Adopted

Chapter 55

Jessica's POV

When I opened my eyes I thought I was still asleep and dreaming.

"PopPop?" I said.

"Hello there angel," he said.

"Are you really here?"

"You bet we are. Granny came, too," he said. And Granny sat beside him.

"How's my favourite granddaughter?" She asked.

"That's not fair to the other kids," I laughed.

"Then don't tell them," Granny winked. "But seriously, how are you feeling sweetie?"

"I'm okay," I said.

"Jess," Mom said, taking my hand. "They've scheduled your skull surgery for tomorrow."

"Is it going to hurt?" I asked.

"You'll be asleep, darling. Like when you were in the coma. You won't hear or feel anything."

"The good news is, according to your dad, if all goes well, a couple of days after that, you might be able to go home. How does that sound?"

"A heck of a lot better than being here," I said. "The food's really gross."

"At least you stopped throwing it at me," Mom said, laughing. I'd gotten better at controlling my left hand.

"What's that all about?" PopPop asked. "Why are you throwing food?"

"When I first woke up, I wasn't really good at eating with my left hand. I'm right handed. And the therapist said that some of my head injuries sort of disconnected my left hand. So I needed to strengthen my left arm. But before any of that, my arm would spaz out when I tried to eat. Mom wore more of my dinners than I got to eat."

"You know, if you keep working on being left-handed, you might make a decent switch hitter," PopPop said.

"Dad," Dad said, shaking his head.

"What?" I said. "What?"

"Jess, you might not be able to play baseball this year."

"Why not? The school said my diagnosis didn't matter!"

"Because of your skull. You're going to have to be very careful until it heals.  And having a baseball possibly hit you in the head is too dangerous."

"I can wear a helmet!" I cried.

"Jess, it's not written in stone. Besides, you can't play with a broken arm anyway.  And you'll need physio on that arm anyway."

"The school baseball team doesn't try out until February," a voice said from the doorway.

I looked over and Mr. Clark was in my room. He'd been coming and helping me with English to keep me caught up. I'd been in the hospital almost a week and a half already.

"Hello, Jessica. Something seems different today." He said.

"They took out her chest tube," Mom said.

"Ah. Nice," he said, pulling some papers out of his briefcase.

"Not really," I said. "It hurt like he-," I looked over at PopPop and Granny. They don't like swearing. "A lot."

"And who do we have here?"

"My grandparents- PopPop and Granny," I said.

"Grace and Boyd," PopPop said.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Patrick Clark. Jessica's English teacher."

"Your name is Patrick?" I asked.

"Is that a problem?" Mr Clark smiled.

"No. Just Dad has a friend named Patrick."

"There are lots of us. But, when you're back at school, remember, I'm still Mr. Clark."

"Yeah yeah," I said.

While PopPop and Granny sat and watched, Mr. Clark and I went over the lesson I'd missed today. I was mostly caught up to my class, but sometimes fell asleep trying to do my homework, so I still had a bit to catch up on. But Mr. Clark was awesome. So was Mr. Berger, my math teacher. And my science teacher had been pretty good, too. Most of what she gave me was reading from the textbook and worksheets, but she still came every afternoon and went over stuff.

My music teacher had come by and told me that she'd selected me for the piano, and that until my cast was off, she'd play and I'd turn pages for her. She gave me some music theory homework and came by twice a week.

My PE teacher came to visit but it's not like you can do PE in a hospital bed with a chest tube, an IV and a catheter. That had come out yesterday thankfully. And now that the chest tube was out, I'd be able to move around more.

After I finished working with Mr Clark, Mr Berger came in and helped me with math. After math I was tired and started falling asleep.

I heard my science teacher come in but kept my eyes closed. Not because I didn't want to do science. I love science. I was just so tired.

"I'm sorry, Jess has had a little bit of a rough day," I heard Mom say. "She had her chest tube out and it was apparently very painful. She's had some pain medicine and even though Mr Clark and Mr Berger were here, she's just fallen asleep."

"Understandable. How's she doing? She looks a lot better. Any idea when she'll be able to go home?"

"She's scheduled for surgery tomorrow to replace the piece of skull they removed when her brain was swelling, and if all goes well, hopefully she'll be able to go home a couple of days later."

"That's so good to hear. I know she was only in school for two days, but we really do miss her in our class. She was already so engaged."

"I'll let her know she's missed. Once she's had the surgery and recovers, we'll have a better idea when she might be able to come back to school."

"Looking forward. I'll come back tomorrow. Here is the work we did today. If she's able to do some of it, that would be great and I'll go over it with her if she's up to it tomorrow. Oh! No. Not tomorrow. I doubt after surgery she'll be up to anything. I'll check in with you tomorrow and as how she does in surgery."

Mom said goodbye and the teacher left. I fell into a deeper sleep.

I was woken up by someone poking me. I opened my eyes and Josh was in front of me with a drumstick and poking my arm.

"I was sleeping," I said.

"Yeah. But that's boring. And besides, I brought someone to see you."

I sat up a bit and looked over. Tyler was sitting beside Josh.

"Hey, kiddo. Josh told me what happened. What did you go get beat up for?"

"I decided school wasn't that great and I missed my dad. So I figured getting my ass kicked was a good way to get him home."

"It was effective," Dad said, coming in with more Starbucks.

"Dad, if you kept every cup of coffee from every trip to Starbucks, I bet we could have built a whole house with them."

"Well, I wouldn't be drinking so much Starbucks if you hadn't forced me to come home," he winked at me.

I visited with Josh and Tyler for a while. I wasn't getting dinner because of my surgery in the morning.