PRESENT TENSE
Chapter Six
"Rose! Rose, wake up!"
Rose jumped, startled, as the speaker shook
her. Blinking sleepily, she looked up, trying to remember where she was.
Michelle stood in front of her, looking at
with concern. "Are you okay?"
"Huh?" Rose looked around, finally
remembering where she was she. She was sitting in a chair in the waiting room
at Memorial Hospital. Stretching, stiff from sleeping in the uncomfortable
chair, she sat up, trying to find her crutches. They were lying on the floor
beside her.
Still groggy, Rose looked up at Michelle.
Suddenly, as she became more alert, everything came back to her. "What
time is it?"
Michelle looked at her watch.
"8:30."
Anxiously, Rose struggled to her feet. She
had been waiting for an hour and a half, and there had been no word. What if
something had happened, and they had chosen not to disturb her while she was
sleeping?
"Where are you going?" Michelle
followed her to the front desk.
Rose leaned on the counter. The nurse, a
different one from the one who had been there earlier, turned to look at her.
"Can I help you?"
"Has there been any word on Jack
Dawson?"
The nurse turned to look at a collection of
sticky notes attached to the computer monitor. "Yes. About half an hour
ago, one of the nurses came looking for you. You were sound asleep in that
chair over there, so she told me to have you go up to intensive care as soon as
you woke up."
"Did she say anything else?"
"No, just go on up there. Someone will
be able to tell you what’s going on."
"All right." Rose turned toward the
elevators. Michelle followed her.
"Want some moral support?"
"Sure." Anxiously, Rose swung
herself into the elevator. She leaned tiredly on her crutches as the door
closed. She was exhausted, having gotten only an hour and a half of sleep in
the last twenty-five hours, and her ankle ached. She felt dirty and sticky, and
had already noted the layers of dirt and soot on her face. Her dress was stiff
and stained with dried blood, and ripped in dozen places. She looked and felt
awful, but her concern for Jack overwhelmed her own misery for the moment.
She found the room that Jack was in and
hurried over to his bed. He hadn’t stirred. Rose looked at him, her anxiety
nearly overcoming her. He should have been awake hours ago.
The doctor had seen her come in and hurried
over to her.
"How is he? What’s going on?" Rose
gripped her crutches so hard her knuckles turned white.
He hesitated for a moment, trying to think of
the best way to tell her.
"He’s in a coma." At Rose’s
horrified look, he explained, "The brain swelling got worse, which is
probably why he’s in a coma. There’s no telling when, or if, he’ll wake up.
We’re doing everything we can, but the prognosis is very poor."
Rose stared at him, not wanting to believe
it. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t possible.
A voice came over the intercom, paging the
doctor. He looked sympathetically at Rose’s stricken face. "I’m
sorry," he told her, before hurrying away.
The chair she had sat in earlier was still
there. Rose sank into it, her hands shaking. Numbly, she stared at Jack. He didn’t
look quite as bad as earlier. His face had more color, and the blood
transfusions had been stopped. Nevertheless, he was still pale, and he was
completely still.
Gently, Rose took his hand, the one without
the IV attached. Stroking his hand, she spoke quietly to him.
"Jack, come on. You’ve got to wake up.
It’s going to be okay; I know it is. You’ve just got to wake up."
Michelle had found another chair somewhere.
Sitting next to Rose, she tapped her on the shoulder.
Rose jumped, startled; she had almost
forgotten Michelle was there. She turned to look at her.
"You know, my grandpa’s a preacher, and
he always says that prayer is an important part of healing. Maybe we should try
it now. It can’t hurt."
Rose hesitated; she had never been one to
pray much. Still, Michelle was right. It couldn’t hurt. Bending her head, she
prayed silently that Jack would wake up and recover. She wouldn’t pray out
loud; it made her think of the loud-mouthed, bigoted evangelists who swept down
upon the campus of Elias University twice a year and angered the students so
much the police had to stand nearby to protect the demonstrators. But she would
ask for a little assistance. Jack needed all the help he could get.
She finally looked up. Michelle’s head was
bent, too, and Rose was suddenly grateful. Michelle didn’t know Jack very well,
but she still cared.
Rose sat quietly for a few minutes, holding
Jack’s hand. Finally, she spoke.
"This is all Cal’s fault."
"How so?" Michelle had assumed that
Jack’s injuries were from the earthquake.
"Cal’s the one who shot him in the
back."
Michelle’s mouth dropped open. "He’s
been shot?"
Rose nodded. "Cal was aiming for me, but
Jack got in the way. We took cover between two half-collapsed buildings, which
then collapsed on us. We had to climb out, which is when Jack got hit in the
head with a chunk of concrete. If Cal hadn’t pulled that gun, none of this
would have happened."
"You’re not still planning on marrying
him, are you?"
Rose held up her hand, showing her bare
finger. "I broke off the engagement before any of this happened, which was
probably why he was so upset."
"I guess he didn’t take it well."
"That’s an understatement."
"I thought you were committed to
him."
"Committed is a good word. That’s what
happens to crazy people, isn’t it? Getting engaged to him was a colossal
mistake. I wish I’d never met him."
"He did seem to be a real jerk, the few
times I met him."
"He is. But I was dumb enough to keep
hoping things would change, even though they just kept getting worse. I finally
realized just how futile it was yesterday, and decided to end the
relationship."
"What finally changed your mind?"
"Yesterday morning, he slammed my hand
against a door frame because I disagreed with him." She showed Michelle
her bruised wrist. Michelle raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Rose already
knew her opinion of Cal.
Rose continued with her story, telling
Michelle about picking up her wedding gown, about going to see Jack, and about
the subsequent confrontation with Cal. She left out only a few details, such as
the interlude in Jack’s bedroom, and the fact that she had broken Jack out of
jail.
"And now Jack’s in a coma, and he might
not make it," Rose concluded, her voice breaking. She took a deep breath,
blinking her eyes rapidly, as she squeezed Jack’s hand.
"Are you going to be okay?"
Michelle asked her. "You’re not going to cry, are you?"
"No," Rose told her, and promptly
burst into tears. Michelle dug into her purse and handed Rose a crumpled
tissue.
"Don’t worry, it’s clean," she told
her, as Rose took it gingerly.
Rose tried to stop crying. But she was
worried, frightened, and exhausted, and her aching ankle and ribs didn’t help.
"I’m sorry," she choked out, wiping her face on one of the few clean
spots left on her skirt.
"Don’t be," Michelle told her,
handing her another tissue.
"Why are you here, anyway?" Rose
asked her, swiping at her face with the tissue. It came away covered with dirt.
"I brought Mari here this morning."
"Mari? What happened?"
"Well, the dorm building survived the
earthquake, but a bunch of things fell down. We cleaned up most of the mess,
but Mari didn’t realize until this morning that her lava lamp had also fallen
down and broken. She figured it out right about the time she stepped on a shard
of the broken glass and cut her foot open. I’ve never heard
such...creative...swearing before," she told Rose. "She jumped up and
down, hopped back up on her bed, and called the lava lamp a few things that
shouldn’t be repeated."
For some reason this struck Rose as
hilarious. She clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to muffle her giggles.
Michelle looked at her oddly.
"Must be something in the air," she
mumbled.
Rose finally stopped laughing. Clutching the
crumpled tissues in her right hand, she shook her head. "I don’t know what’s
come over me."
"You’re probably overtired,"
Michelle told her. "I’d bet they’re about through with Mari by now—there
was a line, which was why I wandered off. Enough of the roads are passable here
that we can get back to the dorm. Classes are canceled this week because of the
earthquake—one of the dorms collapsed and the library caved in."
"Was anyone hurt?"
"Quite a few people in the collapsed
dorm were hurt, and three died that we know of. Luckily, it was that one story
dorm, so there wasn’t so much to fall, and about half of the people who lived
there were out. No one was in the library except a custodian, and he got out
okay. Lucky for him, he was near the door. If he’d been caught in amongst all
those mazes of shelves, he would have been crushed."
"How do you know all this?"
"One of the campus cops helped get Mari
to my car." She shook her head, then looked at Rose. "You’re both
strange. You laughed, and Mari tried to flirt with the cop."
"What’s so strange about that?"
"His wife was right behind him."
"Oh."
"Why don’t you come back to the dorm for
a while? You aren’t missing any classes, and you could get some clean clothes
and some rest."
"I can’t. What if something happens and
I’m not here?"
"If he wakes up now and sees you, you’ll
probably scare him." She pulled a small mirror out of her purse and handed
it to Rose. "You look like something out of a horror movie."
Rose had to admit she looked pretty bad. Her
face was streaked with dirt and soot, she had dark circles under her eyes from
lack of sleep, and her eyes were red from crying. Still, she didn’t want to
leave Jack. If something happened, she would never be able to forgive herself
for not being there.
"No. If something happened, I wouldn’t
know."
"You could have them call you on your
cell phone. I noticed the phones here are working, although they’re not back at
the dorm. The power’s out, too, but you can still get cleaned up and rest. The
water is still running."
Rose still shook her head. “I lost my cell
phone—and my purse—in the earthquake.”
Michelle tried another tactic. "Well,
then, they could you on my cell phone, or Mari’s. You aren’t doing him any
good, anyway, staying here and making yourself sick because you won’t rest.
What if he wakes up and discovers that you’ve hurt yourself?"
Rose sighed reluctantly, too tired to argue
further. "All right. I’ll go back to the dorm. But I want to come back
here this afternoon."
"Fine. I’ll bring you back then. Now,
let’s go find Mari."
Rose got up, then kissed Jack on the forehead
before following Michelle.