Never Fall in Love with the Fisher Boys

44- He's Awake

The week drones on like a decade without Carter. I was in an out of the hospital, mainly only leaving to sleep, shower (which was a difficult feat with the stupid arm cast), get dressed and then go back to the hospital.

Carter had been in and out of surgery. The doctors were dating tests after tests to see how they should treat him. It felt like a decade from hell when in reality, it was only Saturday, exactly a week since the accident. Sitting in the waiting room of the hospital for any news about Carter, I felt exhausted even though I’d waken up just three hours earlier.

Andy was texting me, telling me that I should go back to the house. The hospital would call if anything changed. It was bad for me to just wait around like I was at the hospital, it wasn’t getting anything done. I didn’t care though.

I wanted to be there when Carter woke up. I had some AP homework to do to pass the time but it was hard to focus on anything except for Carter. I just didn’t feel whole without him there to talk to me. I mean, it would have been different if he got tired of me and threw me to the curb. I would get over him after a while if that happened. But this, this wasn’t a way to lose somebody. He was just lying in the hospital, breathing through a tube, while I waited around without a way to help him at all. I wasn’t even allowed to see him for more than half an hour at a time.

“Madison,” Dr. Barnes, Carter’s doctor, greeted me in the waiting room with a bright smile. Since I’d basically moved into the hospital since the accident and I’d demanded information about my boyfriend every hour on the hour until the doctor came out and personally informed us about what was going on, I’d known Dr. Barnes well. He’d come talk to me every day to tell me what was going on with Carter’s improvements and everything, which was really nice of him.

“Hello,” I responded with a yawn as I looked up from my AP Statistics text book. “Any news?”

“Yes, actually,” He confirmed with a nod and I brightened up at that prospect. “He’s been improving a lot over the past few days. It’s looking brighter now than it did in the beginning. We expect that if today goes well, he’ll make a full recovery.”

“If today goes well… what’s happening today?” I wondered with a concerned frown.

“We just have one more test to run, to make sure the diagnosis is correct,” He explained. “It should take a few hours. After that, I think that we’ll be ready to wake him up, if the injuries aren’t as severe as we had originally thought.”

“That’s amazing,” I said with an excited grin. “Really, that’s so great. I’ll know in just a few hours?”

He nodded. “I’ll personally come out and let you know what’s going on when I find out.”

“Thank you,” I smiled at him gratefully, feeling much more awake than I did moments ago now that I have some newfound hope for Carter. He was really going to be alright. He really was, I just knew it. He was fighting, and he was so strong so he’d make it out just fine.

But still, the thought of Carter hurting in the hospital with the horrid chance that he might not walk out of here alive. The thought made me want to vomit, but I just swallowed down my upset stomach and tried my best to focus on the math in front of me for a minute before I calmed myself down again enough to call Tom and tell him about what the doctor had told me. He’d spent a lot of time at the hospital too, even though he had a business trip planned for the past Wednesday to California. Right now, he was at home though, because even Tom realized that being at the hospital 24/7 wasn’t beneficial to anybody. I still couldn’t get myself to stay away, not when Carter was here, alone.