Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Can I come with you?” I plead.

The attendant looks at me, “Sure you can, or you can follow us to The General.” They slide her into the back of the truck and one of the attendants jumps in with her and places an oxygen mask over her face. Pull yourself together, she’s in good hands now, I tell myself. “Ok, I’ll follow.” They put her into the ambulance. I close the car door on her side and then get into my car.

I try dialing her house to tell her parents what happened but there is no answer, so I leave a message. I call my mother and give her a quick rendition of what happened, so she can try to get in touch with Isabella’s mom while I stay with her at the hospital. I force myself to drive calmly even though I just want to floor it the entire way.

When I get there, they have her in the examining room. They are in the midst of transferring her onto a stretcher when I catch a glimpse of her eyes opening, “She’s awake!” I exclaim.

They finish the transfer and a nurse attaches a portable blood pressure machine to her arm to take her vitals again. The ambulance drivers are reporting the events that took place in the field to the nurse as she makes her notes. I looked at the machine attached to Isabella and her pulse has increased to 80 and her blood pressure was now 82/50. “My head,” she complains.

A doctor casually strolls in wearing the name badge, ‘Dr. Philip’. He is an older gentleman who appears friendly and calm, “What do we have here?”

The nurse looks at the attendants, “Thanks, you guys can go now.” She dismisses them, and they nod leaving the curtained examining room. “We have a 16-year-old girl who was getting into a car when she collapsed losing consciousness. She has some sort of bleed going on in the back of her head, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

“Order a c.t. of the head to rule out a bleed, complete blood count, electrolytes, and,” he pauses looking up at me, “is there a chance she might be pregnant?” I nod, “And a human chorionic gonadotropin level.” He gives me a look before explaining, “That’s a pregnancy test boy.”

The nurse continues, “Initial vitals were: BP 74/44, Heart rate 50, respirations 10, 02 Sat 88. The attendants stabilized her head and put her on 100% non-rebreather, started a bolus of normal saline and now her vitals are: blood pressure 82/50, heart rate 80, 02 saturations 100% on a 100% non-rebreather with a respiration rate of 12. She came too when we transferred her onto the stretcher.”

“Let’s take a look at her head,” he instructs the nurse. Isabella’s eyes open again as the doctor starts examining her. “Hi sweetheart, do you know where you are?”

“In the hospital,” she seems unsure.

“Do you remember what happened?” he asks.

“I was getting into a car.” She was trying to remember more of what happened, but it doesn’t seem to come to her.

“Yes, that’s right and you had a bit of a fall. Can you tell me what day it is?”

“Thursday.” “Month?” he asks. “November.”

“The last thing you ate?” “A banana.”

The doctor continues, “Memory is intact. Place her on telemetry to rule out any kind of dysrhythmia.” The nurse holds her head up as he unwraps the bandage and looks at it, “She’ll need stitches. Shave around the site. Have the suture kit and 1% lidocaine ready, I’ll be back in a few minutes!” The nurse leaves to collect the supplies as Isabella lays there silently. When she comes back, the nurse begins to shave around the area that’s bleeding. Tears begin rolling down her cheeks at the sound of the loud razor cutting off her hair.

nurse throws a few handfuls of long strands of my hair into the garbage. Scott sits silently by my side watching the entire time, his thumb wiping away my tears.

The nurse then proceeds to draw blood which she sends to the lab and starts removing my dress. Scott quickly gets up to leave and the nurse gives him a curious look and then shrugs. She must have assumed he’s seen me before and doesn’t know why he’s leaving the room. When the heart monitor is placed on my chest, she calls out, “You can come back now.”

Scott and the doctor come back into the room and the doctor starts aspirating with a syringe the lidocaine from the vile with a needle. He explains everything he’s going to do before doing it. “I’m going to freeze you locally with this injection which will sting, but then it shouldn’t hurt when I start suturing. It looks like you’re going to need about seven stitches. They are dissolvable, so you won’t have to get them removed.”

I close my eyes and take the painful needle into my open wound stoically. The doctor and nurse start talking about a movie they both watched called Money heist while they work on closing me. I glanced up at Scott, “Does mom know?”

He shakes his head, “I tried calling her but there was no answer, so I left a message, I have my mother working on that.”

Another lady in scrubs comes into the room, “They called her down for c.t. now.”

The doctor looks up, “I need a few more minutes.” “Okay,” she says, “I’ll tell them.”

“Has someone inserted a 20 gage i.v. into her? They’re going to want to use contrast.”

“Yes,” my nurse answers.

True to the doctor’s word, he finishes a few minutes later and then raises the railing of my stretcher. The nurse and Scott start rolling me to my c.t. scan. Scott is asked to wait outside while the c.t. technician and the nurse transfer me from their stretcher to the c.t. machine. I lay still for several minutes while the test is being performed and then they transfer me back onto my stretcher. The nurse rolls me out into the hallway and then we go back to my curtained examining room.

The nurse locks the stretcher in place and leaves me alone with Scott. “Are you okay?” he asks. I nod yes. “Do you want me to call anyone?” I nod no. I just don’t have it in me to speak to him. “I just came up with a Name for you now,” Scott says lightly.

I look at him waiting to hear it.

“Patch!” he teases.

“It’s better than your name,” I say a little spitefully.

“I have a Name?”

“Anna and Lara came up with it.”

He rakes his fingers through his wisps, “What is it?” “I’m not telling you,” I taunt.

“Tell me!”

“No!”

“Tell me,” he persists softly.

“Alpha Orgasm!” I giggle.

His nose crinkles up and his eyes widen a little, “Why?”

“Anna thinks your bossy but cute,” I explain knowing full well she is going to kill me when she finds out I told him.

His hand covers mine and we stay companionably silent until the doctor returns, “Kids, you’ll be happy to know that you’re not pregnant. Your electrolytes are out of balance and we’d like to correct them overnight and monitor your heart. I am admitting you for observation. If you’re okay, you’ll be able to go home tomorrow.”

They wheel me into a room on a medical floor. I continue to have a drip going into my arm and the telemetry pack from the Emergency Department is replaced with a different heart monitor that can monitor me on my new floor. Scott sits on a chair close to my bed. I gaze at his hand which is still covering mine making me feel safe and secure, “I owe you an apology,” I admit.

His tender gaze locks onto mine, “There’s no need.” “There’s every need,” I argue.

“I’m so sorry for losing it at the arena this morning and slapping you.” “Don’t be,” he says quietly, “just get better.”

Our eyes don’t budge from one another. Loads of electricity pulse through my body. Oh my, I’m starting to like him.

The serious look in his eyes alone is pivotal in our relationship, immediately I know it’s mutual. Everything is less coherent and yet way more real. We don’t need words; these new feelings have a life of their own.

PARENTS

I’m sitting up in bed having my dinner and Scott is eating a sandwich from Tim’s next to me, when Mrs. Brandon comes knocking on the door, “Oh dear, what happened?”

“She fainted and cut her head open mom, Doctor Philip said she was dehydrated.”

“Let me see,” she says.

I moved my head for her to see my stitches and she gasps, “Oh My God!”

“So, are they keeping her?” She asks.

“Just overnight. Did you get a hold of her parents?” “Ya, they’re coming.”

Mom and dad knock on the door only minutes later.

“Come in,” I call.

They peek their heads into the door and see that there are no more chairs in my room. Mom and dad say, “We’re going to get more chairs.”

They disappeared back into the hallway assumedly looking for more chairs. They came back with two, “We stole them,” dad says mischievously! Leave it to him!

Mrs. Brandon informs mom, “She’s fine, they’re just keeping her in for observation. She fainted and cut her head open on Scott’s car. Take a look! The doctor who saw her said she was dehydrated.”

Mom looks at my head, “Oh my God!”

Dad gets up and looks too but he doesn’t have that same grossed-out, horrified look that the moms have. “How do you feel Honey?” Dad asks.

He kissed me on the forehead before sitting back down on his stolen chair.

“Better, thanks.”

Mrs. Brandon looks at Scott, “Do you want to tell me what happened on the ice this morning? Coach Tammy called, he told me you guys were fighting and she slapped you in the face.”

“That about covers it,” Scott said evasively. “It won’t happen again.” “I should hope not,” she says indignantly. “Mr. Tammy told me that if he sees one more outburst like that on the ice, you guys can find another coach.”

Mom looks shocked, “This is the first I heard of this! What were you two doing fighting on the ice?”

“It was stupid,” Scott sloughed it off. “I deserved the slap.” “No, you didn’t,” I told Scott.

“That’s my girl,” dad says proudly, “feisty!”

The hospital announces the end of visiting hours, everyone stands except for Scott. Mrs. Brandon glances at him, “I’ll see you at home?”

Scott runs his fingers through his hair, “No, I want to stay with Isabella, make sure she’s all right. The nurses said I can.”

Mrs. Brandon looks at my mother for approval, “That’s fine with me,” she reassures. They kissed me on the forehead just as they are about to leave when I stop mom, “Can you tell Anna and Lara what happened.”

“Sure Honey, give your phone to me and I’ll do it when I get home.”

The room gets quiet after they all leave, and we are tired. I squish over to one side of my bed making room for Scott. I open the covers for him to join me.

“I was so scared for you, Patch” he confesses, as I rest my head in his arm.

“It is over now, Alpha,” I reassure. We savor our quiet time together, drifting off to sleep our breathing becomes synchronous.