-Anguish and Salvation

Betty and Ken drove in silence toward grandma’s house in Cerritos.  Betty sniffed from the passenger seat and occasionally broke into full sobs, wracked with grief.  Ken found it hard to be stoic, but he had to.  Jeff and Darren sat silently in the back seat.

           Presently they pulled off the freeway and made their way into grandma’s neighborhood just off the 91 freeway, slowly working up the street and pulling up to the house.  Ken shut off the car.

            “Do you want me to do it?” he said. 

Betty clenched her jaw and shook her head, a fresh stream of tears welling from her eyes.  She was about to do the hardest thing she had ever done, Ken knew, but she had to be the one to do it.  She opened the door and got out.  Ken guided Jeff and Darren and they followed her to the door.  Betty produced a key and unlocked it quietly, and slipped in.  Ken followed and directed my cousins to sit in a couch in the front living room, while he and Betty made their way to the back of the house where grandma’s bedroom was.

            They made their way across kitchen where we had all sat yesterday morning for breakfast, a complete family.  Betty could still picture mom, how she had been sitting there and sipping her coffee, laughing and…alive.  The image brought a fresh wave of sobs which stopped her in her tracks for a full minute. 

Grandma’s room was off to the side of the kitchen.   Betty hugged Ken tightly for a few moments in the darkness of the kitchen, and then turned to walk into the room alone, closing the door behind her.  Ken could see the light that filled the small hallway leading to the room through the crack under the door.  He sat down at the table and listened to the murmur of Betty’s voice as she softly woke grandma up.  The murmuring became excited and suddenly the house resonated under grandma’s wail, followed by screams and hollering cries from her and from Betty. 

It was the worst sound Ken had ever heard.

He held his hands to his face and lowered his elbows to the table.  His body began to hitch and he started to cry too.

The emergency room staff milled about near the entrance of the ER, in anticipation.  Ron Craig had made all of the arrangements to receive us and Bruce had called some friends, too.  Many of the hospitals staff came in as soon as they heard.  Together, they had assembled their one of the most skilled group of medical staff any of them had ever seen.  Dad was one of theirs, and now they would be taking care of him, and his family.  No one else would die today, if they could do anything about it.  And they all believed that they could. 

The ambulances were on their way, and would be pulling in shortly.  People chatted softly and got charged up with cups of coffee, but by and large the facility was quiet.  It was a somber time, but a time to be as excellent as they all could be.  That emergency room, like all, had seen its amble share of horror and mayhem, but this one had hit a little too close to home, and every one of them knew that by the grace of God they had a chance to make it right.

The wail of the sirens approached from the south.  The morning sun was slowly beginning to brighten the landscape just beyond the glass doors of the ER.  Suddenly the ambulances roared in and screeched to a halt right outside. 

Bruce stood just inside waiting to receive us.  After a few moments, the doors suddenly burst open flooding the foyer with bright sunlight in front of the first stretcher, which happened to be the one I was strapped to.  Someone directed it to an empty bed and Bruce followed it in.  Rick and Kim were sent to two other rooms and Chris was immediately taken to get his arm X-rayed. 

Bruce was now my savior and he quickly recognized me.  He was a veteran ER doctor and trauma surgeon, but seeing me, his godson and his son’s best friend, like that - and still alive shocked him.  I was quickly transferred to the ER table and the stretcher was removed from the room.  He made a quick assessment of my injuries.  The deep gash in my leg was wide open and packed full of dirt and dried blood. 

Bruce saw that the sharp piece of steel had incised the pack of the knee and appeared to have sliced directly along the margin of my tibial nerve, which was now stretched and hanging out of the back of my leg, but seemed in tact.  It also sliced neatly right along the posterior artery of my leg, which had been packed deep into the wound but also appeared unscathed.  A fraction of an inch to one side and I would not have ever walked on that leg again.  A fraction of an inch to the other and I would have bled to death in minutes, long before dad even dug me out. 

He couldn’t have been more precise with the cutting if it had been done during surgery.  Luck, Bruce decided, was on my side that night.  But he shook off the thought and amazement.  Now he had to fix it - but that was what he did.  He fixed these kinds of things, and he was damn good at it. 

“Prepare an IV and ready OR one,” he told the ER nurse. “Prep him and get him up there stat!  I am going to operate right now.”

She departed the room and I was wheeled out to be prepped for surgery.  Bruce could see the activity in the other parts of the ER.  He could hear dad’s voice in one of the curtain draped beds and poked his head into the room from which it came. 

Dad was standing next to the bed of his little girl and was conducting himself more like a doctor than a patient.  He was acting in charge of and still trying to direct the care, which he was capable of doing Bruce knew, but his friend needed to be a patient now.  Bruce called to him and they connected eyes.  Dad was a mess, but he was still a doctor, and having a hard time being a patient.  Bruce motioned him to come over and they stepped into the brightly lit hallway between the curtained divided rooms of the ER.

“I’ve sent Randy to surgery,” Bruce said.  “I’m going to operate right away.  He’s going to make it.  Why don’t you sit down take it easy and I’ll get scrubbed.  Let them clean you up.”  Dad nodded and turned away.  Bruce was satisfied with that and went to the doctor’s lounge to get changed into scrubs for my surgery. 

A few minutes later he reemerged.  Before he went up to the operating room he went back to the ER to check on dad.  To his surprise, dad was still up and again trying to direct the care of the rest of the kids.  The staff was trying to calm him, but he was having a really hard time throttling down.  Now he was more in the way than anything else.  Bruce went to him and pulled him aside, speaking to him as gently but as firmly as he could.

“Jim, we’ve got them,” he said.  “You have to let us take care of them, and we are.  But we need to take care of you, too.”

Dad was physically exhausted, but there was determination in his eyes.

“We’ve got them…” Bruce said again and placed his hand on his friends shoulder.  Dad’s eyes softened.  Bruce wrapped dads arm around his neck and led him to an empty bed, bearing most of his weight, and caught eyes with a nurse who quickly hustled over and helped him lift dad onto the bed.  Dad lay back for the first time since he woke up a little over 24 hours ago.  He finally closed his eyes.  Bruce squeezed his hand. 

“We’ve got them.”  He said. 

Another nurse came into the room and they began to clean the wounds on dads face and head to prepare them for sutures.  He’d need quite a few.  Dad let out a long deep sigh and Bruce felt his body slump, completely exhausted.  But finally he could just lay there.  He had done more than he thought he would ever have to do that night, Bruce knew.  He was a hero, if that’s what you want to call it.  But the night was over.  Now he had to rest and let the other heroes do their jobs.

Bruce looked over his friend once more, and sadly shook his head.  A tear ran down dad’s cheek and he began to tremble.  What did he go through tonight, Bruce thought? 

Then he turned to go to the operating room and put me back together.