Chapter 141: The Accident

Warren opened his eyes and looked around. "Where am I?" he asked.

"In an ambulance," a man in a uniform next to him told him.

"What happened?"

"You were in a car accident."

"Jesus. I don't remember a thing."

"You knocked yourself out, but we think you're going to be OK."

"What about my friend, Jessie? The girl in the car with me?"

"I don't know, pal. She's in the other ambluance. What's your name, anyhow?"

"Warren."

"I'm Fred. We'll get you to the hospital and get you fixed up."

"Can someone call my wife?"

"Sure," Fred grinned, and pulled out his cell phone. "Does your wife know you were out with your 'friend'?" he joked.

"Jessie's not just my friend, she's my wife's best friend. She lives with us. We were out grocery shopping. We do all the cooking, so my wife stayed at home with our daughter."

"Nice arrangement," Fred grinned. Oh, if he only knew, Warren thought! "What's your number?"

Warren gave it to him, and the EMT dialed it on his cell phone. He handed the phone to Warren.

"Honey? It's Warren. Don't panic, but there's been an accident. They're taking us to the hospital at the University."

Sophia showed up at the hospital only a few minutes after the ambulances did. She found Warren in the emergency room.

"Oh, Snugglebear!" she hissed, seeing him there.

"Hiya, Pookie."

"You look horrible!"

"Thanks. How's Jess?"

"I don't know, I came to you first."

"Where's Betsy?"

"Paul and Cait have her. Do they know if there's any damage yet?"

"No, but I can tell you-there's something wrong with my right leg."

"Oh, not your leg!"

"Yeah. I don't know what, but it feels like it got run over."

"Oh, Jesus. Do you know what happened?"

"Nope. The last thing I remember was cruising along, talking to Jess about all the fresh herbs she bought. The next thing after that is waking up in the ambluance. Hey, we're not going to know anything until the doc gets here to check me out. Go see if you can find Jess."

"Good idea." She went, and came back a few minutes later.

"Warren? Jessie's still unconscious."

"OK, this is the deal," the doctor was telling Warren, with Sophie there. "Warren, you had a mild concussion, but you'll be fine there. It was very minor, but that's why you were out for a few minutes-that, and shock. You have bruised ribs, but that's minor. The big problem is your right knee.

"It's bad, Warren, I won't minimize it. Both your anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments are torn. There's torn cartilege. It's a mess. You're going to need it reconstructed."

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit," Warren groaned.

"This is repairable, Warren. You'll be able to live a normal life, no problem."

"Will I be able to skate?" he asked. The doctor looked at him questioningly. "Sophia and I are competitive ice dancers. In fact, we're past world champions. And the Olympics are less than a year and a half away."

"Ah," the doctor said. "My honest answer to that? I don't know. However, there's been athletes that have done quite a number on their knees and have come back from it. I'm a skier, myself-purely recreational, but I follow the competitive skiing, and I remember Picabo Street coming back from a hell of a knee injury."

"You're right," Warren said.

"What we're going to do is we're keeping you overnight. Even with a mild head injury, we have to do that. And we're going to have an orthopedic man check you out while you're here. You're going to need surgery, I know that much. But we'll make sure the orthopedic guy knows about you being an athlete."

"OK, Doc."

A few hours later, Warren had been settled into a regular room. Sophie came in.

"Jessie's still unconscious. I called her parents. They're flying out here."

"I talked to mine," Warren told her, "and I told them not to fly out here. I told them I'd let them know what was going on--since I wasn't in a coma or anything, and it was just my knee, there was nothing they could do."

"Yeah."

Just then, a policeman came into the room, asking to speak to Warren. "Sure," Warren said, "but I have to tell you, I don't remember anything."

"Nothing?"

"I was driving, talking to Jessie about the groceries we had bought." He turned to Sophia. "She'd bought piles of fresh herbs, I was kidding her about buying the store right out of them." Sophia giggled. Warren turned back to the cop. "The next thing I remember is waking up in the ambulance. I don't even know what I hit."

"Another car."

"Oh, shit!" Warren hissed. "The other people, are they, you know..."

The cop sighed. "The driver is a guy about your age. He's in rough shape. They had to operate on him for some sort of internal bleeding. They don't know if he'll pull through. His girlfriend, who was in the passenger's seat, is fine. Look, Warren, we have eyewitnesses. Every single on of them told us that he ran a red light. You had a green."

"I'm glad witnesses told you, because I wouldn't have been able to. I don't remember."

"I know, but everyone did, including the girlfriend, the passenger in the other car. She confirmed that he ran a red light. Also, he had a blood alcohol level of .17. You were tested, of course--yours was zero. This accident wasn't your fault."

"That's good to know, but still..."

"I know," the cop said sympathetically. "Anyhow, we might have some later questions."

"That's fine."

The cop left and Warren looked at Sophia. "Shit. I know it wasn't my fault, but, shit."

"I know, Snugglebear."

The next morning, Warren was waiting for the orthopedic doctor to show up. Sophia beat him there.

"Jess is still out," she told Warren worriedly. "She hasn't come out of the coma."

"Do they know what's wrong?" Warren asked.

"Severe concussion. That, and shock, are what's got her in the coma. They're confident she'll come out of it. But they don't know how she'll be when she comes out of it."

"They're worried about brain damage," Warren said.

"Exactly. Her parents are on their way. I'm so worried."

"I am too, Pookie. You know how I feel about Jess."

Just then the orthopedic surgeon came in. They discussed options. Surgery was really the only one, and the doc didn't know how bad things were until he got in there. Warren was going to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, and they'd hope to do the surgery soon, as soon as the swelling went down.

After the Doc had left, a teenaged girl, about seventeen, appeared in the door. She was accompanied by two people who were apparently her parents. "Are you Warren Kelleher?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "can I help you?"

The poor girl looked downcast. "I'm Suzanne. I was, well, that was my boyfriend... I was in the other car. I just wanted to apologize."

"For what?" Warren asked. "You weren't driving. Come on in," he said, waving her in. She introduced her parents, and Warren introduced Sophie.

Suzanne sat in the chair by the bed. "No, I wasn't driving, but I should've been. I tried to get the keys from Adam. Evidently I didn't try hard enough. I knew he had been drinking."

"How is he?" Warren asked.

"He's still in a coma."

"Jessie is, too." Warren said. Suzanne looked at him blankly. "My friend, the girl that was in the car with me."

"Oh, no!" Suzanne wailed.

"Look. It wasn't your fault. None of it."

Suzanne started crying. Her parents looked on with dismay. "Are you OK?" she managed through her sobs.

"It's just my knee," Warren smiled. "They're going to have to reconstruct it, but they think I'll come out of it OK."

"You won't have any problem walking?" Suzanne's father asked.

"Oh, no, I'm not even worried about that," Warren laughed. "I tore two ligaments and some cartilege. Walking won't be a problem. It's skating that I'm worried about. The Olympics are 16 months away. And we'd like to compete this year, at least at Worlds, which is, what, five months away? I'm having surgery this week, and then we'll see."

"Skating?" Suzanne asked. "The Olympics? You might skate in the Olympics?"

"We already did once," Sophia smiled. "We won a silver medal in the last Olympics. This time it's gold or bust. We're ice dancers."

"I knew I recognized you from somewhere!" Suzanne's mother said.

"Oh, God, you're that good and you wrecked your knee?" Suzanne whined, dismayed again.