Gemini

by Carol Cassella

  David was waiting for them. After Jake got into the car and shut the door, she pulled David aside and told him what she’d seen. “I want to take him to a pediatrician in Aberdeen.”

  “Another doctor? And pay for it how?”

  “Some doctors take charity. We can sign up for Medicaid now. He’s limping. Like one leg is shorter, or something.”

  “Legs don’t shrink overnight. You’re under a lot of stress, Raney. So is he.”

  David started to open the car door, and Raney shut it again. “Something is wrong with him. I know it. I can feel it.”

  “Well, he hasn’t been taking his medicine, for one. Maybe he never took it. Started selling it from the beginning.”

  Raney was speechless, a band constricting her chest. “You think he did it, don’t you? You believe Jerrod and Tom Fielding more than your own . . .” David went a shade paler and stammered a word before Raney cut him off. “He needs a decent doctor. I’m taking my son to a doctor.”

  David looked out toward the wind-swept marsh. After a chilled moment he nodded. “Okay. We’ll see. Tomorrow might not be the best day. We’ll see.”

  —

  The grocer asked them to meet him at his store at nine the next morning. It was only a few hours’ drive to Aberdeen, but once in the city they would have to pay for a motel, so David pulled into a rest stop eight miles north and hauled out the sleeping bags and tarp. He hunted out the smoothest stretch of grass and kicked the larger rocks aside, then spread the tarp and arranged the sleeping bags side by side. Shortly after they fell asleep it began to rain so they shoved the wet tarp under the car, folded the seats down and made a pallet out of the three sleeping bags, then tried hopelessly to fall asleep again. They were back on the road at four forty-five, pulling into Aberdeen before daylight.

  They stopped at a McDonald’s for coffee and two breakfast sandwiches to split among the three of them. When David went to the bathroom Raney asked the cashier how to get to a marina or park where they could take a coin shower. Raney had turned her last pair of underwear inside out to last another day, but if she could wash her hair, she could tolerate the rest. One more day and they would have beds to sleep in. Hot water. She could stand anything for one more day.

  The marina was well outside town, and the shower was locked. A sign read “Open 8:30 a.m. to noon, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.” She checked the windows to see if one might have been left unlatched. The whole city was still asleep. Along the docks metal halyards clanged against metal masts in broken music. It sounded so lonely in the gray mist of dawn. The space between her ears buzzed, as if so many nights of bad sleep had garbled the circuitry inside her brain. They all walked back to the car and sat inside with the doors locked and the radio on, waiting, until Raney said, “Just drive to the grocery store and park. Maybe he’ll get there early.”

  It was not a big city, but they still drove the wrong way up a one-way street and through a stop sign searching for the store. By the time they found it, they’d quit talking to each other—their collective patience used up. David pulled into the lot behind the store and parked, put his seat back as far as it would go, and slapped a T-shirt over his face. Raney said she was taking Jake with her to find a bathroom, beyond caring if David was still awake to hear. Let him worry if he woke to an empty car.

  They tried a gas station at the end of the block, but the bathroom was for customers only and the clerk showed no sympathy when Raney asked for the key. She stood on the corner looking for another option, then started up a hill toward a large, well-lit building—so many lights had to mean a lot of people, who must all, at some point, use a toilet.

  It was a hospital. For the first time in months, Raney felt like her luck had turned. She combed her filthy fingers through her hair and tried to do the same to Jake before he could pull away, then she followed the signs to the emergency room. She left Jake in a chair near the TV and found the registration desk, waited while an elderly couple in front of her dug out their insurance cards and filled in three pages of forms before they finally moved aside. When it was her turn, though, she had no idea what to say. Why was she here? Whatever Jake had, it wasn’t an emergency.

  “I’m new here. In Aberdeen. Well, not even Aberdeen—up the coast . . . We . . . I . . .” She stopped. The nurse blinked and folded his hands—Raney could tell he’d seen it all. She took a breath and leaned so close she was surprised the man didn’t back away. “Look, something is wrong with my son. His back, his joints—he hurts all the time and it’s getting worse.” She stopped for a minute to gauge whether he was taking her as seriously as he should. He raised his eyebrows, apparently ready for whatever came next. “He’s started to limp. I’ve taken him to three doctors. I am tired of being told it’s stress or depression or growing pains or ADD.” With the last word Raney’s voice broke and tears brimmed in her eyes—she wondered if she would hit the man if he turned her away.

  Instead, he nodded. He put a fresh form on a clipboard and made some Xs at the places she was supposed to sign. The emergency room doors whooshed open and two medics rushed past with a wailing child on a gurney; an IV bag swung wildly on a silver pole when they turned the corner. Raney stopped reading and handed back the clipboard. “I shouldn’t be here—in an emergency room. What I need is advice. A doctor’s name. A specialist. I don’t know where to go.” A woman walked up and stood quietly behind the nurse, listening. “I might as well tell you now, I don’t have any insurance. I don’t have Medicaid,” Raney said. “I’ll pay over time, whatever it takes.” There it was. All her cards on the table for the closed club of those privileged to give and receive the best medical care in the world. Jake’s fate was theirs to consider and decide.

  The man looked at the woman. “You want to take this?”

  She told Raney to take a seat in the waiting room, then she disappeared through a door at the far end of the corridor. Raney checked the time: seven thirty. Through all of this, Jake had kept his eyes fixed on the television set, which was tuned to some political talking heads—God alone knew what rage or pain had kept him awake through that. She changed the channel to cartoons and noticed that no one else in the room seemed any less enthralled by VeggieTales. She jumped, half-dozing, when the woman sat down next to Jake.

  “Ms. Boughton? I made up a packet for you.” She opened a large white envelope and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “All the applications you’ll need for Medicaid and TANF—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It takes a while to get through the system, as you can guess.” She handed Raney another page. “This is a list of doctors in the county—addresses and specialties. Phone numbers. Sometimes it’s hard to get an appointment if you’re on assistance, so call soon.” She looked at Jake. “Did I hear you say it’s his back?”

  Raney answered, “Yes. Jake, can you stand up?” He hesitated for a minute, like he might be poked with something sharp. “She’s not going to do anything. Just show her your back.” Jake stood up, facing the woman. He looked solemn and resigned, and maybe, Raney thought, ready to end this game. The nurse asked him to turn around and Raney helped Jake pull off his filthy T-shirt.

  “Touch your toes for me, would you, Jake?” the woman said. He leaned over and let his hands dangle, then grabbed the toes of his tennis shoes. She stood directly behind him, scanning the bony knuckles of his skinny spine. Raney saw her face change—little more than a light leaving her eyes, a hint of doubt in her confident-nurse smile. “Thank you. That’s fine.” Then she turned to Raney. “I’m not allowed to give you any medical advice, since you aren’t registered in the ER. But if, say, I ran into you in the park or the grocery store and you asked me about a good doctor for our friend here, I would tell you to see this man.” She took a Sharpie out of her pocket and circled one name. James Lawrence, MD. Pediatric orthopedic surgeon. She smiled at Jake then, and Raney saw her tilt her head and look more closely. “You have a handsome son,” she said. She was looking at his eyes, Raney knew. People were always struck by Jake’
s eyes.

  —

  When they got back to the car, it was empty. For a minute she felt bad about leaving David without a note, worried he was out searching for them. Or maybe a cop had seen him sleeping there with his unshaven face and dirt-streaked clothing and taken him in for vagrancy. Then she noticed the door to the grocery store was open. She told Jake to get in the backseat and wrap up in a sleeping bag, hoping he could fall asleep.

  There were no customers inside the store. The lights weren’t even on yet, only the white ghost-glow from the refrigerated cases. She called David’s name softly and walked down the middle aisle. At the back was an open, lit doorway. A small office with a desk and chair—little more than a broom closet. David wasn’t in there, but someone else was—a dark head bent over papers, half-hidden by a computer screen. Raney took a step backward, wishing she’d just waited in the car. “Mrs. Broughton? You Mrs. Broughton? Good, good! Please. I like you sign too.” The grocer was half a head shorter than Raney, a round man with a smile that buried his eyes in his cheeks. David had already been in and filled out the rental forms. He had waited awhile, then gone out to look for his wife and son. “He look you,” as their new landlord put it.

  Raney tried to make small talk. He seemed happy they were renting the trailer, but it was hard to pretend she felt anything but tired and dirty. His accent was so thick she had trouble understanding and gave answers that left him flummoxed once or twice, turning their conversation in circles.

  Finally Raney said, “Why don’t I go ahead and sign the lease and then I’ll hunt for David. My husband, Mr. Boughton. Let you get back to work.” The grocer looked concerned, but after a moment he smiled and pushed the lease across his desk. She scanned the pages, looking for the lines David had already signed, assuming she should just sign underneath. At the bottom of the second page a box caught her eye. It was for references. Six references with phone numbers and addresses. Six. Given all the bridges they had burned in Quentin, Raney was amazed to see that David had filled every one in. He had put Sandy’s name down first, of course, and Marina—the glassblower from the gallery who Raney barely knew, the only people he could be sure wouldn’t jinx the rental. He’d listed Jim, the owner of the dairy David had done a little work for. She suspected that had not ended on good terms—David had been vague when she asked why Jim never called him anymore. Then two names in Oregon, probably from when he’d lived in Medford. A name on the last line had been partially crossed out and written in again, the lines of ink doubled over each other for clarity against the cross-out so they indented the page. Shannon Boughton, in Florida. Shannon Boughton. David’s ex-wife. I’ll be damned, Raney thought. David had given the name of a dead woman as a reference. Had they really ended up with so few friends?

  —

  When she got back to the car, David was in the driver’s seat with the key in the ignition. “Where were you? I looked all over,” he said.

  The envelope from the hospital was in Raney’s purse. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t take it out and show it to him. It should have made him as relieved as it did her. A place to start. The faintest glimmer of hope that Jake might get care without their having to sell the car. She thought about that later—her reluctance to tell him what she was planning. What part of her brain was already connecting dots to outline the face she was only beginning to see clearly?

  “The marina shower opens soon. Can we stop there before we drive home?” she said.

  He shook his head, his nerves frayed, she could tell. “I just want to go. We can take a shower in our own bathroom tonight.” He looked in the rearview mirror at Jake. “Right, Buddy? Want to shower in your own bathroom for a change?”

  Jake was quiet. Raney could feel him glaring back at David’s eyes in the mirror. Then Jake said, “My mother calls me Buddy.”

  Raney started to make a joke, impelled to lighten the impact, but she didn’t have the heart. How could she make David feel better about it without making Jake feel worse? She slid her hand across the seat so it rested against David’s thigh. He tensed and kept his hands on the steering wheel.

  The drive home seemed to take hours. Twice as far as they’d come. She was not consciously thinking about the rental application—they were almost to Queets when it hit her. It was so obvious she felt nauseous in the face of her own stupidity. David hadn’t given the name of a dead woman as a reference. Shannon Boughton was no more dead than Raney was.

  When they finally bumped down the rutted driveway and parked in front of the trailer, Raney told Jake to take the key and choose which room he wanted, resting her hand on David’s arm to stay him. After Jake was inside she said, “You want to explain?” The heat in her voice made it clear what she’d seen. He slumped against the car door with his eyes focused somewhere between the windshield and the dark hovel in his soul that had generated his lie. After a long time Raney asked, “So are you actually divorced from her? Or was that a lie too?”

  He rubbed his hand over his face; the slack fold of his jowl was dark with stubble. “Shannon called and told me she’d broken up with her boyfriend. She begged me to give us another try. Christ, she’d been my wife for eleven years—I thought I owed her a second chance. After two months we were worse together than we’d been before. I didn’t know a woman could be that . . . All I could think about was you, Raney. I should have told you the truth. But I thought I’d lose you.”

  • 20 •

  charlotte

  A notepad filled with Felipe Otero’s small, even script lay on the desk in Raney’s ICU. Her numbers. Felipe must have gotten here early—it was his habit to handwrite each patient’s information, though he could as easily print it from the computer. He said it helped him organize his thoughts. Once, Charlotte had found a list of personal goals inadvertently tucked beneath the medical lists: “Try to go to bed at the same time, clean one bathroom every Saturday morning, read one book in common each month, count to ten . . .” After skimming it, she’d been embarrassed to realize it referred to his struggling marriage. She’d found it months before she knew Felipe and his wife were separating, and she remembered thinking she could have written the same list for her own relationship with Eric. Well, were any human relationships so very unique?

  The numbers Felipe had written today were remarkably good—they must be Raney’s post-dialysis blood work—another miracle of modern medicine doing its superior, computer-calculated job. But it was the ventilator readings that got Charlotte’s attention. Raney’s pulmonary pressures were out of the danger zone. Her respiratory gases were normalizing.

  She knew. It was time. They would stop her sedation and check her reflexes, then take her off the ventilator and see if she had enough brain-stem function to breathe.

  She saw Felipe coming down the hall. He broke into a smile, so genuinely pleased to see her it made her particularly glad that today, of all days, she would not have to make every medical decision alone. “You saw her creatinine?” he asked.

  “Looks good. They didn’t land her potassium quite as perfectly as usual. Still a bit high.” It was another joke they had, comparing dialysis to technical marvels such as Mars landings or the Chunnel.

  “She wasn’t dialyzed today. Those are her own kidneys back at work. She’s getting an MRI this morning—it’s been a while,” Felipe said.

  All her lab values were normalizing, in fact. The antibiotics had battled the most malevolent bacteria to a standstill. The last residual hepatic toxins appeared to be out of her system. The inflammation in her lungs had subsided. It was all good news. Heartening. Charlotte began to hope, to pray, that the healing of Raney’s body foretold a healing of her brain, but when she looked at Raney’s MRI and saw the shrunken folds, too small for the encasing skull, like a child’s hand inside a woman’s glove, Charlotte knew how permanent the damage was.

  She stood with her hands in her deep lab coat pockets, looking at her patient. Her patient. A gifted artist, an orphan, a widow, a wife. Her lover’s ex-lover, the
mother of a boy she felt committed to, rationally or not. How odd to know someone’s history, body, home, child—and never have heard her voice, never have seen her open her eyes.

  Felipe stood quietly behind her for a moment. “I can write the orders.” Charlotte nodded. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She lifted one shoulder. “At least we’ll have an answer, even if it’s not an easy one. At least Christina Herrand isn’t here to share the moment with us,” and with that comment she managed a small, disingenuous laugh.

  They stood together at Raney’s bedside. Charlotte lifted Raney’s eyelid and brushed a clean Q-tip softly across her cornea. In the first spontaneous movement she had made in almost three weeks, Raney reflexively blinked—a sign that despite all she had suffered, the most elementary animal functions had survived. She turned to Felipe, not caring if he saw how deeply affected she was. “Tell me. If you were twelve, would you rather learn your mother had died, or see her live in an endless coma—almost as unreachable. Would you rather visit a grave marker or . . .” she gestured toward Raney but her hands ended up covering her face. Felipe put his arms around her and she completely gave in to him, unconcerned that anyone might walk through the open door. “I know better, after all these years. I know better!”

  “Charlotte, Charlotte. You’re better at this job because you care. Because you let yourself care.” He rocked her quietly, waited until she was ready to let him go. “There’s still a chance, you know. It happens.”

  “Yeah. But it won’t. Not for her. We’ve both seen her brain scan.”

  “You did the job you set out to do, as well as any doctor I’ve ever known. No one can heal a broken mind, Charlotte. None of us.”