“Hey, it’s gonna be all right,” I said. “Stu’s in the best hospital on the island. And they’re pumping enough medicine in him to bring down a water buffalo. I have a good feeling we’ll see some progress tomorrow.”
He snuffled and then wiped his hands down his face. “Okay. You really think that?”
“I do.” I gave him a quick hug and then watched him lumber down the hall to the elevators.
***
When I awoke there was a pillow under my head. My phone was vibrating in my purse, which I held in a death-grip in my lap. It took me a couple of beats to come around and figure out where I was and why I was there. Rows of blue chairs; a TV on mute hanging in the corner; sunlight peeking through the trees in an outside courtyard. When it all added up to ‘hospital waiting room’ and ‘my brother Stuart’s in the ICU’ I answered my phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Babe. Sorry to call so early,” said Hatch. “But it’s getting late here and we haven’t talked in a while.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve had a few things come up here.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. My brother Jeff had to go back early and my brother Stuart’s in the hospital. In fact I’m there now.”
“You’re at the hospital? What happened?”
“He fell into the Ala Wai Canal.”
“Oh wow. Is he okay?”
“Yeah. He got an infection, but I think he’ll be fine. I haven’t had a chance to go in and see him this morning but he’s getting boat loads of antibiotics. How are things in Montana?”
“Great. I know why they call it ‘Big Sky Country.’ It really grows on you. We went out on a little lightning-sparked fire just south of here, but we managed to knock it down in a day. That’s why I couldn’t call yesterday.”
“Wow, your first fire. Do you get a merit badge or something?”
“Nah. But the guys did buy me a few beers and I got to skip being on watch last night. I actually got a full seven hours of sleep. First time since I got here.”
“Sounds like we’re both sleep deprived,” I said. “Somebody brought me a pillow last night but my body still feels like I’ve been on a long-haul flight to China. I got here at midnight so—”
He cut me off. “Sorry, Babe, gotta run. Smoke break’s over. I’ll call again when I can. Tell your brother I’m thinking of him.”
“Will do.” I hung up thinking how strange it was that firefighters took a ‘smoke break.’
I went into the ladies’ room and did my business. When I was washing my hands I kept my head down for as long as I could before curiosity forced me to look in the mirror. Not good.
My hair was scrunched flat on one side and my cheek had a crease in it, like I’d been folded and clamped in a vise. My eyes were as bloodshot as Moko’s had been and I was wearing matching purple bags beneath my eyes along with a scrim of mascara.
I dug through my beach bag purse for reinforcements but only came up with a tube of lipstick that was so used up I had to dig it out with a fingernail and dab it on my lips. Maybe I’d check the gift shop for concealer and mascara. If they didn’t stock stuff like that, they should.
I sprinkled some water on a paper towel and tried to carefully remove the smudged mascara beneath my eyes. The coolness felt so good I went whole hog and wet the entire towel and ran it over my face. My brother would probably be alert and awake by now. I hoped it wouldn’t send him back into delirium to get a good look at me au naturel.
I took the pillow with me when I went into the ICU. Probably someone from the nurses’ station had taken pity on me. I needed to give it back, though. I could only imagine what a hospital charged for pillow rent.
“I brought this back,” I said. “Mahalo. I appreciate it.”
The nurse stood up and scrutinized the pillow as if I’d brought roadkill into her sterile environment. “That’s not one of ours,” she said. “You’ll have to take it back outside.”
“Really? It isn’t mine either.”
She looked at me over the top of her reading glasses with a ‘don’t make Mommy say it twice’ glare.
“Okay. I’ll take it back out to the waiting room.”
I tucked the pillow into a corner behind a fake potted plant and returned to the ICU. When I inquired about Stu’s condition, a trace of indecision crept into the nurse’s eyes.
“Uh. Wait here a minute,” she said. “I think the doctor wants to talk to you. You’re the patient’s wife, right?”
“No, I’m his sister. His wife can’t be here.” I tried to keep the judgment out of my voice, but I don’t think I succeeded. I mean, if it had been Hatch lying in that hospital bed there’s no way I’d be home slugging Pepto and calling for updates. I’d be there front and center, toting a barf bag if necessary.
“I’ll get the doctor,” she said.
The same doctor I’d seen the day before showed up in record time. “Remember me? I’m Dr. Malone.” He nodded instead of shaking hands, but that made sense to me under the circumstances. “I’m treating your brother.”
“Yes, thank you, doctor.” I’m not sure why I thanked him. It just seemed like the right thing to say.
“Today we have a guarded hope that we may be able to get this thing under control,” he said. He smiled, but it was only one of those mouth smiles that doesn’t extend to the eyes. “But, as I mentioned yesterday, it’s going to require some sacrifice.”
“You mean like money? Like you want to give him drugs that cost an arm and a leg?” I gave him a mouth smile of my own. After all, there wasn’t much to smile about.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, you’re correct.” He paused. “We don’t have drugs to deal with what we’re facing here. We’re going to have to take the leg.”
It took me longer than it probably should have to understand what he was saying.
“Take the leg? You mean like amputate it?” I said.
“Yes.” He puckered his lips into a weird little “o” and stared me down like he was trying to hypnotize me. I broke eye contact.
“I don’t… I mean, uh.” I hadn’t been prepared for that. I’d only met Stuart four days earlier. And now they were asking me for permission to saw off his leg?
CHAPTER 21
Needless to say, I begged off. No way was I going solo on a decision like that. I went out to the courtyard and called Moko.
“Sorry to bother you. Did you get any sleep?” I said.
“Some. I’m still not going into work, though. I took the kids to school for my wife this morning to make up for ditchin’ her with them last night.”
I thought about the complicated negotiations one has to make with a spouse. I’d never had to do that and I wasn’t sure I could ever get used to it.
“Anyhow,” he went on, “I’m ready to come down and relieve you. How’s our guy doing this morning?”
“Uh, I’m not supposed to be talking on my cell. Why don’t you come down as soon as you can and I’ll catch you up?”
“That doesn’t sound good,” he said.
“I’ll see you when you get here.” I hung up. What choice did I have? Lie to him and then devastate him with the truth when he got there or tell him Stu’s leg was coming off and have him worry himself sick while he dealt with Honolulu rush hour traffic? It was a lose-lose situation.
Next I called Natalie. Once again she answered in a voice like sounded like I’d wakened her from a sound sleep.
“Sorry to wake you up, Natalie,” I said. “But something’s come up with Stuart. Do you think you could come down here?”
She sighed. “First off, I wasn’t sleeping. I’ve been up for hours worrying about Stu. How is he doing?”
“He’s hanging in there,” I said. “But something’s come up.”
“Oh? What?”
“The infection’s worse than they thought. The drugs aren’t going to be able to kick it all by themselves.” I congratulated myself on my step-by-step build-up to the grim reve
al.
“What’s that mean?”
“They’re going to have to get rid of the source of the infection.”
“I’m not following you.”
So much for my step-by-step. Apparently, I’d veered off the path.
“Okay, there’s no good way to say this, Natalie. Stuart’s leg is going to have to be amputated.”
“What? Are you joking? No way!”
“It’s that or he may die. The doctor says this is the only way they can halt the spread of the infection.”
There was a pause. Then Natalie blew out a breath. “No way, Pali. I’ll be there in half-an-hour. Don’t let them touch him.”
***
Moko showed up five minutes later so I had no time to regroup after blowing it with Natalie.
He took it well, but he understood why Natalie had freaked out.
“She’s all about how things look, ya know? She always got the make-up goin’, and perfect clothes and her car’s always clean and all that. Probably when you told her that Stu was gonna have only one leg she thought, ‘Oh, no. He’s gonna look bad.’ But she’ll come around. Maybe she needs to hear it from the doctor.”
“I sure as heck didn’t want to be the messenger on that one,” I said. “But she’d said she couldn’t stand it here at the hospital. I should’ve told her to come in; or maybe offered to go out to her house. It wasn’t a good idea to tell somebody something like that over the phone.”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. Nobody knows what to do here. When Dad got sick, at least we all had plenty of time to get used to what was happening. With this…” He let it trail off.
We sat in silence for at least three minutes.
Finally, I spoke up. “You want to go see him? I haven’t been in there yet this morning.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Natalie?” he said.
“I’m thinking she may be able to handle the waiting room, but I don’t know if she’ll be able to deal with seeing Stu. It sounds like the infection’s gotten worse. Who knows how bad he looks.”
“Let’s do it then.” He got up and offered me his hand. I took it and hauled myself up out of the chair.
“Say, did you come back last night and bring me a pillow?” I said as we walked down the hall.
“No.”
“I had a pillow under my head when I woke up out there this morning.”
“Probably one of the nurses brought it.”
“They said it wasn’t one of theirs.”
By then we’d come to Stu’s room. We both did the Smurf routine and covered ourselves from head to toe in blue paper with rubbery hands.
“Natalie couldn’t do this,” Moko said. He was slipping the string loops on the paper face mask behind his ears.
“Why?” I said.
“Can you imagine what it would be like to barf while you’re wearing one of these mask things?”
We went in Stu’s room and I nearly found out.
CHAPTER 22
Whoever it was in that bed wasn’t the man I’d met for tea at the Moana Surfrider on Monday. I wanted to ask the nurse what they’d done with my brother when they’d swapped him for the guy who looked like a balloon from the Macy’s New Year’s parade in New York.
My gasp was muffled by the mask. So was Moko’s, but neither of us commented on it. Instead, I reached out my hand and Moko grabbed it. He held on as if I was the only thing keeping him upright.
Stu’s body had bloated to the point that I couldn’t help but wonder how his skin was able to stretch over it. All sorts of gory images danced through my mind but I pushed them down, unwilling to give credence to the horror I was witnessing.
“We’ve got to get Natalie to let them take his leg,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Moko said. “For sure.”
The machines beeped and pinged but they were showing lower numbers now. His pulse had gone up, but his blood pressure was lagging. The number that really got my attention was his temperature. It showed one-oh-three.
“Look at his temp,” I said. “It’s way up there.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go see if Natalie’s here,” I said. “I don’t want her seeing this and if we’re not out there, she may try to come in.”
“Yeah.”
I had to pull Moko out of the room. His eyes looked watery and when he pulled off his mask he used it to mop his face.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “Even when Dad was at the end, he didn’t look nuthin’ like that.”
“Well, cancer’s bad. But it’s a slow bad. This infection’s ripping through him really fast. I think Natalie will have to agree to let them take the leg.”
We pushed our used sterile gowns into the biohazard bin and walked past the nurses’ station. The nurse sitting there dropped her eyes when she saw us coming. Maybe she thought we were going to demand that she do something, or we were going to ask a question she didn’t want to answer. Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to acknowledge us and that was fine by me.
Natalie arrived soon after we’d resumed sitting in the same chairs we’d occupied before going into Stu’s room. She looked fresh and relaxed; as if she’d just showered and donned a crisply-ironed sun dress. I felt envious, but then realized what was happening inside the ICU affected her much more than it ever would me. I wouldn’t trade places with her for anything.
Moko gave Natalie a quick brotherly hug but didn’t say anything. Once again, it looked like I’d be expected to do the heavy lifting.
“So, what’s this about someone wanting to do drastic surgery on Stuart?” she said. “Why won’t they let him be? Don’t you think he’s already been through enough?”
Moko turned and caught my eye. I half-expected him to say something like, ‘Oh look at the time; gotta run’ but he stayed put. But he didn’t say a word.
“Natalie, we were just in Stu’s room,” I said. “And we both agree…” I looked at Moko to see if he was planning to chime in but all I got back was a blank stare. “Anyhow, we both agree we should let the doctor do what he thinks is best.”
“Well, I don’t agree. That doctor doesn’t know Stuart. And you don’t know Stuart. I’m the only person who really knows Stuart.” She paused. “And I can tell you, without question, that Stuart does not want to spend the rest of his life as a cripple.”
I was astounded on so many levels I couldn’t even list them all. She was right about me not knowing Stu; I’d only met him on Monday. But to say Moko didn’t know him was a slap in the face. Moko had known Stu since he was born. He’d never known a day of his life when Stu wasn’t in it. From what I’d gathered, she’d only known Stu for two or three years. And, to call Stu a ‘cripple’ was beyond indefensible. First of all, since the Middle East wars, prosthetics had become as much art as science. There were vets out there with two artificial legs who surfed and hiked and raised their children while working at high-paying jobs. The word ‘cripple’ in and of itself was an insult to humanity.
As if he was privy to my brain tantrum, the doctor showed up. He introduced himself to Moko and Natalie, and once he’d determined the pecking order, he addressed himself solely to Natalie.
“Mrs. Wilkerson,” he said. “I want you to know we’re giving your husband’s case the highest priority. Already we’ve brought in specialists from neighbor islands to make sure we leave no stone unturned.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And all these so-called specialists still can’t come up with something better than amputating my husband’s leg? What is this, Humpty-Dumpty time?”
I was so astounded I collapsed in the nearest chair. Moko remained standing. The look on his face turned dark.
The doctor didn’t seem to take offense. “I understand how troubling this sounds. But I assure you; this is our best course of action.”
“What if you take no action? I mean, what if you allow Stuart to fight this infection on his own, with the best medications and keeping him comfortable, of course.”<
br />
“Mrs. Wilkerson, if that were a viable option, we would offer it. But, unfortunately, it’s not.”
“Well, I’ll have to think about this. I don’t want to be the one who scars Stuart forever and then has to answer his hard questions about why I allowed you to do this.”
“Mrs. Wilkerson, with all due respect, if you don’t allow us to do this—and soon—I’m afraid there may not be anyone to answer to. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I’m pregnant, doctor, but I’m not stupid. I may be having a harder time than normal keeping my meals down but my brain is working just fine. I need some time to consider what you’re asking me to do.” She looped the shoulder strap of her purse over her shoulder and turned and headed down the hall.
The three of us looked at each another as if checking to see if anyone had any idea of what had just happened. Seemed no one did.
Moko apologized to the doctor and offered the explanation that Natalie was pregnant and hadn’t been herself lately. The doctor once again warned us that if he didn’t take the leg within the next few hours, Stu’s chances would ‘deteriorate,’ whatever that meant. It looked to me like Stu was in full-blown deterioration mode already.
I waited for a few minutes, hoping Natalie would come to her senses and reappear, but she didn’t. I was exhausted and told Moko I needed some time away from the hospital. He offered to drive me back to Waikiki but I declined.
“Thanks, but I’ll take the bus. Seeing normal people having a normal day will do me good,” I said.
I got back to the penthouse and flopped down on the bed. I’m not the praying type, but I prayed that Natalie would come to her senses before it was too late.
***
My cell phone went off; vibrating next to me on the bed. It wasn’t that noisy, but it was enough to wake me up. I sat up and looked at the clock on the bedside table: three o’clock. Since it was sunny outside I quickly deduced it wasn’t 3 a.m., but what was I doing asleep in the middle of the afternoon?
I clicked over to the call. It was Moko. “She finally said ‘yes’,” he said.
O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) Page 12