Certainty by Eileen Sharp Page B

his head. She put a hand on my hair.
    We sat down and I stared at the clock on the wall in the waiting room as the hands moved slowly around.  A television was on and we pretended to watch it, Mom and Dad holding hands and James leaning on Mom’s shoulder.
    At some point I realized my shirt was on inside out, but I didn’t care.
    Other people came in the waiting area—an old man with his hand bandaged and a man and a woman who called him Dad. The woman held on to him as if he might fall and the man talked to the blonde nurse at the desk.
    Finally a doctor came toward us and my Dad stood up with my Mom.
    The doctor was older, with a square jaw and white hair swept sideways.
    He peered at us over his glasses, his pale blue eyes kind. “Mr. and Mrs. Warren, I’m Dr. Hollister, the ER doctor on staff. Your son is stable and we’ve done a CT scan.”
    He paused and my parents waited.
    “We can’t tell very much but there may be some damage in the frontal lobe, which could affect his speech or memory, or both.  We don’t know. And we’ll need to monitor him for swelling in the brain. At this point we just have to wait and see.”
    “How much damage does he have?” Dad asked.
    “He’s still unconscious so we don’t know—and we won’t know if he’s going to have any damage at all—we just know based on what the CAT scan revealed that he might. To be honest, I’ve not see this type of damage without some type of e ffect on the patient. But we can’t know very much until he wakes up.”
    “When can we see him?” Mom asked.
    Dr. Hollister answered slowly, pushing his white hair off his forehead. “He’s got some facial swelling so he may look a little rough.”
    “Thank you,” Dad said and the doctor nodded, his white head bobbing. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”
    Mom and Dad decided to take James and me to the cafeteria so they could visit Derek alone. They gave us a quick hug and some money for dinner. I think they wanted to make sure Derek wasn’t too scary-looking before James saw him. I knew I would be okay no matter what injuries Derek had, though my stomach did a flip-flop every time someone talked about blood and Derek.
    Through the cafeteria windows I could see it was dark outside. It was later than I realized.
    The cafeteria was pretty big, with a food bar stretching from one side of the room to the other. James followed me like a confused puppy.  I pointed out all the different choices and waited while he stood around, snapping his fingers and thinking about what to have.  He wasn’t very good at snapping his fingers because he had just learned. He practiced it whenever he was nervous.
    Eventually he settled on a hot dog and I got one, too. We carried our tray with the hot dogs, root beer and fries to the cashier. After we paid for everything we sat down and ate.
    “Is Derek going to be all right?” James asked, poking at his fries.
    I suddenly understood why Dr. Hollister didn’t tell us Derek was going to be fine. I didn’t want to tell James it would all work out because what if it didn’t? What if Derek got worse?
    “I don’t know,” I started and when he froze, I added, “I think it’s going to be okay.”
    I didn’t know what to say.
    We finished our dinner and waited for a long time. We finally saw Dad come in the cafeteria alone. He smiled at us, but it wasn’t real.
    “How’s Derek?” I asked.
    “He’s doing fine. We’ll know a lot more in the next few hours.” He sounded like me when I answered James. Careful. We were all being careful.
    “Is he awake? Can we see him?” James asked.
    “No, not yet.  Maybe tomorrow. Uncle John is coming to pick you up and take you to Granpop’s house.”
    So Derek really was looking “rough” as the doctor had said. I wanted to go see him anyway, but I didn’t argue.
    My cell buzzed in my purse and I pulled it out. I had forgotten there was a world outside the hospital. It was a text from Katie.
    Did you get your