Another Reason To Live (Watty Awards 2014)

Chapter 17

Chapter 17:

Instead of going straight to the hospital after school the next day, I walked home.  Although I wanted to call Frank and ask him if he was ready to head downtown to visit Gerard, I knew that at some point I would have to go home, answer picky questions about how school was, how much homework I had, if I was going to the hospital, and so on.  Plus, Noah was going to escort me to the hospital instead of Frank.

After I returned from the hospital yesterday, he asked me how Gerard was doing and when he found out that I was planning on returning today, he offered to take me there instead of having to wait for Frank.  Since lately I've been lacking time alone with Noah, I agreed happily.

Once I stepped inside, I sighed with relief as the air conditioning cooled me off almost straight away.  I walked across the floor and rounded the corner into the kitchen, where Noah was rummaging through the fridge.  Luckily, he was able to get out of school early because he had a densist appointment.  Instead of taking me out early as well, my mother decided that I would be bored while Noah got his teeth cleaned and made me stay.

Once my footsteps became audible,  Noah peeked from around the fridge door and smiled.  "Hey Scar."

"Hey Noah.  You ready to go?" I asked, scanning the contents of the fridge as well.

He sighed and seemed to finally settle on a bottle of flavored water.  I didn't take anything, so he shut the door and cracked open the plastic bottle.

"Yep," he replied before taking a sip.  "Let me grab mom's keys and then we can be on our merry way."

He left the room momentarily to retrieve the keys and returned within thirty seconds.  Once we were out the door, we went to the family van and climbed inside.  Noah assumed the role of the driver, which was fine by me.  I didn't feel like driving anyways.

As we drove down the street towards the heart of the city, Noah brought up Gerard again.

"So you mentioned something about a test he had done yesterday?" he asked, glancing at me before returning to looking at the road.  "You never really explained what they found."

I clutched my backpack a little closer to my body as I remembered what Donna had told me once she arrived during her lunch break.  Since I wasn't a blood relative of Gerard, I couldn't get a hold of the results until Donna delivered the news directly to me.

The scans revealed that there were some minor improvements with the pressure within the cranial cavity, but that it wasn't as big of an improvement as what the doctors had hoped to see.  There appeared to be no signs of permanent damage or internal bleeding, but again, they couldn't be sure of that until he woke up.

In the end, the doctors concluded that with the rate of his improvement so far, they would give him another 72 hours before re-testing him.  If the pressure within his cranial cavity improved as much as it already has, then they would give him the appropriate medication to bring him out of his coma.

I repeated this information to Noah, who was listening intently as he drove.  When I finished, he gave me a small smile.

"Isn't this what we've been waiting for?  To hear news that he'll be waking up soon?"

I shrugged.  "Yeah, I mean it's great and all, but it's just been so long since I've talked to him.  I miss him, y'know?  It'll be difficult to see him knowing how injured he is and - wait, why are we going to The Boombox?"

Sure enough, Noah had pulled into the parking lot of The Boombox and parked the van. 

"Come on, I have something I want to show you," he said, extracting the keys from the ignition and getting out of the car.  I followed suit and walked into the store, trailing behind Noah.