Second Chances
Page 15
“I do?” Eva lifted her arms and noticed how pink they were. Pink, not red. “Oh, I guess I do. It doesn’t hurt.”
“But it still needs treatment,” the man said. “Let’s fix you up and then I’ll go check on your son.”
“Curtis. My son’s name is Curtis Allan Steinar and he’s a genius.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The man nodded and pushed her toward the nurses’ station, where he left her with a promise to come back and get her once he found out about Curtis.
But he didn’t.
Dr. Groundling came to talk to her after a nurse had cleaned and bandaged Eva’s knee and applied a cream that smelled like coconut to her face and arms.
“How are you doing, Mrs. Steinar?”
“Where’s Curtis? Is he back in his room? Take me to him.”
The doctor glanced at the nurse over Eva’s shoulder and nodded. The nurse moved away.
“He’s resting, Mrs. Steinar. His fever’s back and it’s rather high.”
“It’s just the sunburn. I should have brought sunscreen. I need to see him, please take me to him.”
“Before we do that, can I ask if your husband’s here?”
Eva sat up straighter and clutched her purse. Something crunched inside, probably the tablet. The screen had cracked almost in half when it fell to the ground. She didn’t think it could be repaired, but she couldn’t just throw it away. It belonged to Curtis.
“No,” she said, “he’s at work.”
“I think it might be best if you called him and asked him to come.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Where’s Curtis? Why won’t you take me to him?” Oh God. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“No, Mrs. Steinar, he’s not, but he is in the ICU and I think your husband needs to be here as soon as possible.”
He wasn’t dead. Curtis wasn’t dead. That’s all that mattered.
“All right.”
The call didn’t take long. It was almost as if he’d been expecting it.
Eva turned off the phone and put it back in her purse. “He’ll be here as soon as he can. Can I see Curtis now?”
Dr. Groundling licked her lips. “It might be best if we waited for your husband.”
“Now. Please.”
“I want you to prepare yourself first.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Mrs. Steinar, if you would just give me a moment to explain.”
Eva looked into the doctor’s eyes. “Does he have a moment?”
Dr. Groundling didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to.
Chapter Sixteen
Haverford, Pennsylvania / 7:10 p.m.
They wanted him to die.
No one had said it out loud, of course, since that way lay lawsuits, but Eva knew that’s what they hoped would happen the moment she’d walked into the narrow, eight by ten white room. If they didn’t want him to die, they would have put him back in his own room, the one she and her husband were paying a premium for because it faced west and had a lovely view.
Dr. Groundling had said it was because of the severity of Curtis’s sunburn and his body’s inability to regulate his internal temperature. The sunburn had caused him to spike a fever of 103.8 degrees and they needed to put him into a sterile and controlled environment.
Blah, blah, blah.
It was just medical gobbledygook for wanting to pad his bill before they let him die.
They were just waiting it out. Vultures.
The only decent thing they’d done was to leave her alone with him. Her husband had walked over to the cafeteria on the rehabilitation side of the facility for coffee, or something. God only knew why he’d bothered to come in the first place since he hadn’t spent more than ten minutes with Curtis since he arrived.
It was too hard, he told her, to watch him die.
After carefully folding the gooey tissue in half, Eva dropped it with the others on the top of the rolling tray table and pulled a new one from the box. They’d covered Curtis’s face and arms in a thick layer of hydrocortisone cream, with aloe, for his sunburn, and tucked packs of cooling gel around his torso to bring his temperature down.
When she first walked in she’d tried to tell them that Curtis hated creams and lotions and tried to wipe it off. They stopped her that time, but they were gone now.
Eva carefully wiped the cream from under his left eye.
“You need to wake up now, Curtis,” Eva said, dropping the saturated tissue and getting another. It didn’t matter how hard she rubbed, she couldn’t get it all. His forehead was greasy when she pressed the back of her fingers to it, but it was cooler. The fever was going down. “Do you hear me? You have to wake up. I need you to wake up.”
“Hon?”
Eva looked up as her husband walked into the room. His collar was unbuttoned and his tie was loose and he wasn’t holding a cup of coffee. Dr. Groundling walked in behind him.
“Hon,” he said, “we have to talk.”
* * *
Arvada, Colorado / 5:10 p.m.
Hell.
This was Hell and she wasn’t alone.
You don’t have to sit here.
Yes, I do.
Jessie stopped rocking when her sister got up from the desk and came around to the opposite side of the bed. Their father was downstairs with Carly’s parents. They’d called him just after lunch and asked him to come over.
He called them on the house line three hours later. Abbie had grabbed the phone, probably thinking it was English Nigel or someone, while Jessie….
She couldn’t remember what she’d been doing when Abbie walked in and told her, out loud, that they needed to get over to the Wingates’ as soon as they could. She’d drive.
Jessie remembered Abbie pulling the Kia Soul they shared in next to their father’s Escape and hearing Mrs. Wingate crying even before they were halfway up the front walk. She remembered feeling scared and helpless and hopeless so it was weird that she couldn’t remember what she was doing when the call came.
Jessie leaned back and started rocking.
In the two hours she’d been there, Carly’s breathing pattern had changed. No one seemed to notice, or, if they did, they didn’t mention it or what it meant. But they didn’t have to. Jessie had sat there and listened as each breath grew more shallow and the pauses between grew longer and longer. No one said Carly was dying, but that’s what was happening.
And they were there to say goodbye.
Abbie had starting crying the moment they stepped into the house, but Jessie just walked up the stairs to Carly’s room and sat down in the rocking chair like she’d done so many times since the accident. Crying wouldn’t help.
She heard Abbie sniff from the doorway. “Why don’t you come downstairs, just for a little while?”
Jessie shook her head. They weren’t using their inside voices. It didn’t seem right to keep anything inside.
“Do you know why they call it a deathwatch, Abbs?”
“Geeze, Jessie….”
“It’s a vigil to protect the body from evil spirits.” Jessie looked up at her sister. “Why don’t you go down? We’ll be okay.”
Her sister left without saying another word.
Jessie continued rocking – thump, bump…thump, bump – until she realized how much it sounded like a heartbeat and stopped.
“Abbie’s seeing this new guy. English. Seems nice, I guess. Maybe a little nerdy, but that’s not a deal breaker. You wanna laugh? He was making a play for me, can you believe it? Abbs was so pissed off.” Jessie laughed. “You should have seen his face when I told him I liked girls. A complete stranger. It was easy…just as easy as telling my dad. See, no more secrets.”
Jessie looked at her friend’s face and wondered if Carly knew she was lying.
“I should hav
e told you first and I’m sorry I didn’t. You were…are my best friend so I should have told you first. And shouldn’t have, you know, kissed you like that. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought…I don’t know, maybe I thought you already knew. Dumb, huh?”
Jessie watched her friend’s face. Carly hadn’t opened her eyes or moved since they walked into her room, but maybe she knew Jessie was there and knew she wasn’t alone.
God, she hoped Carly knew that.
Dying was hard enough without doing it alone.
Jessie pushed herself out of the chair and took her friend’s hand. Carly’s skin was warm and soft.
Freak! Don’t touch me! Leave me alone!
Jessie took a deep breath but didn’t let go.
“I was wrong to do that, Carly, I was wrong about a lot of things except one. I love you. I still love you. Good—”
Carly opened her eyes and stared at Jessie.
“Carly? Oh my God, hi. I was just…. Carly?”
Carly’s eyes got bigger and bigger then rolled back into her head as her body jackknifed, went rigid, and collapsed back onto the mattress.
“Carly? Carly!”
Carly was staring at the ceiling. She wasn’t breathing. No. No.
“Dad!”
* * *
Haverford, Pennsylvania / 7:15 p.m.
“No.”
Her husband tried to take her hand but the sunburn cream they put on her made it slippery and he couldn’t hold on. She pulled away easily.
“Eva, please. Think of Curtis.”
It was the first time since Dr. Groundling told them that Eva looked at her husband and actually saw him. Up until that moment he’d been a blur.
“Curtis is the only person I have been thinking of. You’re one to talk. I’ve been here every day and night. How dare you say something like that to me?”
“Eva, I only meant—”
“I know what you meant and I said no.”
He tried to take her hand again. “It’s time.”
He’d blocked her into the corner next to the bed so she couldn’t move without shoving past him. It was only the thought of touching him that stopped her.
“And what time is that, Allan?”
“You heard what Dr. Groundling told us. He’s gone.”
Eva glanced toward the doctor, Curtis’s executioner, who’d had the sense to stay near the door. “No.”
“Mrs. Steinar, I understand how upset you are—”
“You don’t understand anything. Either of you. I said no. Get out and leave us alone.”
Dr. Groundling walked to the opposite side of the bed and Eva tried to grab the bed’s handrail but couldn’t hold on. Damn cream.
“Mrs. Steinar, I’m so very sorry. We did everything we could for Curtis, but the fever caused a cascade effect. There’s no brain function, Mrs. Steinar. The ventilator is only keeping his body alive; Curtis is gone.”
Eva looked at the monitors on the wall behind the bed. “His heart’s still beating.”
“It is and might continue for a few minutes once we disconnect the ventilator, but it won’t last.”
“Then don’t turn it off.”
“Mr. Steinar signed the release.”
Eva turned toward her husband, a broken man in a rumpled business suit with his tie hanging around his neck like a noose, and slapped him across the face. He finally backed up.
“Mrs. Steinar!”
“I don’t care what he signed. You’re not going to kill my son! He’s a genius.”
“He’s dead, Eva!”
Eva pressed her hand against her son’s beating heart. “Wake up, Curtis. You need to wake up now.”
“Eva, stop it.”
“Mrs. Steinar, please.”
“Eva….”
Eva grabbed the front of Curtis’s hospital gown with both hands. “Curtis, wake up!”
A pair of hands grabbed her arms and began to pull her away. It was the same orderly who’d helped her into the lobby.
“Will you take Mrs. Steinar to the family room, please?”
“No!” Eva tightened her grip.
“Let go, Mrs. Steinar, please.”
“Curtis, wake up!”
“Eva, for God’s sake, let him go.”
“Curtis, listen to me. You have to open your eyes. Open your eyes. If you don’t they’re going to turn off the machine that’s helping you breathe. Curtis, they’re trying to kill you! Open your eyes!”
“Please, Mrs. Steinar, this isn’t helping.”
“Eva!”
“Open your eyes!”
“Mrs. Steinar! Stop it!”
The orderly pulled and Curtis’s gown slipped through her fingers. “No! Let me go!”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Steinar. I’m so sorry.”
“He’s just being stubborn!” Eva screamed as she was pulled backward toward the door. “Can’t you see he’s just being stubborn? He’s a genius and geniuses do things on their own time. Curtis, open your eyes! Curtis, listen to me. Open your eyes!”
Eva felt the air leave her own lungs when Dr. Groundling nodded and the nurse turned off the machine.
* * *
Arvada, Colorado / 5:15 p.m.
Jess had tried to get his daughter to go downstairs with her sister to comfort Carly’s mother, but didn’t have the heart to demand it. Abigail had gotten hysterical, taking comfort instead of giving it, while Jessica’s eyes stayed dry, her resolve firm.
“I have to stay here,” she’d told him. “I have to be here for her.”
Her words had humbled and strengthened him. Up until Richard had called him, everything had been only a proposal, an option, ethereal and abstract. Now it was real and he held it in his hand.
Keeping it low and out of sight, Jess watched his friend from across the room. He’d purposely chosen a spot farthest from the bed, waiting in the shadows until he was needed.
Carly’s body twitched and took a rattling breath. Jessica stopped rocking and leaned forward. Richard reached down and took his daughter’s hand.
“It won’t be long now, will it, Jess?”
“No. Did you call Don?”
Richard nodded. Don Chase was an EMT and member of both Jess’s congregation and U.C.U.A. chapter. The three of them, Jess, Richard and Don, had discussed what would happen if Richard called. Don would get the call on his private number and make sure he didn’t arrive too soon. Afterward he would verify time of death and fill out all the paperwork before transporting Carly’s body directly to a U.C.U.A.-owned funeral home. The coroner, another member of the congregation, would meet them there and sign the death certificate.
It would all be very cut and dried, step by step.
Once she died and Jess administered the preventative.
Jess straightened his shoulders and watched his friend lean over to kiss his daughter’s forehead.
“It’s okay, Carly, we’re ready,” Richard whispered. “You can go. We’ll be okay.”
Carly took another ragged breath and stopped breathing. Jess stepped out of the shadows just as she gasped but kept walking until he reached the bed.
“Do you have the release?”
Richard looked at him and frowned. “What? Oh, yeah, it’s down in the family room. I guess I should get it, shouldn’t I?”
“I’ll go with you and witness the signatures. Jessica, Mr. Wingate and I are going downstairs for a moment.”
His daughter stopped rocking and nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled at her and followed his friend out of the room.
“It’s going to be all right, Jessica.”
“I know.”
* * *
But it wasn’t.
When her father and Mr. Wingate left the room Jessie stood up and too
k Carly’s hand. It felt cold. She stopped breathing twice while Jessie watched and when her breath finally came again it rattled.
“I wish we could trade places. I’m sorry.” She kissed Carly’s hand the same way Nigel had kissed hers. Carly stopped breathing…gasped….and started breathing again.
“Can you hear me, Carly? If you can, it’s okay, like your dad said. You can go. I love you…we all love you, but you can go now.”
Carly stopped breathing and didn’t start again. It was so quiet Jessie could hear her own heart pounding in her ears as she folded Carly’s hands over her chest like Sleeping Beauty. Jessie closed her eyes.
“Dear God…the one who dwelled within this body is gone, and has taken with her a soul that was hers and hers alone. We who are left behind ask that her soul be kept only unto this body and not return. As it was and always shall be, one body, one soul for now and all eternity. Amen. I love you, Carly, and I always will.”
Leaning forward, Jessie opened her eyes so she could memorize her beloved’s face before she kissed it goodbye.
* * *
Haverford, Pennsylvania / 7:23 p.m.
…beep…beep……beep………
They were even crueler than Eva could have ever imagined. After the respirator was turned off, Dr. Groundling had told the orderly to let her go so she could be there to watch her son die.
“I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Steinar.”
“Please, Curtis.”
…………beep…………beep……………beep……………
“Open your eyes!”
……………………beep………………………beep………………………………………
* * *
Arvada, Colorado / 5:26 p.m.
The lips that pressed against Jessie’s suddenly parted in a scream as a pair of blue-gray eyes stared up at her. There was another scream from the doorway and her father’s voice in her ear when he pulled her away.
“Jessica, what are you doing?”
Jessie could barely hear her father over Carly’s screams…except it wasn’t Carly’s voice. The voice was strange, a child’s voice.
“Mama! Maaaaaam!”
A Traveler’s voice.
Jessie turned and grabbed the front of her father’s shirt. “Kill it.”
His eyes moved, darting to her then back to the thing on the bed. “What?”