Something So Unscripted

by Natasha Madison

  “Let it out,” she says, and I just look at her.

  “I could lose him.” My voice cracks. “My baby is in there, and I could lose him.” I put my hand to my chest as the tears stream down my face. “Why?” I ask her, and she doesn’t answer me because she has no words. Instead, she comes over and gets on her tippy toes and wraps me in her arms.

  I bend my head and bury it in her neck. My arms go around her waist, and the tears come; everything I’ve been keeping in, afraid to show, always having to keep my brave face on is gone. With her, I let it go.

  “I promise,” she whispers, “I will do everything in my power to make him better.” She softly rubs my head while I compose myself. “You feel better?” she asks softly.

  “How do you do that?” I don’t want to let her go, but I do it anyway as I step out of her embrace.

  “Do what?” she asks, and I see that she has her own tear marks down her face.

  “Know what to say and when to say it,” I ask her.

  She goes over to the little desk and grabs a Kleenex and wipes her eyes. “I don’t want Jack to see me like this.” She totally avoids what I just asked.

  “You’re beautiful,” I tell her, and she looks at me.

  “We should go and check on him,” she says, and I just nod at her, but I grab her hand before she walks out of the room, making her turn back to look at me.

  “Thank you,” I tell her. She just nods at me but doesn’t let my hand go as we walk back to Jack.

  “There they are,” Shirley says, looking at us and then down at our hands. Denise lets go and then walks to the side of the bed.

  “How is the patient?” She smiles at them, and Mallory looks at her.

  “We are almost done,” she says, and then Jack looks at Denise.

  “I don’t feel so well,” he says, and I see that his lips are turning a little white.

  “Mallory, get some juice.” Denise springs into action while I stand here with fear gripping me. She lowers the head of the bed and grabs a pillow to put under his legs. Mallory comes back with apple juice, and she puts the straw between his lips. “Take a sip for me, honey,” she tells him, and he does. “Little sips.”

  As he’s taking small sips, Mallory gets the sphygmomanometer out and takes his blood pressure. “Eighty-five over sixty.”

  Denise looks over at me and my mom holding hands. “His blood pressure is low.” She looks back at Jack. “How are you feeling, honey?”

  “A little tired,” he says, and she just nods at him.

  “You just have to keep talking to me for a bit, and then if everything is okay, you can take a nap.” He takes another sip of apple juice while he lays there.

  Mallory takes his pressure again. “Normal,” she says when she finishes.

  “Okay, if you want, you can take a nap or sit up,” she tells him, and he turns on his side.

  “I want to stay here a bit,” he says, and she runs her hand over his head.

  “Okay, honey,” she says softly to him, and Mallory walks out of the room.

  “Did he eat a big breakfast this morning?” she asks me, and my mother answers.

  “He was a bit antsy, so he took a couple of bites, but not much.”

  “That could be it. But I would like to keep him a bit for observation.” She looks back at him. “And if he’s all better by the end of the day, he can go home.”

  “Whatever you think,” I say, and then Jack looks up a bit.

  “You okay, buddy?” I say, going to the bed, and he just nods his head.

  Mallory comes in with a blanket in her hands. “Look what just came out of the dryer.”

  She places the blanket on Jack, and he smiles. “It’s so warm.”

  “It is,” she says and then looks at Denise.

  “I have to go see some of the other patients. But I’ll be back,” she says, leaning over and kissing his cheek. Her eyes come up to me. “Page me if you need me.”

  “I will,” I tell her and watch her walk out the door.

  My mother walks to the side of the bed where Denise was just at and sits next to Jack, taking him in her arms. “Do you want to sleep a little?” she asks him, and he shakes his head, but his eyelids have other plans. Soon, his snoring fills the room.

  “She’s something else,” my mother says, and I sit at the end of the bed, looking at her and Jack. “When I first met her, I didn’t think much of it, but then I saw her with Jack.”

  “She’s good with him.”

  “No, she’s great with him,” she corrects me. “I’ve never heard him laugh so much. I’ve never seen such happiness in him when he was just playing cars with her. She gives him all of her.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t because she does, and she has from the beginning. “We are very lucky she took the case.”

  “I don’t think luck has anything to do with it,” she tells me. “Jack isn’t the only one I see her saving.”

  “Mom,” I tell her, and she just shakes her head.

  “No, you let me have my say,” she says a bit forceful. “When you brought Chantal home, I didn’t say anything. In fact, I bit my tongue. A lot.” She opens her eyes wide. I just laugh, thinking about the first time I brought her to my parents’ and how she cried when she got mud on her shoe. “Then you came back, and you were engaged, and I thought to myself. My son wouldn’t marry someone like that; I was hoping I was wrong.”

  “Mom,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “I’m sure you loved her,” she continues. “She was easy on the eyes, as your father says, but then you came back, and she was pregnant, and I tried. God knows I tried to form a bond with her, but I couldn’t. She just was ...” She looks up at the ceiling like she is trying to find the right words. “She was a bitch.” I laugh now because my mother hates to swear. “Then she had Jack, and I tried to bond with her over Jack, and well, we all know what happened there.”

  “You mean your visit to our house that lasted four days?” I ask her, thinking back to when Jack was born and I flew her and Dad down. I was so proud to be a dad, so proud to show her Jack, my son. Well, I was the only one happy. Chantal made it quite clear that she wasn’t up for any visitors, so my mother took the hint, and she and Dad packed up and left the next day.

  “Exactly,” she says, “but then I meet Denise, and when she comes into the house, do you know how she greeted me?” she asks me, and I shake my head. “She came in and hugged me right away. She literally hugged me standing in the entrance of your house, thanking me for having her over.”

  “She’s a good person.”

  “She sat down and played cars with Jack and Michael for three hours and not once did she raise her voice. She wiped up mess after mess at the table, and not once did she scold them or tell them what a mess they were.” Her eyes find mine as if she is trying to burn the image in my brain.

  “I get it, Mom,” I tell her.

  “Do you?” she asks me. “Do you really? She saw the look on your face when you were looking at Jack. She saw you leave, and she made an excuse to walk out to see to you.” I look down at my hands. “She took care of you, something I don’t think Chantal ever did.”

  “It wasn’t all bad,” I try to tell her, but she just looks at me.

  “I want you to find love, son,” she starts. “I want you to be loved, and I want you to be so loved that you never have to second-guess it. I want you to find that love and hold onto it, make it bigger, make it everything.”

  “She’s probably like that with all her patients,” I tell her.

  “Bullshit,” she says loudly. “Stop finding excuses and do something about it.”

  “I can’t cross the line. Because then if things don’t work out, it’s awkward for her and especially for Jack,” I tell her, and it’s just another excuse.

  “But what if it isn’t?” she says, and I let the question linger in the air, not ready to answer it. Scared to answer it. She doesn’t get a chance to say anything else because we hear a commotio
n in the hallway and then see nurses flying down the hall.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Denise

  I walk out of the room, and I now have Zack’s smell on my coat. I smell him everywhere. So now not only is he on my mind every second of the day, but he’s also all around me.

  Mallory comes to see me at the nurses’ station. “I got all of Jack’s blood and packed it up. It will be going out today.”

  I nod my head, and I’m about to say something when I hear commotion in the hallway. “We have a code blue!” I hear one of the nurses yell, and I get up and run down the hall, following the commotion to Evie’s room.

  “She was fine this morning,” Janet says, quietly sobbing. “She said she was tired.”

  I walk into the room; the machines beep like crazy as her heartbeat gets slower and slower. “Someone page Steve,” I say loudly.

  I walk to her. “Hey, Evie,” I say loudly. “Can you hear me, sweetie?”

  Nurses come in and start hooking her to the monitor in case she goes into full on cardiac arrest and we have to shock her. Steve comes rushing in. “What’s going on?”

  “Her heart beat got under fifty,” I tell him, and he stands beside her.

  “Evie, sweetie,” he whispers to her, and she turns her head. “You have to talk to me, okay?”

  “I’m tired, Dr. Steve,” she says. “I just want to sleep.”

  “I know you do, honey, but you just have to fight a bit more,” he says, and she just closes her eyes. We all look at the monitor to see if her heartbeat gets any lower.

  Her beats start to slowly climb, and Steve and I look at each other and then at the nurses who just nod. We walk out to talk to Janet and see that she is sobbing in Shirley’s arms.

  She looks at us when we walk out, shaking her head. “No.”

  “She’s stable,” I tell her and then look at Shirley, who has her own tears in her eyes. I look at Jack’s room and see that Zack is lying down with Jack while he watches his iPad.

  “You have to do something,” Janet says.

  “We’ve done everything,” Steve says. “She didn’t respond to the last round of chemo.”

  “There has to be something else,” she says, her voice going louder and louder. “There has to be.”

  “I’ll see what else can be done,” Steve says, then looks down blinking, and I know he’s blinking away his own tears. They prepare you for the field in medical school, but what they don’t prepare you for is the heartbreaking losses. The times you lose your patient who you’ve not only cared for, but who put their lives in your hands and you failed them. No course can prepare you for that.

  Each time I lose a patient, I feel the same hurt the families feel. No matter how much I prepare myself for the end, the result always leaves a permanent mark on my heart.

  “I have to call my husband,” Janet says, walking away from Shirley.

  “I don’t know how you do this,” Shirley says, and I look down, blinking away the tears that are fighting to come out. “You two really are heroes,” she says, turning around and going to Jack’s room.

  “How the fuck is this going to be okay?” Steve asks, looking at me. “There is nothing to be done.”

  “Did you speak with Melissa?” I ask him as we turn to walk toward the nurses’ station.

  “I did,” he says. “but the family can’t afford five hundred K, and their insurance is stingy as fuck. They delayed treatment for a month while they investigated her case.”

  “I’m going to check with the foundation and see if we can help cut costs there,” I tell him, and he just nods.

  “They are going to review the chart and bury us in paperwork, and by the time it’s done, it will be too late.” He shakes his head. “A miracle,” he says, walking away from me now. “She needs a miracle.”

  I nod my head, and I’m looking down when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I don’t have to turn around to know it’s him; my body knows. I almost feel my shoulder rising to bring his hand up to touch my face. Instead, I turn around. “Are you okay?”

  I take a deep breath. “Not even close, but I’m going to have to be.”

  “Is she okay?” he asks, and I just look down the hall where Janet paces in front of her daughter’s room on the phone, no doubt talking to her husband.

  “I can’t tell you anything,” I tell him and then look down.

  He nods his head. Janet comes to us, and Zack sees her. “He’s on his way,” she tells me of her husband. “We had to pull Brock out of his hockey tournament, but ...” she says, wringing the Kleenex in her hand. She turns to look at Zack. “She’s a year older than Jack, and she’s had cancer half her life.”

  “Denise,” she says with all the hope in the world, “there has to be something you could do. Something we haven’t tried.”

  My heart breaks for this mother, who is essentially asking me to save her daughter, and I wish I could. I wish I had all the answers, but I have to be honest with her. “I’ll look into something else, but, Janet,” I tell her, blinking away my own tears. “I don’t know if there is anything.”

  She nods her head at me and then looks at Zack. “Maybe you can bring Jack for a visit. She was asking about him the other day.”

  “Sure thing,” he says right away. “Why don’t you come and get us when she’s up?” She nods at him and then walks away.

  “Are you on lunch?” he asks me, and I just look at him.

  “It’s eleven,” I answer him, looking at my watch.

  “So a coffee then?” he says, grabbing my hand and walking into Jack’s room to find him still sleeping.

  “Mom, I’m taking Denise down for a coffee break. Would you like anything?”

  “No, you two go ahead. I’ll call you if anything changes,” she says, smiling at us.

  “Zack, I can’t just leave,” I tell him, and then he looks at me. “Okay, fine, let me just tell them I’m stepping out.”

  I turn and walk back to the nurses’ station. “Is everything okay?” I ask them, and they all nod at me. “I’m going to grab a coffee. Do you guys want anything?”

  Mallory looks over at Zack. “I wouldn’t mind that right there,” she says, winking at me. “Is he single?”

  “He is,” I say, “but I don’t think your husband would like that one bit.”

  I laugh at her.

  “Buzzkill,” she says, laughing at me as I turn to walk back to Zack.

  “There is a Starbucks around the corner,” I tell him, and he puts his hand out for me to lead the way. I walk to the elevator, and when we walk out, a couple of fans spot him and approach him for pictures. I wait for him while he does his thing, and when we walk into Starbucks, the barista sees me and greets me by name when we walk up to the counter.

  “What can I get you, Denise?” she says, and I look at the menu. “Can I have a vanilla latte, no foam.”

  “Sure,” she says, and I look at Zack as he waits for me to finish.

  “What do you want?” I ask him, and he orders a regular coffee. He pays, and I just walk to the side to get the coffee.

  “Why are you looking at me so weird?” I ask him, smiling.

  “It’s just every single time I’ve been in Starbucks with someone, their order is usually ridiculous. It’s half this, shot of this, nonfat that.”

  I bend my head laughing when the barista calls my name. “When it comes to food and whole milk, I have a YOLO attitude.”

  “Good,” he says and grabs his own coffee. “Do you want to sit here or go somewhere else?”

  “Whatever you want to do,” I tell him, and he leads me to a small table in the corner. I sit down, putting my coffee on the table and placing my hands in front of me.

  When he sits down, he looks at me. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I tell him honestly. “Not even a bit.”

  He shakes his head. “What are you doing for dinner?” he asks, and I look at him.

  “Probably nothing,” I tell him, picking up my coffee and t
aking a sip.

  “Come join us,” he tells me. “It’s Mom’s last night; she leaves tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to impose on her time with you guys,” I tell him, and he tilts his head.

  “Do you ever think of yourself before everyone else?”

  “Do you?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Match point,” he says with a smile, and for the rest of the time, we talk about his hockey schedule, which is mostly home games for the next week. I switch to nights starting tomorrow for the week.

  “So when you do night shifts, what time do you start?” he asks when we get up and make our way back to the hospital.

  “Eleven to seven,” I tell him. “Worst shift to have, but I get them once a month since we do a rotation.”

  We walk back into the hospital and ride up the elevator all alone, and I stand on one side as he leans against the other side. “Tonight?” he asks me, and I have to get my heart to race at a normal pace.

  “Zack,” I whisper, and I’m about to say something else—what I have no idea—but the door opens and more people come in, and then it’s finally our floor. We walk out together, his hand grazing mine.

  “See you later,” he says to me, smirking and walking away from me while I look down at my hand and wonder if I imagined his touch.

  I walk back to the nurses’ station, finding no one there. Steve walks in from the hallway. “You’re back,” he says. “Melissa called back. Evie is a good candidate.”

  I put my fist together to cheer, but the look on his face shows me that he isn’t celebrating. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “The bad news is that the insurance company totally shot it down. It’s still in the clinical trial phase, according to them, even if it’s FDA approved.”

  “There is no way they can afford that,” I tell him, and he just nods his head.

  “I’m going to check with the foundation,” I say. “We can’t just not give her the drug even if we don’t have the money to save her.” I shake my head and feel someone near me. I don’t have to look up because his smell surrounds me.