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Joan Ryan, Simon & Schuster (page 4 of 4) Page 4 of 4
He said Ryan had sustained “a right linear skull fracture from frontal to sagittal bone, subdural and epidural hematoma, and right frontal contusion.” I looked this up later in the hospital records; the words were a blur that night.
The doctor took us into a small room where he showed us the post-op CT scan. I pulled Lorna in with us, certain that neither Barry nor I would be focused enough to take in the details. I saw something on the scan I had not seen on the earlier ones.
There was a clear jagged line cutting across Ryan’s skull from the base to the forehead. It’s one thing to see a white spot that is supposed to be blood but looks like a smear of bleach on a photo-negative. But this crack. This was recognizable, undeniable, sickening.
I suddenly felt light-headed and nauseous, as if I might faint. I could barely breathe. Lorna led me to a chair in the hallway, leaving Barry alone to nod his head at the neurosurgeon’s explanations, as if any of this made sense.
The doctor told us there was no reason to spend the night at the hospital. Ryan was in a coma. He was stable. And we lived just six minutes away by car in case anything did happen. We should get some sleep, he told us. We had a long road ahead of us.
We returned home that night to a dark, quiet house. Without Ryan there, the house felt almost creepy, the way abandoned buildings do. There had been only a few nights in Ryan’s sixteen years that he wasn’t with Barry or me. He had never gone away to camp. Barry and I loved to travel, and Ryan went everywhere with us. It sometimes felt as if we were a single unit, three mismatched people who somehow found each other, bound by ties that had nothing to do with blood.
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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Beautifully written piece.
Dec 5th, 2009 10:42am