Ten Days

by Janet Gilsdorf

  Waiting. Waiting. Waiting until she could see Eddie again, could learn what was wrong with him. Was he still alive? The possibility of good news tugged against the probability of bad news; the unknown made her head ache. He’ll be just fine, she told herself. He’s going to die, she told herself a minute later. She ran her fingers through her hair, combing it back away from her face. She wanted the suspense to end. And yet, at the end of the waiting, could she deal with what came next?

  She wanted to make the time go faster. She didn’t want to read. Didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to answer Jake’s probing questions. Didn’t want a cup of the stale coffee from the urn across the room. She couldn’t sleep while sitting up in the chair, couldn’t consider sleeping while Eddie was trapped in the other room. What were they doing to him, anyway? She shifted her weight to her right hip. What was taking so very long? Then she shifted her weight back to the left.

  It seemed as if she spent her life waiting for something to happen: She had waited for her wedding, waited for Jake to finish medical school, for Chris to be born, for Eddie to be born. On a more mundane, day-to-day scale, she waited for Jake to come home in the evenings, for Chris’s birthday, for the trip up north next time Jake had a full weekend off, for the blue linen jacket with the bone buttons she had ordered from the Talbots’ catalog, for the next semester of new students who spoke three or four or six different languages but not English.

  Now, she was waiting to hold Eddie in her arms, to rub her hands against his skin. He’d be scared without her, back in that room, would know something was missing—would know she was missing, that he was being hurt and the usual comforts, her smell, her kisses, her singing, her warm, sweet milk, weren’t there. He’d look around the cubicle, stare at those ugly curtains and wonder where she was. If he could wonder. Can a six-month-old baby wonder? Her fingertips smoothed the hem of her nightgown against her shin, patted out the wrinkles. Surely he’d wonder why she wasn’t there with him.

  It was her third visit to this emergency room. Last summer, on the Fourth of July, Chris had a fever and scratchy voice. She thought it must be strep throat. Turned out to be an ear infection. The summer before he had had a fever, then a bright red rash.

  “Probably baby rash,” Jake had said.

  “Maybe scarlet fever or measles,” she said.

  “Not measles. He’s been vaccinated against that.”

  The rash turned out to be roseola, an innocuous virus.

  During those other visits she stayed in the cubicle with her sick child, hadn’t been banished to the waiting room while they examined him or drew a blood sample from him. Everything else was the same, the waiting for the tests to come back, the flickering fluorescent lights, the moans and shouts of the other patients, the confusing smells that seemed both antiseptic and rotten. Only, this time was worse.

  She knew what they were doing to Eddie—sticking needles into him. Taking blood samples. Doing a spinal tap. Why didn’t someone tell her what was going on? She stared at the vacant door that led to the hallway that led to the room of cubicles that led to the gurney where Eddie lay.

  “What’s taking so long?” she asked.

  Jake rearranged Chris on his lap. “They’re probably starting an IV, drawing blood, doing the lumbar puncture, infusing his antibiotics.”

  She folded the hem of her nightgown yet again, and then unfolded it. “Is he all right?”

  “I hope so.”

  His voice sounded thin. He seemed to be on the moon and yet he was slumped in his chair, Chris snuggled in his lap, merely six feet to her left. She stood up—couldn’t stand to sit any longer—and wandered into a hallway.

  A sign with a large arrow pointing to the right said CAFETERIA. The thought of food made her stomach lurch. She turned to the left, away from the cafeteria, and walked down the hallway among the clutter of empty gurneys, wheelchairs, IV poles, and cribs. First a man and then two women, all three dressed in wrinkled green scrubs, zigzagged through the maze of equipment, their arms loaded with boxes, stacks of linen, coils of tubing, plastic bags filled with clear fluid. She had been waiting and waiting and waiting. They were busy.

  Of course Eddie would be okay. The soles of her clogs padded against the floor to the rhythm of her thoughts. Would be okay, would be okay, would be okay. He has to be okay. He’s had a little spell, a snit from his cold. Most certainly he had a virus that would soon pass and they could all go home.

  Ahead was a crossroads in the hallway. An arrow that said X-RAY pointed to the left; one that said GIFT SHOP pointed to the right. One that said CHAPEL pointed straight ahead.

  She could pray. She stepped inside the doorway. Rows of benches led to the altar. A white beam from somewhere—the ceiling? somewhere else?—lit the altar. A cross and a Star of David glowed in the pool of eerie light.

  She didn’t know what to pray for. Forgiveness for not calling Dr. Elliott? Absolution for sleeping through the night? For Eddie to be okay? She didn’t know how to pray, except to repeat the Lord’s Prayer she had spoken by rote in Sunday School when she was a little girl. Worship wouldn’t help Eddie. It was the doctors who would make him better. She turned around and walked back the way she had come.

  The seat of her chair in the waiting room was cool. She wished she had worn a sweater. Her old brown cardigan lay draped over the chair in her bedroom. Why hadn’t she thought to bring it? If Chris were nestled in her lap, he would keep her warm, but he clung to Jake’s shirt like a baby monkey to his mother monkey’s hairy front. He seemed to be asleep, hidden from the world behind closed eyes. Suddenly his arm jerked. He uttered a smothered yelp, grabbed at Jake’s shirt again, and snuggled back against his dad’s chest.

  Jake looked like a pile of wrinkled laundry in his chair. The legs of his scrub pants twisted around his knees. His puffy eyes showed his weariness, his tangled hair his discombobulation. The stubble on his jaw was a leftover from his long night on call. If he’d been home last night, he would have shaved by now, his clothes would have been pressed.

  If he’d been home last night, none of this would have happened. He would have taken care of Eddie and Eddie wouldn’t have had the seizure, wouldn’t be so sick. On the phone he’d said Eddie was fine, said he merely had a cold. If Jake had been there, he would have known what was happening to their baby. He wouldn’t have said everything was fine, wouldn’t have misled her.

  She wanted to be warm, tried to remember what it was like to be warm. She coughed into a Kleenex, curled her feet against the cushion beneath her bottom, and waited. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the warmth of the Upper Peninsula sun against her face.

  “Mr. Abrams?” a nurse called. “Is Mr. Abrams here?” The old man in the corner struggled to his feet, grasped his cane, and, with a woman’s lumpy purse dangling from his arm, tottered out the door behind the nurse.

  She spotted the tuft of caramel-colored hair that peeked from the V neck of Jake’s scrub shirt. She wanted to poke the tuft back inside his clothes. She leaned forward, about to rise from her chair, and then sat back. Let it be, she thought.

  “Mrs. Campbell?”

  She turned toward the voice. A young man in a short white lab jacket—the medical student who had asked Jake to sign a permit for the spinal tap—stood before her.

  She jolted upright in her chair. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Is he okay? Can I see him?”

  “Um . . . Dr. Easterday is with him now, and . . .”

  “Honey, they’ll tell us when they’re done,” Jake said.

  “So, Mrs. Campbell, my name is Sunil and I’m a med student working in the ER today. I met your husband earlier.” Sunil turned toward Jake, smiled briefly, and turned back to her. “I have a few questions about Eddie.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I said, I have a few questions . . .”

  “I know. What questions?”

  Sunil squatted beside her chair. A clipboard rested on his knees. He pulled a card from his pocket and
a pen from another pocket.

  He stared at the list of words on the card. “When was Eddie born?”

  “October eleventh, six months ago.”

  She watched him write DOB: 10/11/00. “What’s DOB?” she asked.

  “Date of birth. October 11, 2000.” Sunil glanced at Anna and then back to his paper. “How much did he weigh when he was born?”

  “Eight pounds, one ounce.”

  “How many pregnancies have you had?”

  “Two.”

  The student continued down the list. Any complications with the pregnancies? Any medications during the pregnancy with Eddie? Any problems during Eddie’s birth?

  “Apgar scores were 8 and 9,” Jake interrupted.

  Sunil looked over at him.

  Jake added, “I think it was one off each for color and tone at one minute and one off for color at five minutes.”

  “Thanks.” Sunil jotted down the numbers. “I usually don’t get that kind of detail from parents.” He shot a momentary smile toward Jake and then returned to his cue card.

  Coal-colored hair tumbled over Sunil’s forehead and brushed against his eyebrows. As he spoke, his fingers swept through the hair, pushing it away from his face. His skin, the color of freshly brewed tea, made her think of warmth. His chin was pointed and his lips were thin and dry, which, for her, downgraded the warmth to tepid. The crust of a cold sore stippled the corner of his mouth.

  She rubbed her fingers against the hem of her nightgown. These questions irritated her. Eddie’s birth was six long months ago and had nothing to do with what had happened overnight. The only important thing now was that the doctors make her baby better, and these questions wouldn’t get them closer to that goal. Besides, Sunil seemed nervous; he stumbled over words as if unsure of their pronunciation. He was very young, inexperienced, an amateur. If she had to talk to him, at least he could know what he was doing.

  “Which baby shots has Eddie had?” Sunil asked.

  “All of them.”

  “Even hepatitis B, the one he should have had right after he was born?”

  “I don’t remember exactly which ones.” She felt exhausted. Her arms and legs ached. She was too tired to think. Her head throbbed, her chest hurt. She pressed her knuckles against her temples and coughed. “He’s had everything he was supposed to have.”

  Sunil flipped his card over and stared at the chart on the back. He sucked on the end of his pen and then said, “Well, at age six months, he should have gotten the third hepatitis B shot, the third DTaP, the third polio, the third Hib . . .”

  She twisted in her chair, straightened her legs, and then coughed again. “I said I don’t remember.” She closed her eyes. “Does this really matter right now?”

  Jake stood, once again set Chris in the corner of his vacated seat, and stepped toward her. Chris scrambled off the chair and bolted after his father. “Daddy,” he screamed. “Daddy.”

  Jake’s fingers—warm even through the layers of her nightgown and shift—kneaded her shoulder. “Honey, they need all of Eddie’s medical information . . .”

  She shrugged his hand away, wanted the student to leave her alone. “Then you tell him.”

  “I wasn’t there for his well-baby visits. I don’t know for sure which shots he’s gotten.”

  “Well, I don’t remember right now and I’m tired of these stupid questions.”

  She slouched back into her chair. “Just make him better. Just let me go in there.”

  Sunil slowly backed toward the door. “Dr. Easterday, uh, will be out in a minute.”

  Jake returned to his seat and scooped Chris into his arms. “Sunil and the rest of the doctors need to know everything about Eddie’s health.”

  She felt tears run down her cheeks. “I was very tired. After I put him in his crib, I went to bed.”

  “It’s okay, honey.”

  “He didn’t cry at night to nurse. When I woke up, my breasts were sore and he looked dead. But, Jake . . .” She couldn’t read the look on his face. What was he thinking? “He wasn’t dead, just limp. And pale.”

  Jake nodded. “It’s okay.”

  Chris wiggled in Jake’s lap, opened his eyes, and stared into his father’s face. “Mommy made me come in my jammies.”

  She glanced at her watch. Only two hours until class time. She’d need to arrange for a substitute. Cell phone. Where was her cell phone? In the charger on her dresser.

  Sub. She had to get a sub for her class. She slipped a quarter into the pay phone at the end of the waiting room.

  The phone rang twice, three times, four times. A sense of panic clawed at Anna. What if Elizabeth doesn’t answer? She couldn’t think of another way to arrange for a sub, didn’t have the phone numbers of the community college or the program coordinator in her purse. Please, Elizabeth, answer the phone.

  She could depend on Elizabeth. They traded babysitting occasionally and carpooled together to faculty meetings on the main campus. Last summer, before Eddie was born, they had refinished an old dresser for the silent auction at the linguistics department. The memory of that day threaded through her tired mind. After applying the primer, they had painted the background, had smeared on layers of deep sapphire-colored enamel. Then Anna had tole-painted maroon and pink roses on the fronts of the drawers, had dabbed thorns on the stems and shadowed the edges of the petals and leaves in deep green.

  At the beginning of the seventh ring, her friend answered the phone.

  “Elizabeth, I’ll need a sub this morning.”

  The seat of the chair at the pay phone was sticky, as if Kool-Aid had dried into the upholstery. She shifted her bottom to the edge of the cushion, tried to avoid the spill.

  “What’s wrong?” Elizabeth sounded alarmed.

  She didn’t know what to say, where to begin. What’s wrong? No one had done anything bad. What’s wrong? Everything. “Eddie’s in the hospital. In the ER.”

  “Oh, no,” Elizabeth gasped. “Wh-What happened?”

  She began to explain. Her chest tightened as if it were wedged in a clamp and the screw were slowly turning. She breathed in short little pants and her words were mixed with air. She clutched the handle of the pay phone.

  “Anna, where are you?” Elizabeth asked. “Are you alone? Where’s Jake?”

  “He’s here.”

  “Are you at the hospital?”

  “Yes, in the emergency room.”

  Speaking was becoming easier. The clamp around her chest loosened and she took a deep breath.

  “I’ll call Rob to line up a sub.” Elizabeth’s voice sounded settled, in control. “Bonita—that’s your aide’s name, right?—should be able to help. How independent is she, do you think? If nothing else, I’ll take over your class. Does the office have lesson plans?”

  “We’ve been working on business skills—writing checks, filling out rental agreements and citizenship forms, that kind of thing. Bonita can be a big help. The kids seem to like her, especially the Spanish speakers.”

  Anna pulled the moist Kleenex from her pocket, found a dry corner, and wiped at her nose. For a moment, she was back in her real life, a world of languages and students and workbooks and pronunciation exercises. Scenes from her class tumbled through her mind. Elena’s new haircut. The birthday card Ismael and Huang had made for her. Maria’s platform shoes and polka-dotted socks. Tran’s high, squeaky voice begging, “Mrs. Campbell, show me how,” repeatedly: how to say “hamburger” and “French fries” in English, how to make “mailman” into a plural word, how to give someone forty-three cents in change.

  “We’ll arrange subs until you tell us not to,” Elizabeth said, just before hanging up. “You take care of Eddie and yourself and we’ll take care of your class.”

  Then Elizabeth was gone. All that remained was the empty thrum of the dial tone. A sub would take over her class. All she had to worry about now was Eddie.

  “Dr. Campbell. Mrs. Campbell.” The nurse touched her shoulder. “Dr. Easterday decided to
intubate Eddie”—she felt the pat on her arm as the nurse continued—“to help him breathe more easily. We’re ready to move him to the ICU. Just waiting for them to prepare a bed.” The nurse’s hand pulled away from her shoulder. “You can go see Eddie now.”

  She scrambled out of her chair and dashed through the doorway into the hall. She heard Jake’s footsteps behind her.

  When they reached Eddie’s cubicle, she heard Chris call, “I wanna go home.”

  “We’ll go home in a little while,” Jake said.

  There he was on the gurney, unmoving as if asleep, but his body lay at all the wrong angles. His pudgy legs splayed like a bloated frog’s against the sheet, and his arms, L shaped and unmoving, seemed locked in surrender. A saucer-sized yellow-brown circle stained the sheet beside his waist. His hair was arrayed in a halo around his head. She ran her fingers along their tips. Silky and fine as cobwebs—same as usual.

  She felt Jake behind her and leaned back against him. She closed her eyes to escape this sight, but then opened them again. She couldn’t bear to see her baby like this but couldn’t bear not to see him. Plastic tubes ran into him from bags of fluid overhead. One, two, three. One to his right hand. One to his groin. One to his left wrist, limp beside a dime-sized spot of blood on the sheet. A tube, protruding from his mouth like a thin, hideously long, ivory-colored plastic tongue, was attached to a coil that ran to a machine humming beside the gurney.

  She stretched her hand toward Eddie, but it hovered midair like a storm-tossed bird. “Is he alive?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Yes,” Jake said. “The ventilator’s helping him breathe. You can touch him. Just don’t pull anything out—the tubes and stuff.”

  She ran her fingers slowly, tentatively over the pale skin on Eddie’s shin. What if she hurt him? A tear tracked down her cheek. Then another. Her breaths came out in little sputters.

  “Anna, I’m going to find Dr. Easterday,” Jake said. “I’ll take Chris, you stay here with Eddie.”