Friend

Chapter 5

The moment they arrived at the hospital Sharna was rushed away to an OR. They had to stop the bleeding and restore any possible damage to her shoulder. Val was guided towards the waiting area where he sat down. Burning in his pocket was a box, with a ring in it. Before this all started he was planning on proposing to Sharna tonight or the morning. And right now he had no idea how she was doing or what was happening to her. 10 minutes later Peta and Maks walked in, they saw Val and walked towards him, each sitting down on one side of him. Together they waited in silence until they would hear news from Sharna. A nurse walked towards Val, she wanted to take a look the blow he had gotten from the gun. He was fortunate enough that there wasn't any bleeding and he had no longer a headache. There was a bruise forming. Just to be sure they wanted to have a CT-scan. This fortunately only took a couple of minutes and he was back with Maks and Peta very soon. Not very long after the doctor, who had examined him, came back with good news. He didn't have any bleeding or hemorrhage inside his brain, that meant he was allowed to go home.

30 minutes later the police came in and wanted to talk to Val. They needed his statement about what happened. The talk they had right now would be just a general talk, later this week they needed a longer interview with him, but that would happen when Sharna was awake and doing better. Val told the general story of everything that happened this day. Although it was only a shorter interview, they were still busy for more than one hour. When Val returned to Peta and Maks they told him they hadn't heard any news yet. So Val took a seat and waited with them. It was another 30 minutes before they heard anything. A nurse walked towards the group. "Family of Sharna Burgess."

"Yes, I'm her boyfriend." Val quickly rose to his feet and walked towards the nurse. "You can follow me."

Without saying anything else they the nurse let the trio into a smaller room. "You can wait her, the doctor will be here any minute. If you want you can get yourself a cup of tea or some coffee." And with that she left the three of them alone. Val had too much energy to sit down. He kept on pacing around, waiting for the doctor to show up. One minute had never taken so long in his life, but he was relieved when the doctor entered.

"How is she doing?" Was Val's first question.

"Let's take a seat and I will tell you everything. The trio sat down opposite the doctor.
"Sharna just got out of surgery. We were able to stop the bleeding from the shot. On her CT scan we did see some hemorrhage from the several blows to her head, but at this moment we think that there won't be any long term damage. The reason the surgery took longer than expected was the fact that we found she had a pneumothorax. When we finished with the stiches we wanted to make sure that all the vital parameters were okay before we send her to her room. Her oxygen levels were to low and then we found out that she had a pneumothorax. We placed a drain between in the thorax, that way we take out the fluids and air which are between the thorax and the lung. I think we will be able to remove the drain within the next two to three days. Then we have the largest problem, she is still unconscious and at this moment we don't know why. With the CT scan we didn't find any clues of why she is still unconscious, so what we are going to do is a MRI. After that scan we hopefully now more. Right now she is having that scan and afterwards we will bring her to her room. If you want, I will bring you there right now. Then you can wait for her. She'll be there in approximately five minutes. I know I gave you a lot of information about her condition, so please let it all settle. But for now do you have any questions?"

Val was too shocked to answer. His girlfriend was in a coma and they had no idea why. He couldn't think properly. "Right now I just want to see her. And I can't think of any questions." "Then follow me."

The doctor let the three of them to a room. Right now there were a lot of monitors, but no bed yet. In the room were a couple of chairs and they sat down. The doctor left them alone and Val looked around. Sitting opposite of the room was Peta and Maks. Peta had tears streaming down her face ever since the doctor had started talking. And Maks was doing everything he could to calm her down. Val himself was too shocked to cry. He wanted to cry, but the doctor's words echoed through his head. The several blows to her head had caused damage in her brain and he had given her one of these blows. Every time Val closed his eyes, all he saw was him hurting Sharna, he had hit her in her stomach and he had hit her on her face. And he hated himself for that. She didn't deserve him, he had been as bad to her as Jenna has been.