by Carol Devine
"Shane was bucked off his horse. He hit his head, broke his leg. He's on his way to the hospital. Cassie's already loaded in my car. I'm driving."
Mariah jumped into high gear, rushing Ana out the door without even locking it behind her. Even under intense questioning, Ana knew only what she'd already said, Shane was hurt bad. The ambulance had a half hour head start.
Distrusting herself and uncertain of how extensive Shane's injuries were, Mariah hovered over Cassie in her car seat in the rear of Ana's car, focusing her attention on her baby. She tried not to think, to project the worst.
She received a call from the hospital ten minutes out.
"How far away are you?"
She told them.
"Get here as fast as you can."
Ana squealed the car to a stop in front of the ER entrance. Mariah left Cassie with Ana and rushed inside. An ER nurse was waiting, on the lookout for Mariah Youngblood, wife of a critically injured patient.
The nurse hustled Mariah to the elevators leading to the main hospital. "He's being prepped for surgery. We have to hurry."
"Has he been asking for me?"
"He hasn't regained consciousness. His head injury is serious. We got him stable enough for surgery. We need you to sign this release form. Do you understand?"
Scrawling her signature, Mariah did understand. But she refused to believe the true extent of how bad; then she saw Shane on the gurney. Orderlies were preparing to wheel him in.
His head was bandaged, covering his eyes. A brace stabilized his neck. His jeans and shirt were cut away. Underneath him on the sheet, droplets and streaks of blood had dried. His tan was faded, nonexistent. Mariah couldn't see the difference between her skin color and his. She clutched his hand, feeling no sign of life.
A long cut had been stitched on his side. Wrapping the entire length of his right leg was a temporary splint. Worse, there was a stillness to his body Mariah had never felt before, seen before.
The nurse nudged Mariah's arm. "The surgeon wants to speak with you as soon as... as soon as… you're finished."
Feeling pressured, Mariah bowed over her husband, barely able to take in the truth. She squeezed his hand, tapped by the IV needle, saw his wrist speckled with dirt and blood.
"I love you, Shane," she whispered.
They rushed him away before she had a chance to say or do anything else.
Ana carried Cassie, and accompanied Mariah to her next stop, the waiting room on the critical care surgical floor. The neurosurgeon met them there, wearing his scrubs. He ushered them into a quiet corner.
"Tests show there's bleeding in the brain," he said. "The pressure needs to be relieved. This is a critical surgery, there's no two ways about it, but I want to tell you we are doing everything we can."
"I see."
It was all Mariah could think of to say to this neurosurgeon who looked like he'd just graduated from high school. He was far too young to know what he was doing. Mariah blinked at this boy-man doctor, who carried the responsibility of life and death in his hands. It took every ounce of her will to keep from screaming protests at him. Screams that were way too loud for a hospital waiting room.
Wordless, she took Cassie from Ana. Mariah faced the surgeon and tucked Cassie's head between her neck and shoulder. She would force him to see how much Shane was loved and needed. They had a baby daughter. It would give the doctor an extra incentive. It would spur him into instant maturity. He would grow wise beyond his years. The neurosurgeon in him must understand how necessary it was to save this particular patient.
It was such a nakedly pathetic gesture, one Mariah meant with her whole heart. Anything to save Shane. She'd manipulate the world if she had to.
Ana stayed with her, patting her hand, rubbing her back. It took effort to keep from screaming at Ana, too. She jiggled the baby when Mariah had to pace, swinging her arms to keep the circulation going. Except for giving Cassie to Ana, Mariah wouldn't put the baby down. The six month-old slept, ate and played in her mother's lap. Mariah cooed and smiled, wearing her bravest face. She tolerated Cassie's joyful ignorance about what was going on.
It was twelve hours of surgery. It was another half hour after, when the surgeon finally emerged to tell her what happened.
Ana stayed with Mariah, holding her hand. Ana listened to the cautious phrasing the surgeon used. Judging by Mariah's pale face and lack of reaction, Ana sensed how little of what the doctor said penetrated. The fact that Shane remained in critical condition in the intensive care unit, and was expected to do so for a long time seemed to pass right over Mariah's head.
After the surgeon left, Mariah turned to Ana. "He's going to be fine. I can feel it."
Ana went into Shane's ICU room with Mariah. Cassie was watched by a social worker whose job was to support families in crisis.
Murmuring his name, Mariah crept to his bedside. Ignoring the tubes and wires, the rhythmic sound of the ventilator, IV drip, pulse ox indicator, and regularly beeping monitors, she laid her hand on his shoulder, closed her eyes and prayed.
Our father, who art in heaven…
Unable to remember the rest, she felt tears welling in her eyes.
She heard Ana whispering with the nurses. Mariah refused to acknowledge their silence, refused to bear the sight of Kellen Shane Youngblood, lifeless and still, hooked up to machines that were clearly keeping him alive.
ICU rules didn't allow 24 hour bedside vigils with patients. She had to leave with Cassie for the night. Mariah took a room in the hotel next to the hospital, eschewing the friend they had stayed with through the last weeks of her pregnancy. The Wainwrights lived too far from the hospital, fifteen minutes too far. Besides, she'd be forced to talk to him and his family, to be polite. Mariah couldn't bear to see or talk or be polite to anyone but Ana, Cassie and Shane.
Ana went home. Being alone actually helped Mariah. She turned her entire focus on Cassie, the only job she wasn't able to ignore. Her other job didn't matter anymore. She wouldn't even take calls from her office.
During the day, they sat in Shane's room together. Mariah would set Cassie on his bed. She'd do her happy gurgling and goo-goo sounds near Shane's ear. There was research to suggest coma patients might be able to hear what was going on around them even when unconscious. Every night, Mariah studied neurological research.
Even though her singing voice was an off-key muddle, she sang to Cassie and Shane for that reason. When the muscular nurses' aides came in to turn his body every four hours to prevent bedsores, she used the end of the bed to lay Cassie down and describe aloud the pictures in her simple cloth story books.
Mariah played the music Shane had stored on his phone, a hit parade of Country and Western favorites, except she advanced past the sad honky-tonk songs detailing regrets and lost loves.
Shane's family and employees showed up, at least one every day. That was Mariah's escape time. Leaving Shane was torture, but greater torture was being faced with somber expressions and awkward questions about Cassie's latest milestones, like new teeth or sitting unattended or eating solid foods. Shane's condition was rarely mentioned, as if they couldn't bear to hear the truth any more than she could.
Mariah could barely tolerate Ana's visits, either, those first few weeks. Without fail, Ana came every weekend. She insisted on staying in the hotel room with them on Saturday night. She would roll out her sleeping bag, as though they were teenage girls again, sharing the same room.
Mariah would curl around Cassie on the hotel bed, forcing herself and her baby to rest.
Ana encouraged Mariah to talk. Eventually, words poured out, hopeless and frightened of the future. Sometimes she cried, heaving great sobs, wearing herself out. Other times she fell asleep abruptly in Ana's arms, dreamless or sometimes experiencing nightmares. Mariah would awaken, screaming that Shane couldn't wake up. Either that, or he didn't want to wake up.
By herself, Mariah didn't indulge in such thoughts. She tucked Cassie safely tucked in a portable crib, en
tered the bathroom, turned on the shower and the sink faucets, and stood in the center of the room, railing against God.
Where was He? Didn't He know what a good man Shane was? A loving and responsible man, too vital, too young and vigorous to be taken away, to die, now when he was happy, when he had a wife and child who loved him more than life itself.
Mariah decided she hated God. Two weeks in, she refused to pray. If God was real, He would have stopped Shane from being hurt in the first place. After Bird's long and useless life, the unfairness of it burned Mariah's soul.
Then remorse would swamp her. Ashamed of herself for being ungrateful, she cowered in the corner, raised her hands and clasped them tight, afraid of His wrath. She appealed for mercy.
Save Shane, she prayed. Take me, instead.
She was willing to do anything, give up anything, except for Cassie. Whatever sacrifice He might want from her, she was prepared to give in exchange, herself included.
In saner moments, she humbly asked Him to save her, too, and keep them a family of three.
The doctor had removed Shane's breathing tube with Mariah's consent, three weeks after the accident. It was critically important he breathe on his own in order to assess his condition. Breathing without help from a machine meant more of his brain was functioning than the first tests and prognosis indicated.
If the doctors were wrong in the beginning, Mariah reasoned they were wrong about how Shane's condition would end. When he breathed on his own, Mariah was certain he was coming out of the coma, alive and maybe not perfectly well, but well enough. Well enough to smile at her and his baby girl.
His condition remained unchanged. He breathed on his own but didn't wake up. He was moved to a regular hospital room for a week, then transferred to a long-term care facility specializing in brain injuries.
Mariah bought a cot to keep in his room and Cassie's portable crib. They lived there, waited for weeks, then months. She held the baby and circled the room, singing, talking. She sat at his bedside and let Cassie play and roll around on the floor. Mariah rubbed Shane's arms and legs, looking for some sign, some outward sign that he continued to exist, that his spirit was there even if, God forbid, his frontal cortex was not.
Mariah no longer cared if he lost his ability to smile, talk, walk, or even understand. To see him open his eyes was all she wanted. It would be enough. That was something she could work with, she could live with, knowing he was still part of her world and Cassie's life. Not like the first Mariah. Shane couldn't be simply a bunch of photographs hanging on the living room wall.
The sign she prayed for finally came. It came thirteen and a half weeks into the vigil. Cassie was napping and Mariah was practicing her daily ritual of reading aloud articles from American Horseman magazine when her attention was snagged by his thumb.
It moved. She swore it did.
She knelt on the floor, gaze locked on level with that thumb. It moved again, ever so slightly.
Stroking his arm, she checked his sleeping face. Her gaze traveled down his body, searching for more movement. She willed him to twitch, to tap, to shiver. When it didn't come, she laid her ear against his chest, not to hear the sound of his heart but to allow him to feel her presence. If that movement was real, he needed to know she was listening, ready to communicate by whatever means necessary.
His thumb jerked. Tears in her eyes, Mariah fumbled with the nurse's call button. The nurse rushed in. It happened again. The nurse confirmed it and, shaking her head in wonder, recorded it in Shane's chart.
After that day, Mariah hardly ever moved from his bedside. Instead of putting Cassie down in her crib when the baby grew tired, Mariah laid Cassie down in the crook of Shane's arm, between his body and a chair backed against the bed, to ensure the baby wouldn't roll off.
That's how he woke up for the first time, five days later. Cassie slept by his side with Mariah in the chair set parallel to the bed, prepared to catch her baby in case she fell off the side of the mattress. Cassie was at the crawling stage, rocking and rolling, working hard to climb over her father's shriveled legs.
Shane opened his eyes.
Mariah clutched Cassie like a shield. "Shane?" she said.
He closed his eyes.
Setting Cassie down on the floor, Mariah stroked his two-day growth of beard that didn't get shaved as close as he did it himself. She had to believe his synapses were firing.
Or misfiring.
She wondered if she had imagined the whole thing.
He opened his eyes, focused on her. She saw him swallow. She laid her finger on the spot, skimmed his neck, his Adam's apple, saw how he struggled to speak.
"It's okay," she said. "You're alive. I can see you. You don't have to talk. I can't tell you how good it is to see you. Nice to see you. Great to see you." She was babbling. "How do you feel?"
He closed his eyes as though exhausted, mouthing words, real words. "How... are... you?"
Each word was spaced far apart. But they were in the right order. He made perfect sense. Synapses zinging, lighting the way.
Since his eyes were closed, she laid her hand alongside his face, smiling at the inanity of this incredible conversation. "I'm fine. You?"
He raised his hand, brushed her hip and whispered. "Hungry."
She pressed a steady kiss to his forehead. "We'll see what we can do about that."
Mariah pushed the call button on his bed control as she had a hundred times before. Only this time she didn't have a request, she had a report.
"He's awake and hungry," she said.
* * * * *
Chastened by eight months in a hospital bed, Shane went home determined to follow his doctor's advice and his rehabilitation plan to the letter. Barely able to get out of bed and use a portable toilet and a bath chair the day he got home, it took seven days of occupational and physical therapy just to be able to chew and swallow a meal in one sitting without drifting into La La land. It took another week to make it reliably to and from the downstairs bathroom using a walker to keep from falling.
Another two weeks went by as he relearned going up and down the stairs with his stiff, barely bendable bad leg, the goal being to move to the second floor of the house and sleep in the master bedroom with its large adjoining bathroom.
If Mariah hadn't shown such happiness at having him there, he would have chosen to stay downstairs. He preferred the hospital bed. Fully adjustable, he could raise his head and lower his legs with the barest movement of his hand. The king-sized bed upstairs was flat and lacked support, making him waste energy on the simple act of getting comfortable.
Each day, the effort of climbing or descending from one floor to another robbed him of what little physical strength he had left, cutting to pieces any plan to sit up in his recliner, awake, for more than fifteen minutes at a time.
In those fifteen minutes, the only thing he was good for was reading to Cassie. She was 14 months old when he returned from the hospital and had two speeds: wildly cruising from chair to wall to table to banister to stair, or cuddled up in the crook of his arm. She showed a marked preference for quiet time with him rather than with her doting mother.
He didn't understand it, this preference. Most times he was too uncoordinated and shaky to turn the pages of her fat cardboard books. Fortunately, she loved to turn the pages herself, often two or three at a time, making for fast reading. It was the only kind he could tolerate. The main drawback was, he ended up reading her entire library, the same five books, over and over again.
He eventually worked up the gumption to make a request of Mariah. He refused to make requests prior to this, saving them for his PT and OT therapists. His wife had already sacrificed too much. Everything she did, she did on his or Cassie's behalf.
He made the request in the morning, when he had the most energy. He cleared his throat as she bustled around, dragging a wet washcloth across his face and neck then a dry one, then changing the bed linens, chattering like usual, proudly detailing Cassie's lat
est milestones.
Shane snagged her attention by interrupting, speaking his first sentence longer than five words.
"Cassie needs at least a dozen new books."
Mariah mussed his hair happily, like he'd danced across the room or something equally asinine. "You're right," she said.
It was such a priority, twenty new cardboard books were stacked next to his recliner by the end of the following day.
She'd sold her agency, McBride Investigations, to her employees. They paid her a monthly sum, basically an option to buy her out over time. She likened it to getting income from a valuable asset, spinning off cash, like she owned a house and was renting it out. Someday, she might buy back in, if she wanted to return full-time and her employees got to a point where they owned it outright themselves.
Ana and the KSY crew held down the fort at the stables. His recovery depended on it. He had to allow his people to worry about everything because the moment he started thinking about his horses, his good intentions flew out the window. After he first woke up inside the rehab center, getting back to work made him push himself to the point of unendurable pain or injury, time and time again. The rehab would have to start over again.
Finally, the day came when the stars aligned. He got the okay to be released from the long-term facility. That night, he got horribly feverish. He developed a bacterial infection severe enough to send him back to the regular hospital for another week-long stint.
By the time he made it home, he was weaker than a newborn baby. He forced himself to pay attention to the orders given by the doctors and rehabilitation specialists. Whenever he saw Cassie, saw how young she was and how much more growing she had to do, he reminded himself that he had to surrender to their judgment.
It was an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, surrendering judgment. He relied on his judgment his entire life. His judgment had been honed over many years, had stood him in good stead, providing him with an extensive livelihood he was proud of.
But he'd learned his lesson. Secondary infections, torn ligaments, sprains, twisted ankles, even a broken bone in his foot from trying to hop from bed to a chair on his own in the rehab center wasn't worth it. With Mariah and Cassie, there was too much at stake to push himself to the edge of reason, testing his many physical limitations.
