Read Online Surface by Stacy Robinson - Free Book Online Page B

to avoid had already dawned on him. “I—” she started.
    Shaking his head, Michael stared through her.
    She stepped back, nearly falling into the chair at Nick’s bedside. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “Because it stinks, Claire. And now . . .”
    Claire saw Michael’s lips tremble, saw his disbelief. She looked down at the floor tiles and the dulled path that marked the way from the entry to Nick’s bed, then back up at their comatose son. And the explanation she sought to speak evaporated. She wished she could do the same. “You know I’d never do anything to endanger Nicholas,” she said, her voice small with surrender.
    Michael raised his eyebrows. The wretched sound of Nicholas’s respirator reverberated around them.
    Claire reached out for her husband’s hands over the bed, but he stepped away. “Not intentionally, Michael. You know that.”
    The curtain drew open with zipper swiftness, startling Claire. Dr. Sheldon entered and introduced himself to Michael, shook his hand. Michael cleared his throat and looked sidelong at Claire, in what the doctor might have interpreted as an attempt to stifle his grief. Dr. Sheldon suggested they go to the lounge to talk. Claire followed, suddenly panicked that she’d allowed such an inappropriate conversation to take place in front of Nicholas. She hoped for any morsel of good news from the doctor, and wondered how she could possibly cool Michael’s simmering anger.
    As Dr. Sheldon explained Nick’s condition in detail to Michael, Claire tried not to focus on the skepticism she read in the doctor’s tired eyes. Those first twenty-four hours, already ticking away, were crucial, he explained. It was positive that there had been no more bleeds, and while Nicholas’s hemorrhage was severe, he did not yet want to characterize it as massive. But the level of the coma was deep, even though Nicholas did exhibit some eye movement when his head was turned. Good always tempered with bad.
    “What about surgery?” Michael asked.
    “We’ve performed some tests to locate the damaged blood vessel, and Dr. Marks, the head of neurosurgery, will be making his evaluation based on the results. But it was critical we stabilized Nicholas before any surgical treatment.”
    “And you’ve done that, which seems to be good news. So how long do we wait for a decision?”
    “Dr. Marks should be down to meet with you both when he gets out of the OR. But it’s not really a question of if we’ll do surgery in Nicholas’s case, but when. We need to go in and drain the hemorrhaged blood. And we may need to remove the damaged area to prevent another hemorrhage, depending on what Dr. Marks finds. Really, it’s the type of procedure that Dr. Marks needs to determine. He’ll discuss all this with you.”
    “Will the removal of the vessel wake Nick from the coma?” Claire asked.
    “It’s possible the surgery could rouse him. That would be the optimal outcome, but unfortunately we just can’t predict these things.”
    Claire looked from Michael, whose stoic veneer revealed nothing, back to Dr. Sheldon. “So would you recommend—?”
    But Michael cut her off. “What are the risks of the surgery?”
    “Dr. Marks is one of the finest neurosurgeons in the country. But I’ll be frank. In a case like this, the potential risks are severe disability, vegetative survival, or death. But Nicholas could pull through this with little or no permanent disability, and that’s what we hope for.”
    Michael stood and walked to the other side of the long empty lounge, his arms folded tightly over his chest. “When can we expect Dr. Marks?”
    “He should be scrubbing out right now. I’d say another ten minutes.”
    When the doctor left, Claire crossed to Michael, who stood studying a print of hot air balloons floating in the mountain mist. “I think he should have the surgery as soon as possible,” she said in a soft voice.
    Michael closed his eyes for a long moment, then turned