Beside You

“Daddy?”

“Yes, baby girl?” Henry barely looked up from his office work.

“I kinda fell down the stairs and now my arm’s kinda weird and it hurts...” That certainly made him perk up. He turned around in his office chair and as soon as he saw his daughter his eyes widened. Her arm was definitely not supposed to have that shape!

“Holy sh- Maddie! What happened!” Henry jumped up and went over to his daughter.

“I fell down the stairs,” she said like it was no big deal. “Me and Jared were doing pillow rides.”

Henry resisted the urge to yell for his youngest son and let him have a piece of his mind immediately. “Come on, we gotta get that looked at, I’m pretty sure it’s broken. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Yea...” Maddie admitted meekly. “Are they going to cut me open, Daddy? Cause I don’t want them to! Marc said at the hospital they cut people open and take out their insides.” And the second son went on the list of those ‘up for a scolding’.

“They don’t always cut people open at the hospital, Mads, they’re not gonna cut you open. They’ll make your arm straight and then you’ll get a cast, that’s all,” he assured his daughter as he ushered her to the front door to put her shoes on. “Boys, come down here!” he yelled up the stairs. With Linda gone for the weekend to visit her sister who just had a baby, he’d have to take all of them with him.

“Holy shit, what happened to your arm, Maddie?!” Marc was the first one down.

“Marc, language,” Henry sighed. “Help her put her shoes on, I’ll get the car.”

A few minutes later a concerned Marc, a guilty Jared and a grumbling Jordan were sharing the backseat while Maddie sat up front and was starting to feel more miserable by the second. The adrenaline of the pillow ride and the fall was wearing off and she was starting to really feel the pain.

“It hurts, Daddy,” she whimpered.

“I know, sweetheart, we’ll be there in a minute and they’ll make it go away.”

It took a couple of hours until Maddie emerged from Thunder Bay hospital with her arm enveloped in a green cast. Jared, who’d received his scolding whilst they were waiting for Madison to get her x-rays done, was already busy discussing with his sister what they would draw on the cast when they were home. When he suggested they should draw a hockey rink and little players doing a play, she giggled at the idea and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Linda was none too happy to come home to a daughter with a broken arm in a cast, but it seemed like Maddie was more excited about her ‘cool cast’ than about her broken arm by then. Abby and everyone else in their class certainly seemed to think the cast was cool.

.

“You know, sometimes I really don’t like you a whole lot,” Maddie sighed at Eric after he had deemed it necessary to ruffle his little sister’s hair.

“Aww,” Eric pretended to pout.

“Shut up. You know, I’m doing you a favor here, so maybe you should be nice to me or you can write your vows alone,” she deadpanned and that shut the oldest Staal brother and groom-to-be right up.

“So, how are we going to do this?” Eric asked, watching as Madison played with her pen.

“How am I supposed to know? I’m not the one getting married,” she rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, not for a few decades,” he nodded firmly.

“Whatever. How about you just tell me what’s important to you to mention and we’ll go from there?”

Eric sighed, he wasn’t necessarily keen on unfolding his feelings for his fiancée to his younger sibling, but he needed help, so he needed to get over that. Slowly he started to tell Maddie what she wanted to hear and a few hours later they had a few drafts of Eric’s wedding vows finished of which he needed to pick one, so they could polish it in time for the big day.

In return for helping Eric with his vows, Madison had made him promise to come on a ride with her, which she cashed in on a few days later. None of the brothers did that very often, so it was always a special occasion.

“Don’t just sit there like a bag of potatoes, Eric,” Maddie laughed, watching Eric get adjusted atop of Theo. She mounted Lady and quickly led the mare and subsequently the gelding out of the stables. Theo just went where Lady went, so Eric hardly had to do anything, which he was pretty happy about.

It was peaceful on the back of a slowly trotting horse just outside of Thunder Bay. At least until Maddie looked over her shoulder and gave him a big grin.

“See you in a sec,” she told her oldest brother and took off, pressing her legs and heels into Lady’s side just a bit to make her go faster. Eric almost let out a very girly scream, when Theo followed suit, albeit slower.

.

.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
.

.

A few days after the accident Madison was still the coma, but her condition had stabilized so now the doctors were thinking about moving her somewhere better than the small hospital in Thunder Bay. The head injury was the biggest concern, so Maddie was to be moved somewhere with experts in that kind of area. Toronto came highly recommended and so did New York. The final decision fell on the latter, not at last because it was more central for all the boys that needed to get back to their hockey teams.

No one wanted to leave while Maddie was still like this, unmoving and pale in the ICU, but they had to. Their teams needed them back and watching Maddie sleep all day wasn’t going to get them anywhere. When she was moved to New York all of them would and could be there within a few hours, when she woke up.

The hospital had seen many visitors, most of them family, but also some of Maddie’s school friends. The only person that hadn’t been there was Matt. At first everyone was too wrapped up with everything else to notice, but it soon became very obvious. No one knew why he wouldn’t come and visit his girlfriend, but they would soon find out.

It was a few days after the accident that Matt came to the Staal’s house, asking to talk to Linda and Henry. It was the first time that Jordan saw the kid that supposedly was his little sister’s boyfriend, but the tall blonde wasn’t too impressed. What kind of boyfriend wasn’t around when something like this happened to his girlfriend?

That was exactly the question Matt sought to answer. The reason for his absence came in the form of previous experiences with a family member that had sustained head injuries during a car accident and never woke up. Matt found himself unable to go through that again and so he stayed away. He was too scared that Maddie wouldn’t be the same or that she would never wake up to stick around.

None of the Staal brothers really had any understanding or sympathy for Matt, never once they would dream of abandoning a family member or friend in such a situation. Abby stopped talking to Matt as soon as she heard and she agreed with the Staals. In her eyes, Matt was just being a coward. She had to believe with all her heart and might that Maddie would be just fine and if Matt didn’t want to be there for that, it was his own fault.

.

The day Maddie got moved was an emotional day. The people that were going to stay behind in Thunder Bay didn’t want to let her go, but knew they had to. Abby made her parents promise that she could fly out whenever possible and immediately when they heard that Madison was waking up. The Staals promised to help out financially in that case. Hopefully it would be soon.

Transporting Maddie was a highly difficult and dangerous move, but one that had to be made. Linda went with the medical transport plane, while Henry made it to New York with a regular flight. He and Marc were anxious to welcome the two women in their family, hoping that there wouldn’t be any complications. The hospital was very well equipped and had a good reputation in the neurological and recovery areas. Marc especially was glad to have Maddie so close to him and his brothers weren’t without jealousy about that.

As soon as the plane arrived, Maddie was moved into her hospital room and the new doctors ran some tests to make sure she was doing okay. The results came back positive, which everyone was glad to hear. Now they had to wait for Madison to wake up and to recover slowly after she did.

.
“As far as we can see right now, we expect that there will be very little, if any brain damage. It was very lucky that she was brought to the hospital so quickly, the first hour is crucial,” Dr. Martens told Linda and Henry, looking over images of Maddie’s brain they had taken during the tests.

“So you think she’ll be fine?” Linda asked, reaching for and squeezing her husband’s hand tightly.

“It’s difficult to say what exactly will happen when she wakes up, but right now I don’t see why she wouldn’t be,” the doctor answered with a small smile. “I cannot make any promises of course, but it looks promising for her.”

“Thank God,” Linda sighed in relief and exchanged a look with Henry, on whose face you could also read the relief.