Before the Fall(12)

“Fine,” he says, “but I’m getting you a wheelchair.”

Scott nods. A nurse wheels over the chair and he falls into it.

“Are you his father?” she asks him as they roll to the exam room.

“No,” Scott tells her. “We just met.”

Inside the exam bay, the doctor gives the boy a quick once-over, checking for fractures, light in the eyes, follow my finger.

“We need to start an IV,” he tells Scott. “He’s severely dehydrated.”

“Hey, buddy,” Scott tells the boy, “the doctor needs to put a needle in your arm, okay? They need to give you some fluids, and, uh, vitamins.”

“No needles,” the boy says, fear in his eyes. He is one wrong word away from losing his mind.

“I don’t like them either,” says Scott, “but you know what? I’ll get one too, okay? We’ll do it together. How about that?”

The boy thinks about this. It seems fair. He nods.

“Okay, good,” says Scott. “Let’s—hold my hand and we’ll—don’t look, okay?”

Scott turns to the doctor.

“Can you do us together?” he asks.

The doctor nods, issues orders. The nurses ready the needles and hang IV bags on metal arms.

“Look at me,” Scott tells the boy when the time comes.

The boy’s eyes are blue saucers. He flinches when the needle goes in. His eyes tear up and his bottom lip quivers, but he doesn’t cry.

“You’re my hero,” Scott tells him. “My absolute hero.”

Scott can feel the fluids entering his system. Almost immediately the urge to pass out dissipates.

“I’m going to give you both a mild sedative,” the doctor says. “Your bodies have been working overtime just to stay warm. You need to downshift.”

“I’m fine,” Scott says. “Do him first.”

The doctor sees there’s no point in arguing. A needle is inserted into the boy’s IV line.

“You’re going to rest a little bit,” Scott tells him. “I’ll be right here. I may go outside for a minute, but I’ll come back. Okay?”

The boy nods. Scott touches the crown of his head. He remembers when he was nine and he fell out of a tree and broke his leg. How he was brave through the whole thing, but when his dad showed up at the hospital Scott started bawling. And now this boy’s parents are most likely dead. No one is going to walk through the door and give him permission to fall apart.

“That’s good,” he tells the boy as his little eyes start to flutter shut. “You’re doing so good.”

After the boy is asleep, Scott is wheeled into a separate exam room. They lay him on a gurney and cut off his shirt. His shoulder feels like an engine that has seized.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asks him. He is maybe thirty-eight with smile lines around his eyes.

“You know,” says Scott, “things are starting to turn around.”

The doctor does a surface exam, checking for obvious cuts or bruises.

“Did you really swim all that way in the dark?”

Scott nods.

“Do you remember anything?”

“I’m a little fuzzy on details,” Scott tells him.

The doctor checks his eyes.

“Hit your head?”

“I think so. On the plane before we crashed…”

The penlight blinds him for a moment. The doctor clucks.

“Eye response looks good. I don’t think you have a concussion.”

Scott exhales.

“I don’t think I could have done that—swim all night—with a concussion.”

The doctor considers this.

“You’re probably right.”

As he warms up and his fluids are replaced, things start to come back to Scott, the world at large, the concept of countries and citizens, of daily life, the Internet, television. He thinks of his three-legged dog, staying with a neighbor, how close she came to never eating another under-the-table meatball again. Scott’s eyes fill with tears. He shakes them off.

“What’s the news saying?” he asks.

“Not much. They say the plane took off around ten o’clock last night. Air traffic control had it on their radar for maybe fifteen minutes, then it just disappeared. No mayday. Nothing. They were hoping the radio was broken and you made an emergency landing someplace. But then a fishing boat spotted a piece of the wing.”

For a moment Scott is back in the ocean, treading water in the inky deep, surrounded by orange flames.

“Any other…survivors?” he asks.

The doctor shakes his head. He is focused on Scott’s shoulder.

“Does this hurt,” he says, gently lifting Scott’s arm.

The pain is instantaneous. Scott yells.

“Let’s get an X-ray and a CAT scan,” the doctor tells the nurse.

He turns to Scott.

“I ordered a CAT scan for the boy too,” he says. “I want to make sure there’s no internal bleeding.”

He lays a hand on Scott’s arm.

“You saved his life,” he says. “You know that, right?”

For the second time, Scott fights back tears. He is unable, for a long moment, to say anything.