Weecho: First Shots

Chapter 19 - Don't Screw Up

They’d taken Weecho’s mother into the operating room earlier than expected. By the time he got off the train at White Plains and walked to the hospital, she’d already been in surgery three hours. 

Tilda was in the waiting room. 

Weecho came in looking puzzled. “How come they speeded it up?” 

“I don’t know, but something changed.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Like all of a sudden she’s everybody’s pet patient. Like some heavy here said move her to the top of the list. They can’t do enough for her or move fast enough.” 

Nobody except for Juna even knew she was here. 

Before Weecho could think too much about it, the doctor that he and Tilda had talked to before about the X-rays came into the room, rubbing his eyes, damp patches under the arms of his scrubs. 

Weecho could feel himself tense up, taking a breath and holding it in when the doctor came over. 

“She’s made it in pretty good shape so far.” 

Weecho letting out the breath, not too loud. 

“We removed the troublemaker,” the doctor said.”The next day or so should tell us what kind of recovery to expect.” 

“When can I see her?” Weecho said. 

The doctor shook his head. “First we have to get her hooked up in ICU.” He looked over his shoulder toward the hallway where two orderlies were wheeling a gurney, a white sheet pulled up to the chin of the figure they steered down the hall. 

The doctor turned back to Weecho, could see the stress was taking its toll. “Why don’t you ask one of the nurses if there’s someplace you can rest. Or go downstairs and get something to eat. We’ll find you when it looks like it’s okay to go in.” 

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It was an hour later when a nurse found Weecho wandering the halls and showed him into the intensive care unit (Tilda had already parked herself outside it). The nurse was all niceness, Tilda was right. She led Weecho down a row of beds to the one where his mother was hooked up to the intravenous drips and blinking screens that were part of her life now. Weecho could hardly recognize her for all the bandaging around her head. 

“We can only let you stay for a minute,” the nurse said. 

“Can she hear me if I talk?” 

“Probably not. She’s still coming out of the anesthetic.” 

Weecho nodded. But he knew better. 

The nurse went to check on another patient and Weecho moved closer to the bed. 

“Hey, Ma, it’s me,” he whispered. “It looks like the operation worked.”  

She lay there as still as a corpse. Weecho looked at the thin blanket across her chest for some sign she was breathing. 

“The doctor said everybody talked about how they’d never seen such a thick skull.” 

Thought he saw a little rise in the blanket. 

“He says you came through great. I told him that was your style, I never thought it’d be any different.”  

Yeah, right. 

“Tilda’s here, says if you need anything just ask. The fatteninger the better.” 

He went on like that, talking nonsense, just trying to let her know he was here. He took her hand and bent down and kissed it. Kept holding it, rubbing it gently.