Treadmill Guy

Roses are Red, Violet is Still Unconscious

The next day, the nurses shut Maggie and I out of Violet's room for most of the day while they ran another bout of tests in an attempt to figure out what was wrong (even though we all knew perfectly well what was wrong, an idiot flew off a treadmill and rammed right into her). We spent most of the day in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the hospital, where Maggie studied for her pathophysiology test and I drank several vanilla lattes and tried to focus on my essay. I watched in surprise as Zach arrived, flowers in hand, entered the elevator, and came back down a few moments later, looking discouraged and flower-less. I laughed quietly to myself and sipped my latte. Later, loser. I honestly couldn't understand why he had come back. He had "apologized," lied to our faces, and now was back for more. Wow.

"I seriously can't believe she didn't tell us." Maggie couldn't stop talking about Violet and Zach, and I still couldn't get myself to tell her the truth, although I wasn't quite sure why. I guess I had kind of expected Maggie to figure it out on her own(I had described Zach to her on the first night), but she chose to blindly believe Vi's nurse, and even seemed to have taken a liking to Zach. And in all honesty, I wasn't altogether sure what the truth was. Zach had been here every day since knocking Violet out, and the way he looked at her, with so much tenderness and remorse...

It wasn't long before we were allowed to visit Violet and Chiara, the sweetest and most regular of Violet's nurses, sat us down to explain the situation.

"So, because our initial blood tests and brain scans were inconclusive, we just re-ran a bunch of blood tests to try to learn more about Violet's situation, and so far we really haven't learned much other than her coma is neither drug- nor alcohol-induced."

"Which we knew.." I grumbled.

"Still," Chiara ignored me, "we'll be running a few brain scans over the next couple days and will proceed from there. In the meantime, I wanted to talk about y'all's role in all of this:

"There's some research that suggests that stimulating her senses of smell, touch, and hearing can be good for her and possibly even help her wake up, so it's incredibly important that you visit her as often as you can. When you visit, you should announce yourselves so that she knows you're here. Aside from that, you might try bringing her flowers, wearing her favorite perfume, holding her hand, and talking to her. You can talk to her about your day, tell her a joke, or just hang out and chat. It doesn't matter too much what you talk about, but it is important that you visit when you can."

We talked for a bit more about brain scans and treatment plans until Chiara kicked us out of the ICU.

As she drove us back to campus, Maggie turned to look at me and said, "we're visiting her every day."

Even though I expected her to feel that way, I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little. "Did you forget we're in school? We can't just drop everything to move into the ICU with Vi."

"We don't need to be there all day every day; I know she wouldn't want us to flunk out because of her. But I do really think we should go hang out in the afternoons after classes. We can just bring homework and hang out like we would normally, maybe bring her some flowers and try to hold her hand some or whatever."

"Yeah, I guess so. And if one of us can't go the other probably can."

"Right, and I'll be at the hospital for my clinicals already, so that'll make it a little easier for me..."

"Yeah."

We drove in silence for a while, the sun shining too cheerfully through Maggie's dusty windshield, watching our depressed, run-down college town fly by.

"She'll be okay, right?" Maggie broke the silence.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I hope so." 

Coming Next: will flowers and hand-holding be enough to wake Violet up? Zach's skeptical... or so he says