“I can appreciate that. What did you take him into the OR today for?”
“Honey,” Carla whimpered softly, squeezing Tana’s hand, “Croix has had his leg amputated below the knee.”
“No,” Tana gasped, leaning heavily into my side.
“I’m sorry, Santana.” The doc really did sound genuinely upset by the situation. “We would most definitely have tried to do reconstructive surgery to fix it, but this morning, after we rechecked it, the decision was made to amputate from just below the knee.”
Looking over at where Merrick looked like he’d snap if you touched him, he reassured, “The operation was a success, and now he just has to heal while we monitor everything else.”
“You mentioned his head, Doc,” Marie cut in, leaning around where Jerry was staring at the ground, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Is it okay now?”
From there, more discussions of Croix’s injuries followed. There were a lot of possible surgeries ahead of him, including the release of the pressure inside his skull if it got any worse, and what follow-up treatments were available to him.
What there wasn’t was a one hundred percent guarantee that he’d survive this.
“He’s back in the ICU if you want to go and see him when visiting opens up in an hour?” the doctor offered. “We’re only letting two people through at a time, and there can only be a maximum of four visitors during this visitation period. When the one this afternoon opens up, we allow another four—two at a time—to go through, if that makes it easier?”
“I think I’ll go and see him this afternoon,” Tana murmured. “You guys should see him now, just to make sure he’s okay.”
“I want to go back to the hotel with Tana,” Hart said quietly. “I’ll go and see him with her later.”
His offering that was huge because it meant Merrick, Carla, Jerry, and Marie could see him immediately, like he knew they were only just hanging onto their sanity over it all. For a thirteen-year-old, the decision impressed me with how mature it was and how he was putting their well-being ahead of his own.
After they’d asked the doctor some more questions, we decided it was time for us to go until Tana and Hart could visit their brother this afternoon.
“I know you’re tired, but how about I take y’all out for a late breakfast,” Rett offered as we walked toward the entrance.
“I could go for something,” Hart agreed. “But I don’t want to be in a restaurant where other people can see me.”
My brother’s eyes lit up because this could mean only one thing for him—cheat food.
“Leave it to me.”
Because we had our own vehicle, Tana and I drove straight to the hotel we were staying at and checked in while they went ‘gathering,’ as Rett called it.
We’d only just laid out on the bed with the news playing gently in the background while she checked on Toby for us, when a thud I recognized as a foot knocking on the door sounded.
It felt like I was missing something vital not having my son here, and there was a constant buzzing as the anxiety brewed in the back of my mind. But I knew how much Tana needed to hear him and make sure he was okay, so on this occasion, I could be the audience to the call.
“I hope you’re hungry,” I sighed as I got up, winking as she looked up from where she’d been playing with the comforter as she listened to whatever Tobe and Carrie were doing. “When Rett gets to have cheat food, he tends to go overboard.”
Opening the door, I had to smile when I saw the grin on Hart’s face as he balanced drink trays in his arms.
“Your brother’s awesome. We got donuts from three places. Rett even got McDonald's to do breakfast for twenty minutes after they stopped ‘coz he said he’d just gotten in from a deployment and had craved it for twenty months.”
I started laughing as I opened the door for him to come on in. “After that, we went for the donuts and got coffee from Dunkin and Starbucks because he said both were the shit.”
As he listed the other things they’d picked up, Rett walked up behind him, bags dangling from his hands.
“You just had to break the kid with your food issues, didn’t you?” I teased, taking some of the bags out of his hands and putting them on the table near the window.
“Listen, I don’t get to have cheat food that often, and I don’t even have cheat days. Do you know how cruel that is? Every time I’m driving and I see the logos everyone associates with the best fast food being available, I know I can’t have it, and I die a little inside.”
“Yeah,” Hart added from where he was going through the bags. “Is it any wonder or a crime if he gets all his favorites at once when he does have them?”