Better Off Alone (Adopted by Brendon and Sarah Urie)

73. Brendon

Callie spent a lot of time sleeping. It wasn't surprising. Four days in the hills and then four days battling two infections, pneumonia and sepsis, she needed the rest. But the day her fever broke we saw that she was probably going to be okay. She fought having her hospital gown changed when she soaked through it with sweat when her fever broke. Sarah and the nurses changed her and her bedding as quickly as possible, and eventually she just stopped fighting and lay there crying. Sarah told me she could imagine what Callie thought might have been happening while they changed her. Once they'd gotten her settled back in bed, she opened her eyes and Sarah told her what had happened.

Her sign language was clunky and slow. As if she'd forgotten how to sign. But we chalked that up to the past eight days being incredibly stressful on her body and brain.

My parents could not wait to come see Callie. Somehow we'd managed to keep them away while Callie was at her worst. She was already so confused when she was sick that even my parents would have made things more difficult.

"Hi there, Honeybee," my dad texted and handed her her phone.

"Hi PopPop," Callie texted and smiled back at him. "Hi, Granny."

A couple of days after her fever broke, Callie was doing so much better. She was able to stay awake for longer periods of time, was starting to eat again, and was drinking water like it was going out of style.

We had to help her to the washroom because of her foot, and she didn't have crutches yet to help her, so Sarah would walk with her to her bathroom.

Her sign language came back to her usual fluency and she had colour in her cheeks again. She didn't look so gaunt. She was still a little pale, but she looked so much better.

Now that she was awake and doing so much better, she'd been moved to a medical floor instead of the ICU. We brought her some pyjamas from home so she didn't have to wear a hospital gown all the time. I think she was much more comfortable once she'd changed out of the gown. No doubt the gown made her feel particularly vulnerable.

The school had stayed in touch and their lawyers had been in touch hoping we weren't going to sue them. We dealt with them and asked Callie if she wanted to go back to Merton or find another school.

"Is Melanie still in my class?" She asked. That seemed to be her biggest concern. At first it had been that her new friends wouldn't be her friends anymore because of what Melanie had said.

We'd finally gotten the whole story. Callie was able to remember what happened a couple of days after her fever broke. She said this Melanie kid had accused her of trying to kill me. She'd worked so hard to overcome her guilt about what had happened in New York, and this kid had undone so much with just a handful (pun not intended) of words.

The school had suspended Melanie and would be moving her to a different class. They said they wouldn't expel her simply because there weren't a lot of options for families with Deaf kids. We understood. We didn't like it, but we understood.

We'd assured Callie that the school would do their best to keep her and Melanie apart. She seemed okay with that.

What had definitely helped was that her friends had come to visit her in the hospital. They'd also read the story in the paper about the incident in New York, but they decided maybe Callie could tell them what happened when and if she wanted. She explained to them what had happened in pretty vague terms. They accepted her version, and I corroborated her story, so they seemed fine. Callie cried when they left. She'd been so sure they'd stop being her friends. She was so relieved.

The principal and her English teacher came to visit her as well.

But I think the visitor she was the happiest to see was Anna. She'd helped with the search as soon as she'd heard and was able to help the searchers who weren't able to call out for Callie, since she wouldn't have heard them.