“No.” His tone was sharp and bitter. “They keep telling me her status hasn’t changed.”
This was where Emma would barge inside and demand she be told something if our roles were reversed. I couldn’t bring myself to though. Instead, I needed to wrap my mind around what we knew first.
“What happened? I know you said she hydroplaned and hit the guardrail on highway twenty-eighty.”
I could hear his sharp inhale as he prepared to retell me the story, this time in more detail. I hated seeing him in so much pain, but I needed to know. The desire to prepare myself as best I could for what I would see once I finally made it to her bedside blasted through me.
“She was supposed to make a quick trip to Walmart for a few things.” He brought a hand up and smoothed the area beneath his right eye. “Emma’s tires were bad. I knew they were. I had planned to have new ones put on at the end of the month. Damn it, why didn’t I just go ahead and do it?” He was blaming himself.
“It wasn’t your fault.” My voice was weak and low, because I knew my words wouldn’t bring him any comfort. Once you had it in your head you were responsible for something as horrific as this, nothing anyone said could change your mind.
Dawson shifted his gaze to meet mine. His blue eyes were wild from lack of sleep and guilt swirling within them. “Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t.” His jaw clenched tight.
I didn’t want to argue with him. I didn’t have the strength. I needed more details of Emma’s accident to paint a picture of the whole scene. “She hydroplaned and crashed into the guardrail. How fast was she going?” The words fell from my lips devoid of emotion.
“The speed limit.” A smirk twisted Dawson’s lips upward. “You know Emma, she never went more than two over the limit.”
I smiled, because my sister was such a goodie-goodie. “I know.”
“Didn’t matter though. She was still going fast enough to hit it and bounce off. The officer said she spun into the other lane and crashed into a semi-truck beside her.”
“So they put her in a medically induced coma. Why?” The question propelled past my lips on its own, even though I knew the reason why. I wasn’t stupid. Her injuries had to have been substantial. After all, she had been taken to Easton Regional by helicopter.
“She wasn’t ejected from the car. She was wearing her seat belt,” Dawson continued. Emma always wore her seat belt. It was the smart thing to do when you were riding in a car. Why was there such turmoil in his words? “They said if she hadn’t been, her injuries would have been less severe.”
I blinked. That couldn’t have been what they said. Seat belts saved lives. They didn’t take them. They didn’t cause injuries to be worse than if the person hadn’t been wearing one. That wasn’t how they worked. “Why would they say that?” Were they even allowed to?
“Because the semi-truck couldn’t stop in time. It crushed the driver’s side of her car.” I could tell the words were painful for him to say, but they were even more painful to hear. “They said if she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, she would have been ejected when she hit the guardrail.”
“And things would have been better for her then?” I didn’t understand. Who the hell did they think they were being so damn presumptuous? “As opposed to what?” My voice shook as erratic anger bubbled through me.
Dawson peeled away from the wall, and ran his hands though his hair. “She broke her back in five places. I can’t remember all the different T numbers they spouted off to me, but I know breaking your back in general isn’t a good thing, let alone breaking it in five places. Something is messed up with her spinal cord, and she had a lot of bruising of her internal organs.” His voice was low and steady, unlike the way I was sure mine would be if I were having to explain my sister’s detailed state. “She’s got some broken ribs, her right leg was shattered, and her head was gashed open from something.”
His words wrapped around my lungs, squeezing the air from them, and making it nearly impossible for me to breathe. It sounded as though my sister was broken beyond repair.
“I know this is a lot to take in at once, but Emma wouldn’t want us focusing on the bad,” he insisted. “She would want us to think positive for her.” His words were low and hollow, making me wonder if he felt the impossibility of what he was asking.
“How can I?” I voiced the question burning through my head as my eyes filled with tears.
“It’s okay.” Dawson wrapped me in his arms, pulling me against his solid chest. The physical contact made the tears slip from my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much I needed someone to hold me. My stomach clenched as the grief I was feeling powered through me. “You can do this, Charlotte. I know you can. You’re as strong as she is. We both are. And, she’s going to need us both to get through this.” His words rumbled through his chest, making his body vibrate against mine.
We remained locked in one another’s arms for longer than we probably should, riding the waves of grief as they crashed into us one right after the other. Emma had been in a car accident. This was real.
THE LIGHTS INSIDE THE hospital room were too bright, illuminating my sister’s broken body in an eerie glow. They made the bruising on her face seem even more discolored and grotesque. I hated the lights. Emma was beautiful, but not beneath these lights. I stared at her, soaking in all the details about her. Her brown hair was tucked within the bandage around her head awkwardly, as though whoever wrapped her up didn’t care what she looked like. Her eyes were closed. If I didn’t know already that she was in a coma, I would have wondered if they were swollen shut. Tubes leaked from her mouth, held in place by scraps of tape. The thick, textured kind that always left behind its icky glue when it was removed. Not only was it slapped haphazardly across her chin, but it was on her arm as well, holding an IV in place.
“Don’t worry, Emma,” I whispered. “I’ll help you scrape the gunk off before it turns brown and nasty.” I held my breath, waiting for some sort of an answer from her. A laugh. A giggle. A huff of sarcasm.
Emma didn’t respond. Disappointment crashed through me. My feet continued forward in their slow pace. I couldn’t speed them up. I wasn’t even sure what was propelling me toward her when all I could feel was the fear holding me back.
Once I reached her, I swallowed hard as I stretched out to touch her. My fingers curled inward before they reached her though, and my nails dug into my palm.
If I touched her, this all became real. Too real.
I blinked, unsure if I was ready for reality to crash into me again. This felt surreal, like a dream. An extended version of my nightmare from last night. I held my breath, listening for the breathing they claimed she was doing on her own, but not hearing anything. Why did they have a tube in her throat if she could breathe on her own? Was it a precaution? Was my sister’s life really that unstable? Wild thoughts buzzed through me.
I focused on the chorus of machines as they beeped out a slow tune, hoping to find some comfort in the noise, because it meant she was okay. My eyes shifted to them. Regardless of what I felt due to the sight of her, these machines told me Emma was alive.
She was strong. She would make it through this, and I would help her.
Holding on to those thoughts, I inched closer to her. Reaching out, I finally managed to touch her arm. I moved my fingertips against the few inches of her skin not covered in tape from the IV. It was warm, not cold like I had expected.
“Hey. It’s me.” My words were low and stiff. I couldn’t help but feel that if I talked to her, she would hear me and wake up on her own. “You’ve got this, Em. Don’t let go.”
I repeated the words inside my head like a mantra, staring at her, waiting, wishing, and hoping for some sign she was listening. I pushed with my mind, suddenly having become a firm believer in the whole mind over matter bit. Nothing changed though. The machines continued in their slow song of life, and my sister remained a sleeping beauty.