The Water Giver Joan Ryan, Simon & Schuster (page 2 of 4) Page 2 of 4

Fifteen minutes passed. Thirty.

The last time Ryan had been there, I was in the treatment room the entire time. I asked the receptionist why we couldn’t go back to see Ryan. He said he’d check. Finally a white-haired doctor appeared from behind the automatic double doors. He said Ryan was still being settled, that someone would come get us soon. Okay. Thanks. I checked my watch. How long does it take to settle one kid?

Another fifteen minutes.

Then a middle-aged woman emerged from the double doors. She asked if we were Ryan’s parents. I looked at the job title on her nametag.

Chaplain.

Ten

The woman walked us out of the waiting room, down a short hallway, and into her office. “What’s going on?” I asked, my heart pounding. “Why are we talking to a chaplain?”

She said a whole team is summoned when there is a “full trauma.” A surgeon,an anesthesiologist, a chaplain. She listed others that I don’t remember now.

“What do you mean a full trauma?” Barry asked.

“He bumped his head,” I said.

The chaplain leaned forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees. She said she wished she had more information for us. A doctor would talk to us soon.

The doctor knocked lightly on the door before entering. It was the same one who had come to the waiting room. He looked shaken. He didn’t sit. He said Ryan had sustained a significant head injury. He had been put into a drug-induced coma.

He led us down the hall into the large ER hub with counters and computers in the center and curtained rooms along the walls.

The doctor pulled back a curtain. Ryan was in a blue hospital gown. His long body filled the bed. His head was wrapped in white gauze. He had a thick tube protruding from his mouth; it was attached to a machine that was helping him breathe. Two IVs snaked from his arms and connected to clear bags of liquid hanging from a metal stand. There was blood on the sheet under Ryan’s right elbow, where, we later learned, he had yanked out one of the IVs. Nurses scurried around him with tubes and needles and sterile things in sealed packets.

Barry and I stood there, mute, trying to take it in.

A drug-induced coma? A ventilator? Ryan had fallen off a skateboard, for God’s sake. He had been conscious and even talking. How could he suddenly be like this?

The doctor explained that during the ambulance ride Ryan had become disoriented and agitated, classic signs of a traumatic brain injury. The EMTs had called the hospital en route to elevate his case to a full-activation trauma. He had been sedated to keep him from injuring his head any further and to allow the staff to treat him.

The ER doc took us to a computer on a counter outside Ryan’s room. On the screen was a CT scan of our son’s brain. The doctor pointed to a white blotch; it looked like a bleed, he said. Ryan probably would need surgery. It was a “significant” injury, he said. The neurosurgeon was on his way. He would be able to tell us more.

We returned to Ryan’s side. We were trying to gather information, absorb what everyone was saying. I listened to the list of medications. Versed. Dilantin. Lidocaine. I knew them. I had spent much of the previous year chronicling the lives of two young soldiers who lost their legs to improvised explosive devices in Iraq. Both had suffered closed head injuries, and both had been given many of these same meds to put them into comas. The two soldiers had emerged from their head injuries pretty much intact — and they had been blown up. All Ryan did was fall off a skateboard on a suburban street.

So while I was worried and nervous, I didn’t panic about seeing him this way. I knew he wasn’t in a real coma. I knew he was sedated to reduce the activity among the neurotransmitters, which could further damage the brain tissue. I knew he could be brought out of the coma whenever the doctors wanted. I understood this was standard head injury protocol. It all seemed familiar to me from my time with the two soldiers.

But the people in the ER seemed to be expecting tears, and neither Barry nor I was complying. They kept offering us water and Kleenex in that awful, pitying tone you hear only in funeral parlors and hospitals.

“This is a significant injury,” the ER doctor said yet again, draw¬ing out his words. He mentioned something called “Cushing’s triad” and “burr hole” and “evacuation and closing.” He paused. He stared at me, as if trying to discern if I understood what he was telling me.

Then he said, “Is there anyone you want to call?”

I began to cry. Okay, I get it. My son might die. The chaplain, hovering in the background, handed me the box of tissues I had declined earlier.

One of the doctors — perhaps the anesthesiologist — lifted his head from adjusting the tubes in Ryan’s arms. He said Ryan’s vitals weren’t looking good. His heart was spiking, then dropping. He said in his opinion Ryan needed surgery right away.

“Do you have other children at home?” he asked.

I looked at him. Do I have other children at home?

“No,” I said.

No, I wanted to scream at him. No, I don’t. This is it. I have no spares at home.

I pulled a small notebook from my purse. The reporter in me kicked in. I flipped the pages and came across a list: “sandwich, snacks, breakfast, water, socks, extra shirt, sunscreen, hat, Aleve.”

They were items my friend Lorna had told me to bring on a seventeen-mile hike we took near Lake Tahoe the previous weekend. Could that have been just five days ago?

I turned the page.

“CT scan,” I wrote. “Hemorrhage. Evacuation. Versed. Induced coma. ‘Do you have other children at home?’ Significant. Substantial. Cushing’s triad. Bur hole. Evacuating and closing.”

The neurosurgeon arrived. Dr. Peter Nguyen looked to be in his forties. He looked at the CT scan, then led us back to the chaplain’s office. Yes, he said, it was a significant injury, but it didn’t require surgery at the moment. He was soft spoken and re¬assuring. They would monitor Ryan closely for any changes.

We bounded out of the office and back to Ryan’s side. I stroked his arm.

From THE WATER GIVER by Joan Ryan. Copyright © 2009 by Joan Ryan. Reprinted with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. www.simonandschuster.com. For more information on Joan Ryan, go to www.joanryanink.com.

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