38. Britta

Chapter thirty-eight

Britta

I clutch the phone closer to my ear, hoping I've misheard while sure that I haven't. "How hurt?"

Archie's pause wipes away any thread of hope I might have held onto. "Bad. He's in hospital."

"What do you mean, hospital? What hospital? Here?" On some level, I realize that's not possible, but I throw out a desperate wish that Dex is closer than the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"He's in the ICU at Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu."

So still in Hawaii. Worse, the Intensive Care Unit.

"What happened?" I whisper and sink into a patio chair.

The sun dips orange and pink rays into the horizon, painting the surface of the ocean with reds, violets, and hints of blue. I want Dex here to see it, his arms wrapped around my back and shoulders so we can watch it together.

"He was paddling out. An enormous wave crashed in front of him. He couldn't dive under fast enough and got pummeled hard. I thought for a minute he wasn't coming back up. That's how long it took for him to surface." Archie holds nothing back. There's more than worry in his voice. He needs to process what's happened to his best friend. "But then he got hit by half a dozen more colossal waves."

"Did he hit his head?" I ask, dropping my head in my hand.

I know surfers risk getting knocked out under water every time they wipe out—especially on a wave like Pipeline that breaks over shallow reef; more things I've learned from Dex, but this is the first thing he's told me I wish he hadn't.

"The doctor says his brain scan looks similar to a soldier's who's been caught in an explosion." I feel Archie's fear across the line.

"Are you saying he has a brain injury?" I glance up when I hear the back door slide open. A staggered breath escapes when Stella sits down next to me.

"This isn't Dex's first concussion, Britta," Archie says slowly, which is worse than a simple yes or no. There's no easy answer to whatever is happening with Dex.

"What does that mean, Archie? How many has he had?"

Stella mouths what happened , but I just shake my head. That's all I can tell her.

"A lot," Archie continues. "By my count, he's had at least a dozen concussions. Probably more."

"A dozen? Are you serious? Why is he even still surfing?" I already know the answer to the last question, but I don't understand how Dex could love something so much that he'd risk his life to do it.

"It's what every pro-surfer does." Archie pauses, as though he's giving me time to process everything he's said and make the connections on my own. I don't want to do that. I want Archie to tell me that Dex isn't as bad as I'm imagining.

I've seen brain scans. Mom had plenty of them, and I was there every time the doctor explained what they meant. I had a front-row seat to the deterioration of Mom's hippocampus, her entorhinal cortex, her temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes as the neurons in her brain stopped functioning. I know what a shrinking brain looks like in pictures, and I know what it looks like in real life.

"Archie, just tell me how bad it is. Can he walk? Talk?"

"That's what I'm trying to explain, Britta." The uncharacteristic gentleness of his tone makes my pulse tick faster. "This wipeout was bad. One of his worst… but not the worst. It's the previous concussions that've made the damage so bad this time."

"Archie, please just tell me." I can't stop the bouncing up and down of my legs until Stella puts her hand on my knee. I grab her hand and cling to it. I'll drown if I don't.

"The hospital has to run a lot more tests, so there's nothing conclu—"

"—Archie! Is he paralyzed? Can I talk to him?"

Another pause from Archie fills in the last pieces with the worst I'd imagined.

Stella stands and slips her hand from mine. "I'm getting your dad."

As she runs inside, Archie answers my question. "Right now, he can't walk. He's got bleeding in his brain, so the doctors have cut a hole in his skull to release some of the pressure from swelling. He can say a little, and he understands us, but—"

"—Who's us?"

"The doctors. Me and…his parents."

Now it's my turn to go quiet as the picture grows darker. Archie knows too much about this accident for it to have happened in the last few hours. For Dex's parents to have traveled from Australia to Hawaii, the accident couldn't have even happened today.

A shadow passes over me, and Dad takes Stella's place by my side.

"How long has Dex been in the hospital?" I ask.

I grab Dad's hand and hold tight. I count back the days to the last time Dex and I talked or texted, then answer my question.

"Monday? Why did you wait until today to call me?" My voice raises, and I try to stand, but Dad gently tugs me back down.

Archie takes a breath. "I wasn't sure Dex would want me to call you. He doesn't know that I am now."

"What? Why?" There's no keeping me in my seat now. I shake off Dad's hand and walk to the edge of the cement patio where a low wall separates the property from the sandy beach and the ocean fifty feet away.

"I can only guess, because he's not able to say much." Archie talks slowly, and I sense him searching for the right words. "But when I told him I'd call you. He shook his head and said, ‘it's off.'"

"It's off? What does that mean?"

"When we were in the Azores, Dex made me promise that if anything happened to him, you wouldn't be left caring for him." Archie's tone is firm now—protective—but I'm not sure if he's trying to protect me or Dex. "Surfing is risky business. He didn't want you to feel obligated to care for him the way you had to for your mum if it came to that."

I'm knocked silent with Archie's words.

"But I'm his wife. Why wouldn't I want to care for him?" I'm feeling both defensive and guilty, replaying all the conversations I've had with Dex about Mom. How I don't regret giving up my own dreams to take care of her, even while I resent the fact that I felt like it was my duty as her daughter.

"You're his wife in name only. He understands that. If he can't keep his part of your arrangement, he doesn't want you to feel you have to, either."

In name only.

The words are true, but painful to hear. I'd started to think of myself as Dex's wife.

"I should be there, Archie." My voice is a whisper.

In the distance, a wave crashes on shore before being sucked back to sea to be reformed into another wave. From here, the sound is gentle and soothing. Up close, they'd be so loud, I wouldn't have heard Archie's next words.

"He won't want you here, Britta. Not yet. Not until we know exactly how bad it is. I'm sorry. But I still thought you should know. The story will be picked up by the sport reporters soon, and I didn't want you to hear it from them. "

I appreciate Archie sounds like the words are as hard to say as they are to hear, but that doesn't mean they don't knock the wind out of me like a punch to the gut.

"Okay." It's the only word I can get out between trying to catch my breath.

"I'll keep you updated."

That's the last thing I hear Archie say. I end the call before a goodbye can follow.