Risking It All

by Nina Darnton

  When Jeff returned after his dinner he sat down next to Danny’s bed again and once more tried to speak to him. “So, Danny, I’m going now, okay? I just got some dinner and I’m going to my hotel but I’ll be back early tomorrow morning. Maybe you’ll feel better by then. Maybe you’ll have your eyes open. I hope so.” He paused. “Look, I know my being here wouldn’t be much comfort to you if you were awake, but I promise, Marcia will be here soon. Just hang in there, okay? Don’t give up on us.”

  As he turned to leave another nurse approached Danny and reached for the IV bag. Jeff was curious so he asked her what she was doing. “Oh,” she said, fussing with the bag, “it’s time to add antibiotics and anti-inflammatories to his IV.”

  “Are you sure?” Jeff asked. “I mean, a nurse came and did that less than an hour ago.”

  The nurse stopped and checked Danny’s chart. “No, you must be mistaken. She was probably just checking to be sure the IV was inserted properly and wasn’t causing problems. His chart doesn’t show any recent medication.”

  “No. I’m sure. We spoke and she told me what she was doing. I didn’t see her write anything on the chart. Another patient needed her and she broke away to go to him.”

  The nurse hesitated. “Do you know the name of the other nurse?”

  “No. But you can check it, can’t you? I don’t want him to receive any more medication until you are sure it isn’t duplication. I assume that could be dangerous.”

  The nurse narrowed her eyes—in her view this was clearly just a meddlesome family member slowing her down. She knew the type, she thought, but she left to check Jeff’s story and he sat down again, determined not to leave until this was settled. When she came back twenty minutes later, she was full of apologies and self-justifications—the chart hadn’t been filled in, she pointed out; it wasn’t her fault.

  After this episode, Jeff was reluctant to leave so he remained in his chair, sleeping on and off during the night, waking with a backache early in the morning when the nurse checked on Danny again. He looked at his watch and realized the doctor might soon appear so he alerted the nurse to ask her to wait for him, went to the men’s room, washed his face, glanced ruefully at the stubble that had already appeared, and returned to his seat.

  He didn’t know what he was expecting from the attending physician. His desire to see her was probably just a symptom of his helplessness, he thought, wanting to speak to the most senior person, as if that gave him some control over the situation. It didn’t. She was a woman who looked only a few years older than Dr. Bernstein, who was at her side. She seemed efficient but cold and also seemed to be in a rush. He was happy to notice, however, that she did use the Purell dispenser as soon as she entered the room. Then she introduced herself as Dr. Flynn and put on a pair of gloves before doing a very brief examination of Danny. She turned to Jeff and, in response to his questions, repeated everything Dr. Bernstein had said in a brisk, mechanical voice, offering neither hope nor comfort. She made him angry, bringing out in him the reaction to rudeness or arrogance he always had, which was to challenge it. But he knew that Danny was at the mercy of these people and he had to avoid antagonizing them. He restrained himself, with considerable effort. He thanked her, but stopped her as she started to move off to her next patient.

  He explained, as nicely as he could, that he wanted to return to the hotel to shower and change, but was afraid to leave Danny’s side after what had happened with the nurse. Now he seemed to have her attention. She made a note on the paper on her clipboard and assured him that the mistake was an unusual event and wouldn’t be repeated. She would speak to the head nurse, she said. Jeff looked at Danny again and ruefully shook his head.

  “If the antibiotics are going to work, when would we start to see some improvement?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I think we would see some change by tonight or possibly tomorrow,” she said. He couldn’t bring himself to ask about possible brain damage.

  He thanked her and left for the hotel. Once there, he showered, shaved and changed clothes, stopped in the hotel coffee shop for breakfast and returned to Danny’s room, taking up his vigil once more at his bed.

  Danny didn’t show any change all day. Jeff followed the same routine as the day before, once again sleeping in the chair next to Danny’s bed. Maria, the nurse who had suggested he talk to Danny, asked if he wanted to lie down—she said they could provide a cot for him—but he thanked her and said he was fine where he was. She smiled at him and patted his shoulder. “How’s the conversation going?” she asked.

  He smiled back, appreciating her kindness. “It’s not really a conversation. That takes two of us. But I’m trying.”

  “Good,” she said. “Keep it up. Later you can ask him if he heard you.”

  “If there is a later,” he mumbled.

  She patted his shoulder and moved on.

  He called home again when he broke for supper and Berta said he shouldn’t worry, Griffin was fine. Once again he gave her the same report about Danny—nothing new. He checked on Danny again after dinner, hoping he would see something, anything, that would show he was going to pull out of this. No change. Jeff settled again into his chair and dozed off. Somewhere in the early morning when the room was even quieter than usual he woke suddenly to the loud noise of an alarm clanging. He looked up, bleary-eyed but worried, and realized it was Danny’s. The nurse wasn’t in the room so he got up and ran to the nurses’ station shouting for help. A nurse darted out from another room and was at Danny’s side in an instant. She checked the monitors and adjusted one of them. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s just a wire that came loose. His stats are the same.” Then she bent down and looked closely at Danny. “But how did the wire come loose?” she murmured. “Did he move?”

  Jeff bent down too as his heart stopped racing. He stared at Danny’s arm, the one he had rubbed the day before. It seemed to be closer to his body than it had been. “His arm,” Jeff said. “Doesn’t it look like it’s in a different position?” They both looked closely at Danny again. Jeff took his hand and squeezed it. He felt a slight movement. Was it a response? “He moved!” he shouted, as the nurse smiled and hushed him at the same time. “He moved. I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ll get the doctor,” she said, hurrying off. “Talk to him. Don’t stop.”

  “Danny, Danny, it’s Jeff. Can you hear me?” Danny opened his eyes. “Listen, you’re in the hospital. Don’t be scared. I’m here with you and Marcia is coming. She’s coming soon. The doctors are taking really good care of you.”

  Danny blinked. Jeff couldn’t tell if he understood anything he said but he was thinking that surely this was a sign the antibiotics had kicked in. A young doctor, a different resident, came in to check him. Just as she arrived the blank look on Danny’s face turned to one of panic. His eyes opened wide and he grabbed for the breathing tube, trying to pull it out. The resident restrained him and called a nurse, who helped her tie his hands to the bed. Danny was weak and he couldn’t put up too much of a fight. The doctor added something to his IV, all the while talking to him, calmly telling him not to panic, he wasn’t choking, he needed the tube to breathe, she was giving him something to make him feel better. Within seconds, he seemed to calm down; his body became less rigid and his eyes closed.

  “Is he okay?” Jeff asked.

  “Yes. I just gave him some more sedative so he can tolerate the tube. We’ll try to remove it soon to see if he can breathe without it, but we can’t do that yet. But you can allow yourself to be happy, Mr. Naiman. I know he’s scared and he’s uncomfortable and he may be in pain, but he’s alive, and he’s beginning to recover. Look at his hands.”

  Jeff glanced down and saw Danny’s hands, no longer purple and mottled, but looking almost normal. The relief that flooded through him was so strong it surprised and exhausted him.

  “He’ll sleep for a while now,” the resident said. “Why don’t you take a little break?”

 
“I want to be here when he wakes up. I don’t want him to be alone.”

  “Come back in about an hour. He won’t wake before that.”

  Jeff went back to the hotel. He longed to sleep, but he resisted, stopping in the hotel coffee shop for a strong cup of coffee instead. He called Berta to tell her the good news.

  “Listen, if Marcia calls, just tell her that Danny is in the hospital and she must come home immediately. She should come straight to the hospital. You have the address, right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jeff. But I’m sure she will call you when she hears.”

  “I know, but I’m not allowed to have the cell phone in the hospital room so she might not be able to reach me right away. Tell her he was in a coma but he just woke up.”

  “Thanks to God. I’ll tell her.”

  Jeff picked up another coffee to go and returned to the hospital. The curtain around Danny’s bed was closed when he got there and he could hear several people ministering to him. He hurried to the nurses’ station to ask if Danny was all right. The nurse on duty reassured him, saying they were testing the breathing tube and if they could remove it, it would be done shortly. Jeff waited impatiently, pacing up and down in the hallway until the group started filing out of Danny’s room. Jeff recognized Dr. Bernstein and also Dr. Flynn. She nodded at him and smiled as she passed but Dr. Bernstein stopped to talk to him. “It’s good news,” he said. “He’s awake and he knows where he is. We tried to turn off the ventilator to see if he can breathe by himself, but his breath is still a little ragged so we’re leaving the tube in for a few more hours. But I’m pretty sure we’ll be removing it by the end of today.”

  “But that tube terrified him. It made him feel like he was choking.”

  “I know, but he has enough sedation now so he can stand it, but not enough to knock him out. You can talk to him and he understands. He can even answer. We have a whiteboard and a pen he can write with. Would you like to try?”

  Jeff nodded. Dr. Bernstein called the nurse over and asked her to bring Jeff the board. Jeff walked over to Danny’s bed. Danny’s eyes were open but he still had most of the tubes and wires attached to him, and looked so frail and weak. “Hi, Danny,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

  Danny looked at the board that the nurse had just put in Jeff’s hands. “Do you want to say something?” Jeff asked. Danny just barely nodded his head yes, and Jeff propped the board up and gave him the pen. Danny was weak and exhausted, and he struggled to grasp it and write. His message was hard to read, but Danny had managed two words.

  I’m sorry.

  “No. Please. You have nothing to be sorry about. I was just trying to say how glad everyone is that you have woken up. You were in a coma.”

  Danny didn’t respond. “Are you in pain now?”

  Danny wrote, Where Marcia

  Jeff explained again, saying that she would come as soon as she got the news. Probably by the next day or the day after. “Is there anything I can get for you? Would you like a magazine or a book or, I know, how about an iPad?”

  Danny looked very tired. He shook his head, then wrote need sleep on the board and closed his eyes.

  Jeff took the board away and put it on the windowsill for later. He noticed that Danny’s blanket was rumpled and he straightened it and pulled it up. “I’m going to go to the hotel and take a nap too,” he said, not sure that Danny was still awake to hear him.

  37

  Marcia’s retreat had been a great success. After spending three days with her author, she was more convinced than ever that she had discovered an impressive new talent. She’d had several ideas, however, for structural changes she felt were needed and she had worried that her author would resist or resent her suggestions. But she found they worked well together and had reached a happy understanding by the end of the third day. She was relieved when they decided to return to Cape Town a day early. Although she was eager to get home to see Griffin, she also felt sad that she couldn’t stay longer. It was such a beautiful country. It seemed foolish, even wasteful, to have come so far and not even see one wild animal. She should have gone on safari for a few days, she realized, and considered the possibility that she might change her plans and add an extra few days to her trip, as soon as she checked in with Berta to be sure all was well at home. She might not get another chance.

  Her cell phone, which she had left in her suitcase in the hotel’s storage room, was dead so she didn’t immediately get any of her messages. But when she checked in at the desk to get the key to her new room, she was handed several slips detailing multiple phone messages from Jeff asking her to call him as soon as she was back. The sheer number was alarming—there were six messages in three days. She knew something must be wrong and, fighting her growing anxiety, she quickly gave the hotel operator the number for Jeff’s cell phone. There was no answer and her worry mounted. She then gave the operator her landline number at home but there was no answer there either. Berta is probably out with Griffin for a walk, she tried to tell herself. It doesn’t mean anything bad happened. But it didn’t calm her. She plugged her phone in and waited a few minutes until it turned on. When she checked those messages, she heard a series of urgent, panicked calls from Jeff, informing her that Danny was very sick and telling her to return home immediately. The last message suggested she call Berta for an update. Her fear mounting, she tried Berta’s cell phone and this time she reached her. Berta told her to go straight to the hospital, Danny was very sick, he had been in a coma, but he had just woken up. Jeff was with him. When she realized that Danny had been near death and that no one but Jeff, who didn’t even like him, was at his side, she was beside herself. It still wasn’t clear exactly what condition Danny was in. He had been in a coma. How was he? Was his brain damaged? What had happened to him? Berta knew so little—not even whether it had been an accident or an illness. She asked the hotel concierge to get her on the first flight to New York, and managed to get on a flight that left at 7:55 that same evening and arrived at 10:25 New York time the next morning—a trip of about 20 hours. She sent an e-mail to Julie in New York asking her to book her a car and driver to meet the plane and take her straight to the hospital. She didn’t want to drive herself, fearful that the combination of her exhaustion, jet lag and anxiety would be dangerous.

  She tried to picture how Jeff would behave in this situation. He was at the hospital, she thought, so that was good; after all, he might have just said it wasn’t his concern. But he wouldn’t do that, she corrected herself. He didn’t have any love for Danny, he wished he wasn’t in his life, he even blamed him for all the problems in their marriage, but he wasn’t a monster. He would have realized that Danny had no one else and that he had to show up, even if it was just so he wouldn’t be embarrassed when the doctor called. But Danny needed more than a dutiful appearance from Jeff. He needed someone to advocate for him, to sit by his bedside, to hold his hand, even if Danny wasn’t conscious enough to know Jeff was there. She would have done that but she knew Jeff wouldn’t. She could imagine what Jeff would have done. He would have come to the hospital, gone to the nurses’ station, looked in on Danny, probably even felt bad to see him lying there half dead. He would have talked to the doctor, told him or her that his ex-wife was really the boy’s guardian and would surely come to the hospital as soon as she could get there. He would have encouraged them to do whatever was necessary to save Danny, and then what? Would he have left? Probably he would have, she thought, he’d have needed to get back to work or maybe he’d been worried about Griffin, or maybe he’d just wanted to be out of there. He’d have satisfied his conscience by going to the hospital and looking like a decent guy to the hospital staff, and then he’d have left.

  But something nagged at her as she pictured this scenario. It seemed to paint such a cold portrait of her husband, and staring at it in her imagination, she didn’t recognize Jeff in it. On some level, even as she bitterly assured herself that yes, that’s what he would do, she couldn’t really be
lieve it. As had happened so many times since that terrible day Eve died, Marcia thought of her, pictured her, imagined her sorrow about what had happened to her child. Marcia felt guilty yet she knew she wasn’t at fault. This was yet another dirty twist of fate, almost as if they were cursed. And why, if this had to happen, did it have to be while she was away, when she so rarely traveled? There was no answering these questions, no point in wondering and imagining. She just had to get to Danny.

  They were the longest twenty hours of her life, but eventually her plane landed, she passed through customs, following the crowd in a dazed way, and as soon as she was permitted to use her cell phone she tried Jeff again, but again she couldn’t reach him. Where could he be? Berta had told her the name of the hospital so she called and asked for the nurses’ station on Danny’s floor. The nurse who answered seemed to be in a hurry to get off and barely seemed to know whom she was asking about. Marcia repeated his name several times and asked to speak to someone who knew his condition. The only information she could get was that Danny had been in a coma for three days and was now awake. His status had changed from critical to stable and his breathing tube had been removed just an hour ago.