birthday party was canceled. The child was in the hospital with a mild concussion and suffering from shock. There’d been vomiting, and his lungs had taken in fluid which needed pumping out that afternoon. Now he simply seemed to be in a very deep sleep – but no coma, Dr. Francis had emphasized, no coma, when he saw the alarm in the parents’ eyes. At eleven o’clock that night, when the boy seemed to be resting comfortably enough after the many X-rays and the lab work, and it was just a matter of his waking up and coming around, Howard left the hospital. He and Ann had been at the hospital with the child since that afternoon, and he was going home for a short while to bathe and change clothes. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said. She nodded. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be right here.” He kissed her on the forehead, and they touched hands. She sat in the chair beside the bed and looked at the child. She was waiting for him to wake up and be all right. Then she could begin to relax.
Howard drove home from the hospital. He took the wet, dark streets very fast, then caught himself and slowed down. Until now, his life had gone smoothly and to his satisfaction – college, marriage, another year of college for the advanced degree in business, a junior partnership in an investment firm. Fatherhood. He was happy and, so far, lucky – he knew that. His parents were still living, his brothers and his sister were established, his friends from college had gone out to take their places in the world. So far, he had kept away from any real harm, from those forces he knew existed and that could cripple or bring down a man if the luck went bad, if things suddenly turned. He pulled into the driveway and parked. His left leg began to tremble. He sat in the car for a minute and tried to deal with the present situation in a rational manner. Scotty had been hit by a car and was in the hospital, but he was going to be all right. Howard closed his eyes and ran his hand over his face. He got out of the car and went up to the front door. The dog was barking inside the house. The telephone rang and rang while he unlocked the door and fumbled for the light switch. He shouldn’t have left the hospital, he shouldn’t have. “Goddamn it!” he said. He picked up the receiver and said, “I just walked in the door!”
“There’s a cake here that wasn’t picked up,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
“What are you saying?” Howard asked.
“A cake,” the voice said. “A sixteen-dollar cake.”
Howard held the receiver against his ear, trying to understand. “I don’t know anything about a cake,” he said. “Jesus, what are you talking about?”
“Don’t hand me that,” the voice said.
Howard hung up the telephone. He went into the kitchen and poured himself some whiskey. He called the hospital. But the child’s condition remained the same; he was still sleeping and nothing had changed there. While water poured into the tub, Howard lathered his face and shaved. He’d just stretched out in the tub and closed his eyes when the telephone rang again. He hauled himself out, grabbed a towel, and hurried through the house, saying, “Stupid, stupid,” for having left the hospital. But when he picked up the receiver and shouted, “Hello!” there was no sound at the other end of the line. Then the caller hung up.
He arrived back at the hospital a little after midnight. Ann still sat in the chair beside the bed. She looked up at Howard, and then she looked back at the child. The child’s eyes stayed closed, the head was still wrapped in bandages. His breathing was quiet and regular. From an apparatus over the bed hung a bottle of glucose with a tube running from the bottle to the boy’s arm.
“How is he?” Howard said. “What’s all this?” waving at the glucose and the tube.
“Dr. Francis’s orders,” she said. “He needs nourishment. He needs to keep up his strength. Why doesn’t he wake up, Howard? I don’t understand, if he’s all right.”
Howard put his hand against the back of her head. He ran his fingers through her hair. “He’s going to be all right. He’ll wake up in a little while. Dr. Francis knows what’s what.”
After a time, he said, “Maybe you should go home and get some rest. I’ll stay here. Just don’t put up with this creep who keeps calling. Hang up right away.”
“Who’s calling?” she asked.
“I don’t know who, just somebody with nothing better to do than call up people. You go on now.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m fine.”
“Really,” he said. “Go home for a while, and then come back and spell me in the morning. It’ll be all right. What did Dr. Francis say? He said Scotty’s going to be all right. We don’t have to worry. He’s just sleeping now, that’s all.”
A nurse pushed the door open. She nodded at them as she went to the bedside. She took the left arm out from under the covers and put her fingers on the wrist, found the pulse, then consulted her watch. In a little while, she put the arm back under the covers and moved to the foot of the bed, where she wrote something on a clipboard attached to the bed.
“How is he?” Ann said. Howard’s hand was a weight on her shoulder. She was aware of the pressure from his fingers.
“He’s stable,” the nurse said. Then she said, “Doctor will be in again shortly. Doctor’s back in the hospital. He’s making rounds right now.”
“I was saying maybe she’d want to go home and get a little rest,” Howard said. “After the doctor comes,” he said.
“She could do that,” the nurse said. “I think you should both feel free to do that, if you wish.” The nurse was a big Scandinavian woman with blond hair. There was the trace of an accent in her speech.
“We’ll see what the doctor says,” Ann said. “I want to talk to the doctor. I don’t think he should keep sleeping like this. I don’t think that’s a good sign.” She brought her hand up to her eyes and let her head come forward a little. Howard’s grip tightened on her shoulder, and then his hand moved up to her neck, where his fingers began to knead the muscles there.
“Dr. Francis will be here in a few minutes,” the nurse said. Then she left the room.
Howard gazed at his son for a time, the small chest quietly rising and falling under the covers. For the first time since the terrible minutes after Ann’s telephone call to him at his office, he felt a genuine fear starting in his limbs. He began shaking his head. Scotty was fine, but instead of sleeping at home in his own bed, he was in a hospital bed with bandages around his head and a tube in his arm. But this help was what he needed right now.
Dr. Francis came in and shook ha
nds with Howard, though they’d just seen each other a few hours before. Ann got up from the chair. “Doctor?”
“Ann,” he said and nodded. “Let’s just first see how he’s doing,” the doctor said. He moved to the side of the bed and took the boy’s pulse. He peeled back one eyelid and then the other. Howard and Ann stood beside the doctor and watched. Then the doctor turned back the covers and listened to the boy’s heart and lungs with his stethoscope. He pressed his fingers here and there on the abdomen. When he was finished, he went to the end of the bed and studied the chart. He noted the time, scribbled something on the chart, and then looked at Howard and Ann.
“Doctor, how is he?” Howard said. “What’s the matter with him exactly?”
“Why doesn’t he wake up?” Ann said.
The doctor was a handsome, big-shouldered man with a tanned face. He wore a three-piece blue suit, a striped tie, and ivory cuff links. His gray hair was combed along the sides of his head, and he looked as if he had just come from a concert. “He’s all right,” the doctor said. “Nothing to shout about, he could be better, I think. But he’s all right. Still, I wish he’d wake up. He should wake up pretty soon.” The doctor looked at the boy again. “We’ll know some more in a couple of hours, after the results of a few more tests are in. But he’s all right, believe me, except for the hairline fracture of the skull. He does have that.”
“Oh, no,” Ann said.
“And a bit of a concussion, as I said before. Of course, you know he’s in shock,” the doctor said. “Sometimes you see this in shock cases. This sleeping.”
“But he’s out of any real danger?” Howard said. “You said before he’s not in a coma. You wouldn’t call this a coma, then – would you, doctor?” Howard waited. He looked at the doctor.
“No, I don’t want to call it a coma,” the doctor said and glanced over at the boy once more. “He’s just in a very deep sleep. It’s a restorative measure the body is taking on its own. He’s out of any real danger, I’d say that for certain, yes. But we’ll know more when he wakes up and the other tests are in,” the doctor said.
“It’s a coma,” Ann said. “Of sorts.”
“It’s not a coma yet, not exactly,” the doctor said. “I wouldn’t want to call it coma. Not yet, anyway. He’s suffered shock. In shock cases, this kind of reaction is common enough; it’s a temporary reaction to bodily trauma. Coma. Well, coma is a deep, prolonged unconsciousness, something that could go on for days, or weeks even. Scotty’s not in that area, not as far as we can tell. I’m certain his condition will show improvement by morning. I’m betting that it will. We’ll know more when he wakes up, which shouldn’t be long now. Of course, you may do as you like, stay here or go home for a time. But by all means feel free to leave the hospital for a while if you want. This is not easy, I know.” The doctor gazed at the boy again, watching him, and then he turned to Ann and said, “You try not to worry, little mother. Believe me, we’re doing all that can be done. It’s just a question of a little more time now.” He nodded at her, shook hands with Howard again, and then he left the room.
Ann put her hand over the child’s forehead. “At least he doesn’t have a fever,” she said. Then she said, “My God, he feels so cold, though. Howard? Is he supposed to feel like this? Feel his head.”
Howard touched the child’s temples. His own breathing had slowed. “I think he’s supposed to feel this way right now,” he said. “He’s in shock, remember? That’s what the doctor said. The doctor was just in here. He would have said something if Scotty wasn’t okay.”
Ann stood there a while longer, working her lip with her teeth. Then she moved over to her chair and sat down.
Howard sat in the chair next to her chair. They looked at each other. He wanted to say something else and reassure her, but he was afraid, too. He took her hand and put it in his lap, and this made him feel better, her hand being there. He picked up her hand and squeezed it. Then he just held her hand. They sat like that for a while, watching the boy and not talking. From time to time, he squeezed her hand. Finally, she took her hand away.
“I’ve been praying,” she said.
He nodded.
She said, “I almost thought I’d forgotten how, but it came back to me. All I had to do was close my eyes and say, ‘Please God, help us – help Scotty,’ and then the rest was easy. The words were right there. Maybe if you prayed, too,” she said to him.
“I’ve already prayed,” he said. “I prayed this afternoon – yesterday afternoon, I mean – after you called, while I was driving to the hospital. I’ve been praying,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said. For the first time, she felt they were together in it, this trouble. She realized with a start that, until now, it had only been happening to her and to Scotty. She hadn’t let Howard into it, though he was there and needed all along. She felt glad to be his wife.
The same nurse came in and took the boy’s pulse again and checked the flow from the bottle hanging above the bed.
In an hour, another doctor came in. He said his name was Parsons, from Radiology. He had a bushy moustache. He was wearing loafers, a western shirt, and a pair of jeans.
“We’re going to take him downstairs for more pictures,” he told them. “We need to do some more pictures, and we want to do a scan.”
“What’s that?” Ann said. “A scan?” She stood between this new doctor and the bed. “I thought you’d already taken all your X-rays.”
“I’m afraid we need some more,” he said. “Nothing to be alarmed about. We just need some more pictures, and we want to do a brain scan on him.”
“My God,” Ann said.
“It’s perfectly normal procedure in cases like this,” this new doctor said. “We just need to find out for sure why he isn’t back awake yet. It’s normal medical procedure, and nothing to be alarmed about. We’ll be taking him down in a few minutes,” this doctor said.
In a little while, two orderlies came into the room with a gurney. They were black-haired, dark-complexioned men in white uniforms, and they said a few words to each other in a foreign tongue as they unhooked the boy from the tube and moved him from his bed to the gurney. Then they wheeled him from the room. Howard and Ann got on the same elevator. Ann gazed at the child. She closed her eyes as the elevator began its descent. The orderlies stood at either end of the gurney without saying anything, though once one of the men made a comment to the other in their own language, and the other man nodded slowly in response.
Later that morning, just as the sun was beginning to lighten the windows in the waiting room outside the X-ray department, they brought the boy out and moved him back up to his room. Howard and Ann rode up on the elevator with him once more, and once more they took up their places beside the bed.
They waited all day, but still the boy did not wake up. Occasionally, one of them would leave the room to go downstairs to the cafeteria to drink coffee and then, as if suddenly remembering and feeling guilty, get up from the table and hurry back to the room. Dr. Francis came again that afternoon and examined the boy once more and then left after telling them he was coming along and could wake up at any minute now. Nurses, different nurses from the night before, came in from time to time. Then a young woman from the lab knocked and entered the room. She wore white slacks and a white blouse and carried a little tray of things which she put on the stand beside the bed. Without a word to them, she took blood from the boy’s arm. Howard closed his eyes as the woman found the right place on the boy’s arm and pushed the needle in.
“I don’t understand this,” Ann said to the woman.
“Doctor’s orders,” the young woman said. “I do what I’m told. They say draw that one, I draw. What’s wrong with him, anyway?” she said. “He’s a sweetie.”
“He was hit by a car,” Howard said. “A hit-and-run.”
The young woman shook her head and looked again at the boy. Then she took her tray and left the room.
“Why won’t he wake up?” A
nn said. “Howard? I want some answers from these people.”
Howard didn’t say anything. He sat down again in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. He rubbed his face. He looked at his son and then he settled back in the chair, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
Ann walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot. It was night, and cars were driving into and out of the parking lot with their lights on. She stood at the window with her hands gripping the sill, and knew in her heart that they were into something now, something hard. She was afraid, and her teeth began to chatter until she tightened her jaws. She saw a big car stop in front of the hospital and someone, a woman in a long coat, get into the car. She wished she were that woman and somebody, anybody, was driving her away from here to somewhere else, a place where she would find Scotty waiting for her when she stepped out of the car, ready to say Mom and let her gather him in her arms.
In a little while, Howard woke up. He looked at the boy again. Then he got up from the chair, stretched, and went over to stand beside her at the window. They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn’t say anything. But they seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way.
The door opened and Dr. Francis came in. He was wearing a different suit and tie this time. His gray hair was combed along the sides of his head, and he looked as if he had just shaved. He went straight to the bed and examined the boy. “He ought to have come around by now. There’s just no good reason for this,” he said. “But I can tell you we’re all convinced he’s out of any danger. We’ll just feel better when he wakes up. There’s no reason, absolutely none, why he shouldn’t come around. Very soon. Oh, he’ll have himself a dilly of a headache when he does, you can count on that. But all of his signs are fine. They’re as normal as can be.”
“It is a coma, then?” Ann said.