Derailed

by Jackson Neta

  “Oh, you the boss, Pops. You da boss if you get that hoop up for me.” The boy grabbed two more pancakes like he was storing up reserve fuel for the day.

  After breakfast, we picked up the additional hardware we needed from Home Depot and, after a few minor complications, got the Spalding backboard and hoop mounted on the back of the garage before lunchtime. By then, DaShawn’s friend Tavis had discovered what we were doing, as had his older brother, Destin.

  I watched with satisfaction as a little two-on-two got organized, Rodney and DaShawn versus the two Jasper boys. Apparently, the morning’s pancakes were lasting. Putting up the hoop definitely was worth the effort, not just for my grandson, but I could see it’d be good for other neighborhood kids as well.

  “You wanna play, Pops? We can probably find someone else.”

  “Nah. I gotta take Corky for a walk and grab some lunch ’fore I head on over to Manna House.”

  Hustling up the back stairs, I asked Estelle if she thought I could take Corky with me to the shelter.

  “Don’t see why not. The Fairbank boys bring Dandy by sometimes for a visit. Of course, he’s still the shelter’s ‘Hero Dog.’ ”

  “Yeah, but Dandy’s not a drug detector.”

  “Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. The shelter’s supposed to be a drug-free facility, but . . . you can never tell. Maybe it’d be good to have an occasional sweep.”

  “No, no, no. I was messin’ with you. Corky’s Amtrak. If she alerts to someone, I can just give her the ‘free’ signal, and they’ll never know the difference. But I don’t mind takin’ her into unfamiliar situations. Helps keep her alert.”

  The hoop in the alley got a lot of play all weekend, attracting some of the other kids in the neighborhood, even young Danny and his two dads from the house a couple of doors down. There was lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ going on when Estelle and I came back from visiting Mom at the hospital Sunday afternoon, but everyone good-naturedly took a break as we drove into the garage.

  Sure hoped the other neighbors wouldn’t become upset over all the noise. Might have to set some rules about when things had to shut down in the evenings.

  Rodney wasn’t playing basketball. When I went down the front stairs to take some laundry to the basement, the front door to the first-floor apartment was open. “Rodney, you in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  He sounded as dejected as a Bears’ fan after a losing game. I walked in and found him on his bed in his room. “What’s up?”

  “Ah, Donita. Been on the phone with her for the last hour.”

  “That don’t sound good.” I didn’t welcome hearing that name any more than a February snowstorm. “What’s she want?”

  “She says she’s gettin’ her life together. Started rehab, wants to see DaShawn.”

  “Not under my roof. That woman’s poison.”

  “Yeah, I know . . . but she’s still DaShawn’s mom.”

  “You think he wants to see her?”

  “Probably not, but there may come a day. You know, Dad, you didn’t try very hard to keep our family together, though now you got a good one. I’ll give you that. But I don’t like the fact that mine fell apart either. Sometimes I think that’s my next step . . . to put it back together.”

  I looked at him and slowly shook my head. He was right about my failures, but I just didn’t see any hope for him and Donita.

  By Sunday evening, I started thinking about my workweek looming ahead. Since Captain Gilson seemed so eager for me to put in some extended time on the Southwest Chief—“The Drug Train”—maybe I’d substitute it for my overnight that week and postpone the Texas Eagle until another week. Tomorrow morning I’d go in early and catch the 7:30 up to Kalamazoo and back for a day run, patrol Union Station on Tuesday, and head out to Kansas City on the Southwest Chief on Wednesday afternoon. I could catch the eastbound Chief the next day and get back to Chicago on Thursday afternoon a little after three, presuming the Chief was running on time. It’d be a perfect week, and I could still take Friday off.

  Everything came off without a hitch on Monday. I made a bust and still got home in plenty of time to have dinner with the whole family. DaShawn was helping Estelle prepare dinner, so he got to bring the steaming bowl of green beans to the table as well as the Caesar salad.

  “I made it myself, Dad.” He grinned at Rodney as he plunked the salad bowl down in the middle of the table.

  But when he returned for the hot chicken casserole from the oven, Estelle shooed him away. “Thanks anyway, buddy, but I’ll get this one. Don’t want you burning yourself on this hot dish—you might drop it.”

  Once everyone was at the table and we’d said a blessing, Estelle began serving up the hot chicken and rice. She handed Rodney’s plate to him with a wink. “Might have some good news for you.”

  He inhaled deeply through his nose. “Mmm, smells like good news to me. Thanks. But, uh . . . were you meaning some other news?”

  “Yeah. I was over visiting our neighbor across the street this afternoon—same woman we had to dinner a couple weeks ago—and her assistant, Samantha, was there helping her. Anyway, she’s the one who arranges all of Grace’s transportation—”

  “She still gonna use the train?” I asked.

  “Probably. But the news is”—she gave me a frown for interrupting—” when I mentioned you were looking for a job, Rodney, Samantha all of a sudden blurts out that the guy at the end of our street here is looking for drivers. Might be worth checking it out.”

  “Wait a minute.” I swallowed my mouthful of chicken. “Are you talkin’ about that McMansion dude? He needs a personal driver?”

  “That’s not it. He’s an attorney, but apparently he owns a limo company on the side—”

  “That must be why those big ol’ black stretches drive up our street sometimes.” DaShawn hooted.

  “Most likely. Samantha said the last time she tried to schedule one, she had problems because they were short of drivers. The person she talked to on the phone apologized and said they were looking to hire new ones. She just threw it out there as a possible answer to prayer since I’d asked them to pray for you.”

  Everyone was silent as Rodney chewed, staring at his plate. Finally, he looked up at her. “Yeah. Well, I’ll look into it. Thank you. I’ll definitely check it out.”

  Good! He made the right choice.

  I took a deep breath and leaned back. “Hey, y’all. I got some news too. Made another bust today.”

  “Get outta here!” DaShawn jumped in as if he too had sensed the tension and was glad for relief. “Who was it this time?”

  “Couple of ol’ hippies, rich ones, if their car was any measure.”

  “What?”

  “Well, if I tell ya, I’ll have to . . . you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’ll have to kill us. Come on, Pops, we won’t tell no one.”

  “Anyone.” Estelle reached for the salt. “You won’t tell anyone.”

  “Whatever. Come on, Pops.”

  “All right. But you can’t be blabbin’ it around, ya know.”

  “We won’t. We won’t.”

  Rodney eyed me with a smirk on his face. “Speak for yourself, son. This information might be worth somethin’ on the street.”

  “Oh, yeah?” DaShawn came right back. “But your butt won’t be worth nothin’ if you sell it.”

  We all laughed. The boy was smart all right.

  I took a couple more bites. “This is mighty good, Estelle. And your salad too, DaShawn.” I paused and thought for a moment about how I could tell the story without revealing my cover to DaShawn or Rodney.

  “Come on, Pops. Quit stallin’.”

  “Well, I went up to Kalamazoo today, and by the time we were nearly there, Corky and I had worked our way from the rear of the train through all the coaches except the first one, and we were nearly to the front of it when Corky suddenly sat down and identified this middle-aged couple who were sittin’ there watching a movie on the
ir laptop. I was still standing a little behind them, kinda lookin’ over their shoulders, but they were so engrossed in their movie they didn’t even notice us.” I chuckled. “They were quite a pair, though. The woman wore a paisley tunic and had dreadlocks the color of a dirty gunnysack. And the guy had a gray beard and a nearly bald head—”

  “Ha! Look who’s talkin’,” muttered Rodney.

  “No, no, no.” I stroked my short beard. “Mine’s neatly groomed, isn’t it, Estelle? And I shave my head so it has some class. But this guy . . . well, the most I can say for him is that he didn’t do a combover, but let me tell you, those fly-away wisps of white hair looked like smoke streaming from a Gary steel mill.”

  “So what’d you do then, Pops?”

  “Well, me and Corky—”

  “Harry Bentley! How’s this boy supposed to learn proper English with you saying me and Corky. It’s Corky and I.”

  “Okay.” I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just say, I freed Corky with a hand signal, and we backed off without those two even noticing. Then we went down to the vestibule and were the first to detrain when it stopped a few minutes later in Kalamazoo.”

  I gave Estelle a wink. “Say babe, you got any more of that chicken and rice?”

  She rolled her eyes and served me a small dab as DaShawn shoveled in his last couple of bites and passed her his plate. “Please.”

  “Now you’re learning.” She rewarded him with a much larger scoop and a smile. Oh well, my waist didn’t need more.

  “I didn’t want to confront the couple near other passengers, so as soon as we got off the train, I headed for the station, which turned out to be nearly empty. Wanting to make sure the culprits saw my badge and service weapon straight off, I dropped my jacket, hat, and Corky’s D-handle beside an old woman dozing on one of the benches and asked her to watch them for me. Her eyes got wide at the sight of my weapon, so I made sure she got a good look at my Amtrak Police shield as I clipped it onto my belt.”

  I was almost sorry I’d started this tale, but had to finish it now. “With Corky on her leash, we ran outside just as the couple who’d gone around the outside of the station crossed the street to their shiny BMW, which they’d parked in the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission’s parking lot, no doubt without permission.”

  “How’d you know that?” Rodney asked.

  “Since this ain’t no courtroom, I can tell you. Pure conjecture. But as soon as they opened the trunk of their car, I confronted them. Corky sat down immediately, indicating that their luggage was dirty.”

  “Busted!” DaShawn punched the air above his head in triumph.

  “Oh yeah, but they complained that I had no jurisdiction because they weren’t on Amtrak property. Didn’t make any difference. I insisted they open their bags, and there were the drugs: amphetamines and a baggy of weed. Oh, how they whined. ‘Why aren’t you out arresting people with guns or catching rapists? We aren’t bothering anybody. Besides, we’ve got prescriptions for these.’ But when they couldn’t produce any documentation, I called 9-1-1—”

  “Wait a minute,” Rodney cut in. “What kind of documentation?”

  I frowned. Was he looking for loopholes around the drug laws? “They didn’t have a prescription for the pills or a medical marijuana ID card from the State of Michigan for the pot, so I decided to let the Kalamazoo police and a local judge sort out whether they were ‘legal’ or not. As far as I was concerned, those are controlled substances and against the law.” I glared at Rodney.

  Everyone was silent for a few moments, then DaShawn broke the tension. “So what happened to the old woman in the station?”

  “Oh, I went back and thanked her for watching my stuff. Think she was in shock.”

  I didn’t explain that her shock was topped off by watching me disappear into the men’s room and emerge a few moments later as an ol’ blind man with a guide dog. Who would have believed her story anyway?

  I was just as eager the next morning to report my exploits to Captain Gilson, but on my way to work, just as I got on the outer drive, my cell rang. When I saw the caller ID said Saint Francis Hospital, my heart jumped. “Hello.”

  “Mr. Bentley, your mother’s just had another stroke, and I think you need to get here right away. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good at all.”

  “Is she conscious?”

  “No sir. We may have to put her on a ventilator, so we need you to get here.”

  Ventilator! I pulled off the outer drive at Foster Avenue and headed back north as fast as I could go, calling Estelle as I drove. I knew if this was it, Estelle would want to be there with Mom.

  We’d had so much hope Mom could come home soon! But now . . .

  Chapter 27

  It was cool enough in the Saint Francis parking garage that I didn’t have to worry about leaving Corky in her kennel. Besides, it had an automatic fan that would kick in if needed. “Stay, girl. You got plenty of water, and I’ll be back to check on you soon as I can.”

  By the time I got up to Mom’s room, Estelle was already there. She reached out and pulled me close as I approached the bedside. The beep, beep, beep of the monitor was the only assurance Mom was still alive. For reasons I couldn’t quite identify, she actually looked like she was gone. Her face was vacant, gray, and seemed to sag.

  “What’d they say?”

  Estelle shook her head as she stared at my mother. “Hardly anything. Just that they had to resuscitate her and they’re about to take her down for a CAT scan.”

  “Resuscitate? What about her DNR order?”

  Estelle shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Has the doctor been in?”

  She shook her head. “I just got here a couple minutes before you.”

  A businesslike nurse bustled in and asked us to wait outside. “We need to get Mrs. Bentley ready for transport.”

  I stepped aside but asked, “Where’s she goin’?”

  “Down for a CAT scan.”

  “Last time they did an MRI. Why the change?”

  Without looking at me, the nurse said, “You’ll have to ask the doctor.” But I had the impression she knew more than she was letting on.

  “Has the doctor seen her?”

  “Not this morning, but I’ll let him know you’re here. He’ll probably meet with you after the CAT scan.”

  We stepped out into the hall and stood there in silence, staring . . . without seeing each other or the decorator prints on the wall or what was going on at the other end of the corridor. When the patient transporter finally arrived and wheeled Mom out and down the hall, we drifted aimlessly along behind like we were walking in a fog until we reached the nurse’s station where Estelle leaned over the counter. “Would you let us know when Mrs. Bentley comes back up or when her doctor gets here? We’ll be in the waiting room.”

  “Sure thing.”

  There was no one else in the waiting room, and Estelle sat down and bowed her head over folded hands. I picked up an old copy of Car and Driver and thumbed through it without finding anything of interest.

  “You think they ordered that CAT scan ’cause it’s cheaper? Maybe they’ve given up on her.”

  Estelle raised her head and gazed at me thoughtfully. “I really don’t know, Harry.” She bowed again over her clasped hands then abruptly looked up. “But ya know, hon, suspicion doesn’t do much good at a time like this. I’d say, if you got that question, you should ask the doctor straight up, and put it to rest.”

  I tried to flush the suspicion out of my mind, but the questions still niggled around the fringes.

  Half an hour later, the doctor came in and sat down to give us his report. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, frowning as if he were trying to think of the best way to break hard news.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Bentley, this was a massive bleed, a subdural hematoma, which we usually see in head injuries. But sometimes it occurs spontaneously as a form of stroke. We might take some heroic measures to relieve the pressure, but I seri
ously doubt whether your mother will ever regain consciousness. And even if she does, the damage from this incident on top of her previous strokes would leave her so impaired that she would be . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence, but I heard the word he was thinking: vegetable.

  It made me angry. If Mom regained consciousness, she wouldn’t be a vegetable, no matter how impaired. “Why’d you give her a CAT scan instead of an MRI? Was it because it’s cheaper?”

  He looked taken aback. “Uh . . . uh, yes, in one sense a CAT scan is cheaper, but they are also better for some things. Better in a case like this with a very recent bleed. The MRIs told us how extensive the older damage was, but this bleed is ongoing, and a CAT scan shows it very precisely.”

  I glanced at Estelle. The gentle look on her face held no condemnation. I turned back to the doctor. “But you said there were some things you could do that might help. What?”

  “Well, there’s medication, of course, that might slow the bleed. But we’re talking about a very delicate balance here. We don’t want to create clots, which was probably the source of her first stroke. Beyond that we could drill one or more holes in her skull in hopes of relieving the pressure. However, this hemorrhage was so massive, I’m not sure we would succeed.”

  “And if you don’t do anything?” I asked.

  He looked away and then back as he took a breath. “The pressure will increase on her brainstem until she expires. Her respiration’s already suppressed, probably as a result of the increased pressure.”

  I leaned back trying to absorb the horror of them drilling holes in my mother’s head until the doctor broke into my nightmare with a further complication. “If that’s the way you decide to go, we’d probably better get her on a ventilator as soon as possible. But you need to realize that mechanical ventilation does not insure her survival. And any meaningful recovery is highly unlikely.”

  “But not impossible?”

  “Mr. Bentley, how do I answer that question? I am a Christian. This is a Catholic hospital. I have witnessed what I would call miracles. None of us wants to see our loved ones pass, but even the Bible says we are all appointed to die at some point.”