Surreality

As a group of us - friends and family - were sitting in a classroom we'd overtaken near the neuro-ICU a woman came in.  She was with another family that has been in the area for two weeks.  She was visibly disturbed but had a message for us, it went like this:


"We're getting moved, after two weeks, to a regular room.  So if you want to come and have the little waiting room we'd taken over, you can stay there.  This is just so tragic what we're dealing with."

My friend, Kate said "Oh, are you with the young man who had the ATV accident?  I met his mom."

"Yes.  Its just the worst tragedy...he's only 24 and paralyzed from the waist down.  We just don't know how his life is ever going to recover."


We all sort of stared at her and nodded. 


We would take the twitch of a pinky.  We would take an eye flutter.  We would take anything.

Ann's condition is stable.  But the wound in her head is too big to close.  The surgery would take more than 8 hours.  Right now, she can breathe on her own for two or three hours at a time.  It is brain stem function, we know.  But still ... it feels/ sounds like something we like to hear.