The man unfolded the page and began to read. “My name is Thomas Greer. I was the bus driver. When they pulled me out, I had no pulse in my legs and a piece of the windshield in my side. A nurse knelt on the wet floor next to my stretcher and told me, ‘You don’t get to leave yet, Thomas. You have kids.’ She said it fourteen times that night, to fourteen different people. Every one of us is still alive.”
The room went completely still. Denise had both hands pressed over her mouth. Thomas looked up at Colton. “I lost my legs, son. I didn’t lose my life, and I didn’t lose my daughters. My oldest graduates nursing school next month.” He turned the page around so everyone could see the letterhead. “She started a scholarship in your mother’s name. Fourteen families paid into it. The first check goes out in June.”
Colton’s plastic cup was trembling. Thomas’s voice softened. “You were twelve that night, weren’t you? Home by yourself. She called you every hour between patients. I heard her. ‘Did you eat? Lock the door. Mommy’s helping people.’ I thought that boy must be very proud of her.”
Colton put the wine down on the nearest table and stared at the floor. Then he walked over to his mother, the woman he had just called a babysitter for sick people, and wrapped his arms around her in front of the entire department. I heard him say, very quietly, “I remember those calls. I thought you were just checking on me.” Denise held his face and said, “I was, baby. Every time.”
I’ve worked the front desk for nineteen years, and I have never seen an ER staff cry all at once. That night we did. Before Thomas left, Colton pushed his wheelchair all the way to the parking garage and helped him into his van. Two weeks later, the scholarship fund got an anonymous donation large enough to cover four more students. Denise doesn’t know who sent it. I do.
