Yellow Packard

by Ace Collins

  “It was my fault,” Beverly moaned. “I shouldn’t have let her play on those monkey bars. She is simply too young for an activity like that.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Dr. Hutton quickly snapped. “Kids are going to play and they’re going to fall. That’s the way they are. What happened didn’t create that mass in her head. It only stirred it up a bit sooner. It was like a monster hiding in the shadows waiting to leap out. There is nothing you could have done about it!”

  “But surely,” Nate argued, “there is someone out there that could remove it.”

  “I’ve shown you the x-rays,” the doctor sadly explained. “There is no one in Chicago that can do that kind of surgery. Heaven knows I’ve made calls. There’s a guy in London who is experimenting with a procedure that might work a few years from now, but he’s not ready to try it on humans. Beyond the scores of telephone calls, I’ve written many, many letters, and I’ve gone through every medical journal I could find. I put out the word begging for someone—anyone—who was willing to try to untangle that ungodly mass from her brain. A few neurosurgeons who have done exploratory surgery in this area have visited with me, but when they see the x-rays they all say the same thing. The operation would kill her.”

  Beverly pulled out a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes. She then looked back to Dr. Hutton and forced out a question she didn’t want to ask, “How long?”

  “She’ll make it through Christmas,” he assured her, his sad eyes looking toward one of the room’s bookshelves. “But as the tumor grows, the seizures will get worse. I could get her some medication that will reduce the pain and might buy her a bit of time, but it is very expensive.”

  “I’ll get the money,” Nate assured him. After wringing his hands he gently reached over and caressed his wife’s shoulder. “I can take some extra flights. I think the supervisors at American can get me a bit more work. And we have some stuff we can sell. I own a nice, almost new Mercury; I can get some good money for it.”

  “But, honey,” Beverly protested, her eyes meeting his with an expression of hopelessness, “we need a car. What if we have to get Angel to the hospital in a hurry? We can’t wait on a cab.”

  “I’ll buy a good-running, older car,” he explained.

  “Nate,” Dr. Hutton cut in, his tone that of a pastor comforting a wounded member of his flock. “That is all well and good, but is having the medicine as important as you being with your daughter in her last few weeks or months?” He paused, rubbed his forehead in frustration, and added, “I can’t answer that for you, but please think about that when you’re scheduling additional flight duty. Being home with Angel and Beverly might be more important than anything else.”

  The father nodded and glanced toward the waiting room at his little girl. She was playing with a doll. She looked perfectly healthy, as if nothing were wrong. “I know. But selling things we don’t really need is not going to hurt anything or anyone. There is someone at the airline that wants my car right now. He’s already told me what he’d give me for it. And I have a camera and a few other things I can pawn. You just order the medicine for Angel.”

  Hutton nodded.

  “Now,” the mother said as she wearily rose from her chair, “if there is nothing else, I’d like to get home. I need to get the Christmas tree up and decorated and …” Unable to finish, she hurried out to her daughter.

  Nate stood up and shook his head. He couldn’t believe the overpowering feeling of helplessness that had invaded his life. Tears ran down the rugged pilot’s cheeks as he stood in front of a man who’d brought him into the world. His clouded eyes moved from his wife back to the doctor. “What have you got to heal a broken heart?”

  Chapter 60

  What brings you out in this weather?” Jinx Stally asked the stranger.

  Dusting the snow from his topcoat, Nate Coffman replied, “Got to have a car and heard there was going to be a couple in your auction today.”

  “I work on them,” Jinx explained, “and we only have one that is really dependable.” He pointed. “It’s that wild yellow Packard over there. It’s a 1936, but it’s solid. Doesn’t burn any oil at all. The weather is so bad, doubt many folks will make it out today, so you might get it cheap.”

  “It’s a good runner?” Nate asked.

  “Like new,” the mechanic assured him. “It’s the pick of the litter.”

  “I’d like to take your word for it,” Nate said, as he yanked off his gloves. “But I still want to look at each of them. Can you tell me where the others are?”

  “They’re back in the right corner of the building,” Jinx explained while pointing in the general direction. “The keys are in them, so start them up if you want. I wouldn’t bother trying that ‘33 Caddy. That one should be melted down.”

  The pilot nodded as he ambled toward the vehicles. For fifteen minutes he looked them over and came to the conclusion that the old man was right. Only the Packard seemed worthy of a bid. With that in mind, he strolled back to the front of the building where the auction was starting.

  It seemed that the half-dozen folks who braved the storm were much more interested in buying two 1939 Ford two-ton flatbed trucks than they were the cars. So, shockingly, his initial bid of a hundred dollars secured the Packard. As he walked up to give the clerk five twenties, Jinx waved and said, “You won’t be sorry.”

  After signing the papers, Nate drove the car out of the garage and into the snowy Chicago streets. By the time he’d arrived at their home in Wilmette, he was convinced he’d gotten a great deal. In fact, he was so proud of the purchase, he left it in the driveway idling rather than pull it into the garage. A few seconds later, he had his wife and daughter wade out through the snow so he could show off the latest Coffman family vehicle.

  “That sure is bright paint,” Beverly noted.

  “Yeah,” he said with a laugh, “won’t be any problem finding it in a parking lot.”

  Sweeping his daughter into his arms, he asked, “What do you think, Angel?”

  “I love it, Daddy.”

  “Well it’s yours, girl.”

  “And, Daddy?” she asked.

  “Yes, Angel.”

  “Can we keep it till I’m old enough to drive it someday?”

  Nate looked to Beverly. The tears in her eyes showed she had no answers. Looking back toward the car then toward his sweet daughter, he took a deep breath and choked out, “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 61

  What’s wrong?” Nate asked, pulling himself from the bed.

  His wife’s screams were so loud they sounded almost as if they were right beside him. But she wasn’t in her usual spot on their bed. Her calls were coming from down the hall in their daughter’s room. “Nate, come quick. Angel’s having a seizure!”

  Without even flipping a light switch, his bare feet hit the cold wooden floor as he raced down the hall and ran through the door to his daughter’s room. Beverly was trying her best to keep Angel’s trembling body calm, but the girl’s eyes were rolled back in her head and her arms and legs were jerking in every direction. He’d seen seizures before, but none as severe as this one.

  As Nate touched his daughter’s forehead, he noted her ragged, shallow breathing. She looked as if she were drowning.

  “We have to get her to the hospital,” Beverly whispered. “She can barely breathe!”

  “Wrap her up in a blanket,” he ordered. “I’ll throw on some clothes and get the car out and warmed up.”

  After hurriedly tossing on pants, a wrinkled dress shirt, shoes, and a topcoat, Nate raced to the garage. Opening the door, he was rudely greeted by a fierce north wind and a blanket of snow. While he’d slept, blizzard conditions had come to Chicago. Looking beyond the front yard, he noted that the streets were already packed by at least half a foot of the white powder. No one had predicted this.

  Stepping into the car, he pushed the gas pedal four times, pulled out the choke, and punched the starter. As the six-volt battery
delivered a burst of power to the starter, the engine slowly turned over, but it didn’t catch. Taking a deep breath, Nate pumped the gas pedal two more times and once more hit the starter. The results were the same.

  “Come on, baby, don’t let me down now!”

  He’d just finished sweet-talking the car when the passenger door flew open and Beverly eased in with Angel in her arms. Her worried eyes looked to her husband as she slid across the seat toward him. “What’s wrong? Why haven’t you gotten it started?”

  “It’s a cold night,” he explained, “the oil is thick.”

  “But, Nate?” She moaned, trying to keep the shaking child in the safety of her arms. “We’ve got to go now. I think she’s dying.”

  “I’ll get it started,” he assured her as he pressed the gas pedal two more times and hit the starter. The old motor wheezed. It coughed twice more as Nate continued to press the starter; then it finally caught and began to purr.

  “Let’s go,” Beverly urged.

  “It’s has to warm a bit, or it’ll kill when I let the clutch out.” He looked at the instrument panel, silently pleading with the engine to heat up. After a minute of idling and the temperature needle still registering cold, he pushed in the clutch and backed the car out of the garage and across the snow-covered lane. In spite of the fact that the snow was up to the running board, the Packard’s wheels steadily propelled the family to the street.

  She pulled Angel even closer to her body. “Can we make it?”

  As the car gained traction and eased forward, Nate grimly smiled. “The car’s heavy,” he explained. “And the motor is powerful. If I keep it in first and second and we don’t have to stop much, I think it will get us there. Just say a few prayers.”

  The words had no more cleared his lips than Angel began to shake even more violently in Beverly’s arms. After staring at his daughter in the dim illumination of the dash lights, he glanced down at the car’s clock. It was two thirty-five. Even on a good day, the drive to the hospital would take ten minutes. How long would it take tonight?

  As he eased down the street, the wipers couldn’t keep up with the falling snow. They did their best to push the slush off the glass, but still Nate could only see for a few seconds at a time and then the world was white again until the blades moved back the other direction. Thankfully there was no traffic, so Nate could aim the car right down the middle of the empty streets and ignore all the stop signs. Still, because the snow was so deep and visibility so poor, the best he could do was a top speed of fifteen miles an hour. Even at that speed he felt as if he were trying to control a sled flying down a mountain trail.

  Block by block they fought their way through the raging blizzard. Twice the car slid toward a curb only to have Nate reverse the steering wheel, slow down, and regain traction. All the while, Angel continued to shake uncontrollably. A mile became two and then three and finally four and five. What seemed like days was less than half an hour, and somehow Angel managed to hang on.

  It was just past three when Nate finally saw the four-story brick hospital through his almost completely snow-covered windshield. He slid like a boat into port into the emergency room’s driveway. But pulling up the slight incline caused his wheels to spin for at least thirty seconds. He thought he was going to have to stop the car, grab his little girl, and race the last one hundred yards on foot. Just as he was about to shift into neutral and set the emergency brake, the Firestone tires caught and the Packard jerked forward. They were going to make it! He had just eased in front of the hospital’s doors when Beverly’s words caused his heart to stop.

  “She’s not breathing,” she cried out. “Nate, she’s not breathing!”

  Nate said nothing. With no explanation, he reached over and grabbed Angel from his wife’s arms, pushed open his car door, and raced through the snow up the ramp and into the hospital. Charging up to the desk, he screamed, “My baby’s not breathing. You’ve got to do something!”

  A middle-aged nurse, dressed in a starched white uniform, got up from her chair, glanced down at the child, ran her hands over Angel’s face, and then gently took her. She barked some instructions to another nurse who was sitting across the room at another desk. That woman grabbed a phone and called for a doctor to come down immediately.

  “She’s got a mass on her brain,” Beverly explained as she came up behind Nate. “Dr. Hutton has been treating her.”

  The nurse nodded, her kind brown eyes catching the couple’s for a moment as she quickly moved across the room. “We’ll do what we can,” she assured them. “You stay here, and I’ll get her into the emergency room.” Just before she disappeared into a side room she glanced over her shoulder and called out, “When did she stop breathing?”

  “Just as we drove up,” Beverly said.

  “Good.”

  A second later, the nurse and Angel were gone, leaving the two frantic parents alone in the waiting room. Nate pointed toward the chairs, wrapped his right arm around his wife’s back, and gently guided her toward a seat.

  Chapter 62

  For five long hours, Nate comforted his wife while they watched doctors and nurses coming and going. Outside, the snow stopped falling and the city awakened to an unexpected winter wonderland. It was the kind of scene Angel would have loved and one that would have likely found her up to her waist in snowdrifts making everything from snowballs to forts. But that wouldn’t happen today. In fact, it might never happen again.

  It was just past eight when Dr. Hutton emerged and walked across the room to the where the couple was sitting. While he appeared exhausted, there was also a peace in his eyes.

  “Is she …?” Beverly couldn’t force herself to say the words that had been etched in her mind for hours.

  “She is fine,” the doctor softly replied. “She is sleeping and we are about to put her in a room. But if you hadn’t gotten her here at the very moment you did, we would have lost her. How you made it through that storm I don’t know. I mean the only the reason I was here was because I couldn’t get home.”

  “Thank God she’s okay,” Nate said with a smile. He looked toward the doctor and then his wife. He knew what the doctor meant was she was all right for the moment. Today, tomorrow, or next week, or next month, Angel would be hit again, and when it happened the ending would likely be much different.

  “When can we take her home?” Beverly asked.

  The doctor smiled. “If nothing else happens and she feels good, I would say tomorrow. Now, Beverly, why don’t you go see her right now. It will take a few minutes before the room is ready, but I know you need to hold her.”

  The woman didn’t need to be asked twice. She bounced off the chair, across the room, and into the open door that had been her focus for so much of the night. After she had disappeared, the doctor took a seat beside Nate. After putting his hand on the father’s shoulder, he softly said what didn’t need to be said, “What you experienced tonight will happen again. There is nothing we can do about that. The mass is growing and things will get worse. So, as a friend, not as Angel’s doctor, I recommend that you cherish the good days you have left. Crowd as much into them as you can. Make what life she has left as sweet for Angel and yourself as it can possibly be. Every moment in each day is a gift.”

  Chapter 63

  Nate watched Angel sleep that night at the hospital. Even though he sent Beverly home to rest and get ready for their child’s homecoming, he never left the chair beside her bed. The next day, after their yellow car had retraced the route from the hospital to their home, he followed the little girl everywhere she went. He felt as if he were trying to crowd a lifetime of memories into just a few short moments.

  As the horrible day of the bad seizure turned into a good day and then a great day, Nate found it hard to leave for his next flight run. Yet he had to work because bills still came in. So to make sure he was always informed on what was going on at their small, brick home in Wilmette they began a new routine. He’d call Beverly from Midway Airpor
t before he got on the plane. He’d then call her from the airport, wherever that was, as soon as he landed. He’d call her again from the hotel and the next morning before he took off. The calls were always the same—Beverly would answer; he’d say, “Hello;” and she’d say, “She’s fine.” They’d talk for a few minutes, and then he’d hang up.

  When he’d get back to Chicago, as soon as he deplaned, he’d race to the employee’s entrance and look for the Packard. As long as it was there, as long as his wife was in the driver’s seat and his little girl’s mitten-covered hand was waving from the back window, it meant he would get to embrace her at least a few more hours or maybe a day or maybe even a week. And that was how life was measured—in moments. One moment at a time.

  The days turned into weeks and the weeks to a month and then two, and just as the focus of his life changed, so did his prayers. When they’d discovered the mass in Angel’s head, he’d asked for a miracle. That prayer continued until the big seizure hit. The prayer then changed to “Please let me be there when she dies.”

  He knew it would tear him to pieces to see his daughter take her last breath, and he dreaded that experience more than anyone could begin to understand. But he had to be there, not just for Angel, but for Beverly. He couldn’t bear for her to go through that experience alone. With the infertility and all they had been through even before Angel came into their lives, that would simply be asking too much.

  A hundred … no a thousand times … he had thought back over all Beverly had endured during their marriage. It had almost broken her heart when she found out she was the reason they couldn’t have children. She felt she had cheated him and even begged Nate to divorce her and find someone who could give him children. It had taken him more than a year to convince her that adoption was something he was excited about. But for reasons he didn’t understand and she couldn’t quite explain, she didn’t want to adopt. If God wouldn’t let her have kids, she saw it as a sign that she wasn’t supposed to. He’d figured they’d never have children. Until fate stepped in.