She didn’t want to do nothing, but she had no choice. So she stood there, overwhelmed by helplessness, trying not to cry. Waiting.
Finally, at just past six in the morning, they got an answer. It felt as if they’d been here for decades, but in truth, it had been less than an hour.
“Mia is in surgery,” the man in front of her said. He was a big black man with tattooed biceps and the kindest, molasses-colored eyes she’d ever seen. His orange scrubs looked more like prison clothes than hospital wear. “She suffered some pretty severe internal injuries. That’s all I know,” he added when Miles began to question him.
“She’ll be okay, though,” Jude said. Everything felt scrambled in her head, sounds seemed to be muffled. Why could she hear her own heartbeat in all this noise?
“The surgeon will come out to talk to you when he’s done, but it will be a while. They just went in,” the nurse said.
“And Zach?” Miles asked.
“I’ll take you to see him,” the nurse said. “He sustained some chemical burns to his face and eyes, so he’s bandaged. Before you ask, Dr. Farraday, that’s all I know. He also cracked a couple of ribs. The girl, Alexa, is in with a doctor right now, but I think her injuries are less severe. A broken arm, a forehead laceration.”
“Burns?” Jude said. “How bad is it? Has he seen a specialist? There’s that doctor from the UW—what’s his name, Miles?”
Miles took her hand. “Later, Jude,” he said firmly, and she felt that helplessness rise up in her again.
They followed the nurse into a private room, where her son, the boy she’d thought only last week was looking so much like a man, lay in a metal-railed bed all alone, surrounded by machines. The right side of his face was bruised and swollen, misshapen somehow. Bandages wrapped his head, mushrooming out above his ears. A rectangular gauze pad covered the lower part of his right cheek and jawline.
Miles squeezed her hand, and this time she clung to him.
“We’re here,” Miles said.
“I’m holding your hand, Zach,” Jude said, trying not to cry as she stared down at her son’s bruised, burned face and bandaged eyes. His other hand was bandaged up past his wrist. “Just like I used to, remember? I used to hold your hand all the way into the classroom in kindergarten. You got cool in eighth grade—after that, I could only hold your hand in the car, and only for a few minutes. I used to reach back into the backseat, remember? And you’d hold my hand for a few minutes, just so—”
“Mom?”
For a moment she thought she’d imagined his voice. “Thank God,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.
Zach tried to sit up. “Where am I?”
“Lie still, son. You’re in a hospital,” Miles said.
“I … can’t see … What happened?”
“There was a car crash,” Miles said.
“Am I blind?”
Of course not, Jude wanted to say. It couldn’t be true, not to her son who had been afraid of the dark. “Your eyes are bandaged, that’s all.”
“We don’t know the extent of your injuries yet,” Miles said evenly. “Just rest, Zach. The important thing is that you’re alive.”
“How’s Mia?” Zach asked quietly, still sitting up. He looked around, blind behind all that gauze. “And Lex?”
“Mia’s in surgery right now. We’re waiting to hear,” Jude answered. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. This is a wonderful hospital.”
“And Lexi?” Zach asked.
“The nurse thought she was going to be fine. We’ll know more soon,” Miles said.
“Just rest, baby,” Jude said, using her voice to soothe him as she had so often when he was little. “We’ll be right here.”
She sat by his bed, as she’d done so many times in his life. A few moments later, Miles left again to check on Mia’s status. Waiting for answers was terrible, but Jude had to bear it. What choice did she have? And she believed in the deepest part of her soul that Mia would be fine. She had to believe that.
Behind her, the door opened again. “No news yet,” Miles said.
Jude looked down at Zach again, trying to think of what to say to him. Words felt heavy and unwieldy and she couldn’t tame her fear enough to think, so she dug deep into the past, went back to the days when she’d had two babies who tangled up together like puppies in her lap, and she told him his favorite story. She didn’t remember it word for word, but she remembered enough to start. “The night Max wore his wolf suit to make mischief, his mother called him Wild Thing and sent him to bed without dinner…”