She began to ask a question, but he gently held up a finger in order to keep going. "I know-for how long? Right?"
She nodded silently.
"I'm not sure," he answered. "We are treating him with blood thinners and steroids and time, and we are monitoring him every second of every day. I came to work at this hospital because of its level of patient care, Mrs. Gunther, and I've never been disappointed with my decision. I will do everything in my power to make sure that will be true for your son as well. Leo is a strong, resilient, middle-aged man. That is a huge plus in his favor."
There was a long, painful lull in the conversation before her voice rose quietly into the silence. "Will he be okay?"
Weisenbeck leaned forward and squeezed her fingers again. "He's resting. You will hear the word coma. That's true, also, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Our bodies are much more intuitive than we doctors in knowing what to do and when. You went through much the same thing when you came to us, remember? Your body needed rest, and so it went to sleep for a while. Better than what any of us could have ordered."
Joe's mother took it in like the psychological medicine it was meant to be, but then asked pointedly, "What dangers is he facing?"
He hesitated, gauging his best approach while looking her straight in the eyes. There seemed to be no breathing in the room.
"He is walking right at the edge. He is susceptible to stroke, pneumonia, and pulmonary embolus, as well as catheter-induced sepsis and several other threats. I will not pretend that it's not a long list." Here he added emphasis to his voice and intensified his gaze. "But I must stress with the same honesty that my optimism outweighs my fears.
"In the end, though," he added, slowly standing back up, "we all just have to wait and keep our hopes up." He smiled as he concluded, "While we watch him like the proverbial hawk. Okay? When he begins to come around-and I stress when, not if-the initial first signs will be neurological. He will most likely first respond to pain stimuli. His breathing will also improve as the ribs begin to knit, increasing his body's oxygen saturation, and that, in turn, will help clear out the fat emboli and allow him to emerge from the coma."
By now he was looking at them all, as if addressing a class. They all instinctively nodded.
"Great," he said. "Now. Would you like to come in and spend a little time with him? I'll have one of the nurses help you out." He glanced regretfully at Gail and Joe. "I'm afraid we're only letting one person in at a time for the moment, mostly just because it gets so crowded otherwise."
Joe was already holding his hand up. "Not a problem. We knew about that. We'll be right here, Mom," he added, patting her on her narrow shoulder.
She looked around and up at him, her smile belying her concern. "I won't be long."
"Take your time."
They watched her through the window overlooking the ICU as a nurse helped drape her in a gown and fit a sterile mask over her face in preparation for the visit. In the distance, Leo remained as still as a mummy, white-clad and corralled.
"God. What a nightmare," Gail murmured.
"Could be better," Joe agreed.
She glanced at him. "You believe him?"
He kept staring through the window. "What's not to believe? He said Leo's walking on the edge of a cliff."
After a momentary silence, Gail said, "I've been trading e-mails with your mom. She says you're looking into the crash."
He pressed his lips together, considering how to respond. There was a time when his reaction would have been immediate and open.
Gail instantly interpreted the hesitation. She'd always read people well. "That probably wasn't something she should have told me," she said quickly.
"No, no," he then said. "It's not like it's a secret. Sure as hell the people we're asking know about it. I just wondered why a relatively new car would fall apart like that. That's really all it is for now. The sheriff's department is helping me out. I'm not even officially involved."
She nodded. "I thought maybe he'd just hit some ice."
It was a leading question, but this time Joe played along. "A tie rod nut worked loose. Without it, the wheel pretty much does what it wants. It happens. I just want to make sure that it happened by accident."
"How do you do that?" she asked.
That felt like pressing, and he resisted her, his reasons at once professional and very personal. "Well, like I said, I'm trying to keep my nose clean. The deputy handling it owes me a call on that very subject. He's pretty good around cars, it turns out."
He still hadn't made eye contact with her, instead studying his mother being wheeled up to his brother's bed. But he was also consciously aware of Gail staring at him from the side, in search of some reaction.
"How're you doing?" she finally asked softly.
He glanced at her quickly and then nodded toward the scene before them, using it to dodge the true meaning of her question. "I've been thinking about the old lady lately, wondering what'll happen after she dies-Leo, the farm, all the rest. I never saw this coming."
This time Gail was the one who remained silent, prompting Joe to seek out her reflection in the glass. She was no longer looking at him, but her sadness radiated like heat.
Damn, he thought. This is too hard.
He glanced at his watch. "Speaking of the sheriff," he said, his voice loud and bluff in his ears, "I ought to hook up with him. Find out what he's got new, if anything. Could you handle Mom? Drive her back home, maybe?"
"Sure," Gail said softly, still not turning. "Happy to."
Joe patted her shoulder once and left the room, relieved and frustrated, both.
He found them out on Route 5, standing like a line of bird hunters at a shoot, except that they were all standing in a snowbank, looking down instead of skyward, and dressed alike in dark blue pseudo uniforms decorated with glaring white sheriff's patches. Barring a couple, they were all boys, mostly thin and gawky, sporting hair that looked painfully short in the cold weather. Slightly back of them was Rob Barrows, watching for traffic as much as giving guidance to the two of his teenage Explorers who were actually manning the metal detectors.
Joe pulled over by the side of the road and got out of his car.
"Any luck yet?" he asked.
There was a shout from the most distant detector handler.
Barrows smiled at the timing. "Guess we'll find out." They began walking together down the line. "We'd be due," he added. "We've been out here almost three hours, finding enough scrap metal to open a business. Slow going."
They reached the young woman who'd shouted out.
"What've you got, Explorer Ferris?" Rob asked in a clipped tone.
The girl stiffened slightly as she barked out, "A signal, sir. Pretty strong."
"Show me."
With her companions looking on from both sides, Ferris swept her instrument across the top of the snow by the edge of the road. They were about a half mile away from where Leo had gone off.
The detector began signaling loudly as she hovered over a marked defect in the white crust at their feet.
"Does look like something went in there," Barrows commented quietly. He turned to another of the Explorers. "Drury, get in there and carefully open up a channel going to the bottom of that hole. Take your time."
They watched as this second teenager got to his knees and slowly began digging into the snow, removing great handfuls in his gloves and dropping them behind him onto the roadway.
"Matthews," Barrows ordered, "you and Johnson go through what Drury's dumping there. Run the detector over it. Make sure there's nothing hidden inside."
Joe watched the deputy gradually engage more and more of his team until almost everyone had a job and felt useful in some fashion.