And So She Slept

Fall Before the Storm

Feeling silly, and quite embarrassed, Sadie held her neck and head still, thankful for the temporary neck brace that they gave her in the emergency room. Seeing nurses buzz quickly around her, she continued to apologize for her presence. With only a pounding pain in her neck, and on the back of her head, she felt that her condition was not necessarily an emergency. Wheeling her down various white hallways to CT Scans and Xray rooms, she knew that although she felt fine to go home, this was protocol, and the best way she could help was to go along for the ride.

"What happened here, Sadie?" the radiology tech asked while the nurses helped to lay her flat on the table for a scan. They were careful to move her slowly, and listened to her words for audible signs of pain in her otherwise soft, melodic voice.

"I climbed up onto the kitchen counter because I couldn't reach a bowl, and I lost my grip on the cupboard. I fell backwards and I caught most of my fall on my back, but I think I pulled my neck, and I feel like I must have knocked the back of my head. No big deal, it just hurts like a fall on the ice," she said, taking moments to catch her breath as she finally relaxed onto the table.

"Sounds painful. We're just going to have your sister watch for signs of a concussion when you get discharged later, ok?"

"Oh, we're not related, but we might as well be. Krys is great, and-"

"-let's just have you breathe slowly and then hold it in for about 20 seconds," the radiologist interrupted.

As Sadie laid still holding her breath, waiting for the circular machine's hum to cease it's song, she was thankful for her best friends. Krystina and Jack had not only driven her to the emergency room, but they had called into work for the next 24 hours to make sure they could camp out in her loft for the day. Exhaling when told, she let the air out of her chest, trying not to wince in pain as she thought about the bruises that would undoubtedly appear in the next few days.

Later, she was wheeled back to her original exam room to await the final discharge orders from the doctor. Jack and Krystina had been waiting for her, having already read all of the expired magazines that were unevenly stuffed into the plastic wall hanging bin. The neck brace almost creating a second chin, they tried not to smirk at just how adorably pitiful their petite friend appeared to be.

"Did you know the vending machines don't even have white chocolate mochas?" Krystina said, not completely realizing that she thought out loud. They had been there for almost three hours, and although she wasn't the one who was black and blue with a possible concussion, she was still ready to go home.

"Could you sound any more...you?" Jack laughed, at a loss for words.

"You guys don't have to stay. I can just call you when I'm done," Sadie mumbled, still weak with pain and exhausted from the event.

Before they could protest, the door to her exam room opened and the emergency room doctor walked in with a file folder. Looking to Jack and Krystina, he spoke professionally.

"How we holdin' up?"

"Doing ok. Are we good to leave?" Sadie asked, mostly for the sake of her caffeine-deprived friends.

"Well, not quite. I wanted to talk to you a little about your scans tonight. Would you like me to show your friends to the waiting room?"

"No, they're the only family I have. If I broke something, you can just tell me," Sadie said casually.

Pulling himself closer to the hospital bed, Jack put his hand on the railing and felt his heart drop with panic. Krystina sat up straight in her chair and exchanged glances with her brother. Sadie didn't seem concerned, knowing that she'd broken bones from figure skating before and the pain was manageable if she followed the doctor's orders. Pulling a rolling stool closer to Sadie and sitting down, the doctor pushed up his glasses and opened the folder to the images and notes inside.

"You don't appear to have fractured anything, so with some bed rest and a prescription for the pain, you should recover just fine. What concerns me is that when we did your scans, I noticed a small cerebellum mass."

"What does that even mean?" Krystina inquired frantically, trying not to raise her voice as she took a step closer to Sadie's bed.

"Well, for now it means more testing, but it could be why you have had some headaches, vomiting, and it could possibly be why you lost your balance tonight. We have some more tests that we're going to have you do before you leave tonight, and then we'll go ahead and discharge you for the evening. In about two days, we'll make another appointment to follow up."

"But you didn't really tell us anything. She's ok, right?" Jack asked, his fingers losing their deep pink color, and slowly fading to white at the knuckles as he gripped the bed rail.

"We don't want to say anything definite yet until we get more information from the tests, so I'm sorry I can't give anything else now. We're just going to collect another blood sample and then we can get you going. Do you have any more questions for me?" the doctor asked. Doing this for fifteen years, he had to sometimes remind himself that although it was his thousandth shift, everyone else in the room was experiencing it for the first time.

"No...it's fine...thank you," Sadie mumbled. Half of her mind was on the prescription pain killers pumped into her by the iv, and the other half was on the word he used...mass. Used to keeping her emotions bottled deep in her solar plexus, she was slightly on edge knowing that her two closest friends were now a part of the scariest night of her life.

* * *

The next three days were torturous. Waiting for lab results was even less enjoyable than having the blood drawn from Sadie's difficult-to-find veins. Jack and Krystina had offered to camp out at her loft to help distract her until her follow up appointment, but she politely declined. She had already felt guilty enough that her fall had disrupted their work weeks, and she didn't want them to have to worry about her any more than they already did.

When it was finally time for her appointment, she arrived 20 minutes early and waited impatiently in the exam room they assigned her to. With the time she spent alone in that room, it seemed like ages before the doctor knocked on the door.

"Sadie?" the doctor said softly as he poked his balding head into the room.

He was a stout man in his 60s with a white five o'clock shadow and a ring of hair behind his head from ear to ear. She nodded, but didn't stand to shake his hand. She'd wanted to, but her anxiety made her legs seem less than trustworthy. He sat on a rolling stool and slid to face her.

"Sorry, yes, I'm Sadie."

"I'm Dr. Lawrence," he said opening the file in front of him.

Looking down at her fingertips, Sadie noticed the chipped corner of two of her nails. She listened as Dr. Lawrence began to transform the word "mass" to "tumor", speaking about it like it had a life of its own. As she stared at the ivory corner of her thumb nail that was free of the coral polish she'd borrowed from Krystina, she lost herself. In and out she could still hear him, but only a few words stuck with her. Inoperable. Malignant. Growing. Pressing. Months. Quality of life.

"So that's it? There's nothing I can do? I'm...I'm just...done?"

"There are experimental drugs proven initially to shrink the size, but they're entering clinical trials, so it could be years before we see them safe to use and available. I'd like to go over some options with you. Is that ok, Sadie?"

She nodded, but was no longer able to take in any more information. Her mind was overflowing and her body was numb. She didn't cry. She didn't feel sick. She felt nothing. Nothing at all. She sat there as still as a statue, staring at her coral chipped thumb nail and tried her best to stay in her own body until the appointment was over.