Don’t compare them. It’s totally different. It means nothing.
That would have to be her new mantra. What Tyler went through and what Tommy went through were totally different. She’d done a little research and knew just the sedation alone could take a while to fully leave his system.
It means nothing.
She leaned in and kissed his forehead, gently squeezed his hand. “I’m going to see if Mom and Karen are out there yet. I’ll send them in if they are. They’ll want to see you.” She straightened and watched him. As she was about to release his hand he gave hers a weak squeeze.
“Do that again. Please, Tommy.”
After an agonizingly long moment, he did.
She choked back a sob. “One more?”
He squeezed.
Nevvie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Two?”
They were weak, but they were squeezes.
“Tyler.”
His eyes opened and he carefully sat up. “What?”
She nodded to Tom’s other hand. Tyler held it.
“Tommy,” she said, “squeeze Tyler’s hand now.”
At first he didn’t, but he slowly swiveled his head to look at Tyler. Then he squeezed.
Tyler breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, love, thank you.”
Tom’s eyes still didn’t look right, dull and empty. Maybe that was an effect of the medication. She prayed that’s all it was.
* * * *
Eddie and Pete sat in the waiting room with Karen and Peggy. After a quick update, Peggy and Karen handed Adam off to Nevvie and hurried to the ICU.
Nevvie leaned in to Eddie when he put his arm around her shoulders. “You know he’s gonna be fine, Nev. He’ll come out of it. He has to.”
“Can you watch Adam today?”
“I’m all yours, babe.”
Pete sat across the way. “Tom-Tom loves him. Hasn’t quite figured out he’s not a puppy.” Tom-Tom was their yellow Labrador retriever, so named because of the sound his thick tail made beating against things when he was happy or excited.
Adam reached up and grabbed Eddie’s chin. “Dee!”
Nevvie smiled. “This keeps up, he’ll be saying ‘Eddie’ before he says ‘dada’ or ‘poppa.’”
When the squealing baby strained to reach Eddie, Nevvie handed him over. It was a relief to have him to depend on.
* * * *
Nevvie returned to the ICU with Tyler after lunch. Tom’s eyes were closed. As Nevvie and Tyler quietly talked with the nurse, Carol, Tom must have heard them. Nevvie watched Thomas follow them with his eyes as they walked around the bed and settled into their usual positions.
His head slowly turned toward Nevvie. She sensed something more, perhaps awareness. “Tommy?”
He looked at her, but steadier than before, as if struggling to focus.
She held his hand. “Blink for me, Tommy.”
He did, once, slowly. Deliberately.
“Blink two times.”
He did.
Fighting back tears, she said, “Squeeze my hand two times.”
He did.
Tyler sobbed from the other side of the bed. Thomas’ head slowly swiveled to look at him.
“Are you really back, love?” Tyler asked.
Thomas blinked once, slowly, deliberately.
The doctors decided to remove his breathing tube later that afternoon as long as he continued making progress. Around four o’clock, Tyler and Nevvie gathered with Peggy and Karen in the waiting room while it was done. Tyler and Nevvie silently held hands, anxious.
Nevvie closed her eyes. They were both awake. Tyler was home, Tom would be too, soon. She could quit crying and get on with helping them heal. She’d already signed up for a CPR class, determined to know how to do it before Peggy left. She wouldn’t take a chance like that again.
Carol called them back to the ICU an hour later. Thomas, his eyes closed, sat up in bed, free of the restraints and the breathing tube. He’d lost weight, at least twenty pounds, and his face looked gaunt.
Tyler tightly gripped Nevvie’s hand, steadying her. He had to be as much of a wreck as she felt, and here he was trying to be strong for her. At their approach, Tom’s eyes slowly slid open.
Carol touched them on the shoulders and leaned in between them. “He’s very weak, and he’ll have trouble talking for a while, so stay calm, keep him calm, and don’t worry about how he sounds. Don’t make him talk too much.”
Nevvie and Tyler nodded and took up their usual positions. Thomas looked at Tyler and tried to raise his hand to Tyler’s face. Nevvie held back her tears as Tyler laced his fingers through Tom’s and nuzzled his hand against his cheek. “Hello there, handsome. It’s good to see you back.”
Tommy slowly licked his chapped lips. “Hey.” His soft, whispery voice drew a sob from Nevvie. He sounded nothing like himself, but he was talking. He couldn’t be horribly brain damaged if he was responding, could he?
Tommy slowly turned his head to her and tried to reach for her as well. She grabbed his hand and kissed it. “Hey, you,” she said.
He gently squeezed her hand and whispered, “Hey. Love you. Both.”
Tyler and Nevvie cried.
* * * *
Tyler needed a nap, so Peggy and Karen came in to sit with Tommy. After dinner, Nevvie and Tyler returned to the ICU with the baby.
Tom managed a weak smile. “Hey,” he croaked.
Nevvie carefully laid Adam next to Tom. “Someone else wants to say hi. I haven’t been bringing him in since you were first admitted, we didn’t want him picking something up in here, but today’s special.”
Tom’s eyes glistened. When he touched Adam’s hand with his finger, his son tightly gripped it.
Nevvie swallowed back her tears yet again. Her boys were back. Thomas looked at her and weakly smiled. She leaned in and kissed him and that’s when she finally lost it, sobbing against his shoulder.
“S’okay,” he hoarsely whispered, kissing the top of her head. Beyond the obvious his voice sounded slurred and slow.
Tyler brushed away his own tears. “They’ll probably move you to a regular room soon. Life will start to get back to normal, I should think.”
Tom slowly nodded. Nevvie sat up and kissed him one more time before picking up the baby. She held him so Tom could kiss him. “I love you, Tommy.”
“You too.” He looked at Tyler. “Love you.”
Tyler frantically nodded, kissing him. “As I love you.”
Tom’s eyes closed. “Go rest.”
“All right, love. We will.”
“Make Nev sleep.”
Tyler and Nevvie exchanged a look and laughed.
* * * *
Nevvie gave up trying to sleep around midnight. Tyler caught her hand as she tried to get out of bed and pulled her back to him for a kiss. “And give him another for me,” he said, kissing her again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“For waking you up.”
“Don’t feel guilty that you wish to go to him. I’m all right. He needs you.”
Ben had her things ready when she arrived. Tommy’s eyes were closed, but his soft, hoarse whisper startled her.
“Hey.”
“Hey, you.” She leaned in and kissed him. He opened his eyes. “Ready for your bath?” She gently brushed stray hair away from his forehead.
“Bath?”
It was hard for her to get used to his weak voice. She hoped that would be the first thing to return to normal. “Yeah. Do you think I’m going to let anyone else do this for you?” She forced a smile and set up her MP3 player. He watched as she prepped everything and pulled the curtain and door shut to his alcove.
She unsnapped the gown shoulders and tucked the towel around his face. “Have to shave you first. It’s going to be easier now without that damn tube…”
He touched her hand.
The floodgate broke. She sat in the chair next to his bed and buried her face against his side and softly sobbed.
He couldn’t do much more than rest his hand on the back of her head. “S’okay. Don’t cry.”
After a few minutes she composed herself and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to do that in front of you, but you don’t know how glad I am to have you back.” She blew her nose and continued her routine, only now his eyes followed her, his ears heard her, and he occasionally smiled or responded to her comments.
After he was shaved she patted his face dry. “Now for your sponge bath.”
“How bad?”
“Your injuries?”
He slowly nodded.
“Bad enough. Could have been a lot worse, all things considered.” He closed his eyes and didn’t look while she bathed him, not wanting to see. He winced a little as she did his range of motion exercises.
“I’m sorry.”
His eyes were closed, but his face looked pinched, tight with pain. “S’okay.”
An hour later, she sat down and reached for the paperback in her bag, then laughed. “I guess I should back up and start from the point where you were.”
“Go home. Sleep.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. Not without both my boys home. This is my routine. I need you back. Then we can all get a good night’s sleep.”
“Routine?”
“Every night.” She stroked his hair. “I come in every night with you.”
“What time is it?”
She looked at the clock. “Two.”
“Go home at three. Deal?” His brown eyes struggled to focus on her.
She nodded. “Deal.”
* * * *
Thomas spent most of the next two days sleeping, awaking a little to say hi before drifting back to the safety of darkness. It was fucking hard to talk, like the words didn’t want to come. Everything hurt. And he couldn’t eat, even though he suspected trying to satisfy the constant hungry growl in his belly would cause a flurry of new problems. He settled for the water, broth, sports drinks, and supplement shakes they let him have between his naps. Time blurred for the most part, night distinguished from day by Nevvie coming in to give him his bath.
The weakness more than anything scared him. He could barely lift his arms, had difficulty holding things. Perhaps it was best he was still on a liquid diet he could drink through a straw, because he didn’t know if he even had the strength to lift a spoon to his lips, much less the dexterity to get the damn thing in his mouth.
It touched and shamed him that Nevvie came in each night to take care of him. She shouldn’t have to do this, she should be able to focus on Tyler, not him. She talked nearly non-stop, and he usually closed his eyes while she worked, enjoying the feel of her hands on him and the sound of her voice.
He hadn’t asked exactly what happened, knew there’d been an accident, but he wasn’t ready to hear the details yet. He knew he was pretty fucked up, that much was obvious, but didn’t even want to know all those facts either. He was content to sleep and sip his drinks and lie there and listen to Nevvie’s chatter at night or feel Tyler holding his hand during the day.
None of those activities required the exhausting activity of stringing conscious, cohesive thoughts together.
* * * *
Thomas looked at his mom and Karen when they visited one morning. For once he felt coherent enough to talk. He’d heard the doctor and nurse talking about backing off on his pain medication, so maybe that was a side effect. “Hey.”
Peggy smiled and kissed him. “You look more awake today.”
“I feel more awake.”
“You know how to put more grey in my hair, don’t you?” Peggy teased.
“Sorry.”
Karen leaned in to kiss him. “How you feeling, baby brother?”
“How are they?” He knew damn well Nevvie wasn’t telling him everything. Tyler probably wouldn’t either.
Peggy patted his hand. “A lot better the past few days, now that you’re awake.”
“What happened? The accident.”
She froze. “How much do you remember?”
He slowly shook his head. “I sort of remember getting off the interstate in Tampa. Nothing else.”
“That’s probably a good thing. You were a mess.”
He lifted his left arm and touched his head where a small dressing covered the surgical wound.
His right arm didn’t want to work that well this morning.
He knew he’d need a haircut, but wasn’t brave enough to ask for a mirror yet. “Still am a mess.” It felt difficult to talk, like he had to hunt for the words and focus on them before he could push them out his mouth.
“Honey, you were in a coma for two weeks. That’s to be expected. You won’t be salsa dancing any time soon. You’ve got to heal.”
“Tyler?”
“Do we really need to worry about that?”
“Mom.”
She sighed, recognizing the stubborn set to his jaw, and retold the events. “What’s important is he’s alive, he’s gonna be just fine, and so will you.”
He rested against his pillows. “Poor Nev. You were right. I shouldn’t have taken the bike.”
Karen laughed. “Tommy, now I
know
you’re brain damaged. You admitted Momma was right.”
He managed a rough laugh. “Yeah.”
Karen patted his shoulder. “You just focus on getting better. Those two need you. Tyler’s been as worried about you as Nevvie. He needs you as much as she does, bro.”
“Was it my fault? The accident?”
Peggy shook her head. “No, sugar. One of the ER doctors saw it happen. The guy pulled right out in front of you. Talking on his cell phone.”
“Charges?”
He spotted the nervous look Peggy and Karen shared. She didn’t answer.
“Mom.”
“They buried him three days after the accident. He died on impact, sugar. I’m sorry.”
He claimed he wanted to go to sleep a few minutes later, waiting until they’d left him alone to close his eyes and cry. Someone died because of him? It didn’t matter the accident was the other guy’s fault. If he’d taken the fucking truck in the first place, instead of being stubborn about it, none of this would have happened. The guy would have seen him. Or at the very least he wouldn’t have been hurt and he’d be taking care of Tyler and Nevvie, without this additional fucking stress on them.
Fuck.
He’d set his mind about the bike when his mom started grousing about it. He had thought about taking the truck instead, but that old stubborn streak of his, when Momma asked him not to take the bike, that made his mind up for him.