Sam lifted the plastic thermal cup to his lips and sipped. The coffee was tepid, weak. Scooting the metal guest chair closer to the bed, he took his mother’s hand, careful not to disturb the IV or bother the bruises blooming on her arm.
The young hospitalist came through the doorway with a clipboard. Yesterday it had been a female doc who asked if he wanted to sign a DNR order. Do Not Resuscitate. Did he want “heroic” measures? What was heroic about shoving a breathing tube down her throat and attaching her to machines? Sam had told her that he needed twenty-four hours to think about it.
“Good morning.” Today’s doctor shook his hand, then turned to Flo. He leaned over her and spoke quietly, then lifted each eyelid gently to shine a small flashlight. No response. He tugged at her forearm; her skin stayed up in a pale tent. “She’s still dehydrated,” the doctor said. “No discernible neurological improvement.”
“Will she wake up?”
“She might. She could even have intermittent periods of lucidity.”
“Do you think she’ll recover?”
The doctor shrugged, just like his colleague did yesterday. “No way to know how much she’ll regain. But with her constellation of problems—heart failure and dementia—regaining significant quality of life isn’t likely.”
Sam grabbed onto the bedrail and held tight. The doctor’s words weren’t a surprise, except how much they hurt and how hard it was to think clearly. To try to understand. To unclench his voice to speak.
“Do you think the new pill caused this? She was fine before. At least her heart was. That new medicine made her too sick to eat or drink. Heart disease and arrhythmias were listed as risks.”
The doctor shrugged again. They must teach that gesture in medical school, with its don’t-blame-me message. “I know you want an answer, but that’s impossible to know.”
“What can you do to help her?”
“Let her heal. Manage the dehydration. But her heart is compromised and can’t handle too much fluid.”
Sam glanced at his mother motionless in the bed. Flo despised compromise. She would hate the doctor using that term without a hint of irony.
Sam was becoming familiar with the impossible balancing acts of a failing heart: give her enough fluid to maintain blood pressure, but not enough to make her lungs fill up. Enough blood-thinners to prevent clots, but not enough to cause internal bleeding.
“That’s all you can do?” Sam asked.
“What would you like us to do?” The doctor sounded sincere, as if he really wanted to know.
Sam thought about it. He’d like Flo returned to the way she was before the memory loss became much more than that. And if he couldn’t have his gloriously outrageous pistol of a mother back, then maybe he wanted her to die. But not here and not yet. Not without saying a proper goodbye to Zoe, to Mimi and the others.
“She’s too young,” he said, knowing it was whiney and irrelevant.
The doctor waited.
“How much longer will she need to stay here?” Sam asked.
“A few days, maybe a week.” When she’s more stable, she can go to a skilled nursing facility.
Sam couldn’t ask the next question, couldn’t bear the answer he already knew. There must be something. Something that would matter.
The doctor picked up his clipboard from the bedside table.
“Can you do anything about the bruises?” Sam pointed toward the enlarging purple splotch on her chest, over her heart, where she hit the bedpost when she collapsed.
“I can decrease her heparin.” The doctor hesitated, then handed Sam the clipboard and a pen.
Sam read the swirling purple script written on the pen and sounded out the syllables: metoprolol. The word—must be the name of a drug—sounded soothing. Like water tumbling gently over rocks in some peaceful, summery place, not like disease and side effects and risks and dread. How was he supposed to know what Flo would want? Flo was still alive and intact in his mind, despite the terrible evidence to the contrary on the bed.
“You’re sure she won’t recover?”
That shrug again. Sam hated that gesture of not-knowing, not-caring all that much. “I can’t be certain,” the doctor said. “But it’s unlikely.”
Unlikely. Sam didn’t like it either. But he didn’t seem to have much choice. He hesitated, staring hard at the doctor, begging in his eyes. The doctor put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and shook his head slightly. Sam signed. His stomach clenched and he breathed shallow breaths to keep from vomiting. He followed the white coat to the doorway and watched him walk to the next room. When he turned back to the bed, Flo’s eyes were open but blank.
“Hi, Ma.”
No response.
He lifted the oxygen mask slightly off her face, touched the red pressure marks from the plastic edge. They must hurt. He massaged them a little before putting the mask back. He ran his finger lightly along her cheekbone. It had only been ten days since she started the medicine and stopped eating but the weight loss had already strip-mined her face. With the excess flesh gone—she had always struggled with her weight—her face was elemental, revealing new planes and angles. “Good bones,” Flo would have said, about someone else.
“Does that help?” he asked. He felt foolish speaking when she was so out of it. But the nurse had told him to talk to her. “Patients hear everything,” she claimed, “even when they’re like this.” So sure, he could talk and his mom had always loved words. But now he wasn’t sure if anything could penetrate her confusion, her illness, her faraway-ness. If anything or anyone could reach her, it would be Zoe.
“Zoe should be here soon,” he told Flo. “She’s coming after school. And Mimi promised to stop by.”
Flo didn’t respond. Maybe his words were too soft to hear with the racket of the breathing machine.
He was relieved when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number on the screen but he answered it, grateful to escape for a few minutes. Maybe Flo in her coma would like eavesdropping on his conversation, like she did when she was awake.
It was Jeremy.
“I need a favor, Sam.” The kid’s voice was odder than usual. Soft and spacey; maybe scared. “I’m having some, some problems, and I need someone to pick me up at school. And a place to stay for a couple of days.”
“What about your—”
Jeremy interrupted. “I can’t ask my parents.”
“What’s going on?” Sam asked. Maybe it was none of his business, but if he was going to bring this boy into his house, with Zoe, then he had a right to know, didn’t he?
“It’s complicated,” Jeremy said. “But I guess you could say it’s about what happened back then, you know, with my dad and everything.”
Sam sighed. He had rescued Jeremy and his brother once before, so he figured he was already involved. Plus, Zoe would never forgive him if he said no.
“All right,” he said. “When?”
“They want to do some tests first. Tomorrow afternoon?”
“Zoe and I will come after school. Where will you be?”
“Health Services,” Jeremy said. “Urgent care.”
Terrific, Sam thought and hung up. Just terrific.
When Zoe and her dad entered the waiting room at Health Services the next afternoon, they went in different directions. Zoe wheeled right over to Jeremy, sitting alone on a yellow vinyl sofa. He didn’t look sick, so she gave him a hug. Maybe it was a tentative hug, since she didn’t know what had happened and was a little nervous. Her dad said that with the federal privacy laws, they’d have to wait for Jeremy to fill them in. Sam stood at the registration desk, deep in conversation with a nice-looking woman who had a stethoscope draped around her neck.
“You okay?” Zoe asked.
“Yeah.” He was watching Sam and the woman too. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“No problem.” Zoe pointed toward Sam and the woman. “Who’s she?”
“The nurse practitioner I’ve seen a couple of times. Patty.
She’s cool.”
Sam smiled at something Patty said, and she touched his arm. She handed him a business card and waited while he wrote something on a post-it note and gave it to her. She touched his arm again before turning to Jeremy and waving goodbye. Sam was smiling broadly and his face looked rosier than his usual tan.
Zoe pointed. “My dad seems to think so too.”
On the drive home, the three of them rode sealed each in their envelope of silence. Jeremy debated with himself about whether or not to tell his parents he was in town. His dad wouldn’t say anything, just signal his disappointment in his pathetic son by snapping more rubber bands. Francie would alternate between concern, ire and angst. No, he’d stay away from campus for two days like Patty asked, but he wasn’t going home.
“Drop your bag in my office,” Sam told him. “You can sleep in there. I’m going to call the hospital and check on my mom, then we’ll order pizza for dinner.”
Sam disappeared into his bedroom and closed the door. Zoe and Jeremy sat at either end of the living room sofa.
“So what’s going on?” Zoe asked, tilting her head in that way Jeremy liked.
“I promise I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “But not quite yet. Is that all right?”
“I guess.” She paused. “Did something happen at the permaculture farm?”
“Yeah. And that means no summer job at the farm. Alice, she’s one of the managers, came by this morning, and told me. And no campus job means I can’t stay in the dorm. But Alice said maybe I can join the garden committee in the fall. If Patty says I’m ready.”
Zoe smiled. “Cool. So you’ll be home this summer.”
Home? He hadn’t lived in the Sumner Avenue apartment since high school, finding summer jobs on campus instead. He loved his folks but his mom’s combination of lonely and bitter was too painful on a daily basis. And with Tian home the atmosphere in the apartment would be even more charged and unpredictable. He’d better think of an alternative. For a brief moment, the idea of returning to Tim’s apartment flashed across his mind, but he pushed it away. Brooklyn had its own ghosts. He looked at Zoe. Too bad he couldn’t stay with her, through she looked pretty miserable at the moment too.
“I don’t know what I’ll do this summer,” he said. That internship with Professor Clarke was probably out too. No one wanted an employee who might hallucinate a homegrown garden at any moment. Change the subject, he told himself. “I’m sorry your grandma is so sick.”
Zoe covered her face with her hands. She said something but her words were muffled.
Jeremy scooted closer and put his arms around her. His hands felt foreign on her back, which radiated warmth right through her sweater. She hid her face in his neck and he could feel the dampness on his skin. They sat like that, not speaking, rocking slightly, back and forth. Was she crying? He couldn’t tell. Should he say something? What could he say?
Be brave, he told himself, and wiped a tear from her cheek with his finger. She burrowed her face deeper into his neck. He wanted to kiss her, but maybe that would exploit her sorrow. Or take advantage of her feeling sorry for his troubles. Besides, Patty had suggested that the plants came alive at times of strong emotion and he certainly didn’t need speed-growing vines complicating this moment. And anyway, Sam was in the other room and could walk in on them any minute. Better wait on the kiss.
He touched her cheek again. How smooth it was, and how perfect. Wait a minute. If Sam was half black, then Zoe was a quarter black. She was racially mixed, like him. Had she thought about that? Did it matter? For a split second he thought about their children, and wondered what they would look like, but that was really crazy and he pushed the thought away. Could Zoe even have children, with her condition?
He stroked his finger over the curve of her chin and into the damp warmth of her neck. Her carotid pulse surprised him, and he left his hand there for a moment, feeling the strong beat. He pulled an escaping curl of her hair from his mouth and pushed it behind her ear. He let his hand stay there, between her ear and her hairline, not daring to move again. His fingers were motionless but so alive.
There was something there, under his little finger. Something hard. His hand pushed against it, then tensed.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“My shunt.”
He’d read about shunts on the spina bifida website. But a picture on a computer screen was worlds away from something hard and foreign burrowed under this soft skin.
“It’s a plastic tube that drains excess fluid from my brain,” Zoe said.
“Does it hurt?”
Zoe smiled. “Only when it fails and I need an operation. But that’s only happened twice.”
“Where does it go?”
Zoe lifted her sweater a few inches, revealing a puckered scar on her abdomen. “It gets dumped in my belly and reabsorbed.” She pulled her sweater down and rested her head on his shoulder.
Jeremy’s index finger rose and fell with her pulse. He moved his little finger slightly, along the bulge of the shunt tubing. He imagined following the tubing along the curve of her neck to the place it disappeared under the collar of her sweater. Her skin would be satin and his hands would be gentle. Okay, they’d be scared and tentative. But in his imagination, he’d be brave.
The ring of his cell phone startled them both. His mother’s name on the screen rattled him more.
“Hey.”
“Where are you, Jeremy?”
He hesitated. “At Zoe’s.”
“In Springfield? You’re here?”
“Yeah.”
There was silence on the line. “Well, Jeremy. There’s a matched set of FBI agents at our apartment to question you. Something about a firebombing in Brooklyn. And your dad is about ready to explode too. I think you’d better get over here. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Even after Jeremy left the apartment, even as her heart rate slowed toward normal, Zoe’s skin sizzled with the heat of his hands. She had learned about her body early in life. Her mom and Aunt Emily wanted her to understand both the healthy parts and the parts affected by her condition. She knew the names of bones and muscles, of organs and blood vessels. She knew in great detail what spina bifida did to different body systems and could recognize early symptoms of a dysfunction. But no one ever told her that the big vessels in her neck, her carotid artery and jugular vein, could miss the light touch of a finger. No one had ever mentioned that her shunt tubing could sigh with yearning, from the slightly bulging lateral ventricle all the way down to the peritoneal cavity.
She wanted to shriek in joy or spin her wheelchair in dizzy circles or … or talk to someone. But she didn’t have the kinds of friends who talked about those feelings. Xander would roll his eyes. Her girlfriends avoided discussing boys, probably assuming that Zoe couldn’t have what they were talking about. Pathetic as it might sound, the someone she most wanted to talk to was her grandmother. And now that might never be possible, ever again. Her grandma might never get to see her grow up, attend her wedding, if she ever managed to find someone to love her that much. Her grandma was probably going to die. Joy and sorrow battled inside her and she wanted to scream.
“Dad,” she shouted toward his room. “Did you call the hospital?”
Sam wore his jacket and shoulder bag. “The nurse says Ma’s agitated. I’m going to go over there and spend some time with her. Maybe I can calm her down.”
“I’ll come with you,” Zoe said.
“No. She’s pretty upset now. Wait until tomorrow.” He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Order yourself some pizza. And save me some.” He looked around. “Where’s Jeremy?”
“His mom called. He had to go home for a bit.”
Why didn’t she tell him about the FBI? It wasn’t like Jeremy did anything wrong.
The two FBI agents stood as Jeremy walked into his parents’ living room. They might have spoken their names but Jeremy didn’t hear. He glanced at his father, who stood with
arms folded across his chest, half aggressively in the room and half escaping down the hallway.
“You don’t have to talk to them,” Tian said. “That’s the law.”
“It’s okay,” Jeremy said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Francie hugged Jeremy. “Do you want me to stay with you?” she whispered. Her eyes couldn’t help flickering to Tian and Jeremy caught the worry there.
Jeremy shook his head. “I’m okay. You stay with Dad.” Tian looked jumpy, wired, ready to spring or collapse, who knew which. If he went ballistic, he could make this interview so much worse.
Francie squeezed his arm. “Holler if you need me.” She took Tian’s hand and led him down the hallway.
Jeremy looked down at the scuffed pine floorboards between his feet. He tried to remember what you were supposed to do when questioned by federal agents. Just tell them your name, right? Did he need a lawyer? These guys looked pretty tame. One thing he remembered from eleven years ago was that he shouldn’t blabber. Just answer the questions. He waited.
“You’re Jeremy Beaujolais?” the older agent asked.
“Yes.”
“You live here?”
“My parents do. I live in a dorm at UMass.”
“Do you know why we’re here?”
“No, I don’t,” Jeremy said, which was, strictly speaking, true.
“We’re investigating a firebombing in Brooklyn,” the older agent said, glancing down at his spiral notebook. “April 22. We understand you were there.”
“I was part of the group that marched down Court Street and occupied Borough Hall. We refused to leave and were arrested.”
“We?”
“I was with some other people.”
The younger agent leaned forward. “We’re interested in who those people were. Who you met with before the demonstration and who you marched with.”
Jeremy shrugged. “I never knew many names. I was just in Brooklyn for a few weeks, visiting my brother.”
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