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I wipe the drool from my mouth as I move into a sitting position. “Yeah,” I reply.
“I’m Luke, Caleb’s brother.”
“Oh.” I glance around the waiting room, looking for his mother or someone else. Panic sets in as I stare at the triage desk, waiting for an answer. “How is he? Have you talked to him?”
“They’ve put him in a room, and he’s being prepped for surgery.”
“Surgery?” I ask in a panic.
“It’s nothing major,” he replies, trying to calm me. “They just have to put a few screws in his arm to set the bone.”
I slap my hand over my mouth. The grotesque sight of Sean’s foot stomping on Caleb’s arm reenters my mind. “Oh my god.”
“They’re only letting his family back right now, but the nurses said you slept out here all night.”
Suddenly, I want to cry. Exhaustion, fear, and adrenaline have my head pounding.
“I had to,” I wail. “The ambulance came and got him, and then they said to wait here, but it’s been all night.” My voice is shaking with emotion.
“Okay, okay. It’s all right.”
“I just want to see him,” I cry.
“I know you do,” he mumbles. “Let me see what I can do.”
Wiping the tears and streaks of makeup from under my eyes, I watch Caleb’s brother walk to the triage desk of the emergency room. He leans down and gives the nurse behind the counter a flirtatious grin. She glances my way, giving me a stern look before turning back toward him.
After a moment, she nods and gestures at me. I scurry from my chair, and when I reach them, Lucas wraps an arm around my shoulders.
“If anyone asks, you’re his wife, okay?”
“Okay,” I stammer nervously.
The nurse stands up and walks us through the large door leading to the emergency room. We go down a long hallway and up the elevator until we reach the third floor. When she opens one of the doors on the right, and I see Caleb lying there, I begin to cry again.
“Caleb,” I sob, rushing to his side.
His mother is there, holding his good hand in hers, and it looks as if she’s praying quietly to herself.
When she lifts her eyes to look at me, I can tell she’s been crying too. Wiping away my own tears, I brush his hair from his forehead. The bruises and swelling around his face make my heart ache with remorse.
“They’ve pumped him so full of pain meds he’s not waking up right now,” his mother says softly.
“As long as he’s not in any pain,” I reply.
When I feel his mother’s skeptical eyes on my face, I want to say something, but I don’t know what. I want to apologize because this happened because of me, but I don’t quite know how much they know. I’m sure they have questions as to why their son was so badly beaten at a party after a football game. But if they knew the truth, that it was because of me, would they hate me?
If it was my son, I would.
Luke scoots a chair up behind me and allows me to sit at Caleb’s side. His mother holds his left hand while his right is bandaged and resting against his chest. Since I have no hand to hold, I just continue brushing the soft hair away from his face.
And in my mind, the apology echoes over and over like an incantation. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Present Day
I’m standing at the edge of the pool deck, staring down at the man currently sitting at the bottom, waiting for him to come up for air.
Glancing down at my watch, I time him.
