I spend hours at the hospital. My teenage daughter and young son come to see DJ. They have been with DJ's best friend's parents, these people have known DJ his entire life and now they will have known him his entire life. My daughter was best friends with DJ they were very great friends--however a few days before DJ's accident he and my daughter had a terrible fight--she said she hated him. She never got to apologize to him, instead she wails over his body and tells him he can't leave her. My son and I go to get food at the hospital cafeteria. No one looks me in the eye, the staff is immune to this grief. The staff looks over me and around me but not at me. I don't know why we even go get food, we don't eat it, it all tastes like cardboard.
The nurses come in and out of the room. They are amazing, they are kind and honest and "No, they have not seen anyone survive head trauma like DJ has had" I know this because I ask them, I quit asking them because I am hoping for a miracle.
Friends come to the hospital, so many that the staff has to put them in a separate room, friends call, I call them. "It's bad, it's very bad." I quit calling them and hand my phone over to a friend to make the calls, asking for prayer. I can't talk to anyone anymore, I can only sit next to my son in his bed and hold his hand--I can only look at the drawing of a star and a dice on his hand that he had drawn only hours before and hold his hand. I put my hand against his to gage it's size, it is just slightly bigger than mine and it will forever be that size, forever in my memory. His skin is becoming hard, it is losing it's warmth, it is killing me that my son is dying next to me.