“You’ll be good as new soon,” I assured her, trying to sound more confident than I felt. I told her nothing about Paige.
“I don’t want to be paralyzed,” she mumbled, the last word almost unintelligible.
“You’re going to recover,” I found myself saying.
When she finally dozed off, I went back to Paige’s room.
Then I visited my aunt again, and that was how I spent the rest of the day. Going back and forth from one room to the other.
In all that time, Paige never regained consciousness.
Right before I left the hospital for the night, I finally managed to connect with the physicians. First up was my aunt’s neurologist, to whom I’d spoken on my drive back from Florida.
While the stroke was serious, he reiterated that it could have been much worse. Based on her recovery to that point, he still planned to release her in a couple of days but said she would likely need assistance once she got home, since walking, dressing, and other basic activities would be difficult. If I couldn’t do it—or if another family member couldn’t—it was recommended that I hire a home-healthcare worker. He added that after her release, she would also need extensive physical therapy and that he was already making arrangements for just such care. Despite all of that, he remained relatively positive about her prognosis.
I next met with the critical-care specialist who’d been called in to help treat Paige while she was in the emergency room. I was lucky to speak with him in person, as he’d returned to the hospital only by chance to retrieve something he’d forgotten, and the nurse pointed him out to me.
“It was touch-and-go for a while,” he admitted, echoing what the other doctor had warned me about. Though prematurely graying, his alert gaze and youthful energy suggested he was only in his early forties. “Since she’s still unconscious, it’s hard to know the full extent of any possible impairments,” he qualified, “but now that her vitals have begun to improve, I’m hoping for the best.”
Until that moment, I realized, I’d been expecting the worst.
“Thank you,” I said, exhaling.
Suddenly ravenous, I stopped at a drive-thru to pick up some cheeseburgers and fries, wolfing everything down on the short drive to the hotel. Again, I fell asleep almost immediately, too tired even to remove my clothes.
I slept for more than twelve hours and woke feeling almost human again. I showered, had a huge breakfast, and returned to the hospital.
I went directly to my sister’s room but, strangely, found it empty. After a few moments of panic, I learned that she’d been transferred to another floor. When the nurses explained why, I understood, but my heart filled with dread as I made my way there.
When I arrived at the room, she was awake and no longer intubated. Her face was still sunken and gray, and she seemed to be struggling to bring me into focus, as if willing me into existence. Finally, she cracked a weak smile.
“You cut your hair,” she said, her voice so soft I had to strain to make it out.
Though I’d known it was coming, I nonetheless felt something plummet inside me. “Yeah,” I lied.
“Good,” she said through dry, cracked lips. “I was just about to fly home and cut it myself.”
Her old joke, I thought. Though I knew she was trying to be funny, I couldn’t help eyeing the restraints on her wrists. I took a seat beside her and asked how she was feeling.
Instead of answering my question, she frowned, visibly confused. “How did you find me?”
As I searched for an answer to soothe her rising anxiety, she shifted in her bed. “Did he send you?” She scanned my face. “Gary, I mean?” Twisting the sheets in her bony hands, she went on: “I had to plan for months, Colby. You don’t know how bad he got. He hurt Tommie…”
And then she launched into a story that I’d suspected would be coming. As she rambled, her agitation grew, until her shouts and the rattling of her bed rails began to attract the attention of a nurse, who came into the room. The nurse told me over my sister’s strenuous pleas that the psychiatrist wanted to speak with me.
Not any psychiatrist. Paige’s psychiatrist, a man I knew well.
He arrived within twenty minutes and led me to a room where we could have a private conversation. I told him everything I knew. He nodded as I described my inability to reach Paige, the frantic drive home, and the state of the house when I arrived, but he sat up sharply when I told him about my aunt. He hadn’t known she was in the hospital, but now I could see him putting all the pieces together in the same way I had.