Answering Machine

“Mr. O’Callaghan.”

I shifted slightly, suddenly realizing how uncomfortable I was.

“Mr. O’Callaghan?”

I blinked, as the voice grew louder, closer, and more urgent.

“Huh?” I mumbled, opening my eyes and attempting to sit up from my painful, slouched position. In my lap, Allie fidgeted in her sleep, one of her tiny fists gripping the fabric of my shirt and her head resting on my shoulder.

In two of the seats next to me, Lindsay’s parents sat up straight and at attention. I barely remembered them arriving – it must have been hours ago – but I remembered clearly the pain of having to call them and tell them that their daughter, their only child, had been in an accident.

I looked around me, taking in the desolate appearance of the mostly deserted pristine waiting room. My eyes caught a glimpse of a clock hanging high on the wall, and I squinted to read the time: 8:47 PM. Had it really been over four hours?

“Where’s Lindsay?” I questioned at once, trying to remember to keep my voice low as not to wake Allie. “Is she okay? Can I see her? I need to see her!”

My words came out jumbled and with barely a pause between each one. I looked desperately up at the nurse in front of me, who was dressed in sea foam green scrubs and peering down cautiously at me.

“She just came out of surgery,” she explained, “and she’s being brought to recovery right now, but the doctor would like to speak with you before we bring you to see her.”

She glanced between Lindsay’s parents and me, attempting to offer us small, reassuring smiles. I wanted to stand up and grip the nurse by her shoulders and shake her, make her take me to see Lindsay before I absolutely exploded with anxiety and fright.

I opened my mouth to argue, but before I could, the large double doors to my right swung open and a doctor walked out, a solemn look spread across his face as he headed towards us.
Please let her be okay, please let her be okay, I found myself repeating silently until the man came to a stop in front of me. I stood up, wobbling slightly as I tried to find my balance, and tried to look him in the eye.

“Mr. O’Callaghan, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson,” he greeted all of us with a curt nod, sticking his hand out. “I’m Doctor Reese.”

I shook his hand and returned his nod with a stiff, acknowledging one of my own, but found that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything in return. I felt so small, sitting while the doctor stood in front of me and Lindsay’s parents rose to do so as well, shaking the doctor’s rough hand. But I couldn’t move, not with Allie cradled in my lap as she was. If anything, I needed to keep her close to me, to know that at least she was okay and safe in my arms.

The doctor looked back to me, offering me a reassuring smile.

“Your wife – “

“Lindsay,” I interjected, perhaps just as an excuse to say her name out loud.

“ – she’s out of surgery and she’s been moved to recovery. She’s still under the anesthesia, but she’s in a stable condition and we expect her to eventually make a full recovery.”

A heavy, relieved sigh escaped my lips and I ran a shaky hand through my hair, nodding, before the doctor continued.

“Thankfully, she didn’t suffer any neurological damage, but her body is beat up quite badly.”

“Quite badly?” I repeated, looking at him with wide eyes. “How bad is ‘quite badly’?”

“Well,” he began with a sigh, “she has two broken ribs, her left leg is shattered in three different places, and she’s got dozens of other cuts and bruises, all of varying sizes and severity.”

I winced more and more with every injury the doctor listed, feeling new tears brim to my eyes. I couldn’t believe it; I didn’t want to believe it. Lindsay, my Lindsay, my beautiful, perfect Lindsay, couldn’t be so broken.

“Can we see her?” Lindsay’s mom piped up quietly. She was clinging desperately to her husband’s arm as he ran his hand over her shoulders comfortingly.

“Unfortunately, I can only let one of you see her now, and only for a very short time, before we move her to her room from recovery,” Dr. Reese explained.

“John, you should go,” Mr. Thompson advised immediately. I looked up at him, surprised.

“No,” I disagreed, shaking my head, “one of you should go.”

“John, dear,” Mrs. Thompson sighed, taking the seat next to me and reaching over to lift Allie from my lap, “you need to go see her. You’re her husband.”

“You’re her mother,” I pointed out. She simply shook her head in response, finally managing to shift Allie to her own lap. Allie stirred in her sleep, but didn’t wake.

“Go,” she instructed, a tone of finality lacing her voice. “We’ll go downstairs and find your parents, and let them know everything’s all right.”

I found myself nodding and standing up, quite honestly having had forgotten that, only moments before I had fallen asleep, my own parents had gone in search of the hospital’s cafeteria, and caffeine.

Both of Lindsay’s parents managed small smiles in my direction before the doctor motioned for me to follow him and we began heading towards the double doors at the opposite end of the waiting area.

Every hallway through which we walked looked the same: eerily clean, white walls with stretchers and gurneys pushed against the walls, doctors in nurses in their scrubs and lab coats dashing past us. The last time I had been in the hospital had been four years ago, when Lindsay was sitting up in bed, glowing as she held a newborn girl in her arms.

The Lindsay I saw as soon as we rounded the corner into the recovery room was nowhere near the same as I remembered. If possible, she even looked worse than when I had been with her in the back of the ambulance, only hours ago.

Her eyes were still closed, and her hair was still matted messily to her head. The dirt and dried blood no longer remained on her face, though, and now I could see each individual cut and bruise that covered her skin. Her plaster casted leg was raised, and various bandages adorned most of her body.

“Lindsay,” I breathed, rushing to her side and pulling her hand into mine, careful of the IV stuck next to her knuckles. I sat in the chair next to her bed, simply staring at her, breaking a little more as each second passed. The machine in the corner clicked and beeped, a happy reminder that she was alive and breathing on her own.

I don’t know how long I sat like that, simply watching her, but it couldn’t have been very long before Dr. Reese clapped me on the shoulder and told me I had to go back to the waiting room. The very last thing I wanted to do was leave her, but I sighed and kissed the back of her hand, before standing up.

“She’s going to be fine,” Dr. Reese reminded me. I nodded solemnly and began to follow him out of the large room, stealing one last, hopeful look at Lindsay.