Part 7 (2/2)
”Approximately eighty-five pounds. Four feet, five inches. No obvious head trauma. Abdomen is distended, rigid and tender on palpation.”
”CareFlite, we're standing by in trauma one with spinal and brain injury team.”
Spinal and brain injury...
”They have to a.s.sume the worst,” Kevin had told me when the chopper set down in the field. ”They have to be prepared for the worst. That doesn't mean the worst is inevitable.”
I repeated that to myself now.
”Ready on the right.”
”Ready on the left.”
”Patient secured.”
”Nose right, tail left... Fort Worth, we are gears up.”
There was a small jostle and sway as we lifted off the ground. As we rose up and the earth fell away, I looked down at Kevin standing there, one arm around Adelynn, the other around Abbie. Their faces were small and white in the wash of headlights from the emergency vehicles. Kevin's expression was etched with a grim determination I'd gotten used to. He wanted to be with Anna, but now she was in capable hands, and even if there had been room for both of us to go, one of us had to be on the ground for Adelynn and Abbie.
With my whole heart reaching out, I looked down on the retreating chaos and kept my eyes fastened on my family. Tinier and tinier. Disappearing. They were seeing Anna and me disappear the same way, receding into the stars above our house. Kevin and I had developed our MO: divide and conquer. But sometimes I felt that divide like a scalpel blade, and this was one of those times. I felt a part of myself being left behind in the dark pasture.
We'd gotten used to it, to the extent that a person can get used to losing a limb over and over again, but I wondered if Abigail and Adelynn felt it as a choice I was making, to be with Anna instead of them. Would they look back and remember only that I left them yet again? Would they be able to forgive me?
”Where's my mommy?” I heard Anna's voice in the headset. ”I don't see my mommy.”
”She's on board with us, Anna. Your mommy's right up here.”
”Ma'am?” The pilot touched my arm and gestured to the headset. ”She can hear you if you want to talk to her. Just go ahead and say something.”
I understood that. And I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to say, I'm here, baby. Mommy's here, and my brain was screaming, Why can't I say something? Why am I not comforting my child?
The words just weren't there. I couldn't even force out the simple syllables of her name. I felt as frozen and distant as the crescent moon hanging on the horizon below me.
”Your mom's here, Anna. She's right up front by the pilot,” the flight nurse was saying. ”Annabel, don't try to turn your head, sweetie. Keep your head still.”
”Why?”
”We want to make sure you don't have any broken bones in your neck, so let's just keep very still until we get to the hospital where they'll give you some X-rays and make sure everything's okay, and then we'll take the straps off.”
”Okay,” Anna sighed. ”The lights are so pretty.”
”You'll feel a little pinch here, all right, Annabel?”
”Are you giving me an IV?”
”Yup. I'm sorry.”
”Oh, that's okay,” Anna said amiably. ”I was just curious. I've had like a million shots and IVs since I was six. Mommy showed me how to blow the pain away till it's done. Like this...”
”That's a good technique,” the nurse said. ”Sometimes people hyperventilate.”
”Yeah, I picked up a few tricks. Like how to mess up the blood pressure cuff. It feels cool when you bend your arm.”
”Oh, that is a good trick! But let's not do anything like that right now. I need you to stay still for me, Annabel.”
The radio chatter resumed, a running dialogue between the flight nurse and the trauma center monitoring Anna's blood pressure and heart rate. Flight status and landing instructions pa.s.sed between the pilot and the ground. I forced myself to focus and breathe.
This is really happening.
The DallasFort Worth metroplex was a carpet of lights below us. A pattern of skysc.r.a.pers and streets emerged as we swooped in, circled low, and landed on the rooftop at Cook Children's-the one part of the medical center we'd never seen. I felt the helicopter settle. In less than a moment, a door flew open on the far side of the roof, and the trauma team poured out onto the tarmac, running with a gurney and equipment on wheeled racks. They swarmed around Anna, swiftly s.h.i.+fting her stretcher to the gurney.
The pilot took my headset as he delivered brusque instructions on how to get out. A bracing rush of cold wind hit me when the paramedic opened my door, and then I was down on the tarmac, running after the doctors and nurses already hauling back toward the rooftop door.
”I'm right here, Anna! Mommy's here!”
I'd found my feet. Found my voice. The whole bizarre situation had thrown me for a momentary loop, but now I was on familiar ground. I knew how to do hospitals. I caught up to the trauma team and stayed close by Anna's side, dropping back for only a moment as they banged through the doors into the bright lights.
”Wait! Wait!” she cried out. ”What are you doing?”
A nurse wielding a pair of scissors opened the front of Anna's s.h.i.+rt in one swift motion. ”Sweetie, we have to cut it so we can see where you're hurt.”
”That's one of my favorite s.h.i.+rts,” she groaned.
”Well, she's alert.”
”Overall, she doesn't look too much worse for wear,” the ER doctor said. ”Jesus was with this kid today. I've never seen anyone fall headfirst from that height without serious spinal and head injuries.”
”Annabel, I'm going to press on your tummy here. Does this hurt?”
”No, but is Dani here? Dani Dillard. Can you tell her I'm here?”
”Dani's not here tonight,” said the nurse, ”but I'm a friend of hers. Is there anything I can help you with?”
”Never mind,” said Anna. There could never be a subst.i.tute for Dani.
Monitor wires and IV tubing snaked out around Anna's body. One nurse picked through the bark and debris in her hair, looking for evidence of a head injury while another a.s.sessed her neurological responses.
”Can you feel me tapping here on your knee, Annabel? Okay, good. And how about right here? And here on your ankle? Let me see you wiggle your toes, Annabel. Wiggle those toes for me.”
Anna wriggled her bare feet. That was my last glimpse of her as they swept her down the hall to begin a barrage of MRIs and CT scans.
Her precious, muddy toes wriggling.
<script>