Fallen: A Trauma, a Marriage, and the Transformative Power of Music by Kara Stanley Page B

hotel and then lie down and sleep, finally, for almost four hours. I return to the ICU a little more grounded, a little stronger. Emily has drifted off to sleep in the chair but wakes when I arrive and we sit for a few moments, silent, both of us staring at the numbers flashing on the machine behind Simon’s bed, staring as if we expect to see something more than a representation of an ascending or descending heart rate or spiking blood or intracranial pressure, staring as if we expect some deeper truth or future outcome to suddenly be made apparent. Emily sighs and stands up, a mild scent of rose hand lotion sweetening the antiseptic air. She kisses the top of my head and says, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
    As I sit in the glass room at Simon’s bedside, I recall the description Jill Bolte Taylor gave in her TED talk of the effects of the bleed in her left cerebral hemisphere, the ecstasy she felt, the simultaneous agony, and the difficult decision she made to fight to remain with her body. When I hold my hands on or near Simon’s face, I can feel a kind of jumbled, roiling heat pulsing off his skin. I think I can actually sense the battle being waged at the peripheries of his physical self.
Please, please, please,
I have been praying, begging, pleading.
Please, please, please,
the supplication of a greedy and undisciplined child. But is my request fair? Would Simon want to stay, in this new, possibly profoundly damaged body? The thought that Simon might awaken from the coma to live a barely conscious life, seems, in this moment, more cruel than death. He would reject that. And so I revise my prayer and make him a new promise, which I scribble down in my notebook:
    3:30 A.M., JULY 25, DAY 4
    Hey, babe, I’m here. As usual, it’s taking a little extra time for me to catch up with you. These last few days I’ve been locked in a back-and-forth struggle between absolute despair and blind hope. But no more. The reality is that this time is critical for you. Your injury is extremely severe but you are alive. And I am here with you as best as I possibly can. I’m here with you for as long as I possibly can.
    Behind me, buoying me up, are all the many people who love you. It’s huge. There is so much love and strength building around us, making sure that Eli is safe and I am able to be here, completely, with you. I am holding you strong, Beau, in my heart, my mind, my gut. Let me be your anchor. I know you might have to journey to a place where I cannot follow but I’m here, now. I promise I’ll stay with you as long as I can.
    AT FOUR IN the morning, Lorna calls the ICU . She is still on Eastern time and is wide awake at Jer and Barb’s hushed and sleeping household. She is distraught. She and Marc remained in the ICU after the family meeting and spoke with another doctor, a young woman from Quebec, whose predictions for Simon’s outcome were even more pessimistic than Dr. Griesdale’s. The young doctor explained that Simon’s injuries were global and diffuse, and if he survived, it was impossible to predict what areas might be affected. All of them, possibly. The bleeding in his brain was extensive, and blood was toxic to neurons; wherever there has been blood, neurons have died off.
    “When I asked her about what the other doctor said to you, that the underlying tissue looked good, she said, no. She said his brain was soaked in blood. Blood soaked down to the ventricles.” Lorna is weeping. “She said his brain was like soup with neurons swimming in it.”
    Her distress is operatic, grief and regret pounding over her in waves, words stuttering out, breathless and drowned. The swells of her emotion make me feel absent, misplaced from my own body. I am sitting at a desk adjacent to the nurses’ station, illuminated by the strident fluorescent glow of a desk lamp; within its halo of brightness so lucent and heartsick, I am emptied of words. Finally, grasping, I say:
    “You cut your hair. I’ve been meaning