How did Dad get here so quickly? Why was Mr. Thompson with him? Why was Nicole there too? The last question intrigued me the most. Excited me, in fact.
Jenna looked confused, angry, and hopeful all at the same time. “How did he beat us?” she asked no one in particular.
“He must have flown,” I said. “Probably after we didn’t come home and had our phones turned off,” I guessed.
“Well,” Josh piped in. “We’re gonna have to go in sometime, right? I think they know we’re coming.”
“I guess so,” said Jenna.
Josh led the way with Jenna close behind. As we walked, I hid myself behind them, like a little kid in a haunted house. The automatic doors opened wide with a snick, like in Star Trek, and we slid inside the hospital. Dad was talking with the receptionist, his back turned to us.
Mr. Thompson saw us and stood up quickly. “Phil. They’re here,” he called. Nicole stood up with him, smiled at us, but stayed silent. She wore jeans and a maroon University of Minnesota sweatshirt. She looked cuter than ever.
Dad turned at the sound of Mr. Thompson’s voice, and he scurried over to us. He embraced Jenna with a hug. I thought he was going to crush her, he was holding her so tight. Jenna didn’t put her arms around him. She gave me a puzzled look. Wasn’t he mad?
After finally releasing her, he scooted over to me and did the same. I put my right arm around him and patted his back. It was the best I could do. Dad didn’t hug very often, so I was out of practice. Then, he made his way to Josh. “Josh. Good to see you,” he said shaking his hand. Josh nodded and smiled. “I’m so glad you guys made it okay. When you guys didn’t answer your phones, I thought the worst.”
We were all baffled. Why wasn’t he yelling at us? Mr. Thompson and Nicole came over after Dad was finished greeting us.
“So, do you want to explain anything here?” Jenna said with an edgy tone to her voice, almost as if she was the one waiting to punish Dad, not the other way around. It had definitely been her trip, her quest. Dad was interfering.
“When you guys didn’t show up last night, like I told you to, I got very worried and very angry. And I got even more worried and angry when you turned your phones off. I was up all night. I called Jim at about 5:00 this morning and told him I was going to try to find a flight to come out here to meet you. I wanted to make sure someone knew where I was, so our whole family didn’t end up on the news as ‘missing persons.’ It wasn’t my intention to get him this involved, but regardless, he offered and then insisted on coming along.” He smirked at Mr. Thompson. “He isn’t just a good friend of mine. He’s a good friend of your mother’s too. Good friends support you no matter the situation, no matter the cost.”
“When your dad called me,” Mr. Thompson began, “I knew he could use some company and support. It was the least I could do. He came out to Oregon with us when my mom died. When I explained everything to my family, Nicole practically begged me to come along.”
I smiled at Nicole to show my appreciation.
“I couldn’t say no,” Mr. Thompson continued. “Plus, I figured this place would probably give her a better education than being at school for a day or two.” We all nodded in agreement. “So, luckily we found three seats on a flight at about 8:30 this morning, flew to D.C., grabbed a cab, and here we are.”
“All that being said,” Dad began. Oh no. The “I’m glad you are safe, but I’m still pissed speech” was on its way. His tone of voice changed quickly. The breathy sound of relief was gone and replaced with his signature deep bellow. “You guys deliberately ignored me. And you drove across the country without permission. That won’t go unpunished, I promise,” he said sternly. “But we’ll talk about that later, when we get home. Right now, your mother is up there, and I’m sure she’d love to see her family.”
“Have you been up there yet?” I asked wanting to know what to expect.
“No, not yet. We’ve only been here for about an hour and we wanted to wait for you.” I could see by the look on Jenna’s face that she appreciated that.
“Are they going to let us see her?” Josh asked. “Jenna got some information from the Internet that said family members had to be officially invited.”
“Well, I’ve been talking to the receptionist and it sounds like that is the case in certain situations. That’s what they told me initially, and that’s why we didn’t come right away. But, we’re all here. They’re going to let us see her. That I can promise.” Dad sounded as if he was on a mission like Jenna.
“They have to,” said Nicole. “You guys came all this way. That would be really uncool if they didn’t.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I agreed.
Dad went over to the information desk and spoke to the receptionist for about five minutes. Both of their heads were shaking and nodding. The rest of us sat down on the couches, but Mr. Thompson sauntered over to the desk to be my Dad’s “wing man” as Seth would say.
Nicole was sitting right next to me. I could feel her jeans rubbing against my leg. I wore shorts in the car, which I regretted because I got pretty cold in the middle of the night. “You must be really tired,” she said.
“Yeah, I am.” I hadn’t really noticed how tired I was until I sat down.
“I can’t believe you came out here without telling your dad.” She sounded impressed, which made me feel big.
“Me neither actually. I just did it. Didn’t really think.” My dad and Mr. Thompson were walking toward us. “Thanks for coming,” I said to Nicole. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Yeah. Honestly, I can’t really believe it either. When my dad told us what was going on, I did beg him to come with, like he said, but I really didn’t expect him to let me. He’s letting me skip school and everything. It didn’t take a lot of convincing.”
“That’s cool.”
“What do you think your Dad will do to you when you get home?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I was already grounded before I came. I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Well, you were just coming to see your Mom. I’m sure he realizes that.”
Yeah. I was coming to see Mom. How could he fault me for that?
Dad came with news. “Well, we can go up and see her. We have to meet with the nurse first, so she can update us on her progress. She isn’t really supposed to have any visitors yet, but I explained the situation. They’ll make an exception.”
We all jumped out of our seats and followed Dad to the elevators. The doors slowly crept open. A nurse came out of the elevator pushing a wheelchair with a man wearing an Army t-shirt. He only had one leg. “Good morning,” he said.
A chorus of “Good mornings” came from our group. The nurse wheeled him toward the exit.
“Come on, Tim,” yelled Jenna as the elevator doors were closing on me. I had been staring at the wounded soldier—pretty rude, I realized later. I remembered the article in the newspaper I read about the soldier who lost both his legs when his Hummer was bombed. That was one article, one soldier. How come no one wrote an article about the guy that came out of the elevator? How many articles could be written? Too many to count, I realized.
We went up to the third floor where the Soldier Family Assistance Center was. We were supposed to meet the nurse there. Everyone filed out of the elevator when we heard the ding.
“Why don’t you guys go wait over there, and I’ll see if I can find the nurse,” Dad said.
Jenna didn’t go sit down. She waited right there with Dad. I did too. There was no one sitting at the reception desk, so Dad put his elbows on the desk and waited for someone to come help us.
“Dad?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“What changed your mind? About coming out here, I mean. You said before we had to wait until the doctors said it was all right. How come you’re here now?”
Dad thought for a minute. I could see Jenna waited anxiously for the answer, too. Finally he spoke. “First of all, I had to make sure you two were all right. With your phones turned off …” He looked at Jenna. “This was the only way to be sure. But I was thinking a lot during the night about why you might have done this. What would cause you to do something so drastic? I realized that you needed your Mom and she needed you.” He put his head down and caught his breath. “I need her and she needs me. I was wrong to not come out here right away, no matter what the doctors said. So, I’m sorry. I really am.”
Dad rarely apologized for anything. He was pretty fair most of the time, but usually he chalked his mistakes up to, “I’m the father and you’re the kids, so that’s just how it is.” This time was different. His tone of voice was pure and honest.
“That doesn’t mean you’re getting off the hook for this,” he continued, giving me a playful punch on the shoulder.
Jenna and I both smiled even though we knew he was serious about that too.
The receptionist made her way back to her seat. Dad explained the situation, and she looked something up on her computer. She nodded as Dad spoke, confirming what he had discussed with the receptionist downstairs.
We waited in the lobby for about ten minutes before Mom’s nurse came to meet us. She was about Jenna’s height, just a little taller than me, and she was wearing light blue scrubs. I always pictured nurses wearing white uniforms from top to bottom, with those little white hats that sat on the back of their heads. She had really dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and her skin was very tan, sandy even.
“Hi. I’m Adira,” she said calmly. “You must be Jessica’s family.” It sounded strange to hear my Mom’s first name. “I’m one of the nurses who’s been taking care of her.”
“How’s she doing?” Jenna asked quickly. Dad put his arm around her. Nicole and Mr. Thompson were hanging back, not wanting to interfere.
“Well, you’ll get a chance to see her real soon. Mr. Hansen, may I talk to you for a moment, please?” She pulled Dad aside. I was nervous watching the two of them talk. Then I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. I turned around. Nicole was there with me, smiling as if to say, “It’s going to be okay.” Her thumb rubbed gently against me.
Dad came back after a few minutes and told us all to sit down. Adira hung back by the information desk. “What did she say?” I asked.
“Well, they think Mom’s going to make a strong recovery, but it’s going to take time. Her leg was severely fractured. It’s going to take surgery to repair it. After that they hope she’ll be able to have full use of it again.”
They hope?
“What kind of surgery do they have to do?” Jenna asked, clearly concerned.
“Well, she fractured her femur.”
I remembered that word from science class. Our teacher had brought in a huge dinosaur femur or something. It might not have been a dinosaur, but it was something big. If mom’s femur was even close to that big, I didn’t know how she could have broken it.
Dad continued, “It’s a pretty serious break, so they have to insert a metal rod in her thigh to stabilize her leg. The surgery takes a couple of hours. The good news is that Adira says Mom’s burns were relatively minor and should heal pretty well. She may have a little scarring on her face, but nothing too serious.”
Dad was trying to sound reassuring, but I wasn’t sure if he believed it himself. I pictured the worst—Mom with a mask over her face and sitting in a wheel chair for the rest of her life.
“What did they say about going in to see her?” Mr. Thompson asked.
“They said we can see her, but she’s pretty out of it right now. She’s on a lot of pain killers, which is why we weren’t invited to come right away.”
Jenna got up from the couch. “Let’s go.” We all nodded. Dad led the way over to Adira.
“All set?” she asked.
“I think so,” said Dad.
“We need to head up to the sixth floor. That’s where your Mom is.” She was looking right at me as she spoke.
We got into the elevator. For the first time, I noticed the smell of the hospital. I had been in hospitals before and they always had that chemical smell, like “Monk” was the janitor, obsessive about cleaning. But this place had a little different smell, like the Pine Sol wasn’t fresh. It was nauseating. I couldn’t wait to get out of the elevator. I hoped the smell wouldn’t be as bad in the hallway. Adira didn’t seem to notice it.
We exited the elevator and followed Adira down to Room 621. The door was closed, but on the board outside, it said, “Lt. Jessica Hansen.” It was true. My mom was there, and she was hurt.
Adira knocked and then opened the door very slowly and quietly, poking her head in. “Jessica?” she whispered. “You have some visitors.” She turned back to us. “She’s pretty tired, but you can go in now if you want.”
One by one we filed in. First, Jenna. Then, Dad. Then, Mr. Thompson. I hung back, waiting, watching the door open slightly and then close again each time someone else entered the room.
“Aren’t you going to go in?” Nicole asked.
“Umm, yeah. But you can go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” She sounded surprised.
“Umm, yeah, I’ll be in in a minute. I just have to run to the bathroom.”
“Oh, okay.” She looked confused, but then she followed the others into the room. I stood, watching the door close slowly in my face.