The forty-eight hours the doctor had asked for came and went sometime around dawn on the third day, and nothing in the room changed when they did. A nurse swapped the water pitcher no one was drinking from. The monitor kept its rhythm, the one sound in the room that hadn't offered anything different since the night they'd wheeled him in.
The doctor came in a little after seven, chart in hand, and didn't sit down before he spoke, which told Arianne most of it before the words caught up.
"Miss Summers, I want to be honest about where we are." He set the chart on the rail at the foot of the bed. "The swelling from the fall has gone down since the last scan. That's good on its own. What it doesn't explain is why he hasn't surfaced. We're past the window where I'd tell you to expect him back on his own within days."
"So what do you call it now?"
