Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

Vance took the shovel and headed back.

He had names.

Carrie drove to her parents’ house in Atlantic Beach after work that day. Raef had just come back from the physical therapist.

It was a small, three-bedroom ranch backing onto a public golf course near the beach, but it was near the Wolfson Children’s Hospital, where Raef went every day to the rehabilitation center. He’d gotten most of his major muscle movement back, along with the majority of his speech. The therapists were still working on the fine-motor movements, such as writing and catching a ball; running was yet to fully come. But it was all improving. The doctors thought that in a couple of weeks’ time Raef would be able to move back in with her and, after the summer, be back in school.

They were hopeful that one day he wouldn’t even show the slightest sign that his brain had been deprived of oxygen for almost two and a half minutes.

“Hi, Mommy!” He ran up to her like any happy nine-year-old, maybe showing just a little weakness on his right side.

“Hey, Tiger!” Carrie exclaimed, lifting him in the air. “Ooof, you are getting to be a real handful. You know that, guy!”

“Roberta said I was very good today.” Roberta was one of his therapists at Wolfson. “We played catch. Look …” He picked up a blue-and-red, soft-cushion baseball, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his right hand, his lagging one. Papa and I have been practicing!”

“Pretty soon we’ll see him pitching for the Marlins.” Nate, Carrie’s dad, the ex-New Hampshire police chief, walked in. Then his face became more serious. “So how’d it go, baby? Some first day back. We saw the news.”

“I’ll tell you about it,” Carrie said, with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve got quite the story. But first… I want to see my Number One Dude here in action. See if he can handle my best heater.” She took the cushiony ball and pretended to rub it up like a real pitcher. “What do you say, A-Rod…?”

“If you throw it slow, Mommy.”

“Slow it is. Just the right hand, Raef.” She went into a windup and tossed it to him underhanded from around four feet away. Raef plucked it out of the air.

“Whoa!” Carrie said, eyes wide. “Awesome job!” She turned to her dad, who was nodding with a glow of grandfatherly pride. “You’re not joking. I think he might well be filling out that pitching rotation pretty soon.”

Raef grinned proudly. Every time Carrie looked at his freckled face, she saw Rick’s smile. He surely did have her husband’s will and determination. He never once felt sorry for himself. Most of the tears he shed were when he was trying to comfort her. Even now, her thoughts roamed to the incident that had taken Rick, and as always, the memory seemed to come to her against her will.

She was down in St. John’s County. At the opening of a JSO-sponsored youth center there. She got the call from Rick. Trying his best to appear calm-that was his way, after two tours in Iraq-but it was impossible not to hear the worry in his voice. “Carrie, I don’t want you to panic, but something’s happened…” The ensuing pause became the dividing line in her life. “To Raef!”

She remembered how every nerve in her body seemed to go dead.

He’d fallen on the soccer field at school and never got up. No one was really sure what precisely had happened yet, but “his right arm started shaking and then he said his leg felt numb and then he just fell…”

Carrie knew from her husband’s tone that he was trying to hold it together as well. This was bad .

“He’s not conscious, honey,” Rick said, sucking in a bolstering breath. “But the EMTs are there. They’re taking him to Memorial Hospital.”

Oh my God! That was close to a two-hour drive from where she was. With traffic. Only about ten minutes for Rick. “I’ll meet you there,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Carrie answered shakily.

“And, Carrie, baby …”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes already overrun with tears and her heartbeat racing.

“He’s gonna make it, Carrie. I promise he will. He’s gonna come through this-you know that, don’t you?”

“I know that, Rick,” she answered weakly.

She knew it because he was saying it. Because nothing could happen to Rick. He was part of the first Marine platoon to arrive in Iraq, and he did two rotations as a field commander, ending up with the rank of captain. He had come through the war fine. Everything always came easy for him. He played third base at U of F and probably could have been drafted as a pro. He had a 3.8 GPA as a history major. He was on the short list for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, but instead decided to enlist. He was the most capable man she knew.

Raef had to be okay if Rick was saying it.

“I’m on my way,” she said, already heading toward her Prius. “I’ll see you there.”

“You drive safely,” he told her. “I love you, baby.”

“I love you too.”

The drive should have taken close to two hours, but she made it in an hour and a half. A patrol car escorted her, flashing lights and all. When she got to the hospital, she ran through the sliding-glass doors of the emergency entrance, her heart out of control. “My son! He’s being operated on,” she blurted to the attendant at the desk. “Raef Holmes. He’s in the OR…”

“Second floor to the right,” the attendant said. “I’ll call up. You can take the elevator…”

Carrie bolted up the stairs. She pushed through the OR doors, searching frantically for Rick. She didn’t see him anywhere. He must have stepped out for a second to make a call. Instead a nurse introduced her to the surgeon. “My son’s in there. Raef Holmes …”

“Your boy’s had what we call an AVM,” said the surgeon, a young-looking Asian in green scrubs. “An arteriovenous malformation. It’s a tangle of abnormal arteries and veins in the temporal lobe of the brain. We operated on him to relieve some of the pressure. He’s a strong kid, but I’d be lying if I told you anything other than that it’s touch and go right now. We’ve got him sedated in the ICU. We placed him in a coma-”

“A c oma!” Carrie put a hand to her mouth. My poor baby…

“To control the swelling. The next forty-eight hours will be key. But, Ms. Holmes…” The surgeon took her by the arm and walked her over to a bench. “I’m afraid there’s more…”

More. Carrie remembered saying to herself, What could possibly be more?

Then she focused back on Rick. Why he wasn’t here. “Where’s my husband ?” she asked, suddenly seeing something in the surgeon’s eyes, something held back, that raised her anxiety level even more.

“He collapsed,” the surgeon said, easing her down onto the bench. “In the waiting room. While we were working on your son. It looks like a dissected aorta. He’s in the OR now. We’ve got our top cardiac team working on him now. It could have happened anytime…” He went through a rough explanation. It was lurking and likely been there for years. Probably congenital. “It just blew.”

“Blew…” Carrie muttered back to him, eyes flooding. Oh, Rick . Rick…

It just blew.

They let her look in at him. For the next six hours, she had a husband in the OR and her son in the ICU. Both of them fighting for their lives as she raced back and forth, afraid to leave either one for any time. She didn’t know who needed her more.

“I love you mountains and oceans,” she said to Raef as she sat by his bed, squeezing his small, unresponsive hand. She remembered Rick’s vow: “He’s going to be all right, Carrie. You know that, don’t you?”