Suddenly Royal

Chapter 13:

"MOM YOU HAVE to calm down..." I told her instinctively.

"What happened?" she asked me.

Her breathing and heart rate started to come down a little, and I decided it was better just to tell her what happened. "We got home from the hospital last night and we all went to bed. The next thing I knew someone was shouting and I could smell smoke. I was just trying to figure out if the hallway was safe to open the door to get out, when Giuseppe opened it and carried me out."

"Are Grandma and Grandpa okay?"

"Grandpa is here so they can keep an eye on him through this afternoon from smoke, and a small burn he got, Grandma was fine..."

"And you?"

"I breathed in enough of the smoke they wanted to check me out."

Mom was crying, "But you're okay though?"

"I'm fine... I'm more worried about you right now."

"I'm not going to lie to you and say I'm feeling great right now," she told me.

"You're going to be okay though, right?"

"The doctors got everything sewn up. My shoulder has enough damage that I'm going to have to have physical therapy for a few months. They figure that'll help me get as much back to normal as I can."

I started crying again then, "Mom I was so scared I would lose you!!!"

I MUST HAVE cried myself to sleep leaning against her bed, because the next thing I knew was someone was shaking my shoulder, "Sweetie, you need to wake up."

I sat up and realized a nurse was getting my attention.

"Huh?"

"You've had a long night it sounds like; we need to let your mom rest for a bit. You can come back and see her again before we close tonight. I think you should go get some rest though," she said kindly.

I shook my head, "I can't leave her..."

The nurse was a little younger than my mom and sighed, "She'll be okay sweetie, she's out of the woods at this point now that she's awake. Go get some rest – you both need it."

I frowned but stood up and whispered, "I'll see you later," to my mom who was sleeping too, "I love you!"

I followed the nurse out to where I found Grandma and Giuseppe talking with a doctor.

"Oh, here she is," Grandma said, "Allie this is your mother's doctor, Doctor Trinidad."

"Hi, nice to meet you," I said. "She is going to be alright, right?"

"Nice to meet you too. Yes, barring anything unexpected like an infection, she's out of the woods right now. We're going to keep an eye on her here in the ICU for another day and we'll get her moved to a regular room."

"When will she be able to go home?" I asked.

"It's going to be at least a few days after we move her to a regular room. Your mom was fortunate that nothing vital was hit, but there was still a lot of damage to her shoulder and muscles in her arm. It's unfortunately not a quick road to being back to normal. I would guess that in about six months she should be as recovered as she can be with good physical therapy."

"Good as can be?" I asked.

He sighed, "She's going to be able to lift and move her arm, but she most likely won't have the full range of motion she did before. She may not be able to lift as much with that arm as before because of the connection to her shoulder. But the important thing is she's alive and will get better," he told me.