We followed Grundleshanks back to the cottage, before he vanished. There was a clap of thunder and it started to rain again. I hoped the rain would stay heavy enough to put out the fire in the cemetery and send the demonic crows scurrying back to hell.
Gus and I were both shivering, so I hit the upstairs bathroom, and let him have the downstairs one. We took hot showers and met back on the couch, in warm, clean clothes, sipping cups of tea.
“Where’s the toad bone?” I asked.
Gus pointed to a leather pouch hanging on his neck, and then tucked it out of sight inside his shirt.
“How are you?” I asked. “Are you breathing any better?”
He carefully shook his head. “I’m… not,” he said, taking a slow breath between each word.
I felt a chill crawl up my spine. I had thought Gus would be fine, once we got back to the cottage.
“How…did…you…” he mimed giant wings with his hands.
I knew what he was talking about. It was that weird dragon metamorphosis. It wasn’t like my exterior body had changed, but it’s what my astral body had changed into, and Gus was tuned-in enough that he had been able to see it.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was like… a part of me woke up. It was what needed to be done and I just… did it. I didn’t even think about it, really.”
Gus nodded, either not able or not willing to speak.
I extended my ‘sight’ over his astral body, and was shocked to find his entire midsection, from his chest to his waist, had turned black, as if his organs had been replaced with the darkness of the void.
I put my teacup down. “Let’s go.”
He looked at me, questioningly.
“We’re going to the new Medical Center in Oldfield. There’s an Emergency Room there. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but if you can’t get enough air into your lungs to have a conversation, it’s getting worse.”
He nodded, and within minutes, we were in Zed and I was driving as fast as I dared down the rain-slicked roads.
* * *
The medical center had an Emergency Room, a Surgical Center, various doctors’ offices, and an Urgent Care Center about a block further down. There were a few rooms with beds, but half the place was still under construction. It really didn’t inspire much confidence, but it was the closest E.R. we could get to at three in the morning. By the time we got there, Gus’s left arm and face had gone numb, and he was still having problems breathing.
In the Emergency Room, they were able to see Gus pretty quickly. The perks of a small town.
They ran an EKG in case he was having a heart attack, and said his heart was fine. They gave him a nebulizer treatment and while it worked a little, it didn’t work as much as it should have. They gave him a spritz of nitroglycerin under his tongue, and that seemed to work better, for a little while. And then he couldn’t breathe again.
His one leg was swollen, and I wondered if it was because he had hit the tombstone in the cemetery with the same knee that had taken a pounding earlier. Because of it though, they couldn’t give him a physical stress test, and they didn’t have the equipment to give him a chemically-induced stress test with a 3-D heart imaging system. They suggested we put that on our to-do list.
They asked me about the trauma around his midsection, and I told them he fell in a rocky stream. I didn’t think they’d believe me if I said it was the result of a demonic crow attack. They ultrasounded him for blood clots, since his leg was swollen, but didn’t find any. They also MRI’d his knee, and confirmed what I had suspected about the meniscal injury.
Since Gus still couldn’t breathe, they sent him for a CT scan of his lungs, but it took five tries to get the IV contrast in. Poor Gus. His arms looked like they had been beaten with a baseball bat by the time the procedure was done.
* * *
Eventually, a doctor brought down the paperwork from the CT scan and said he hadn’t seen anything that would cause the breathing problem. He wanted to release Gus.
Something nudged me and I asked to see the report. He shrugged and left it with me.
“What…is…it?” Gus panted.
I held up my finger and read over the entire report. Everything seemed normal, until I got to the end. There was a phrase I didn’t recognize. Dependent Atelectasis. I pulled out my iPhone and looked it up.
“I know why you can’t breathe.” I said.
“The… doctor… didn’t…”
I interrupted him. I didn’t want him to waste precious oxygen on talking. I showed him the report. “Look here, see this bottom paragraph? Where it says dependent atelectasis?”
He shook his head. “Eyes. Blurry.”
Great. A new problem. This all had to be related. “Okay, well, it means the bottom lobes of your lungs have collapsed. That’s why you can’t breathe, and why none of the asthma meds are working.”
Gus gave me a thumbs up, signaling he understood, then raised two fingers, ticking off a question on each one. “Why? How fix?”
“I don’t know how to fix it. And I don’t know the why. Most of all, I don’t know why the doctor missed that part of the report. They want to release you, but I’m not going to let them. Are you going to be okay? I need to go find a doctor and discuss this with them.”
A panicked look came into Gus’s eyes, and I had to weigh which one was more important—keeping him calm, or tracking down a doctor and beating them over the head with the report until they coughed up the answer to those two questions: Why and How Fix.
“I’ll be right back. You’ll be okay. It’s not a big place. I have my phone. Text me if you start to freak and I’ll drop everything and run back to you.”
* * *
I walked through the corridors, looking for one of Gus’s doctors. I stopped at a diagram of the human body, and looked at the organ layout. From what I read, pressure from the other organs could cause dependent atelectasis. And the largest organ under the lungs was the liver. It figured.
I should have realized we were dealing with a liver problem. Was it related to the crows trying to peck Gus’s liver out in the cemetery? Did they cause the liver to swell? Or were they drawn to Gus because his liver was swollen?
I started walking faster. I was pretty sure I had the why, but now I wanted the why behind that. Why was the liver swollen and pressing on the lungs?
I finally tracked down the female doctor who had ordered the CT scan and ultrasounds. That was fine with me, because I thought the male doctor who showed up to give us his misreading of the CT results was an idiot.
I pointed out the dependent atelectasis phrase, and she gave me a blank look. I swear, it was like they were all being blocked from seeing what was going on.
Blocked. Of course. They probably were. The Devil said that Gus would be begging him to take the toad bone in exchange for the mercy of death. The Devil had to be behind this entire thing. I was going to have to take a different approach.
“Can you scan his liver? It wasn’t included in the lung scan. I think it’s swollen and that’s what’s causing his lungs to partially collapse.”
She grabbed the report from me and looked it over. “Sure. I don’t want to send him for another CT, but we can ultrasound his liver.”
“Great. Let’s do it.”
* * *
I went back to tell Gus he was going in for another test, and found Forrest there, sitting in my chair, sipping on a cup of coffee from the local diner, with Gus’s iPad on his lap. It was morning in the outside world, and Forrest was bright and fresh, ready to face a new day. And clearly, he hadn’t given a thought to bringing any coffee for anyone else.
“What are you doing here?” I asked coldly, oddly annoyed at his lack of exhaustion after what had to be the longest night of my life.
“I got a text from Gus,” he said, flashing his smarmy, lounge lizard grin at me. “I thought I’d come and see if he was okay.”
“Let me save you the guesswork. Of course, he’s not okay,” I
snapped. “Otherwise, why would we be here? Now that you know, feel free to leave.”
Gus frowned at me.
“You’re going in for another ultrasound,” I told him.
Gus rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. Then he pointedly looked over to Forrest and back to me.
“I’m not the enemy,” Forrest said. “Gus left his iPad at my place and I brought it here, thinking he could use it to spend the time. Would a bad guy do that?”
I sighed. “Fine, I’m sorry for being snappish. I’m tired. I’ve been up all night. I’m worried sick about Gus, and you look like you’re abut to go spend the day crooning with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. So, unless it’s to entertain me with some tunes, you probably shouldn’t talk to me right now.”
Forrest chuckled and handed me the iPad. “I admire a woman who speaks her mind.”
* * *
After they took Gus for his ultrasound, Forrest and I sat and stared at each other.
“You don’t like me,” Forrest finally said.
“No, I don’t think I do.” I said.
“Why? People usually like me. I’m told I can be quite charming. Is it because you think I’m going to take Gus away from you?”
“No,” I said. But why didn’t I like him? I was so tired, I couldn’t really remember when my dislike had started. I tried to poke in his mind, to see what he was thinking, but all I got was a smooth darkness, like volcanic glass. My ‘sight’ slid off it and I was no closer to uncovering his secrets than I had been when we first met.
I finally said. “I don’t trust you. You’re always so guarded. Makes me wonder what you’re hiding.”
“Me? I’m an open book,” he protested.
I snorted.
* * *
When Gus came back from his ultrasound, we had another piece of the puzzle. His lungs had partially collapsed because his liver was swollen to almost twice its normal size. But they still wanted to discharge him, so he could go see his regular doctor.
“No,” I said. “We’re not going anywhere, until you find out why his liver is swollen.”
“I’m sure the doctors know what they’re doing,” Forrest argued. “If they want to discharge him, there’s got to be a good reason.”
“Forget it,” I snapped. “You can take your opinion and shove it. Why don’t you go home?”
“Because I’m his significant other. You’re just his roommate.”
“I thought you were his sister,” the nurse said, glaring at me. Then she turned to Forrest, sweet as saccharine. “Do you mind signing these papers? We need the space for incoming patients.”
“I don’t… feel… good.” Gus said, barely able to get the words out.
Instinctively, I put my hand on his forehead.
He was burning up.
Chapter 47
Forrest made an excuse about why he had to leave and said he’d be back later. I ignored him and watched as the nurse took Gus’s temperature. It was 103.
A few minutes later, a new doctor came into the room. He felt Gus’s throat, commented on how swollen his lymph nodes were, and asked the nurse to schedule an ultrasound of his thyroid.
I was ready to scream. I believed that Gus’s lymph nodes were swollen, but I was sure everything was centered in his liver. And with the parade of different doctors that were coming through, I wasn’t at all sure they would be communicating with each other.
“Why… so… upset?” Gus asked, when we were alone again.
“Because,” I said, trying to hold my anger in check. “It shouldn’t be up to me to diagnose you. I didn’t go to medical school. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know why they can’t work together to figure out what’s going on. I don’t know whey can’t even read their own freaking reports.”
“Devil… block,” Gus said.
“Yeah. I think it is. Why don’t you just give the Devil back the stupid toad bone?”
“Never,” Gus croaked. “I won… fair and… square.”
* * *
While Gus was moved from the Emergency Room cubicle to an actual room, I called Paul, told him where the spare key was and asked him to look after the dogs. I knew he was leery of spending time at the cottage, so I asked if he could take the Dobes to his house.
“It’s only for a few days, just until Gus gets out of the hospital.”
“You’re going to owe me for this, big time,” he said.
“Whatever happened to joint dog custody?”
Silence on his end.
“Fine, whatever. I’ll owe you. Absolutely. We’ll settle up later. I’ll buy you lunch. Gotta go.” I said, hanging up before he could change his mind.
After scouring the Internet on Gus’s iPad, to figure out what kind of doctor he most needed to see, I was finally able to track down an Infectious Disease Specialist. Mainly by ‘accidentally’ walking into every department and office in the Medical Center, until I found one who would talk to me.
I told the doctor what was going on with Gus, and my suspicion that it was all centered in his liver. I convinced her to run blood tests for anything that could possibly lead to a swollen liver and gave her a run-down of everything and everyone Gus had been exposed to, from flu vaccines to Grundleshanks and the cats, to me and Forrest.
* * *
Forrest came back later that day, wearing a Santa hat and rubbing sanitizer gel into his hands. “You’ve got to watch out for flesh-eating disease on hospital toilets. I once met a lady, had half her ass eaten off.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
A new nurse came in, took seven vials of blood from Gus and left.
Gus was exhausted and wavering in and out of consciousness. I wasn’t sure he knew either of us were there.
Forrest puttered around a little, turning the TV on and off, before saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little peckish. You want anything from the diner?”
“No,” I snapped. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you go treat yourself to a really long lunch? Followed by a spa treatment. Maybe even a vacation. Come back next week.”
“You’re not the only one who cares about Gus,” he said, sounding sincere.
If that tone of voice had come out of anyone else, I’d have believed them. But not Forrest. I shot him a dirty look.
“It’s amazing how crabby you get when your blood sugar bottoms out,” he said. “I think you’d feel a lot better if you ate something.”
“I’ll grab a candy bar from the vending machine.”
He shrugged. “Your funeral.”
My head snapped around and I glared at him so hard, I thought my eyes would bore holes through him. “Excuse me?”
He backed away, his hands in the air. “It’s a phrase… a saying. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I don’t care. I don’t like it. Considering the situation, it’s insensitive and inappropriate. Why don’t you just go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under and stay there?”
“Mara!” Gus weakly protested, waking up.
“I apologize if I offended the lady.” Forrest said to Gus. “She’s very protective of you. So… how did the toad bone ritual go? Did you get it? Can I see it?”
Gus was about to pull the pouch out of his bedside table and show Forrest, but I stopped him. “No. We couldn’t finish it. Gus got sick.”
Gus frowned.
But every time I looked at Forrest, inside my head, I could hear a tiny whispered voice saying: Don’t trust.
Over and over again.
* * *
Forrest finally left, although I knew he’d be back. While Gus slept, I sat and researched everything I could about partially collapsed lungs and any kind of illness that would affect the liver, until my eyes were stinging and swollen, and I was starting to go into hypochondriac mode.
By nightfall, my stomach was burning from all the vending machine food. But Gus looked so pitiful, hooked up to all the machines and the IV drip, with the oxyge
n cannules in his nostrils, that I just couldn’t leave him. Thankfully, the room was private and it had a couch, so I was able to catch a catnap.
When the nurses came to clear the floor, they assumed Gus was the father of my child and let me stay. The nurse on the late shift even gave me a blanket and a pillow.
Throughout the night, Gus grumbled about being woken up every couple of hours to have his vitals checked. But I was glad they did it. Every grumble meant that he was still alive.
The morning nurse took pity on me, and gave me a spare breakfast tray.
Once Gus was awake, I ran home to shower, change my clothes and give Duke Gronwy fresh food and water.
* * *
When I returned to the Medical Center, the Infectious Disease Specialist came in and told us that Gus had tested positive for active infections of both toxoplasmosis and cytomegalovirus. Between the two of them, that’s what caused his liver and lymph nodes to swell, his lungs to partially collapse, and what was fueling the fever.
“That’s insane,” I said. “What causes that?”
“CMV is a highly contagious virus, in the herpes family. Over half of the population carries it, but most are asymptomatic. About eighty percent have been exposed. You’re really only at risk when you have a compromised immune system.”
“Is it sexually transmitted?”
“It can be, but not necessarily. He may have had it for years, if he had mononucleosis or Guillain-Barre when he was younger. He may have even gotten it from his mother when he was born. In this case, the toxoplasmosis, which is a parasite, weakened his immune system, triggering an acute recurrence of the CMV and allowing it to run rampant. The good news is that Gus is HIV negative, or he’d be in a world of hurt right now.”
“Toxoplasmosis?” That one sounded familiar, but I was too tired for my brain to function properly. One thought bumped into another one, until it triggered my memory. “Isn’t that why pregnant women aren’t supposed to clean litter boxes?”
“That’s right,” the doctor nodded. “Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that is spread through raw meat and cat feces. It’s dangerous to pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems. Everything seems to be coming back to a compromised immune system, but I’m not sure what caused his immune system to become that vulnerable, to begin with.”
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) Page 20