Shannon and her mother arrived at the emergency room and were met by Brendan. "How is she?" he asked Victoria as they walked quickly along with the gurney. "The paramedics say she has a concussion, but they want to do some x-rays." Brendan was very worried. His normally very handsome face had taken on the mask of a tired old man.
Shannon was wheeled into a small room with a large window that looked out on the main desk in the department. The paramedic and a nurse helped move Shannon from the gurney onto the hospital bed. When they left the room the silence between Shannon and her parents was palpable. As she looked out of the window she could see the nurses, the doctor and the paramedic discussing something while paramedic gestured towards Shannon's room.
It wasn't long before the doctor walked around the nurse's station and headed for her examination room. "How are we doing here?" he asked as he approached her bed. "My head hurts and I feel sick," Shannon said. "It looks like the room is divided in half by a wide black line." The doctor used his small flashlight to look into Shannon's eyes again and he carefully felt her head asking her if it hurt here or there. "I know you've already been told this, but you do have a concussion. We'll give you something to help with the nausea you are feeling. We're going to keep you here a little while to make sure you'll be okay. You will need to stay awake for a while, but I think all of the work we're going to do on you will help the time pass by quickly."
The doctor began to check her arms and legs, asking her to move them up or down and sideways. Her right wrist hurt a little when he asked her to rotate it to the right. "I'm ordering x-rays of your arm to see what is going on there. I'm hoping it is just a sprain, but it could be a fracture. I'll see you again once the x-rays come back." He then took Victoria's hand in his and said "she's going to be fine, don't worry. We're going to take good care of her." The doctor left the room and headed toward the main desk. Shannon wondered when Dan would be brought in. He couldn't have been that far behind them since the second ambulance from the accident scene was arriving just as hers had been leaving.
