“That’s way too high.” She scrambled from the window to Eddie’s side. “Why does he have a fever?”
“Don’t know.” The nurse shrugged. “I’ll tell the resident on call. I don’t think they ordered anything for fever.”
Eddie’s forehead seemed more flushed than usual. The skin on his chest was blotchy. She laid her palm on her son’s leg and felt the heat of his body. She drew her hand away. He was too hot.
A sour taste tinged the back of her throat. She swallowed hard. Maybe the meningitis was back. Maybe he had a new infection. She touched his flushed forehead. It also was too warm. How could anything else possibly go wrong?
For the next half hour, she stroked his skin, trying to rub away the fever. Her fingers tracked the curve of his hip, the mound of his belly, the plane of his chest that rose and fell with the rhythm of the ventilator. She avoided his left wrist so she wouldn’t disturb his arterial line. Her touch lingered on the right side of his neck, where the skin was soft as dough and she could feel the reassuring throb of his pulse.
The nurse checked his temperature again. “Thirty-nine point six this time.” She wrote the number on his bedside chart.
Anna glared at the nurse, at her raw hands, at the strands of gray threaded through her dull hair. How could she be so blasé about this? He had had a high fever a week ago and it was meningitis. He had almost died. He could still die, and this nurse seemed unconcerned about the fever.
“Why should he have a fever now?” She wanted to grab the nurse’s wattly neck, to make her care about the fever.
“Could be lots of things. I’ll see if I can get something ordered for it.”
The nurse disappeared around the wall of Eddie’s cubicle.
Anna dropped into the rocking chair, covered her face with her hands. She felt hollow, empty as a grave. She tried to keep from weeping, was tired of crying. She needed to stay strong.
“Mrs. Campbell?” A woman in a long white clinical coat, its bulging pockets accentuating her hips, turned the pages of Eddie’s bedside chart as she approached his crib. “I’m Dr. Boyd. I see Eddie has a bit of a fever. Looks like it just started this afternoon.”
“What’s causing that?” Anna’s words jerked out in little gasps. She couldn’t get enough air. “Is it the meningitis again?”
“Well, I doubt that. Let’s see . . . he had Strep pneumo that was sensitive to ceftriaxone, so he’s been on the right antibiotic.” She turned another page. “And he’s getting a generous dose.”
Dr. Boyd ran her hand over the soft spot on Eddie’s head, listened to his chest, prodded his stomach, and tapped below his kneecaps with the edge of her stethoscope. She stepped back from Eddie, twisted her lips, rapped her pen on the crib rail twice, and finally said to the nurse, “We need to check a CBC, a blood culture, urine culture, chest X-ray.” She paused a moment and then continued, “We’d also better get a head CT.” She glanced at her watch. “Probably can’t get one tonight, but we’ll order it for the morning, and if he still has the fever, we’ll go ahead with it then.” She spoke quickly, robotically, as if she were a pilot reciting the checklist preparatory to takeoff.
“Why can’t he have it tonight?” The specter of delay flapped around her like an injured bird. “This is serious. If he needs the scan, do it now.” Never again would she wait before acting on something that seemed wrong with Eddie.
Dr. Boyd smiled. “We understand your worry about this fever. There are many possibilities, most of them not at all worrisome.”
“Like what?”
The young doctor returned the bedside chart to its hook. “Maybe he caught a virus here in the hospital. Or, maybe he’s reacting to one of his medications. Or he may have a mild pneumonia from lying so still or maybe a urinary tract infection from his bladder catheter. We’ll check a few tests to make sure he doesn’t have another serious infection, but I’m not worried about anything bad happening. His ventilator settings are normal, the nurses aren’t suctioning ugly stuff out of his trach tube, his heart rate and blood pressure are stable. Basically, his only symptom is a fever.”
Anna closed her eyes and shook her head. How could this be happening? She slumped again into the chair beside Eddie’s crib.
“Would you like us to call your husband?” the doctor asked. “We could explain to him what we have planned.”
“Go ahead. Page him.” Again, he was away, not available when she needed him. “He’s on call. He’s here somewhere.” She held her hand against her head. “Just don’t take any chances with my baby.”
Chapter 29
Rose Marie
The silence haunted her. Quiet sounds that last week were buried beneath the children’s racket now rolled like thunder through the stillness. Beefeater wheezed in the bedroom, a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tat-ted on the neighbor’s tree, a squirrel pranced on the roof. Today was the second day of the workweek, the second day in her echo-filled house without the children. Even the walls seemed to miss the kids.
She stared at the crossword puzzle—five letter word for mother-of-pearl, third letter was c—and wrote n, a and r, e in the open boxes on either side of the c. She couldn’t concentrate. She gazed out the window. The sun ducked behind a cloud; a crow flew across her backyard. She couldn’t shake off the worry. How would she pay the tax bill that was due next month? Or the Detroit Ed bill? Or the Shell Oil bill? She had planned to spend next Christmas in Houston with Sarah—away from the bitter Michigan winter for a week or so. The airfare would be at least six hundred dollars. She would probably need to find a new job; her life as a child-care provider seemed to be over. She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. It all seemed so hopeless.
A sharp ring cut into the silence, startling her. Then another. Cautiously she lifted the receiver. Maybe another of the children was sick. Maybe Eddie had died. That reporter might be calling again, the pushy one who had wanted the names and phone numbers of the children.
“Mrs. Lustov? This is Dr. Klug from the LaSalle County Health Department.”
She stiffened.
“Yes?” she said. The children’s parents had been scared away, had acted as if her house were teeming with rabies or Ebola or one of those other germy things that kill people—and now another guy from the health department was on the phone.
“I understand you have some concerns regarding the health department and the situation at your day care . . . specifically about the children with meningitis.”
She leaned against the kitchen sink and chewed her lip. He was probably calling because of what happened yesterday. Somehow that conversation had gone wrong. When she talked to the other guy from the health department, he’d been a jerk. She remembered shouting at him.
Now she twisted the phone cord around her pointer finger, first clockwise and then counterclockwise, and convinced herself with each turn that her reaction to that other man had been entirely justified.
“Well, of course I’m concerned,” she said. “Two of my kids are desperately ill and the parents of the other children won’t bring them back here.”
“I’d like to explain where we are with this and to answer any further questions,” he said. He sounded like an undertaker—formal, low voiced, controlled. She scratched her arm. She didn’t want smooth words from him. She wanted the whole nightmare to go away.
“Late yesterday, we received the final report from the state lab on Amanda’s samples,” Dr. Klug continued.
She held her breath.
“Amanda has the viral form of meningitis, the kind that’s mild with no lasting effects. She’s doing well and went home from the hospital last night.”
“That’s good,” she said tentatively. Could she trust him?
“Yes, that is good,” said Dr. Klug. He sounded less formal. “There’s more good news. Since Eddie’s and Amanda’s infections are caused by different kinds of germs, there’s no epidemic in your day care, or in LaSalle County, for that matter.”
“My other children are safe?
”
“Yes.”
“Guaranteed?”
“Well, Mrs. Lustov, I can’t promise that nothing bad will ever happen to those kids, but I can say we don’t expect them to get the serious form of meningitis.”
“You ‘don’t expect.’ What does that mean?” Her head throbbed. This might be okay, but how could she be sure? Why did these people talk this way? She wished they would answer her questions directly.
“Although Edward has bacterial meningitis, fortunately he has the kind that doesn’t spread to other children.”
“As far as I know,” she said, “the other children are all fine.”
“That’s our understanding as well.”
“Dr. Klug, if you had a preschool child . . .” She paused a moment. Did she dare ask her question? Would he think it silly? Or inappropriate? What the hell. “If your child needed day care, would you feel comfortable bringing him or her to my house after all this?”
“I’d bring him this very afternoon. Your home isn’t a threat to anyone.”
She blinked back the tears. She coughed into the sleeve of her blouse so he wouldn’t know she was crying and wiped her nose on a paper towel. “Could you call the parents of the other children and tell them that?” she asked, clearing her throat. “They’re scared to bring their kids back here.”
He didn’t answer right away. Finally he said, “I’ll have Mr. Watts speak with them. We’ll need their names and phone numbers.”
That evening, she picked up the newspaper again to finish the crossword puzzle. She filled in several words until she had only one empty square, PRT. The clue read “to snare, in reverse.”
A passing car roared down the street, its radio turned up full throttle. She glanced out the window. When she looked back at the puzzle, her mind traced the squares backward, from right to left. TRP. That’s it, she laughed. The reverse of “part” would be “trap.” She wrote a in the blank square. She had figured it out. That must be a sign. Another sign of good things to come.
Sawyer would be back tomorrow. When his mother called earlier to ask when she could bring him back—she said she’d gotten a call from the health department—Rose Marie hadn’t known how to react. Should she apologize? What for? They were the ones who panicked. She’d done nothing wrong. After an awkward silence, she’d finally said, “I’ll be thrilled to have all the children come back. The sloppy-joe mix and Rice Krispies bars are ready in the fridge.” It had been the first time she’d laughed in days.
Now the phone rang again. It was Meghan’s mother. “We’d like to bring Meghan back to your house tomorrow. Is that okay? Meghan misses you a lot. She keeps asking about Beefeater. She even saved the crust from her sandwich this noon for him.”
It was getting darker in the house when she hung up the phone. The sun was heading toward the garage roof and green-black clouds threatened in the west. Thank goodness all the toys in the backyard were put away. The coming storm might be a rough one.
Memories of the children marched through her head. Baby Eddie trying to eat smashed bananas. Chris racing a truck through the sandbox. Meghan sucking her fingers. Sawyer drawing with his left and right hands, at the same time. Amanda the commander. She wondered about Amanda and phoned her mother.
“How’s Amanda doing—or is she Gretchen today?” she asked.
“She’s still a little tired from being sick, but we’d like to come back to your house next week. Would that work for you?”
“Absolutely.” Her sigh of relief must have been audible even over the phone line.
Amanda’s mother then said, “Oh, by the way, Amanda has changed her name again. Now she’s Ruth, after one of the nurses on the pediatric ward.”
Rose Marie laughed again, the third time in an hour. After a week of misery, it felt very good to laugh.
Chapter 30
Jake
The staff room was too hot. He loosened his tie and replayed the last couple seconds of the dictation he was working on. Then he hit the record button and continued. “We plan to see Mr. Holliday in follow-up in the ortho clinic in three weeks. Sincerely, Jacob Campbell, MD. End of dictation.”
Earlier in the afternoon, he had stopped by the ICU to check on Eddie. The little guy had developed a fever yesterday and Anna was beside herself with worry. The docs were looking into it, were waiting for the culture results. Other than the fever, everything was pretty stable. He knew a little fever was nothing to get upset about, but Anna didn’t know that. She wouldn’t listen when he tried to explain that to her.
He was fed up with the whole show. Although Eddie wasn’t getting worse, he wasn’t making terrific progress, either. He was still on the ventilator. No one knew how anything with Eddie would turn out. And the Chris problem. He was a terror. Wetting the bed. Sucking his thumb. Whining, throwing things, refusing to behave. Worst of all, Anna was not the woman he married. There had always been things about her he didn’t understand, but she had turned into a complainer, a demander, a yeller and, yet, in a quick moment, she could suddenly turn into a whimpering lump, incapable of coping with anything.
This was new. The Anna he loved was kind and fair. Even when they disagreed—about the basement tile, for example—she listened to his ideas. She liked the light fixture he preferred for the front hall and thought it a better fit for the small room than the one she had chosen. His Anna was strong, amazingly able to handle a classroom of newly arrived immigrants. She enjoyed her students, could see beyond their bickering. She laughed at his jokes, was quick to see irony in the quirky things around her. She had scolded him for pulling grapes off the stems. “Hey,” she had said, lifting the grape skeleton from the fruit bowl and waving it under his nose. “It looks like it’s been amputated. You could pull off a whole branch of the stalk rather than ripping off individual grapes.” But then it was over, sunshine replaced the storm. Not like now. Now she seemed to fall further and further into the cellar of her sorrows.
Soon he would go home. His in-laws were still at his house, which in many ways was good, but he wanted time alone. Time to do what? He didn’t know. He just wanted to get away from it all.
His pager sounded. He yanked it off his belt and read the message.
Dial the operator for a call from Dr. Monica Daley.
Monica. On the phone. He started breathing as if he were running up a mountain. His fingers shook while he dialed the operator’s number.
“This is Dr. Campbell. Dr. Daley is trying to reach me,” he said curtly, to sound like this was everyday business.
“Hold on. I’ll connect you.” There was a pause. Then the operator said, “Dr. Daley, you’re connected with Dr. Campbell.”
“Hi, Jake. I’ve been thinking about you.” She sounded as if she were only three feet away.
“I’ve thought of you, too, Monica. It was great to talk to you the other day.” Why was she calling? They last spoke only thirty-six hours ago. He was confused, apprehensive. He was ecstatic.
“Jake, I’m here. In Michigan.”
“Here? Where? At your mother’s?” He didn’t understand how she had gotten to Michigan so fast. He sank into the nearest chair.
“No, I flew to DTW this afternoon and plan to stay at a hotel near the airport tonight. I’ll drive to the Thumb tomorrow morning. I thought perhaps I could buy you a drink.”
He checked his watch. Four thirty. His heart was flapping. He could leave the hospital early today. He had written all the afternoon orders on the service patients. The dictations were almost finished. Only two or three to go. He could complete them in the morning.
“Uh, that would be great. Which hotel?”
“The Sheraton. Room three fifteen.”
He swerved out the hospital parking lot, sped to the freeway. Traffic going east on I-94 was heavy, slowed by resurfacing on the left shoulder. “Hurry up,” he shouted to the car ahead.
He remembered her skin, the soft warmth of her tanned arms with their silky blond hairs. He remembered the strength of
her hands as they gripped his wrists. He remembered her laugh, her eyes, her lips. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he yelled out loud. “I can’t believe this is real.”
He parked the car, marched across the hotel lobby, hit the number 3 button inside the elevator. As he moved skyward, he fingered a paper clip in his pants pocket and stared at the blinking numbers. The seconds passed and he was getting closer to Monica. He walked down the hallway until he stood in front of room 315. She was just beyond that beige door. He raised his hand, paused a moment. Should he do this? Goddamn, yes. He knocked.
The door opened. “Hello, Jake,” she said. “Come in.”
Her hair was shorter, more carefree than he remembered, her eyes solemn yet wistful. Her red-brown lipstick made her look older, more severe than before. Her hand gripped the doorknob the same old way, with conviction. Her jeans were snug across her butt, her T-shirt loose over her chest. A purple and green woven scarf draped like a saddle blanket over her shoulders. He wanted to set his hand on the back of her neck and pull her to him. Should he touch her? What if she pushed him away? He couldn’t stand that. What was she thinking?
He stepped inside. She shoved the door shut and wrapped her arms around him. He smelled her hair, the scent of woods and violets and mushrooms. Different from before.
“It’s so good to see you again,” he said, stroking her spine.
“Yes, it’s been a long time.” She stepped back from him. “I ordered a bottle of wine. As I recall, you like merlot.”
She poured him a glass and motioned toward the armchair. She poured one for herself and sat on the end of the bed. “To grand old times,” she said, swinging her wineglass upward in an arc. “Cheers.”
He raised his glass. “Cheers, Monica.”
She asked about Eddie. He didn’t want to talk about his son—this didn’t seem the time or the place to discuss his family—but gave her a brief update. She nodded knowingly as he described Eddie’s EEG results, the neurological findings, the lab reports, the vent settings. She understood exactly what he was saying.
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