Surface

by Stacy Robinson

  “There’s been an accident. I think my son . . . overdosed on cocaine. He’s having some kind of seizure.” She could hear herself answering the operator’s questions, could see her hands wiping Nicholas’s mouth clean with a pillowcase and smoothing the hair from his face as he shook. Her head grew dizzy, as the operator’s voice seemed to deepen and slow. I was just trying to distract you with a little party favor. Nick’s face turned a purplish blue. “Please help us,” she yelled, “he’s turning blue!”

  “An ambulance is on its way. His color should come back shortly. The muscles of respiration tighten during a seizure, then release.”

  Claire held her breath and waited for the convulsions to stop. The woman on the phone tried to keep her calm, and after another minute Nicholas’s body relaxed and the blue in his lips and face receded like low tide, leaving paleness in its wake. “It stopped,” she cried out through tears. She cupped her hands around his, careful not to jostle his body. “Nick, honey, can you hear me?” Mucus dribbled from the corner of his mouth and his breath grew thin and tortured. His fingers suddenly flexed, then released, and his eyes stared vacantly at Claire before rolling back. “Oh, God, no.” She heard the front door crash open and yelled for the paramedics to hurry. “He’s losing consciousness. And he’s diabetic. Please, help him.”

  The paramedics swarmed around Nicholas, and Claire stood watching from behind. In what seemed like seconds, the technicians had intubated Nick, placed him on a gurney and tore out of the house and into the circular drive. She raced behind them and was swallowed into the back of the ambulance where she held his hand and whispered into his ear, trying to drown out the sirens and chaos around them.

  By the time they arrived at the emergency room, Nicholas had fallen into a coma.

  CHAPTER 5

  As the darkness surrendered to the new day, Claire felt brittle as glass in the face of the “if-onlys” cycling through her head. Like the Salvador Dali clock painting she adored, her mind had begun playing tricks on her, toying with her terror and guilt as she grappled with the devastating reality of the situation. If only she hadn’t showered, if she had found Nicholas earlier. Images oozed forward and back through her brain, flaccid and persistent, surreal as Dali’s clocks. The neurologist telling her that Nick had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Her boy so shrunken and gray with the ventilator supporting his tenuous grip on life. The horror that her fleeting ecstasy came at the cost of her son’s agony. If only she had never met Andrew Bricker. The Persistence of Memory, indeed.

  She had called Michael in London at three a.m. when it became clear that Nicholas wouldn’t be coming home anytime soon, her attempts at composed, hopeful language disintegrating under the punishing weight of her fear. Good things rarely happened at three a.m., and this was not a conversation she wanted to have over the telephone at any hour. She told him there’d been an accident with some drugs. That Nicholas was in the hospital, in a coma, and to get home right away. There would be time enough later to explain the awful chain of events. Time she needed to think. But Michael had naturally wanted more, and his voice, so far-off and garbled at times, conveyed as much alarm as she imagined her own did.

  “Tell me what happened,” he’d said. “What the hell’s going on there?”

  Claire could hear horns honking and shouting in the background, and she felt her anxiety balloon in her chest. “Andrew Bricker came to the house. He had some papers for you.” She said the words cautiously.

  “What do I care about that right now, Claire? What happened?”

  “He had cocaine with him. He must have dropped it, and . . .”

  “What?”

  “And Nicholas found it.” She broke into sobs.

  “What are you saying?”

  Claire lowered the phone to her chest for a second and took a deep breath against the anger in her husband’s voice. “Michael, they might have to do surgery. Please just get here as fast as you can.”

  “He overdosed?”

  “It caused a brain hemorrhage.”

  “Christ.” There was a muffled silence before he spoke again. “Can they wait on the surgery?”

  “For the time being. But I don’t know for how long. They need to do more tests.”

  “Who’s taking care of him there?”

  “Dr. Sheldon, the neurologist. He seems excellent. And I’m waiting to see the head of neurosurgery.”

  “I don’t know who they are, but I’m calling Bruce Hoffman. I want him to make sure they bring in the best people. I won’t get there until late afternoon, and I want him overseeing this. If anything happens, you talk to Bruce.”

  She ran to the bathroom to throw up before returning to Nick’s bedside.

  With the new shift coming on and sunlight stretching into the corridors, Claire knew she couldn’t hold things together much longer on her own, and called her big sister, Jackie—the only person she could tell the horrible truth to and still count on for comfort. She was her best friend, her trusted if often blunt confidante, her adviser on all things parental. As a preschool teacher, Jackie had the patience of Job and the energy of a Zumba instructor, with an iridescent style to match. To see the two women from a distance—a seemingly odd couple pairing of pressed monochromatic elegance and colorful hippie-chick spontaneity, one would never guess they’d been raised under the same roof. But beyond the Burberry and batik prints, under the sophistication and practicality, they were compassionate mothers who shared a profound desire to get it right with their children. And for the most part they had managed to raise three thoughtful, creative cousins—Allie (eighteen, an eager epicurean bound for culinary school), Miranda (fifteen, still shy but devoted to volleyball and piano) and Nicholas (sandwiched between, and their go-to consultant on all things in guy world). Three seemingly levelheaded kids who respected their mothers and aunts, and who actually seemed to enjoy family gatherings.

  As Claire anxiously waited for her sister, she hoped against hope that they all would be together again for their annual Fourth of July barbeque bash on Martha’s Vineyard. And when Jackie arrived in the otherwise empty visitor’s lounge, her dark brown curls still damp from the shower, her bare face suntanned and freckled, she wrapped Claire in a secure embrace. Claire lay her head in the crook of her neck, feeling her body settle into Jackie’s warmth and imagining what it would be like to fall asleep there, safe and not having to say anything.

  “I’m here, honey,” Jackie repeated, the tiny crystals on her blouse tinkling as Claire’s body shook.

  Claire rubbed at the outline of a folded-up paper towel square in her pocket and blinked tears from her eyes. She had used the towel hours before to wipe a crusty splotch of Nick’s blood from her cheek while waiting for the doctor. She removed the secret totem from her pants. The white paper had turned a deep russet, and she held it to her nose and inhaled its rusty, metallic scent.

  A blood vessel had burst, she explained to Jackie, and blood had washed over the surfaces of Nick’s brain and into the ventricles, increasing pressure on his brain, which in turn caused part of his central nervous system to shut down. The doctor felt it could have been caused just as easily by one single snort as by an entire gram of cocaine. Claire recounted her first meeting with Dr. Sheldon, remembering how color had gone flat around her as she’d looked into the doctor’s long, thin face and asked if Nick was going to come out of this.

  “Cases like this are unpredictable, Mrs. Montgomery,” he’d told her.

  “But will he be all right? When will he wake up?” She squeezed the paper towel tightly. “Please tell me the truth.”

  Doctor Sheldon paused and looked into her eyes before speaking. “The data shows that patients in your son’s situation have a thirty percent survival rate. And there is the possibility of neurologic disability if he does survive. But he absolutely could come through this. We just can’t tell at this point.” He tried to encourage Claire by reporting some of the positive signs that Nicholas was exhibiting, his good corneal a
nd deep-tendon reflexes. But all she heard was that Nick stood a seventy percent chance of dying.

  Nick’s strong, he’s an athlete. Those numbers can’t apply. “What happens now?”

  “The most important thing is preventing his brain from swelling. Then, once we’ve located the damaged blood vessel, we’ll most likely need to go in and remove it surgically. The neurosurgeon will make that call.”

  “I need to see my son.” Claire felt the immensity of her emotions pin her down as she attempted to stand. Dr. Sheldon took her hand and helped her to her feet, and they walked together to the ICU, his arm steadying her as they went.

  Cumbersome beeping equipment overwhelmed the small curtained room. A window to the left of the bed cast slatted moonlight onto Nick’s face. Dr. Sheldon advised her not to stimulate him with a lot of talking. “Contrary to what you see on television, it might agitate him and raise the pressure in his brain. Hold his hand and let him know you’re here. But try and keep things as relaxed as possible.”

  Claire approached the bed, one hand pinching the damp square of paper in her pocket, the other skimming the sheet alongside Nick’s motionless body. Fewer than twenty-four hours earlier she had made a reckless decision, and now that she stood before its consequences, she shuddered in disbelief. She tried to focus on Nicholas’s closed eyelids, waiting for any movement. His matted hair looked an oily shade of brown, his puffy face distorted, his mouth propped wide with tubing. She could still see tiny flakes of blood caked under the surgical tape around his nose. Larger stains dotted the white-and-blue gown near his neck. She wondered if they’d had to slice off his T-shirt, if it was sitting on the floor of the trauma room like a discarded rag. Stroking his forehead, she silently begged for him to open his eyes. The decibels of her voice rose in her head. She railed at herself. She railed at Andrew and prayed. Then, changing tracks, she squeezed Nick’s hand and whispered beautiful promises into his ear—promises of school in Denver, the family ski trip they missed that year, a river rafting week with his buddies—anything, and everything, if he would just squeeze back.

  As the night wore on Claire felt the silent influence of Dr. Hoffman, their longtime physician and chief of staff, at work behind the scenes. She watched with muted hope the frequent brain-wave tests to check for improvements, and the neurosurgeon’s physical assessments. A revolving crew of nurses checked intracranial pressure and blood pressure, tested blood glucose levels and suctioned the secretions from his mouth. By early morning, Dr. Sheldon informed Claire that the pressure on Nicholas’s brain had stabilized to a safe level—good news she repeated into Michael’s voice mail.

  Claire unfolded from Jackie’s embrace and wiped her face. “Nicky is going to come through this,” she cried, spilling more tears. “He has to.”

  “Of course he will, honey. I know he will.” Jackie combed Claire’s hair with her graceful piano fingers as their breathing came into sync. “But,” she finally said, breaking the silence, “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. Where did he get the coke?”

  Claire studied a nub in the worn chair fabric, wondering how she could possibly explain the events of the previous eighteen hours, wondering how Jackie would respond to her utter failure in character. As sisters they didn’t judge so much as measure themselves against each other. And despite being younger by two years, Claire had always been the responsible sister, the voice of reason in the days when frat guys had been the “morning after” topic of discussion. Steer away from the bad boys, she’d warned Jackie. The ones who stick around just long enough to tighten a vise around your heart and leave you breathless and sorry.

  Amid her dread and delirium, Claire thought back to their high school days, and to the running tally of little rescues they’d performed for one another. She thought of the night Jackie, looking so effortlessly cool in her Dolphin shorts and tattered Cal sweatshirt, had convinced Claire to hide one of her boyfriends in the basement because a newer and cuter crush had come to ask her to a Grateful Dead concert. Point, Claire. And to the time Claire needed Jackie to run interference for her with their parents over a minor curfew violation. Point, Jackie. They’d calculate their points weekly, always winding up in Claire’s bed giggling over the score and negotiating the “winner’s” fee.

  Claire chewed on her lip trying to construct an explanation for this most uncharacteristic transgression. But that first step across the threshold of truth froze her. What an idiot she’d been with her advice to Jackie all those years. Avoid the poets, the lusty artists, the hipsters. Go for the business-school guys with their intensity and promise—those were Claire’s pearls to her sister, antiques handed down from their mother. But Jackie never listened and instead suffered her fair share of lover’s asthma while accumulating a notable collection of memories along the way. And later marrying a successful engineer—a man whose groundedness and devotion bore a striking similarity to their father’s—and who loved her with a passion matched only by her own desire for him. As Claire thought about their different paths, she felt reasonably certain that if she’d been less concerned with doing the right thing back then, she would have gotten the wrong thing out of her system when things didn’t count so critically.

  She looked up at her sister, feeling soreness in her jaws and teeth. She massaged the pressure points just below her ears and slowly began her story at The Palm. And detail by detail, she felt the burden of her secret lift slightly, as if in the telling she was unclasping a necklace that weighed heavily around her neck.

  “No one’s ever kissed me the way he did, Jax. Or wanted me with such intensity.” The tracks of saltiness on her cheeks and lips stung. “I felt like I wasn’t me. Or I was this me that I’ve never let myself be.” She closed her eyes and swallowed mouthfuls of air like she had just swam an entire pool length underwater. “I don’t know how I let myself get so drawn in. It just felt so unbelievable. Until it was over.”

  “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” She cupped her hands around Claire’s. “These things sometimes—”

  “The attraction was beyond intoxicating,” she fought to explain. “This guy, this total stranger somehow worked his way under my skin and deprived me of . . . my sanity.”

  “Like slow-acting poison,” Jackie said under her breath.

  “Do you think I should come completely clean with Michael?” Claire asked after a moment. “Tell him everything, and pray for the best?”

  Jackie looked through concerned red eyes at her before answering. “I’m not sure he needs all of the details at this point.” She dispensed a tissue from the band of her sleeve to Claire. “Eventually, maybe, but men are different. They don’t always crave the information and minutiae we do. The broad facts, yes, but . . .”

  “The fact is I did something neither of us could have ever imagined me doing. I still can’t believe it. And I’d give anything to undo it all. For Nicky to just wake up and be okay.” She looked in the direction of Nick’s room and saw a trail of attendants, could hear the zip of curtains being drawn. “I don’t know how I’m going to face Michael.”

  Jackie inched in closer and lowered her voice. “How well do you know this Bricker character?”

  Claire smirked, shaking her head.

  “I mean, do you think he’ll keep things quiet about the two of you if Michael tries to string him up for the drugs? It would certainly be in his best interest.”

  “Maybe Andrew will just disappear. Maybe he’s already on a plane back to New York.”

  “Right. And maybe the story just stops with the coke having accidentally fallen out of his pocket, Claire.”

  “But Nicky saw us together in the library. He saw the bedroom.”

  “I don’t mean to be indelicate here, sweetie, but,” she squeezed Claire’s hands tightly again, “it’s possible that Nick might be confused when he wakes up, right? What you and Michael need to focus on right now is Nicky’s recovery. Help each other get through that. There will be plenty of time for the whys and wherefores
later.”

  Claire stared into her sister’s unwavering eyes, trying not to go down such a dark alley. “I’m a horrible liar, Jackie. You know that.”

  “That’s a whole other Oprah,” Jackie said, smiling softly and shaking her head. “And I can’t believe I just gave you such Mother-like counsel. But occasionally Cora does come up with some winners. Very occasionally.”

  They both laughed through their tears over the harebrained advice their mother regularly bestowed over the years, the momentary distraction bringing a guilty levity to the otherwise grave scene. Claire wiped her eyes. “So what do I do then? What would you do?”

  “Well, I don’t think you should lie, Claire. I just don’t think you should be generous with the truth either at this point. Omission isn’t the worst thing under the circumstances.”

  “I don’t expect Michael to forgive me. I don’t know that I could forgive him, but maybe if he just understood that—”

  “Do you understand, Claire?” Jackie asked, her confidently questioning expression hinting at an established theory of her own.

  She rubbed Nicholas’s paper towel square, searching. “I . . . I . . . no. I just lost my bearings. Or my mind. Jesus, I could never even color outside the lines, and the one time I’m impulsive in my entire appropriate, rule-following life, look what happens,” she wept. “Look what I’ve done.”

  “Michael isn’t going to care about that. He’s my brother-in-law, and I love him to bits, but . . .” Jackie paused, looking around the long, mauve-flowered room, as if searching for her words on the walls. “He’s definitely on the emotionally constipated end of the spectrum.”