MERCY
After several hours waiting and praying we all look up as a man in green scrubs comes into the waiting room. “The Hursts?” he asks.
Jim gets up and says, “That’s us. How’s Jude?”
“Um, he’s coming out of the anesthesia. His vitals are good for his condition. It’s going to be a while before he leaves the hospital, though. And when he leaves here, he’ll need to go to rehab for a while before he can go home. It’ll probably take near to a year.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. A year before Jude can come home!
Jim puts his hand on Loretta’s shoulder as he asks, “Will he be able to walk again, doc?”
“I hate to say yes or no. I hate to give false hope but I have to tell you that anything can happen. He’s in fantastic shape. He seems like he must have a determined spirit.”
“You have no idea,” I whisper.
The doctor looks at me and asks, “Are you his girlfriend or something?”
I nod. “I am.”
“Oh, well.” He stops and looks down at the floor and moves his foot over it in a nervous-like way. “I probably am not in the right by saying this but I’m going to say it anyway. He most likely will never be able to have children. There was extensive damage to some of his reproductive organs.”
Several gasps come from around me and one may have escaped myself. “Oh.”
He nods. “So try not to bring anything like kids up with him right now. He’s most likely not going to take the news he can’t walk real well. At his age, most don’t. Adding in the inability to reproduce too might cause him to go into a depression which hinders progress as one can imagine.”
“Okay,” I say and smile. “The most important thing is we still have him.”
He nods. “That you do. His injuries are not life-threatening. So there are multiple blessings and that would be best to point out as this news is given to him. I’ve instructed his charge nurse that his family is to be around him when he’s informed of his condition. I’m about to go into another surgery so my fellow surgeon will be coming into his room after he’s finished in the recovery room.”
“We’ll be brought in then, right?” his mother asks.
The doctor nods. “Yes, before he’s told anything, you will be allowed in. And just remember to keep good spirits. Upbeat attitudes help. But if he needs to cry, let him. Okay, Dad,” he says as he looks at Jim. “I know cowboys don’t cry but when they lose the use of their legs and their private parts, most do.”
I find the words coming out of my mouth before I know what I’m doing, “He can’t have sex at all? Even when the wounds have healed?”
The doctor smiles an embarrassed smile. “We won’t know until that time comes. Sorry, I wish I could tell you more but time will let us know more about what he’ll be able to do.”
Rose asks me, “Mercy, even if he can’t ever have sex again, you’ll stay with him, right?” She looks worried and it makes me feel terrible.
“Of course, I will. I love him,” I say as I look her in the eyes then move them to look at his mother. “Don’t even worry about that.”
Loretta gives me a nod and then Ram says, “He’s going to fucking hate that. Probably worse than not being able to walk. Shit!”
The doctor says, “But you don’t need to act like that’s a big deal. Remember to remind him that he’s alive and well loved by you all. Don’t commiserate with him. That’s never a good thing to do. Let him know there is more to life than those things.”
Ram looks away and puts his hands in his pockets as he bites his lower lip. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Well, I’ll leave you all to talk. Someone will come get you when he’s put into a room. Goodbye,” he says then leaves us to look at one another.
My cheeks are hot with a flush as I think about the talk of him not being able to have sex. He’d really hate that his whole family was just talking about that. I think he’s going to hate so much about his new condition. I think he’s going to hate me.
Zeek goes to the vending machine in the little waiting room and gets himself a coke and takes a long drink. Then his eyes land on me. I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking the same thing I am. He’s thinking that Jude is going to hate me.
Then Ram just blurts it out, “Jude may not want Mercy around when he finds this out.”
“Hush!” Loretta says, sharply. “You just hush up. What’s wrong with you. Your brother loves this woman. He’s not going to blame her. You’ll see.” Her eyes cut to me. “Don’t you worry. He’ll deal with this just fine. He’s a fighter. If he wants something bad enough, he makes sure he gets it. Don’t you worry at all.”
The sound of the aluminum can as it’s thrown into the trash can has us all looking at Zeke. His eyes are narrowed at me as he says, “You better not leave my brother, Mercy. After all this, you better not leave him.”
JUDE
I can feel my body being moved and the hardness that was under my back is replaced by a softer cushion. A mattress, I guess. It’s pretty evident that I’m in the hospital and have undergone surgery.
I feel like crap, sluggish, and kind of nauseous but not completely awful. I try to move my fingers again as I’m rolled away to somewhere. I still can’t open my eyes but I can tell my fingers are moving as I can feel the sheet moving around them.
The sounds come and go as I listen to the constant sound of the squeaking wheels as they roll along the floor. Then I feel the hesitation of a door being pushed open by my bed and the woman who’s walking next to my bed, says, “This is Jude. I have to pee like a racehorse, the surgery went so long. Page me when he wakes up, will you, Bonnie?”
“Okay, what happened to him?” the other woman asks.
“Car wreck. One of those eighteen wheelers hit him as he pulled out in front of it. And he’d been drinking so here’s another story to tell those teenagers of yours about when you get home tonight.” I hear the door close and feel warm breath on my face.
A hand moves over my cheek then I feel a little pain as something’s pulled away from my skin. “Let’s get this out of you so you can be more comfortable, Jude. I feel something slipping up my throat and then it’s gone.
A cool cloth is run over my forehead and the lady starts humming. She runs the cool cloth over my face and then along my arms and the back of my hands. “Time to wake up, Jude.”
I try to open my eyes and find I’m in a dim room and an older woman is hovering around me. “Hey,” I say with a whisper.
She looks at me and smiles. “Hi there, handsome. It seems you got yourself in a little accident and landed yourself in the hospital. How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” I say and can’t really understand why my voice sounds so damn scratchy. “Is anyone here for me?”
“I don’t know. I’m just the nurse who makes sure you come all the way out of the anesthesia they used to put you under to do surgery on you. I don’t know anything else,” she says as she looks away to check some lines that seem to be going into me.
“So, you don’t know what happened to me?” I ask as my voice seems to be getting a little stronger.
She shakes her head. “Nope. Are you waking up more?”
“Yeah,” I say.
She presses a button and says, “Recovery, paging Marci Kingston. Marci Kingston, your patient is ready in recovery.” Then she smiles at me. “Your nurse will be here soon to take you to your room.”
“I guess you also don’t know how long I’ll be staying here?” I ask her.
She just smiles and says, “I have no idea. I don’t even know what they did to you.”
The door opens, letting in a bright light and I close my eyes. “Ouch!”
“Good, you can see,” the woman’s voice, I have come to know as Marcie, says.
It opens again and some man comes in and starts pushing my bed out of the room. Marcie walks alongside it again and messes with the lines that are attached to me. “How are you feeling, M
r. Hurst?”
“Fine,” I say. “You can call me Jude.”
“Okay, Jude. We’re taking you to your room and will be bringing in your family. A doctor will be joining us and explaining the surgery you just went through,” she says then we get onto an elevator and she looks down at me as we become stationary. She runs her hand over my forehead and I feel my hair move back. “You don’t look too bad for all you’ve gone through.”
“Not too bad, huh?” I ask with a chuckle but stop because it hurts to laugh.
The elevator doors open and the big guy pushes me out into the hallway where I pass some other poor man on a bed too. Only he’s all propped up and looks like crap.
“Hi,” I say as we go past him.
He just looks at me like I’m stupid. My nurse looks at me with a grin. “Don’t mind him. He’s kind of crabby. He’s been here for a week and wants to go home.”
“Oh, I bet he does. How long am I going to be here?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. The doctor will be a better person to ask that.”
“Okay,” I say then my bed is turned and I find myself in a small hospital room. The curtains on the one window in the room are pulled back and I see it’s night time. “Wow, it was daytime last I recall.”
“What do you recall?” the nurse asks as my bed is placed smack dab in the middle of the room and the bags of fluid are hung up on a new IV stand. The big guy leaves without saying a word and Nurse Marcie is looking at me, waiting for me to tell her what I remember.
“Um, well, I was swimming with my brothers,” I say as I try hard to remember why I was driving.
A scene flashes in my head and I see us laughing as I talk about Mercy being the one for me. Then I see the back of her Suburban as it leaves the house. And that’s it. But I know something was wrong.
“I think my girlfriend was mad at me,” I say. “I have a distinct feeling she was mad and leaving our house.”
“Oh,” the nurse says. “Okay, I’m about to go get your family. They’re all here and I think there’s a young blonde woman with them. Is that the girlfriend?”
“Yeah, that’s Mercy, my girl. So, I guess she’s not mad at me anymore if she’s here.”
“Probably not,” the nurse says. “So, I’ll go get them if you’re ready for them.”
“How do I look?” I ask as I have no idea.
She smiles and pulls a tray to the bed and presses a button on the bed to lift my top half up. When she opens it, I see my reflection in a mirror. I don’t look too bad. I don’t look too great either.
She nods. “There you go. I think you look wonderful, considering what you’ve been through.”
She leaves and I move my hands to lift my body up a little better and notice my legs are very heavy as I pull myself up. There’s no pain but when I go to pull the sheet back I stop as I see my hospital gown is bunched up at my side.
I see a bag of yellow fluid hanging from the bed rail and pull the sheet back.
I’ll let the doctor tell me everything. I don’t want to see something that might freak me out!
The door opens and a tall man walks in wearing a long white coat. “Hey, son. How’re you feeling?” he asks me as he looks at a clipboard full of papers.
He hasn’t even looked at me yet as his forehead is full of creases. His eyes are trained on the page then he looks at me. He seems to be looking around for someone else. “Is anyone with you, son?”
“Not yet.”
He looks back down at the clipboard then back at me. “We’ll wait.”
How bad could it possibly be that we need to wait?
MERCY
It feels like it has been forever since the doctor came and told us Jude was out of surgery and would soon be in his own room. Silence has entombed us since Zeek let me know what he thinks.
I don’t how they’re going to take it if Jude wants nothing to do with me after all I’ve taken away from him. We’ll see if anyone of them is still telling me the same thing in a little while when Jude finds out some pretty hard shit about himself. Shit, I caused him.
A lady in purple scrubs comes into the room and says, “He’s ready.”
All of us breathe sighs of relief after hours of waiting and we all get up and follow the nurse down a series of hallways. She walks at a face pace as I lag at the back of the line of his family.
Finally, she turns into a room and we file into the little room. I see a doctor standing at the end of a bed and when I get inside, I see Jude laid up in that bed.
His family is all over him. Kissing, hugging, and murmuring soft words. Our eyes meet and I find mine burning with tears that are threatening me. He wiggles a finger at me and I come to his side. “Hi,” I whisper. “You don’t know how good it is to see you, Jude.”
“You don’t know how good it is to see you, Mercy.” He takes my hand and pulls me in for a kiss.
As our lips touch my heart pounds and I have to struggle not to cry. I pull back and look at him then he pats the side of the bed. “Sit with me, baby.”
I do as he’s asked and he moves his arm around me. I hate how everyone is watching us. I completely hate it. Then the doctor gives us a nod. “Your better half, Jude?”
Jude nods. “This is Mercy.”
The doctor lifts his light eyebrows at me. “Pleasure to meet you. Before I proceed with this information, I’d like to let you know that how you handle this is important to this young man’s recovery, Mercy.”
I nod. “Yes, sir. I’ve been made aware of that.”
Jude turns his head and looks at me with an odd expression. Then I kiss his cheek. “It’s going to be okay, Jude. Let’s hear what the doctor has to say.”
He nods and the doctor clears his throat. “Jude, you have a crushed pelvis.”
“What?” Jude asks as he grabs the blanket to pull it back.
JUDE
My father who is standing next to me takes my hand, stopping me from pulling the blanket back to see what the hell this doctor is talking about.
How can my pelvis be crushed? I can’t even feel anything hurting down that way!
“Jude, just listen to the man, son,” Dad says,
I look at the doctor. “I can’t feel anything. How come there’s no pain?”
The doctor frowns as he says, “Parts of your lower vertebrae were shattered, rendering you paralyzed from the waist down.”
“Paralyzed?” I ask. He can’t mean that.
The doctor nods. “Yes. You will have to wait to heal then undergo extensive therapy which may or may not lead to you walking again.”
My mind is going hazy and I lie my head back on the pillow. “How long will I be here?”
“Most likely for several months,” he says.
Dad asks, “If we can get him the proper things, can we take him home and get a private doctor and nurse for him?”
“Well, I suppose you could do that. That’s very expensive,” the doctor says.
Dad just nods and pats me on the shoulder. “Money is not an issue, thank the Lord above.”
“We will need him to be here for a few more days to be sure no infection sets in on the wounds,” the doctor says.
“So I have more than crushed bones?” I ask with a shaky voice.
Mercy holds my hand as the doctor answers me. “You had extensive damage to your lower region. Your scrotum was severely lacerated.”
“Whoa! What?” I ask as I reach for the bedspread again to check that out.
Mercy takes my hand and holds it still. “You can’t see that right now, Jude.”
I look around the room at my mother and little sister. “You’re right.”
The doctor smiles. “It’s bandaged anyway.” He looks at the chart again and then back at me. “The surgeon made some notes here about your reproductive organs. I’m not sure now is the time to get into that with you. I’d much rather talk about what happens next for you.”
“I’d like to hear what he put about my reprod
uctive organs,” I say. “Was more than my scrotum injured?”
“Well, there are lacerations in a few places. The underside of your penis has a couple which could lead to erectile problems in the future but I don’t think that’s relevant at this time. There’s also the fact that with the injuries to the scrotum you may be infertile now, another thing that I see as irrelevant at this time,” he rattles off.
I have to shake my head to clear it. “If that’s so fucking irrelevant then what is the relevant news, doc?”
“Your paralysis, of course,” he says.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “When the bones heal, I’ll be able to walk again.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t seem to understand. Crushed bones don’t just reform and heal up. You’ll be in a wheelchair, most likely, for the rest of your life, Jude.”
“No,” I whisper. “No!”
Dad looks at me with a stern expression. “Jude, we’re going to get you the best doctors money can buy. We’ll do everything we have to in order to get you back to yourself again. Don’t you even worry.”
Then I look at Mercy and my heart sinks. “No kids, Mercy. How do you feel about that? Oh, God! No sex, Mercy?”
She shakes her head. “I love you, Jude. Don’t worry about any of that. I’m not.”
“Sure you’re not!”
“I’m not,” she says. Then she takes my face between her hands and holds it tight. “You’re alive, Jude. We’re so happy to have you with us. You have no idea how hard I prayed for God to let us keep you. We all love you, Jude. I don’t give a shit about the rest. I’ll be here for you for as long as you want me.”
“You can’t mean that,” I say and feel myself slowly falling apart. “You should’ve let me die.”
“No!” my mother says harshly. “Jude Hurst, no! Don’t even think that. Lots of people live their entire lives in a wheelchair. You can do it for however long you need to. Don’t say anything negative about yourself. We’re glad to have you.”
“Well, I don’t see how life is going to be worth a shit if I have to be in a wheelchair and can’t feel anything below my waist. I can’t see it at all.” I look at Mercy. “And you already have your hands full with the kids. I can’t glom onto you too. I can’t do that to you.”
Mallory Page 123
