Chapter 5

It was almost hard to wake them. Not in the real sense of hard, but it was difficult nonetheless. The bad part was waking them wasn't the last of it. Next I had to give them the terrible news and then we had to snuggle up again and have a good cry over it.

Soon enough, or as soon as it was possible at least, we had all had a shower and dressed. We made our way to the garage, got into Mom's car, and headed for Wadley. It was a sad trip and then when we reached the place it was a snarled up mess. We went in through the intended entrance and were met by a just arriving old silver haired lady. No doubt she was part of the official day shift welcoming committee. She was useless.

She didn't know shit about who had just come in via the emergency entrance, much less about our parents who'd recently arrived in two different ambulances. She was up trying to hug and console us at once and it nearly made me sick.

"Look, old miss useless, we don't give a shit about you trying to help us get over the shock gently. Our parents were sent here after a horrible car crash and we don't know if they're dead or alive. Help us find out or get your ass out of the way," I nearly screamed at her.

Thank God my loud berating tone got us some help of the non-volunteer persuasion. A woman, a nurse I think, came over dressed in whites and after getting our names she showed us to a waiting room for family of those admitted via the emergency entrance.

It wasn't a regular waiting room like you'd find in a hospital. It looked more like a business end of things. Soon, what I thought of as a doctor came in and told us our parents were being checked over and actually led us to another place where my mother was being rolled out. She was on a Gurney being taken to a room.

There were bandages on her, but thank God she wasn't being prepped for surgery and wasn't even headed for a place to be prepped for such. I wondered about Dad not being nearby, but concentrated on looking at mother. She rewarded us by opening her eyes and I could tell she didn't know where she was or why she was here.

The girls started talking to her at once and thankfully she talked back. They ended up telling her more than she told us. All she could remember was a crashing noise from the windshield and then the car sliding off the road. She thought it ended up hitting a tree, but she wasn't clear about what happened after that.

While she was trying to tell us the details an orderly came over to push her gurney to her room. The orderly told us the one who'd come in at the same time as Mom, hopefully Dad, was in surgery, and he told us where to wait for that.

We went to the surgery waiting room and just sat around. We didn't have any idea what kind of surgery Dad was getting and I just assumed he had some broken bones they were going to put back together, or some such.

The real story didn't come out until nearly two hours later when one of the doctors came in to give us the lowdown.

I was alarmed at first since there seemed to be quite a lot of blood on the doctor's scrubs. Apparently he had come to us as soon as the surgery was over and I had the distinct impression it was my father's blood on him. That was the good part.

The bad part was a lot of the blood had come from the deer they'd had to remove from Dad. Apparently they'd surprised one on the road and hit it with the deer being thrown into the windshield. It must have been a big buck because its antlers had preceded it through the glass and a few of them had punctured places Dad didn't need punctured.

According to the doctor or surgeon or whatever he was, the emergency crew had cut the dead deer's head off and wrapped it and Dad up together for the trip. They cut the antlers in surgery and then tried removing the sharp ends from Dad's skull after that. Apparently some of the blood the surgeon was wearing had come from cutting up the deer's head first.

He told us they had been able to remove all the pieces of antler from Dad, though one particular part had gone in through his right eye-socket and had penetrated behind it and into his brain. It turned out to be the worst news and I'm glad, because I didn't want to hear if anything worse had happened.

He told us how lucky it was since the antler hadn't even damaged Dad's eye. I guess you could call that lucky since at least Dad wouldn't be one-eyed, if he lived over it. It seemed like the doctor was leaving that part open. The lived over it part that is.

Dad went directly into surgical intensive care after the brain surgery part. He told us Mom was going to a more normal intensive care for the first and her only real injuries were a couple of fractured ribs. He said she'd be sore and unable to move around much for a few days and he again left off any mention of how Dad was going to be.

I couldn't stand it any more and asked him about Dad.

"His condition is guarded. We've done everything surgically we can for him, but he is in a coma and still on life support," he said, and then he left.

We were stunned, and all at once we went into a group hug and later, after a little boo-hooing we went in search of the intensive care portion Mom was in.

Damned if they weren't more receptive to our arrival than I'd have thought they'd be. They let April and May in to see her almost as soon as we got there. I found out later that I might have accompanied them except for the part about Mom being naked to the waist. Apparently they held me back until they could put some kind of small tent like thing on the bed to at least cover her for decency. I didn't feel slighted in the least.

I didn't think I wanted to see her titties right now. I could imagine significant bruising and even if she'd been wearing her seatbelt and shoulder strap there was probably a big diagonal bruise running right down between her breasts fruit.

I shook my head to try and get rid of that mental picture. I couldn't help thinking one of her titties might have been bruised horribly.

I got over it before they took me to see her. She was awake, but obviously feeling no pain. No doubt it had something to do with all the trays around with bottles of painkiller and disposable syringes.

They must have touched her up with some sort of la-la-land formula too, because nothing seemed to worry her in the least. I gave her a kiss on the forehead when I came in and another one as we were leaving. She let me know she knew about Dad just after the peck on her forehead as I was leaving.

"You have to take care of yourself now Jake, because you'll need to be strong to take care of me. Without your Dad around I'll have to lean on you for advice now."

I'll admit it shook me. It was bad enough to be in the room with Mom as she lay battered and beaten and to my mind near death, but she was trying to be so strong and she obviously knew Dad was near death for real.

For God's sake he was in a coma from a deer antler point being thrust into his brain. That was bad enough, but where had that deer antler been before. God only knew what kind of bacteria it had brought along for the ride.

Sure, I knew sunlight killed bacteria, and I knew deer antlers didn't drag around in shit, normally, but who could say what little bug might or might not have been on it when it went past Dad's eyeball and sunk into his brain.

I wasn't a fatalist, but I had my doubts about Dad's long-term survival. We headed out to find a motel when the hospital folks wanted to run us off so our folks could rest. Well, they weren't exactly worried about my Dad getting his rest since in a coma he was resting by definition. They wanted my Mom to take a nap and they were getting ready to give us the old heave ho when we got up to leave.