In all of the thirty-three years she'd been alive, Nora had never been a nailbiter. As a small girl, she'd chewed on the ends of her hair, she used to wind her curls around her fingers while she was worried about something and, admittedly, she'd ruined far too many coats of nail polish by scraping it off of her nails with her teeth (a habit she would never have admitted to having, but explained why she seldom wore nail polish.) In spite of all of that, Nora had never bitten her nails. . . before tonight.
She looked down at her fingertips. Her cuticles were sore and bleeding, her nails bitten down to the quick. She hadn't realized she was doing that, even though it must have hurt. It was six AM. She'd been waiting for five hours.
The nurse who'd paid her a visit earlier had given her name as Linda Goodrich; Nora made a mental note to send her flowers later. Even if. . . the worst was to happen, Linda had still helped a lot, and Nora appreciated that more than she could have expressed in words. She glanced at the clock again. 6:02.
The door opened quietly. "Dr. Conway?" came a voice. "He's out of surgery."
Nora exhaled; he'd made it this far. "How. . ."
The nurse, a different one this time, shook her head. "It's too early to tell," she said. "I'm sorry."
Nora nodded, swallowing hard. "Can I see him?"
"He's in recovery," the nurse told her. "Of course you can."
Oh, God, Nora thought. She walked onto the recovery room slowly, flinching when she saw all the tubes, wires and monitors he was hooked up to. She knew what most of them were there for, and they weren't reassuring.
Nora said it out loud. "Oh, God."
The nurse nodded. She had short, dark hair, tendrils peeking out from beneath the surgeon's cap on her head. "I don't know how he's hanging on."
Nora reached her hand out, but she didn't know if she could touch Isaac without hurting him even more. He was still intubated; his lower lip already slightly swollen from the friction of rubbing against the breathing tube. His skin was an off-white tinged with gray; he was incredibly still.
Both of Isaac's hands had been stitched and rebandaged; he couldn't have made a fist now if he'd been awake enough to try. There were three butterfly bandages affixed next to his left eye; Kathleen had come dangerously close to blinding him. His entire abdomen, from an inch and a half or so below his belly-button all the way to his sternum, was swathed in bandages. Two heart monitor patches were affixed to each side of his chest; Nora took comfort in the steady beeping that filled the room.
A tube snaked along Isaac's ribcage and disappeared under the bandages, held steady with tape. He'd punctured a lung and a few of his ribs were broken. IVs were affixed to both of his arms, one carrying dark red blood that hung from the pole above the bed. A third line was taped just below his left collarbone, leading directly to the arteries around his heart. There wasn't a single place on Isaac's body Nora could touch without dislodging a tube, disturbing a monitor or hurting him.
"Nora," John Callaghan was a skilled surgeon, someone who'd repaired a lot of gruesome injuries during his career, but this case had been one of the hardest he'd ever had to deal with, mentally anyway. Now, he paused at the end of the bed, his exhausted eyes filled with no small bit of concern. "He pulled through." He sighed. "I didn't think he was going to, for awhile there. We were this close to losing him, I swear to God." He closed his eyes. "I hope they fry that mother."
Nora swallowed. "I guess we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it."
"He. . . when we opened him up. . ." John shook his head. "His blood levels were all weird, in the lab. Too many white cells. . . he had an infection, and. . . other findings that couldn't really be related to this type of injury."
Nora felt goosebumps rise on her skin. "What else is wrong?" She didn't know if she wanted to know.
John shook his head. "You probably couldn't tell in the E.R., because of all the damage, but he had underlying internal injuries. . . and a massive infection. I mean, he must have been going around for about a week like this."
Nora sucked in her breath. "Oh, God. . . a week?"
John nodded. "Yeah, it's incredible to think about. I can't imagine how he did it. . . but he must have, somehow."
Nora swallowed hard. "He was at our house a couple of days ago. . . he was running a fever, but he didn't tell me that his stomach hurt or anything. . ."
"You couldn't have known unless he told you," John assured her.
Nora sighed. "Oh, God. . ." She felt saddened, shocked and incredibly guilty. If she'd only known what was wrong a few days ago, all of this could have been avoided.
"You couldn't have known!" John insisted. "If you had known, you would have done something."
Nora swallowed hard; she was almost about to cry. She would have done something, had she known. She would have done anything to get the boys away from Kathleen. She could have averted this. . . but she hadn't.
It didn't occur to Nora that she'd had no way of knowing about Isaac's injuries except through Isaac himself; if he had decided not to tell her, there wouldn't have been any way she could have inferred what, exactly was wrong. Little kids got sick and ran fevers all the time; it would have been illogical to suspect that whatever was wrong with Isaac was anything worse than that.
"If he makes it through the next forty-eight hours without any major complications," John said, "I'd give him a pretty good chance of surviving." He yawned, rubbing his eyes. "I wish I could stay and wait with you, but I have to be getting home."
"Thank you," Nora said. "You saved his life."
John shrugged, smiling. "I did my job. I hope I saved his life." He looked back at Isaac, swallowing. "I really hope I did. . ."
"Oh!" Nora suddenly remembered something. "I'd really like to thank the nurse... Linda Goodrich?"
"The nurse?" John raised an eyebrow. "Linda Goodrich?"
"Yeah," Nora agreed. "She came out right after he went into cardiac arrest to tell me what had happened. She was really, really helpful. . . I want to do something for her."
"Linda Goodrich?" John stared at Nora as if she were crazy.
Nora nodded. "Yeah, I actually wrote her name down so I'd be sure to remember it."
"And you say she came out right after he went into cardiac arrest?" John pressed.
"At about a quarter after three," Nora agreed. "Maybe a little bit after. . ." She paused. "I hope I haven't gotten her in trouble."
John shook his head. "No. . . but there isn't a nurse on the staff named Linda Goodrich."
Nora raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?"
"No." John swallowed hard. "And he didn't go into cardiac arrest until at least a quarter to four. . . I remember looking at the clock on the wall." His eyes were wide.
Nora felt goosebumps rise on her arms. "Oh my God. . ." She bit her lip. "I'm not making this up, John. I mean, I guess at worst I could have dreamed it and it seemed real, but. . . it just seemed so real. . ."
John shook his head. "I believe you," he said, sincerely, and that was all he said.
Nora had moved a chair up next to the bed and had folded her arms on top of the guardrail, resting her chin on her wrist. She could feel her eyelids sliding closed, but she willed herself to stay awake. She wanted to be there when Isaac came out from under the anesthesia.
It took awhile; he'd been heavily sedated. Nora eventually decided he wouldn't break if she touched him; she extended an experimental finger and traced it down his arm, as gently as possible. He's alive, she thought, and the fact that he'd made it this far seemed to her miraculous.
Isaac flinched before he opened his eyes, his body stiffening as the anesthetic wore off and he was met with sheer, raw pain, worse than he'd ever felt in his life. Every atom of his being was screaming in agony. He felt like he'd been hit by a truck. He couldn't even yell. . . the tube was still down his throat, preventing him from making any noise.
His eyes met Nora's, and she could see the terror in them. "It's going to be okay, sweetie," she whispered. "You're going to be okay."
Isaac couldn't comprehend what she'd said. It seemed that everything going on around him was happening somewhere very far away, and in a different language. He closed his eyes.
"We're going to give him some morphine," a nurse told Nora. "That should help for about three hours."
Nora nodded. "How much pain do you think he's in right now?"
The nurse shook her head. "I don't think we have any way of knowing."