Six weeks.
It's been six weeks since Sam's accident. Every day is a struggle. We get up, let each other get into the bathroom, get dressed, then go wake Junie and Rosie up, get them dressed and fed, reminding ourselves that we too, need to eat. Sam wouldn't want us starving ourselves.
Once we're all done breakfast, we pack up everything we need for the day and get into the car.
When we get to our destination, Rosie, who was starting to become more chatty again, would become quieter.
In her hand, she clutches a small vase with a rose in it and a balloon tied to it. This one says "Merry Christmas".
We go through the same routine every day.
"I know it's still a couple of weeks away, but, Merry Christmas, baby," I say, kissing Samantha's forehead. She's still in a coma, which is no longer medically induced. She'd had an infection early on, but she's stable now. The first two days, the ones we were told were so critical, the only thing they were looking out for was that she wasn't still bleeding internally. All seemed well, and while she was still listed as critical, she was more of a step-down. Critically serious? Seriously critical? In any case, she'd passed the first test. She'd lived through those first two critical days.
Her second test came just four days later. Her temperature began to rise. It hit 106° and she weathered febrile seizures. Samantha had had an infection somewhere. The antibiotics were increased, she had ultrasounds and was poked and prodded, and apparently, they were able to find the source of the infection: an abscess in a muscle in her back. They were also able to determine it did not get into or anywhere near her spinal cord or spinal column. They didn't have to tell us what that meant. If it had, it could cause meningitis, and in her state, it would likely be fatal. He tells us this as if it's good news. Although the abscess wasn't near the spine, it doesn't rule out the possibility of another abscess forming closer to the spine next time. And Sam was now forever immunocompromised. We had a lot of work to do, ensuring we knew exactly how to keep Sam healthy and safe but not stifle her.
But first, she had to wake up.
Rosie still lay beside her sister every day and told her stories. So, to me, that means Rosie still feels their connection. I never know how to ask her if she can feel Samantha, because when I ask, she says:
"Silly Daddy, Sammy's right here," and she taps Samantha's arm.
For some reason, Junie loves Sam's foot and sits there all day holding it.
And as she did every day, Junie crawled right down to Sam's foot and grasped her toe. I smiled, thinking it was cute. Then, suddenly, Junie chomped down on Samantha's toe! And as Jenna was trying to admonish Junie, I could have sworn I saw Sam's toe move.
"Junie!" Jenna said, taking her away from Sam.
"Do that again!" I said at the same time.
"Tyler! I am not letting Junie think it's okay to bite her sister's toe!"
"She moved it," I said.
"Who did? What? Who moved what?" Jenna asked.
"Sam. Sam moved her toe when Junie bit her!" I said.
"Wouldn't that just be a reflex?" Jenna asked.
"Sure, but to pain! It may be a reflex, but Sam would have to be aware of the pain!"
I ran out the door and to the nurse's station. Zoe, Sam's primary nurse was writing in a chart.
"Zoe, you have to come see!" I said excitedly.
"Tyler, what's wrong. Calm down. Is Samantha okay?" She asked, turning to look at the monitors behind her.
"I think she's waking up. Her toe moved!"
"Tyler, it was probably a spasm," she said.
"No, sorry, wait. Junie, for some reason, bit Samantha's toe, and Samantha moved her toe!"
"Tyler, that's a reflex," Zoe said. "Although..."
"Right, I know, but, she would have to be aware of the pain!"
"Right. Okay, let me call Dr. Shepherd, and I'll be right there to try something, okay?"
I nodded and went back into Samantha's room.
"Zoe's going to call Dr. Shepherd and come in and try something," I reiterated to Jenna.
"Try what?" she asked. I shrugged.
"Maybe a pain stimulus; see if Sam reacts?"
"I guess, maybe," I said.
Zoe came in a minute later with Sam's chart and a few tools. She started with a pen on Sam's big toe and pressed on the nail. Sam's toe jumped. Zoe then ran the cap of her pen up the sole of Sam's foot, and her toes curled in. She tried the pen on the nail on both of Sam's hands, and Sam tried to pull away! I was crying tears of joy. This had to be good. Right? This had to be a good sign.
Zoe smiled at us as she gathered up her stuff.
"Dr. Shepherd will probably repeat all that and a few more. He'll want to check against our baseline."
We nodded, and Zoe went out into the hallway. Dr. Shepherd arrived just then, and they spoke for a couple of minutes, and then Dr. Shepherd entered the room.
"Well there, Ms. Samantha. I hear you're hogging all the attention for yourself. Something about feeling pain? Sam, can you feel me rubbing here?" he asked as he rubbed her sternum. I saw her eyebrows furrow just a little.
"Her eyes! She frowned! Just a little," I said,
Dr. Shepherd frowned in concentration and did it again, a little harder. Sam's frown deepened. He repeated the pen on the nails of her right hand, and she tried to pull away. He ran the pen up the inside of the sole of her foot and she curled her toes again.
He stood up straight, looked at Samantha and then looked at us. He had a smile on his face.
"She is responding to stimuli. And, we now know that there doesn't seem to be any paralysis. We'll do another CT scan in a couple of days. Just keep doing what you're doing," he smiled at us. "Because she's trying to make her way back to us."
Jenna and I broke down into tears, rushing to Samantha's side. I picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles.
"Hi, Sam. Hi! I don't know if you can hear us, and I don't care. I'm going to pretend you can. You're doing great sweetheart. We're here for you when you wake up. Mom, me, your sisters, we're right here, waiting for you."
"Morning," a voice from the doorway said. I looked over. It was Brendon and Sarah. They came every day and sat with us and Sam. "Anything new?"
Brendon sounded so defeated. He had taken Sam's accident so hard. He'd been furious with her at first because he'd thought she'd blown off her curfew again, only to find out that had she and Brandi not been in that accident, she would have been home by her curfew. While he was furious with her, she'd been trapped in Brandi's car, pinned in her seat by the dashboard, her lungs punctured by her broken ribs, her spleen crushed and bleeding into her abdomen. Her liver lacerated and also bleeding into her abdomen, her pelvis fractured, bowel perforated, and slowly, Sam had been dying.
Brendon held such guilt for being mad while Sam had been trapped in Brandi's car. Sarah had made sure he went to a therapist, and he was getting better, but he still felt terribly for being so mad at her.
Brandi, on the other hand, had not survived the crash. It seemed that she'd died on impact, which for her sake, I hoped was true.
Friends and faculty from the high school came to visit Sam. We met Dylan, who seemed to like Samantha, and was so sweet with her.
Her basketball team, and the boys' team came and visited, too. The school had gotten Samantha a letterman's jacket and the team had brought it. We kept it hanging beside Sam's bed.
Meeting her teachers was interesting. They told us about how Sam had fit into the school community right away. She was well liked by her teammates, the seniors at large, and the faculty who'd had the pleasure of teaching her. They offered so much sympathy and cared so much, it was bittersweet to meet more people whose lives Sam touched. Everywhere she went Samantha made connections with the people around her.
Sam had obviously missed Brandi's funeral. Jenna and I had gone in her place, leaving Rosie and Junie with Brendon and Sarah at the hospital. We were able to offer condolences on behalf of our family and of course, Samantha, to her distraught parents.
We'd been able to piece together some of the story behind the accident.
Evidently, Brandi's boyfriend - ex-boyfriend - had cheated on her and she'd broken up with him, but was understandably upset. She'd had THC and alcohol in her system. I was surprised Sam would have gotten into a car with her. Dylan had told us, he didn't realize Brandi was so intoxicated. She seemed fine. He admitted they'd shared a joint, but that had been early on in the night. And he didn't recall seeing her drink more than a beer, also early in the evening.
"I wouldn't have let Sam get in the car if I'd thought Brandi was that drunk. She was mad, and she was yelling at Ashton, because he showed up at the party. I swear, Brandi seemed alright."
We let Dylan know we didn't blame him for the accident. He wasn't responsible for the choices of others.
Brendon and Sarah came into the room and up to Samantha's bedside.
"Still no change?" Brendon said, deflated.
"Actually, no. Junie, for whatever reason, bit Sam's toe and Sam moved it!" I said. "So Dr. Shepherd came by and he and Zoe both tried some things. Sam's starting to respond to pain."
"She what?" Brendon said, looking at Sam. She didn't look any different than she had the day before.
"It's true," Jenna said, smoothing down some of Sam's hair. "She's starting to come back."
Brendon and Sarah broke down into tears as well.
The six of us sat around Samantha, talking to her, touching her, trying to elicit more responses from her. So far all she was responding to were the painful stimulus we tried. But it was a good sign. It was our first positive sign in six weeks.
Later in the day, while Junie and Rosie were both napping against Sam's supine form, the nurse told us Samantha's condition had been upgraded to serious but stable.
I gently lifted Junie off Samantha's bed, detaching her little hand from Sam's toe, so the nurse could do the exercises they did with Samantha's limbs to help with mobility while she healed.
Samantha had had at least three more surgeries since the accident. One was to repair a blood vessel that had begun to leak, having been weakened in the crash. Another surgery was done to revise some of the quick surgeries they'd done in the immediate aftermath of the crash. They'd done what they could just to save Samantha's life. Since she had made it past the critical point, they went back in to make more permanent repairs that would help Sam heal better and more completely. Initially they'd only done what they could to get the bleeding to stop, and to stop her perforated bowel from leaking toxins into her system. They also repaired some ribs that had mutiple fractures and they'd better stabilized the broken ones.
It had been a rough couple of weeks at first, but as Sam stabilized, she needed just a few surgical revisions and she was on the mend.
And now she was starting to respond to stimuli. Hopefully we'd have her back and conscious, soon.