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“Morning,” he’d say. “I guess you decided to stick around another day, huh?”
But then Noel pulled away from me, wiping his face, and I was still in a hospital, where I hadn’t seen Oren in six hours, not since he’d looked up from where he was dangling and told me he loved me before letting go of my hand.
A shudder of horror passed through me, wondering if I’d ever look into those vivacious hazel eyes again.
Noel sent me a tremulous smile that was full of grief. “I totally didn’t mean to fall apart on you like that.”
I squeezed his arm. “It’s okay. Just do me a favor and stop talking about him in the past tense. He’s going to be okay. He’s going to make it.”
Pain passed over Noel’s face, but he washed it away with another sad smile and nodded. “You got it.”
With that agreement made, we wrapped our arms around each other and started back to the waiting room, where we realized a doctor in surgical scrubs had arrived. Oren’s parents had reappeared, too.
“Here she is.” Pick motioned to me when I entered the room.
The doctor turned, took me in from head to toe and then nodded before saying, “Mrs. Tenning, I’m Dr. Wolfowitz, the trauma surgeon who worked on your husband. When Oren came in, he was unconscious and in shock. There was significant damage to the left frontal and parietal bone, which probably occurred when he crashed into the log and boulder he was trapped against until they found him. Though that probably saved him from drowning to death, it’s also what caused the most damage. There was so much trauma to the head and spinal cord...”
Was? Why did he keep saying was like everything was all past tense? Like Oren was past tense.
“Other than the brain injury, he has a dislocated shoulder, fractured leg, and significant, permanent scarring to the right side of the face, though we were able to save the damaged eye and ear.”
I gulped and pressed my hand over my mouth. Permanent scarring meant nothing to me. No, actually it meant everything. It meant he was still alive. Saving an eye and ear, that meant they’d saved the rest of him too, right? His heart was still beating?
“So he’s alive?” I rasped the words, almost afraid to voice them.
The doctor hesitated. I have no idea why he hesitated. If Oren’s eye and ear had made it, then the rest of him had to have made it too.
Finally, the doctor gave a small nod. But then he had to go and chase it with, “We had to put him into a medically induced coma to give the brain time to heal.”
“Oh my God.” Brenda covered her mouth with her hands and turned to Phil, where he immediately gathered her into his arms.
I stared at them a moment as the word coma echoed through my ears. But Oren was in a coma. It didn’t even seem possible. The most irritatingly, lively, foulmouthed, loving jerk I’d ever met, and they’d shut down his brain?
A numb void filled me, as if my own brain decided to take a little break too. I studied everyone else in the waiting room—Oren’s parents clutching each other, Zoey sobbing against Quinn’s shoulder as he softly rubbed her abdomen and kissed her hair, Reese and Eva holding hands and looking pale while their men flanked them on either sides, Asher with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his head bowed as he kicked at a piece of his other shoe, and Noel...Noel looking as if he might start bawling all over again—and I just watched them, feeling sad for them, while inside I was just too...too scared to feel anything at all.
But then Noel grabbed me and hauled me into his arms, and that first painful bite of fear sank its teeth into my jugular. I went cold and started to shake.
“You said medically induced,” Phil repeated as he stroked his wife’s arm and nodded to the doctor.
When Dr. Wolfowitz confirmed it, Phil asked, “So that means you’ll bring him out of it too? How...how long will he be under?”
“It depends. We’ll lighten the barbiturates as soon as the swelling begins to recede. If the level of function is good, we’l
l bring him out completely.”
I shook my head, unable to believe most of this. Oren-not-functioning just wasn’t something I could configure in my thought process. He was always on the go, never stayed still, never really stopped talking. He always had a comeback for everything, always had some kind of reaction. Picturing him lying still and unconscious—reactionless—in a sterile white hospital bed just didn’t fit with the man I’d fallen in love with and married.
But then I didn’t have to picture it in my head any longer. Two hours later, I got to see it for myself. Visitors were finally allowed into his intensive care unit, two at a time and only for ten-minute spans once an hour, but none of us waiting to see him cared about a few rules. We were willing to do anything—wait any length—for even the smallest amount of time with Oren.
The nurse looked to me when she came out to allow the first two people in, but I stepped back and motioned toward his parents, letting them go first. I swear, they went over their time allotment, though. Every freaking second felt like a millennium. When they exited, both their faces were wet and they looked ten years older than when they had gone back. Brenda met my gaze briefly, then quickly looked away again.
I turned to Noel for support. He took my hand and gave me a bolstering nod. “Just one more hour.”
I nodded back because I couldn’t speak. When our time finally came, my fingers squeezed around my brother’s arm as fear squeezed around my heart. I hated the sight of blood and gore, and seeing Oren damaged because of what he’d done to save me made it all that much more distressing.
He was in a coma with permanent scarring, a swollen brain, and broken bones because of me.
But then there he was, and I forgot about all that. I was finally able to see my precious, precious man. With a gasp, I let go of Noel and raced forward. A cast covered his elevated leg, and they’d put one arm in a sling while half his head was wrapped in bandages. A tube fed into his mouth, giving him oxygen while IVs and heart monitors led various other hoses into him as well. The part of his face we could see was fairly swollen, but I could still tell it was him.
