Dear Edward(9)

A brand-new phone has been installed next to the bed, and Susan is there to press the speaker button.

“Edward?” The voice is deep; it fills the room.

The boy is horizontal on the bed, looking small and damaged to the grown-ups that surround him. “Yes, sir?”

“Young man …” The president pauses. “There’s not much I or anyone else can say that will mean anything to you right now. I can only imagine what you’re going through.”

Edward’s eyes are wide, flat.

“I wanted to tell you that the whole country is sorry for your loss and that we’re rooting for you to pull through this. We’re rooting for you, son.”

Lacey nudges Edward’s arm, but Edward doesn’t say a word.

The deep voice repeats the words, slower now, as if convinced that the repetition will make a difference. “The whole country is rooting for you.”

Edward is silent on the plane ride to New Jersey. Silent in the ambulance, which has blacked-out windows to keep the press from snapping pictures of him. He speaks only when medically necessary for the remaining two weeks in the New Jersey hospital, as his lung mends and his leg comes out of traction.

“You’re healing beautifully,” a doctor says to Edward.

“I keep hearing a clicking sound.”

The doctor’s face changes; an invisible dial inside him spins and lands on the clinical setting. “How long have you been hearing it?”

The boy considers. “Since I woke up.”

The neurologist is summoned. He orders new tests and an MRI of Edward’s brain. He has white eyebrows and no other visible hair, and every day he cups Edward’s face in his hand while he stares deep into his eyes, as if there’s information there only he can read.

The neurologist calls Lacey and John into the hall. “The truth is,” he says, “that if ten different people went through exactly the same trauma as this child—were banged around, pitched at a tremendous velocity, and then jolted to a stop—they would all have different symptoms.” He raises his white eyebrows for emphasis. “Traumatic brain injury is invisible to most of our measuring tools, so I can’t tell you with any certainty what Edward is going through or will go through in the future.” He focuses his attention on Lacey. “Imagine I grabbed you by the shoulders and shook you as hard as I could. When I let go, you might not be technically injured—no muscles pulled, et cetera—but your body would feel the trauma. Right? That’s how it is for Edward. He may have odd symptoms over the next few months, even years. Things like depression, anxiety, panic; his senses of balance, hearing, and smell may all be affected.” The doctor glances at his watch. “Any questions?”

John and Lacey look at each other. Everything, including language, seems to have splintered and fallen apart at their feet. Any questions?

Finally, John says, “Not right now,” and Lacey shakes her head.

The nurse wakes the boy up in the middle of the night to take his blood pressure and temperature. She says, “Are you okay?” The bald doctor always leads with, “How’s the pain?” When his aunt arrives each morning, she smooths his hair off his forehead and says, in a low whisper, “How’re you doing?”

Edward is unable to answer any of these questions. He can’t consider how he’s feeling; that door is far too dangerous to open. He tries to stay away from thoughts and emotions, as if they’re furniture he can skirt past in a room. When the nurse leaves the TV on the cartoon channel, he watches it. His mouth is always dry, and the clicking in his ear comes and goes. Sometimes he is awake but not awake, and hours go by without him noticing. He’ll have a breakfast tray across his lap, and then the light’s fading outside.

He doesn’t like his daily walk, which isn’t actually a walk, since he’s in a wheelchair. “You need a change of scenery,” the nurse with dreadlocks tells him each weekday. The weekend nurse, who has blond hair so long it almost touches her bottom, doesn’t say anything. She just loads him into the wheelchair and pushes him into the hallway.

This is where the people wait. The hall is lined with them. Sick people, also in wheelchairs, or standing weakly in doorways. The nurses try to shoo them back into their rooms. “Don’t clog the corridor,” a male nurse shouts. “This is a fire hazard. Give the boy some space.”

An old man makes the sign of the cross, and so does a dark-skinned woman with an IV in her arm. A redheaded teenager, the age of Jordan, nods at him, his eyes curious. So many eyes stare at Edward that the scene looks like a Picasso painting: hundreds of eyeballs, and then a smattering of limbs and hairstyles. An old woman reaches out to touch his hand as he passes. “God has blessed you.”

The worst are the criers. Edward tries not to look, but their sobs thunder like organ notes, and suck up the available air. It feels unkind that they are shoving their emotions at him when his own sadness and fear are so vast that he has to hide from them. The tears of these strangers sting against his raw skin. His ears click and people hold handkerchiefs to their mouths and then the nurse reaches the end of the corridor and the mechanical door slides open and they are outside. He looks down at his busted legs, to avoid seeing the lethal sky.

They release Edward from the hospital when he can bear weight on the less damaged leg and therefore use crutches. His head and ribs have healed, and the bruises on his chest and legs are yellow now instead of purple. The staff gather in his room to say goodbye, and it is only then that Edward realizes he doesn’t know any of their names. They are wearing name tags on their chests, but it makes his head hurt to read. He wonders if this is another symptom. Perhaps he will never put a name with a face ever again, and the only names he will know will be the ones he knew before the crash. This thought is oddly comforting, as he shakes hands with the bald doctor and the blond nurse and the one with the dreadlocks too.