Sam’s countenance brightened. I jumped in again before he had the chance to commend me for the choice I was making so reluctantly.
“But piecing us back together can’t happen here. I’m taking Ryan to the States,” I said again. “You can come with us. Ryan would want you to come with us, whether he admits it or not. But we’re going either way.”
I closed the door before Sam had the chance to respond. I walked to the gate and out into the street to flag down a taxi and get back to my son.
eighteen
RYAN COULD MOVE HIS FINGERS. IT FELT LIKE A MONUMENTAL victory. The swelling on his brain was receding, and his vitals had been stable for several days. His neurologist had decreased the drugs inducing his coma. “We need to get him breathing on his own,” he’d said.
Sam called on Ryan’s eighth night in the hospital. “His eyes are open.” I was at his side in less than thirty minutes. He was confused—only semiconscious—and unable to respond to any of the nurse’s commands. When the machines warned us that he needed more sedation, he faded away again. It would take time, they assured us, until he was able to tolerate the pain.
His doctors determined that it was time to wean him from the ventilator. The first attempt was a terrifying failure. His oxygen dropped and the medical personnel jumped into crisis mode to get him stabilized again. “We’ll try tomorrow,” his doctor said.
Nyall was visiting less often now, but when he did, he cautioned us to keep our expectations low. I fought the urge to celebrate too soon. Sam didn’t. He saw each hint of healing as a precursor to the miracles he’d prayed for from the start. “God will restore him,” he told Nyall. I envied his certainty.
The second time Ryan opened his eyes, I was sitting at his side. “Ryan?” His eyes moved toward me. I yelled to the nurse that he was waking up and leaned close, inserting my face into his line of vision. “Ryan, can you see me?”
I reached for his hand and squeezed it. His fingers moved. Not much. “Try it again, Ryan. Try squeezing my hand.” They moved again, almost imperceptibly.
Tears blinded me and I swiped at them, unwilling to waste a moment seeing my now-conscious son. He frowned.
“You’re in the hospital,” I said as calmly as I could. His eyes met mine and held. “You—you took a fall. You’re … you’ve got some injuries, but you’re going to be fine.” I rubbed his arm and smiled as hopefully as I could. “Steven’s dad has been checking on you. Every day. And he says you’re going to be fine.”
Ryan blinked. “You’re going to be fine,” I said again, as much for my own benefit as his.
I could see his awareness returning as he drifted in and out of sleep in the days that followed. The respirator still kept him from speaking, but he could answer questions with blinks and expressions. Every so often, I’d catch a look of terror on his face. He’d blink twice to confirm it was pain, but something in his eyes told me it was much more.
The third attempt to wean Ryan from the ventilator worked. His doctor gradually reduced the oxygen forced into his body, allowing muscles that hadn’t been taxed in a while to find their role again. His discomfort was visible as his lungs began to function on their own.
“What is your name?” his doctor asked.
“Ryan,” he mouthed after an interminable wait.
Sam patted his shoulder while nurses tended to his needs. “You’re doing great, kiddo,” he said.
He was doing better. I’d grant him that. But while there was evidence of movement returning to his arms, neck, and shoulders, repeated tests of his lower extremities had yielded no encouraging results.
Ryan seemed to remember nothing of the events that had caused his injuries. He asked no questions and we offered no more information than we thought he could absorb. His thinking was still slow. His words still few. But he was alive and conscious. Alive and conscious. It was more than enough for now.
With Ryan moved to a regular room, Sam resumed a more normal schedule. We’d go to the hospital together in the mornings and try to be civil as we talked of trivial things. But I knew there were undertones we couldn’t quite disguise. Sam would go home midday to work and return in the evening. He’d lay hands on Ryan and pray for him before he left the room, and Ryan would lie there enduring it, looking anywhere but at Sam.
Sam was just finishing up his prayer one morning when Ryan spoke. “I’m never going to be able to walk.” It was a hoarse, despairing cry.
We’d tried to keep references to his prognosis vague, knowing he heard everything we said, but he’d likely gathered from our expressions when the nurses checked his reflexes that his inability to move his legs was more than a recovery delay.
Sam and I moved to stand on either side of his bed. I touched his cheek, wet with frightened tears, with the back of my fingers. “You don’t know that, Ryan,” I said. “You don’t know that you won’t walk again.”
“I can’t move my legs.” A sob escaped, and I could see him trying to contain it. With so many injuries, any movement seemed to cause him pain.
“Not yet,” Sam said, his voice intense. “You can’t move them yet. But you’re just starting your recovery. Give it time, son.”
“You heard what Nyall said yesterday,” I added, forcing optimism into my expression. “The progress you’re making—it’s a good sign. And you’re getting more sensation back, right? In your hands and shoulders?”
“Those are all positive things,” Sam said. Our eyes met across our son’s bed. We had to be hopeful for him. We—together—had to be hopeful for him.
“But I can’t move my legs,” Ryan sobbed again, unconvinced by the urgency of our reassurance.
“I know,” I said, leaning close to shush him. I kissed his temple. “I know.”
We spoke of his suicide as an “accident” and of his paralysis as a “slow recovery.” We talked about his soccer team. About the weather. The hospital food.
I’d officially quit my job at the language school three days after Ryan jumped from the crane. “You can’t,” Sam had said. “We need the visas.”
“Not if we’re going home.”
He’d looked at me with disappointed eyes. “This is home.”
I didn’t try to deny it. This country was the center of Sam’s universe. His passion for helping the needy in this place had long eclipsed his lesser homes.
Days later, the same argument continued at home, unabated by the time we’d already wasted to it.
“He needs specialized care,” I said to him. “He needs psychiatric help too. In a language he can understand. In a place that feels safe to him.”
“He doesn’t need psychiatry.”
“Nyall agrees. Pastor Justin agrees. Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees. He needs that kind of help.”
He crossed his arms and stared me down.
“We’ve got to take him back to the States,” I said again.
“There are other options.”
“Like what?”
“Like staying here. Trusting God to heal him here. Not insulting these people by taking Ryan to another country for his care.”
I dropped my head back and looked at the ceiling, letting out a long, frustrated breath. No matter how many times we had this conversation, it always ended the same way. “It’s the right thing for Ryan,” I tried again.
He moved from the living room into the kitchen. “Let’s not talk about this now,” he said as he lit a fire under the water kettle.
I leaned against the door frame and watched him get the coffee from its shelf. He measured a few spoonfuls into the French press, then took a little out. Precision. Always precision. Then he stood by the stove and waited for the water to boil.
“You’ve said you want to talk.”
He looked up. “I do.”
“This is me trying to talk.”
“About flying Ryan home. Not about us.”
“Caring for our son is as central as it gets to us.”
He paused. “You already know how I feel
about it.”
“Yes.”
“And you disagree.”
“I do.”
“Then it seems to me there’s little to discuss.”
The kitchen clock ticked the seconds away. I wondered if our marriage was long past its potential for repair. For Ryan’s sake, not mine, I hoped that I was wrong.
“Can you please reconsider?” I tried again. Stupidly perhaps.
“You’re not seeing the bigger picture.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry that my perspective is hampered by a boy lying partially paralyzed in a hospital bed.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“We won’t know anything until he’s been through more tests, more procedures, more therapy. The best place for all that to happen is not here.”
“How do you know?”
I shook my head. “Logic. Unbiased assessment.”
The water boiled and Sam poured it into the coffee press.
“It’s not just about Ryan,” I said, gathering the shreds of my commitment to this man. “If we’re going to put our family back together again … Sam, if we’re really going to fix us, it just can’t happen here.”
“How do you know that?” His voice was getting sharp.
“I just know, Sam.”
He shook his head and blew out a loud breath. “You’re asking me to accept your opinion, no questions asked, without giving any thought to mine.”
I remembered every time I’d surrendered to his reasoning, valid or not. “I’ve been giving in to your opinion for twenty years, Sam.” My tone hardened to match his. “How dare you say this is unfair? It’s the only time in our lives that I’ve demanded anything from you.”
He looked at me as if the power of his gaze—its inherent authority—could make me fall in line again.
“This is the right decision,” I said, unwilling to yield again and subjugate our son to my submission. “Doing this for Ryan … doing this for us—removing us from the stress and pressures and memories in this place—it’s right. I’ve considered your perspective and I’ve determined that mine is right.”
Sam depressed the plunger, then poured some coffee into a cup. “You go,” he said.
“What? Sam …”
He looked at me without emotion. “You and Ryan, go.”
“You need to be there too.”
“Why? He’ll have the best possible care. You said so yourself. And you’ll have Sullivan …”
“Sam.” I was too stunned to speak for a few moments. I tried to appeal to his sense of logic. “You can’t stay here without a visa, and I’m not going back to work.”
“I’ll find a way. There’s always a way.”
I raised my hands in utter incomprehension. “Ryan needs you with us. We need to get through his recovery together. If we’re going to piece this family, this”—I stumbled on the word, but had to play this hand—“this marriage back together somehow, you need to be there too.”
“I can’t just pick up and abandon—”
“You can!”
The hardness of my voice startled him. “You can,” he said. “I cannot.”
Anger brought tears to my eyes and I fought them back. Sam would see them as weakness, and I wanted to be strong. “Can we compromise?” I said to my uncompromising husband. “Can you just commit to a while? Maybe just a year, for starters—twelve months, Sam. Because our son almost died and because … because it’s the right thing.” We’d figure out the rest later. I had to be okay with that.
Sam moved to the sink and looked out the window, but I doubted he saw anything. I was asking him to sacrifice his mission for his family, and I knew his battle raged deep and fierce. “I committed to you,” he said without turning around. “When I married you. When we had Ryan. I committed to you both.”
I leaned on the kitchen island, fearful of what I knew would come next. The but that had always seemed to defeat my rationales. The conviction. The divine directives that mocked my human needs.
“One year,” he said. He continued to stare out.
“Try it again.”
Ryan blew into the spirometer I held to his lips. I was gratified to see a slight improvement in his lung function since a couple of days before.
“Want something more to drink?” I asked as I put the device away.
“I’m fine.”
“A blanket?”
“I’m fine.”
I sat in the chair next to his bed and considered his expression. “And here I thought the promise of flying home might have changed your attitude.” I smiled and hoped he would too.
He turned his head toward me on his pillow and I felt my smile fade. His jaw was set, his lips pinched. I stood. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?” I touched his arm and he pulled it away—just a bit, just enough for me to know.
“It wasn’t an accident,” he said.
I let the words settle. Mostly because I didn’t know how to answer them. He turned his head and focused on the ceiling.
“Can you remember?”
Nothing.
“The hours before the accident … Ryan, are you starting to remember?”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
I sat on the edge of his bed and wondered when my words to my son had become so stilted. “You’re right,” I said. “It wasn’t an accident. Can you look at me, Ryan?”
He shook his head against the pillow. “Did I jump from the crane?” His voice was tentative. Fearful.
I swallowed past my qualms. There’d been enough denial in our lives. “Yes. You climbed up the crane and … and you jumped off.” I stopped long enough to control my breathing. He was talking. He was talking and I couldn’t waste the moment on emotion. “You were upset,” I said as calmly as I could. “The day of the—the day you got injured. You were upset and … and you’d been drinking.”
He bit his lip, fiercely fighting for control.
“Do you remember anything else?” I asked, willing him to get it all out now—while he still had the courage to speak it.
He shook his head again. Then he said, “Dad …”
“Yes. He was there.”
“You were in Nagarkot.”
“We came back as soon as we heard.”
A nurse came in and sensed the tension in the room. She backed out and we sat in silence for a while.
“You are not to blame,” I finally said.
He pinched his lips together again as his chin began to shake.
“Ryan.” I wanted to force his face toward me, but knew I shouldn’t. This moment wasn’t mine.
“Were you there too?” His voice was still hoarse from the breathing tube.
“I was there. Standing at the bottom of the crane.”
He frowned. “I don’t remember …”
“It’s okay.” He let me touch his arm. “Do you want to know?”
He shook his head again.
“All right,” I said. There would be time for filling in the blanks. There would be time for restitching our lives. “You’ll remember more someday. As your body continues to heal. You’ve been through so much … it’s normal for you not to recall all the details.” I lay a hand on his leg and knew he couldn’t feel it.
His chin quivered again and he turned his head away. “I’m never going to walk. I—I jumped from the … and I’m never going to play soccer again.”
I ached for him. I longed to wrap my faith around his uncertainty, but I’d learned in the chaos of our last few years how little I knew. How little I could predict.
“I wish I could be sure.” I whispered the words and hoped he could hear them. “I want more than anything to promise you that you’re going to walk again.” I pictured his tattered red Manchester T-shirt. “To play again.” I swallowed hard against the emotions, wanting my words to be heard and to matter. “But I promise you, Ryan—I promise you that we’re going to do everything we can to get you well again. Whatever it takes. I promise.”
I w
anted so badly for him to believe me. To trust me. But how could he when I’d withheld so much of what I’d promised him before? By my inaction. By my spineless, will-less faith.
“I know you have no reason to believe me,” I told him. He was still turned away. “I know I’ve said things and allowed things that … I know I’ve hurt you. Probably in ways I don’t even realize. And I’ve been one of those who hasn’t heard you.” A tear ran down his cheek. I felt the guilt surge up again and freeze my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.
Ryan must have sensed it. He turned his head and looked into my face. I saw anger in his eyes—that anger I’d so long tried to excuse away. And I saw trauma, too, the kind that made his shoulders shake.
I realized this wasn’t just his moment—it was ours. In all its gruesome sacredness, this moment was our Truth.
Please, God. Please. The prayer rippled over my spirit and stunned me in its honesty. I neither feared, nor doubted. Somehow, I knew who heard it now. “I need you to know this,” I said to him. “Ryan, please—don’t look away.”
He hesitated. It seemed interminable. Then he turned his head back to me. “It’s my job to be your parent. It’s my highest calling to be your mom. And your job—your only job, Ryan—is to be a thirteen-year-old boy. Happy or sad or angry or … or on top of a crane. I have failed you, and you have done nothing wrong.”
He hiccupped on a sob and bit his lip, but didn’t look away. I touched his face. The hair that escaped his bandage. “You have done nothing wrong,” I said again.
For the hundredth, the thousandth time since his attempted suicide, I caught my breath and stared—just stared—at this battered, priceless extension of myself that I’d lost, in small concessions and false truths, along the way. I took in the minute details, the shadow beneath his lashes, the veins on the back of his hand, the sound of breath entering and leaving his still-tortured lungs.
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