She grabbed the back of her chair to steady herself. Amanda in the hospital, too? With meningitis? What was going on?
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said and hung up.
She wanted to forget the phone call but it stuck in her head like a rat caught in a trap. The reporter said both Eddie and Amanda were in the hospital with meningitis. Was he right about that? Why wouldn’t he be? He had no reason to call her with a lie.
The children were napping. She decided she’d better call the other mothers to let them know what she had heard. Was it true that both had meningitis? How could she know? She pulled her directory of phone numbers from the desk drawer and began to dial Meghan’s mother at work.
A car door slammed from the direction of the driveway and then someone knocked at the breezeway door. She hung up the phone before she finished dialing and headed to the back entry. Maybe it was the meter reader. Maybe the UPS guy. Maybe it was Bill Gates or Senator Levin or Prince Charles of England. Such strange things were happening, the visitor could be anyone. She pulled aside the curtain over the window to the breezeway. Davey’s mother stood on the step.
“You’re early.” Rose Marie used her calmest voice, tried to hide the confusion inside her head.
“You bet.” His mother’s words were bullets, her voice harsh as lye. “I just heard from Amanda’s mother that Eddie and Amanda are both in the hospital. I think I’d better take Davey home.”
“Davey’s fine. He’s napping with the other kids.”
“Good,” she said, abruptly. Her eyes weren’t pearly blue and dancing as usual, but, now, were steel gray and deadly serious. “I’ll be more comfortable if he stays home for a few days, at least until this all gets settled.” She called Davey’s name. “Come on, honey. We’re leaving early today.”
Rose Marie followed them out the back door. By the time she reached the gate, Davey and his mother were already in the car. It backed out the driveway, turned into the street, and disappeared around the corner.
“Sarah, Amanda’s also in the hospital.” Rose Marie’s fingers clutched the phone receiver. “She has meningitis, too. Just like Eddie.”
“Oh, boy.”
“A reporter from the Detroit News called.”
“Mother.” Sarah’s voice was firm. “You shouldn’t talk to reporters about this.”
“Don’t worry, I hung up on him.”
“Umm . . . that might not have been so smart.” Then her daughter added, “Is Amanda okay?”
“I don’t know. She was a little out of sorts yesterday afternoon and last night her mother left a message that she had a fever and was vomiting.” The phone cord stretched out the sliding door, from the console in the kitchen to her hand as she sat in the lawn chair. Meghan and Sawyer were kicking a soccer ball at the target painted on the garage. “I’ve tried to call Amanda’s mother several times today and haven’t been able to reach her. I guess she’s at the hospital. Do you think I should bother her there?”
“Mom, you need to get accurate information about this. I still think you should call the health department.”
“Sarah, why would they know anything about two kids in the hospital? Besides—and I really hate to say this—they can shut down my day care, you know.”
Sarah was silent and then said, “Maybe so, but you need to have your questions answered.”
“I’ll keep calling Amanda’s mother. At least, the other kids are healthy as horses.”
She reached both Meghan’s and Sawyer’s mothers and told them about the call from the reporter.
“I still haven’t been able to contact anyone about Amanda yet, so I really don’t know what’s going on,” she said to both mothers.
Each asked about her child. “Both kids look terrific,” Rose Marie said. “Meghan is in the bathroom at the moment, washing glue off her hands,” and “Sawyer’s standing next to me. Want to talk to him?”
Now, Meghan and Sawyer had gone, and the kitchen floor was a mess. Rose Marie hauled out the cleaning gear. She had just dunked the mop head into a bucket of sudsy water that smelled of pine needles and lemon peel when the phone rang.
“Mrs. Lustov, it’s Gregory Watts from the LaSalle County Health Department. I’m calling to get some information about the children in your day care.”
She twirled the mop in the bucket, wondered what he wanted but knew it would be about the sick kids.
“As you know, two of the children who attend your center, Edward Campbell and Amanda Goodman, are in the hospital with meningitis. We’re required by law to be sure other children aren’t at risk.”
“The rest of the kids are fine.”
“Good. How many children are enrolled in your day care?”
The strings of the mop head writhed in the water like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Did she have to answer? What could happen if she didn’t? Finally she said, “Six, but two of them come only in the mornings.”
He asked their ages, asked which children had been at her home since the day before Eddie got sick.
“Are all the children up to date on their childhood immunizations?” he finally asked.
That question again. Rose Marie hated that question. “As far as I know. They were all up to date when they started coming here.” She had followed the state law on that, had the parents bring copies of their vaccine records when the kids started.
She sloshed the mop head up and down in the water. Maybe he could help her. “Are the other kids going to be okay?” she asked. “They won’t get sick, too, will they?”
“We certainly hope not. That’s why I’m calling, so we can work together to be sure no one else becomes ill.”
He told her that Eddie’s meningitis was caused by bacteria. “Streptococcus pneumoniae it’s called.” He then spelled the words for her. “We don’t know what kind of meningitis Amanda has yet. The laboratory results aren’t back. The kind of meningitis Eddie has isn’t thought to be contagious.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s what Dr. Campbell thought.”
“Dr. Campbell?”
“He’s Eddie’s father.”
“I see,” said the man from the health department. “Anyway, it’s curious that the two children in your day care both have meningitis. We’re waiting for more information from the state laboratory.”
“Curious,” he had said. She wouldn’t have used that word. She would have said “terrible.”
“Could I ask you a question?” she said.
“Sure.”
“How did they get their meningitis if it isn’t catching? Something they ate? You can’t get it from a dog, can you?”
“For Edward, it’s caused by one of the germs that live normally in people’s throats but most folks don’t get sick from it. He didn’t get it from his food nor from a dog. And not from an insect or a cat or dirt. Same with Amanda. That’s not how a person gets meningitis.”
“Doesn’t sound like bad news . . . for the other children, you know.”
“No, ma’am. It’s not bad news. Mostly, it’s uncertain news.”
“Do I need to do anything?”
“Not a thing. Not now.”
As soon as she hung up, she called Sarah and told her about the man from the health department.
“Good. I’m glad you finally called them.”
“Actually, I didn’t call them. They called me.” She switched the receiver to her left hand and swirled the mop in the sudsy water.
“So, what’s the deal?”
“Well . . .” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Eddie has a really bad kind of meningitis and they aren’t sure what kind Amanda has yet. She isn’t as sick as Eddie.”
“How about the other kids?”
“They’re fine.” Rose Marie paused a moment, swirled the mop again, and then added, “I guess I don’t know about Chris. His grandparents came from Baltimore to watch him.”
“What’s going to happen Monday?”
“What do you mean?”
Suspicion crept up her back.
“Can the kids come back to your house on Monday?”
“Of course they can. The other kids are fine.”
“I hope they stay that way. Mother, I gotta go. Let me know what you learn.”
Later that evening, long after the sun had dipped behind the maple trees, Rose Marie pumped the rocking chair back and forth, slowly. With the approaching night, the kitchen grew dim but she wanted to stay inside rather than go out to the patio. She couldn’t enjoy her garden or the sense of promise that hung in the clear spring air or the chickadees that pecked at the seed in the feeder. She couldn’t enjoy anything—not even a glass of white zinfandel. When Beefeater nuzzled his nose into her lap, asking about their evening constitutional, she shoved him back to the floor and snapped, “Not tonight.”
She was waiting for the ten o’clock news, hoping to hear something about the meningitis cases and yet hoping not to hear it. She’d run the channels every half hour since the children left but found no reports about Amanda and Eddie. She considered calling Davey’s mother to ask where she had heard about it. After further thought, she figured that wasn’t a good idea.
She heard a hum. She stopped rocking, tilted her head, and listened to the night sounds. She heard it again. Louder. Then it faded away. Shortly, the hum returned. Finally she saw it, the first mosquito of the season to make it into her kitchen. It flitted against the wallpaper, bobbed and darted its way toward the ceiling, no bigger than a piece of fuzz, no heavier than a breath. She kept rocking. She didn’t care if it bit her. At least she wouldn’t get sick from it. Nobody would. The health department guy had said the kids didn’t get meningitis from bugs.
The ten o’clock news didn’t mention anything about the kids. The broadcaster talked only about a threatened strike by the city bus drivers and a fire that burned a restaurant across town. Nothing about meningitis.
Chapter 20
Jake
The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors parted. Inside, Jake moved to the back and a phlebotomist, her blood-drawing equipment in a carrier at her side, exited. A young man stepped in. His hair was tousled as if he’d blown in with a cyclone, his shirttails fluttered against his butt, his pants were deeply wrinkled at the knees. He pushed number three. As the doors closed, he leaned his head against the elevator’s wall.
“Well.” The young man sighed. He took a deep breath. “Well.” Then another deep breath. He scratched his head, rubbed his stubbly chin, and sighed again. “Well, I guess now I’m a dad.” A broad grin bloomed on his face.
A new dad. Jake studied him, the fatigue that clouded his eyes, the proud set of his shoulders. The fellow had just crossed that threshold of no return—parenthood. Somewhere in the obstetrics unit, a life had just begun, as happened several times a day. But for this man, it was a monumental, once-in-a-lifetime event. His newborn child, wrapped in either a blue or pink flannel sheet after its long, exhausting journey into the world, would lie sleeping in its plastic bassinette beside the mother’s bed.
At floor three, the new father stepped out of the elevator. The doors closed behind him.
For them, it had been the day the green vase broke. That was his and Anna’s code for the afternoon Chris was born, the Monday Jake became a father for the first time. Anna had been in labor for several hours, her contractions occurring every ten to fifteen minutes. The obstetrical nurse said to stay home until the pains were five to seven minutes apart.
Anna had paced. Back and forth across the living room floor, from the bay window to the dining room, over and over. With each contraction, she grabbed the back of a chair or the edge of a table, hunched over her bulging waist, and—her face twisted into a grimace—drew in a long tortured breath. Then, shortly, she began pacing again. With one particularly hard contraction, she lurched for the edge of the side table, hooked her fingers in the doily, and sent the green vase they bought in Chinatown crashing to the floor.
“Okay,” she said, panting. “That’s it. We’re going to the hospital.”
Jake, gowned, masked, and gloved, had sat on a stool in the delivery room beside Anna’s head. Her matted hair was plastered to the sheet, sweat poured past her ears and down her neck. She pushed. She groaned. She took deep, gulping breaths. She panted shallow little puffy breaths. Finally the obstetrician said, “Okay, Anna, with the next push, we’ll have a baby.”
Her eyes widened. She inhaled—long and deep. She dug her heels into the stirrups, grasped the edges of the bed, and pushed. And pushed. Her swollen face flushed until it grew red as a raspberry and still she pushed. He was afraid she would burst a blood vessel in her head. Or she would starve herself, and the baby, of oxygen. He stroked her hair. “Breathe, honey,” he murmured. A low groan rose from the bottom of her chest, like the throttled cry of a strangled animal. She took another breath and pushed again. The baby’s head slid out of her and into the gloved hands of the obstetrician.
There, against the arm of the doctor’s gown, lay his new little boy. Screaming. Gasping. Arms and legs thrashing. Wet, tawny hair. Blood-streaked skin. His son. He had watched babies being born, had delivered a few himself as a medical student. But, this was different. This wasn’t just the birth of a baby. This was the dawn of his son’s life. The start of his own new life as a father.
Later, after Chris had been bathed and Anna and the baby moved to a ward room, he held his son while Anna slept. He unwrapped the blue blanket and examined every part of him. So delicate. So perfect. Tiny, pink fingers—clinging, trusting—curled around his seemingly huge, rough pointer finger. “I’m here, buddy,” he whispered as he kissed his son’s forehead. “I’ll always be with you.”
Six months ago he had also been in the delivery room when Eddie was born. He was already a father by then, an experienced dad, so Eddie’s birth didn’t have the same, life-altering effect as Chris’s. But, still, it was the beginning of a new, precious life.
The elevator slowed as it approached floor five. Here, in this unit, was another life-altering experience. Although he was a seasoned dad, he’d never before been the dad of a desperately ill child. The elevator doors parted and he walked slowly down the hallway to the pediatric ICU.
His pager sounded. Jake answered.
“Please hold for Dr. Ellis,” said the secretary.
He had been waiting for this call. Yesterday Dr. Farley had told him Eddie would get an EEG. He didn’t need to explain why. Jake knew. It was to measure the electrical activity over Eddie’s cerebral cortex, routine for patients with severe intracranial injuries. It was to determine if Eddie was brain dead.
“Jake? I have the preliminary report on your son’s EEG.”
He held his breath, tried to read something into the tone of her voice. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest.
Before he could respond, she continued, “Good news. The tracing shows activity, albeit slow-wave activity.”
He guessed it was good news. Being almost dead was better than being securely dead. Maybe a tiny bit better.
The bold, black letters, as stark as mud against the white cardboard background, read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He was a physician, and, of course, authorized to enter. Yet he paused, his palm motionless on the stainless steel push-pad. Part of him wanted to fling open the door and stride confidently inside—man of the world, doctor of the hour. Another part of him shriveled with the sense that he was trespassing. This wasn’t an ordinary hospital unit, after all. Here he was a father, not a physician, and his little boy lay in one of the cribs.
The glass door automatically slid shut behind him and a cross-current laden with the usual ICU odors—ionized air, antiseptic, hand-washing soap, clean linen, the plastic from the IV bags—drifted past. At the nurses’ station, he rounded the corner where the peach-colored paint, victim of run-ins with gurneys and supply carts and portable X-ray machines, had been chipped down to the white plaster. It looked like a row of open sores.
Across the room, Anna, limp as an
empty sack, slumped in her chair, her right hand folded over Eddie’s hand. Her left fist clutched a wad of Kleenex against her head. He had begged her to go home last night, to get some sleep. She had refused. Maybe she believed her hospital vigil, sustained by cat naps while folded in a chair, would bring something good, something miraculous. She didn’t usually play the martyr, but these weren’t usual times. Probably she was angry, too furious to speak. In the past, she had never screamed nor thrown things, never sworn nor made absurd threats. She had an uncanny ability to contain her ire, to modulate emotion with language that was clear and to the point. Several years ago, after he had stupidly poured boiling water into her grandmother’s crystal pitcher, she’d wept as she gathered the wet, shattered glass from the kitchen floor. Her only words—spoken like spilled acid—were, “Next time, think ahead.” The set of her jaw that afternoon, firm as the floor beneath her knees, was beautiful, inviting. He leaned toward her with a kiss of apology, but she had turned away, saying, “I don’t feel very loving right now.”
And then there was last Thanksgiving. She had climbed on the kitchen counter to retrieve the turkey platter from the top shelf of the cupboard. He had pulled the bird out of the oven and asked her to fetch the carving knife from the utensils drawer.
Her eyes were daggers, her words gunshot. “You’re demanding that I get down from here and fetch you the knife? Right?”
“I asked, nicely.”
“Can’t you see that I’m up on the counter, unable to reach the damn knife right now?”
“You can get the knife after you’re down,” he said. A part of him felt vindictive and defensive, another part conciliatory.
“This is our home, not the operating room,” she said in a voice that would have frozen the water in hell. “I am your wife, not the scrub nurse.”
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