by Gina Holmes
Just when it seemed we’d rot in that room waiting for an update, a man in a lab jacket with a stethoscope draped around his neck appeared in the doorway. He had our full attention. “I have good news and bad.”
Good news: she’s alive. Bad news: she’s a vegetable.
He paused as he looked me over. “What happened to you?”
I pulled my long hair over the bloodstain on my shoulder. “Bloody nose.”
“Do you need—”
“Just tell us,” I said.
He looked as rough as we did. He scratched his five-o’clock shadow and took a seat in the one of the empty chairs across from us. He looked at me with eyes that reminded me of a basset hound’s. “You’re her mother?”
My stomach turned and tightened. “Yes.”
“She’s a beautiful little girl.”
“Just tell us,” I repeated.
Like a defendant on trial watching the jury for clues of a verdict, my eyes were attuned to every nuance of his body language. When his shoulders slumped slightly, I wanted to cry. “She’s not dead yet, but she will be,” I blurted.
He looked at me with a strange expression. “We just don’t know. When someone goes into a coma, it can be for hours, it can be for years, or it can be forever. We just don’t know.”
My father bellowed a visceral sound as he lifted a fist to the ceiling. “How much can I take? How much?” He covered his face with one hand while the other, still clenched, fell at his side.
Unfazed, the doctor turned back to me. “I can’t say I know what you’re going through. I’m a parent, but my children are home in bed.”
“You hope.”
He gave me a questioning look. “Excuse me?”
“She was home in bed too,” I said. “Safe and sound.”
He looked liked he’d rather be anywhere but there. “I’m sorry.”
“Can we see her?” Mama Peg asked.
He studied her with a concerned look. “Are you breathing all right?”
She coughed. “I’m fine.”
I noticed then that she was the worst shade of gray I’d ever seen on her. Alarm filled me. “Mama Peg, are you okay?”
Ignoring me, she answered him. “Do y’all have any oxygen tanks you could loan?”
He leaned over hers and checked the dial before looking back up. “How long has it been empty?”
She didn’t answer.
He shook his head and hurried out of the room.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked. “We’re in a hospital, for heaven’s sake.”
She looked at me but said nothing. It was a stupid question.
A nurse walked in lugging a green, metal tank. Filling the room with clinks and clangs, she slid my grandmother’s empty tank out and replaced it with a new one.
Mama Peg exchanged the tubing, turned a knob, sucked in a deep breath, and coughed. “Sweet air, I’ve missed you.”
I stared at her a moment, watching the pink return to her skin. “Don’t you do that again.”
The nurse picked up the spent tank. “I was going to say the same thing.”
Mama Peg nodded. “I won’t. Thank you.”
“Can we see her now?” I asked.
The nurse glanced at the large round clock hanging above the doorway, then back to me. “In a minute, but understand that when you see her, she’s going to look a little frightening. A respirator is breathing for her.”
I’d envisioned myself on life support many times, but never in my wildest dreams had I imagined Isabella. But at least she was alive, and where there was life, there was hope.
“What are her chances?” The question came from my father.
Dr. Reid stepped back through the doorway. He mouthed a thank-you to the nurse, who nodded at him and left. “The fact that CPR was initiated so soon improves her chances, but ultimately, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Will you pray for her?” I asked.
The look he gave me told me that wasn’t within his scope of practice.
I stared hard at him, trying to will him into agreeing. As irrational as it was, I somehow felt as though his prayer, added to ours, might be the tipping point Isabella needed. “She’d pray for you.”
He studied the ground.
Anger welled up inside me at this man who, a moment ago, seemed full of compassion but now wouldn’t even pray for a dying little girl.
My grandmother laid her hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for everything, Dr. Reid.”
He slipped his hands into his lab jacket pockets and looked up. “I’ll pray,” he said. “I’ll say a prayer, for whatever it’s worth.”
When Mama Peg smiled at him, I realized that she hadn’t put in her false teeth. She seemed to realize it too and clamped her mouth shut.
With only two of us allowed to visit at a time, it was Mama Peg and I who followed the doctor through the pneumatic doors into the pediatric ICU—or PICU as he kept referring to it.
It was even brighter than the waiting room. A myriad of bells and alarms sounded from every direction. I wondered how patients got any sleep. My gaze flitted around, searching for Isabella, past walls of glass and nurses. The doctor touched my arm.
I jumped.
He put his hands up. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Before I go, I have a question. I got the basic story of what happened from the ER docs, but it didn’t make sense to me. Why would a child be swimming by herself at that time of morning?”
I tried to look around him. “I don’t know.”
He pulled his stethoscope off his neck, letting it hang from his hand. “Do you think it’s possible that she might have been depressed?”
His question knocked the wind out of me. I felt Mama Peg’s soft hand wrap around my arm and squeeze. “What? She’s five years old. You think she wanted to drown?”
His face flushed. “Pediatric suicide is rare, but not unheard of. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Please,” I said, unable to take anymore. “Just show us where she is.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The last time I had seen Isabella in a hospital, she was an infant. It seemed that the moment she was born, the nurses whisked her away for her first bath. Too impatient to wait for them to bring her back, I walked myself to the nursery so I could admire her through the glass. I looked past cribs lined up like train cars until my gaze fell on the most magnificent sight imaginable. A pink card hung above her with “Baby Lucas” scrawled on it between inky footprints. Fleshy rolls covered her arms and legs. She was so fat! I felt a grin, wider than the world, spread across my face. I kept thinking, That roly-poly thing came out of me? It didn’t seem possible.
When first I held her, her dark hair lay plastered against her head. But there, lying in the nursery under a warming light, magnificent ringlets sprang from her freshly washed head. My heart leaped and sank in the same instant. Those were David’s curls.
I watched her lovely face scrunch as the nurse slipped a thermometer under her arm. Her porcelain skin turned red as she clearly expressed her dislike of the procedure. Oh, she was beautiful! The nurse saw me in the window and picked up my naked baby girl. She held her up to the glass for me to get a better look. Perfect little feet dangled at the end of perfect little legs. She stopped crying and opened her eyes. Her sweet lips pursed as if preparing to nurse. . . .
From those same lips there now protruded a clear plastic tube that led to a ventilator. With each unnatural, gasping sound, air forced its way into her lungs. Another tube snaked out of her left nostril. A catheter drained urine from her bladder into a clear bag hanging from the end of the bed. An IV fed fluid into her arm. Monitors with incomprehensible zigzag readouts beeped sporadically.
I laid my hand over my mouth, my mind unable to grasp the truth my eyes were seeing. Her face was swollen beyond recognition. If it weren’t for the curls of brown sprawled against the stark white pillow beneath her head, I might not have known it was her. A layer of what looked like Vaseli
ne glistened over her eyelids and lashes.
I felt as though a boulder had landed on my chest. I could barely breathe. My baby. My poor baby.
This is what hell feels like, I thought. This is hell.
Mama Peg intertwined her arm with mine. Paralyzed by anguish in the doorway of Isabella’s hospital room, we held each other up. A nurse stood in the corner of the room near the ventilator, looking as though she were attending a wake.
“Can she hear us?” I asked her.
“Impossible to know for sure,” she said. “We assume that she can and talk to her about everything we’re doing. If she comes out of it, you can ask her if she remembers anything. That’s the only way to know for sure what she heard.”
“When she comes out of it,” I said.
Her face flushed and she averted her eyes.
Mama Peg stared hard at her. “When she comes out of it, we will ask her.”
I unlinked my arm from my grandmother’s and moved to my daughter’s side. I picked up her limp hand, placed it in my palm, and kissed it. She felt so foreign, so cold and lifeless. Something tapped against the back of my knees. I looked behind me to find that the nurse had brought me a chair. I sat and laid my forehead against my daughter’s shoulder.
I stayed there for some time, brushing curls from her forehead, tracing the curves of her face, and lamenting about all that I should have said but hadn’t. All we could have done if I hadn’t been so busy with things that didn’t really matter. All the dreams I had for her that might never come to pass now.
* * *
Someone touched my back and I jerked up, disoriented. As soon as I opened my eyes, bright lights hit me, along with the vague notion that something was wrong—something that I didn’t want to remember. I looked at my unconscious daughter and my heart sank.
“Jenny, it’s time to go home now,” my father said, and I realized it was his touch that had woken me.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “I can’t leave her.”
“Honey, let’s go check on your grandma, grab something to eat, and get cleaned up. I’ll bring you right back.”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving her. What if she wakes up?”
He laid his hand on my shoulder. It felt so heavy. “Dr. Reid said he gave her medication so that won’t happen. She won’t wake up while we’re gone. I promise. Besides, David’s here. He wants to talk to you before he sees her.”
I felt shame that I hadn’t thought to call him. “Who told him?”
“Mama Peg.”
Of course. The only rational one among us. I kissed Isabella’s clammy forehead. “I’ll be back soon, Bells. Your daddy wants to visit with you awhile. I love you.”
David sat in the waiting room alone, slapping a rolled-up magazine against his open palm, staring at a black television screen. Upon seeing me, he stood.
His eyes welled as he opened his arms. “Oh, Jenny.”
The tears I couldn’t seem to release at Isabella’s bedside now spilled freely as I fell into his arms. He held me tight, whispering, “Our girl” over and over. I pulled back and touched his rough, unshaven face. So much was exchanged between us as I met his gaze.
“I’m sorry, Jenny. I’m so sorry for everything.”
The wall of offenses I’d constructed against him over the last six years imploded with that apology, leaving me trembling in the aftershock. “I’m sorry too,” I said. “David, I stole so much from you.”
Flashes of Isabella’s first laugh, first word, and first birthday raced through my mind. He had no idea the treasures I had stolen from him.
After a time, he swiped his arm across his wet face. “Any change in her condition?”
I shook my head.
He exhaled and nodded. “I guess I should warn you that my father’s on his way.”
Though I dreaded having to face Dr. Preston, I said nothing. I figured he had as much right to be there as any of us.
He glanced over my shoulder. “Can I see her?”
“Of course. But, David, she looks bad.” Besides Isabella and my mother, I’d never felt so connected to another human being as I did to David in that moment. No one bore the yoke of this burden with me as evenly as he did. There was a strange comfort in that. I placed my hand on his face and looked him squarely in the eyes. “She’s going to be okay.” I had never wanted to believe anything so badly.
“Of course she is,” he agreed.
* * *
When we returned from home, showered and fed, my father excused himself to use the restroom while I was left to deal with the Preston clan, who had converged upon the PICU waiting room. My gaze immediately landed on Lindsey. Standing alone in the corner, she wore a warm-up suit that looked like something Mama Peg would wear. She wasn’t quite the same delicate creature without makeup and tailored clothes.
Uncle Ted spotted me first. He hurried over and smothered me in an embrace that reeked of cooking grease. Just as nausea began to summon up the contents of my stomach, he released me. “Jenny, how is she? How’s our girl?”
Everyone’s eyes were now on me. David’s relatives studied me with anticipation. “She’s in a coma.”
“Says who?” a man bellowed from behind me.
I cringed at the sound of his voice, braced myself, and turned around.
A squatty, well-dressed man fixed his beady eyes on me. At five feet five, it wasn’t uncommon for Dr. Alfred Preston to be underestimated at first sight, but that always proved to be a mistake. He was in my eyes a modern-day Napoleon. The only person in town who didn’t seem to fear him was my father.
He dipped his head at me. “Genevieve.”
Too weary for small talk, I simply mimicked his gesture. “Dr. Preston.”
“Who said that my granddaughter’s in a coma?”
What does it matter who said it, I wondered. “Dr. Reid.”
“Since when is he a neurologist?” The way he looked at me made me think he expected an answer.
Unnerved by his gaze, I finally shrugged.
“She’s on a ventilator?”
“She is,” I said.
He frowned at me. “Who wrote that order?”
I was in no mood for a browbeating from him or anyone else. “You can stop talking to me like I’m your nurse. She wasn’t breathing. What did you expect them to do?”
He continued his interrogation as if I hadn’t spoken. “Did another doctor talk to you about it? Did they tell you what they were doing and why? Did they consult with specialists?”
I just looked at him. Eventually he’d have to realize the stupidity of this conversation.
He took off his glasses and slid the earpiece into his mouth, looking self-important. “Dr. Reid is a pediatrician, not a pulmonologist, Jenny.”
I crossed my arms. How could he not know how presumptuous he sounded? I had the strongest urge to fire questions at him in French, demanding that he answer me. If I had known French, I would have.
He stared at me for the longest time the way David always did when he was on the cusp of finding a solution. Finally he blinked. “How long was she hypoxic?”
I tried to make my annoyance with him obvious by letting out an exaggerated sigh. Why did it always seem that brainiacs were too dumb to realize they were talking over everyone’s head?
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to answer.
“I guess you could ask Dr. Reid. Excuse me now.”
My father appeared beside me, locking eyes with his nemesis. Fear for what scene he might make caused my heart to race.
I turned to him. “When I go back to see Bella, don’t you dare start anything.”
Dr. Preston trailed his gaze slowly down the length of my father, daring him to defy me.
My father glowered back at him. I was glad I couldn’t read his thoughts. Most likely they were homicidal.
Dr. Preston pulled his gaze from my father and addressed me. “Stay here, young lady. I’m going to take care of—”
My father squ
ared his shoulders. “Don’t tell my daughter what to do.”
Here we go. “Dad, don’t.”
His face reddened. “You go see your daughter, pumpkin. I’ll handle him.”
Pumpkin? The last time my father referred to me as pumpkin, it was to praise me for learning to tie my shoes.
Dr. Preston looked up defiantly at my father, having to bend his neck back so far it looked like it might break. “You may not like me, Jack, and I might think you’re a lunatic, but my granddaughter is lying in there dying, and I’m going to do something about it even if I have to do it over your dead body.”
Something snapped in my father—I could see it in his eyes. I stepped between them. “Dr. Preston, if you can help Isabella, then please . . .”
His gaze never left my father even as he spoke to me. “Jenny, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but you need to in this case. I’ve studied under the finest pediatric specialists in the world. There’s plenty in medicine I wouldn’t pretend to know, but this—this—is where I excel.”
“He killed your mother,” my father growled behind me.
“For the five hundredth time, your wife wasn’t my patient.” Dr. Preston turned to me. “What your father doesn’t seem to grasp is that your mother mentioned she was getting frequent headaches and was tired. As a friend, I suggested she start taking iron and ibuprofen, thinking maybe she had some anemia, but told her she needed to make an appointment with her doctor. I did not diagnose her and I certainly didn’t kill her.”
“I know,” I simply said.
My father glared at Dr. Preston. “Don’t you let him near my granddaughter.”
“Our granddaughter,” Dr. Preston replied. “Your family seems not to understand the concept of fifty-fifty genetics.”
I turned and looked at my father. His eyes were as wild as the night he’d learned of my mother’s cancer.
I gave Dr. Preston a severe look and shook my head in warning.
Fear seemed to replace impudence as his eyes at last grew wide with understanding. “Let me go find out her condition at least.” He hurried away faster than I’d ever seen him move.
Looking embarrassed and unsure, David’s family mumbled excuses and apologies as they scattered, leaving us alone.