“Once the baby was born, he wanted me to confirm his son had fathered the baby, both because of a family medical history of cystic fibrosis that concerned him, and because he wanted to support the baby financially. That is, until he found out the baby was given away before he knew it was born.”
“Nikki said the father was dead. She didn’t mention there were any grandparents involved.”
“No, she wouldn’t, I imagine. As for the embryology, Jim and I used to work together on DNA transfer in embryos at a different hospital, but when the laws changed, we stopped. Now he does some of the embryology for my dwindling IVF fertility patients. And I give him the unwanted embryos for further study once the patients who own them sign a release. He is free to study them before destroying them. If he has continued any human cloning research, he hasn’t told me about it. As for his preposterous speculation about the Trent girl, I think he came up with that one because he destroyed the specimen for one of my patients by mistake and he couldn’t admit it. So he let himself believe I wasted it, that I got the pipettes mixed up or some such nonsense. I don’t think he meant to be malicious. He just couldn’t accept his own error.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“Listen, Kate. Can I call you Kate?”
I didn’t answer. He went on anyway.
“Kate, I’ve known Jim a long time. You’re naïve, Kate. You know nothing about him, really.”
Maybe I could slither under the couch and never come out.
“Some men will do anything to get what they want. You know what I mean? He wanted to hook up with you, so he tried to impress you. Maybe it isn’t going like he planned. Now it sounds like he wants out. Did you do something to disappoint him? I think he is pushing you away. You should move on. Don’t be clingy. Men hate that. Let him go. Clearly he wants that.”
Could it be true? No wonder Mack stiffened when I led JCAH into the room. It wasn’t the group. It must have been me. It must have been because I didn’t invite him upstairs.
I lurched toward the door, unable to stay in the room one moment longer. The humiliation erupting up out of my gut was about to gag me. I needed to get away, and fast. Or I just might puke all over the executive suite carpets.
I darted past the Nazi and made it to the ladies’ room just in time to toss my cookies into the trashcan by the door. I hoped she heard me. At least having to hear me retch would have wiped that smug look off her face.
Chapter 17
I contained my tears of shame and anger and pain and utter wretchedness until I got home. But then the floodgates opened.
While I drenched my pillow, Ollie paced back and forth by my head, wondering what was wrong. He didn’t like to see me upset. Once I sat up and looked in the mirror, I didn’t like seeing me upset either. It looked pretty awful.
I dropped my clothes into a heap on the floor, threw on a robe, pulled myself together and stumbled to the kitchen for a glass of cold water. Nothing else sounded good.
After I settled down, cleaned my face, and drank my water, I went to the mailboxes and got my mail. An envelope from Uncle Howard was in the pile, a bill he’d gotten from Anna’s lawyer. Anna had arranged for her attorney to send Howard a check for his services, but the secretary had apparently gotten her wires crossed and billed him instead of paying him.
I’d told Howard to forward it on to me and I’d get it straightened out for him since he’d been so busy lately and I was the one who’d got him to volunteer in the first place. So I got on the phone to Anna’s lawyer, hoping I’d catch someone before the office closed for the afternoon. I had to look up the number in the phonebook since my Smartphone was on rice and the business card was gone. I still hadn’t figured out that one.
Two rings and somebody answered.
I explained who I was and why I was calling, only to be transferred two times, which required me to explain myself each time.
Finally, I got someone who seemed to know something about the situation.
While the fellow looked for the account file on Joe and Anna, he left me on hold listening to old Rolling Stones hits rewritten for orchestra. It took forever for him to get back to me. I was just getting into some strings revving up on “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” when he came back on. As it turned out, he wasn’t able to do much for me either. He explained their computer had been hacked and some of their files weren’t opening. One of the corrupted files belonged to my cousin and it couldn’t be accessed. He thought it might be a while before anyone would be able to help straighten out the problem with Howard’s bill.
“You mean someone got into their private file?”
“No, ma’am,” he assured me. “The only thing they did was shut down the system. Our security is too sophisticated for just anyone to get past.”
I was glad to hear it. Joe and Anna and Nikki wanted this adoption to stay private.
The fellow was gracious enough to offer to call Howard and explain the dilemma.
I said thanks but no. I wanted to call Howard myself and let him know there would be a delay in getting the payment to him. His phone rang at least three thousand times before I hung up and took a shower. Then I tried again, but still got no answer. I flopped on the couch awhile and fell asleep. When I came to, I found Ollie curled like a hot fresh-baked cinnamon roll on top of my belly, snoring up a storm.
I tried Uncle Howard again and got a busy signal. He had one of those old, heavy phones and an actual answering machine next to it that he could turn off. I called twice more, minutes apart. Same thing. I took that to mean he was there.
Knowing I still had a few hours before my 11:00 shift, and rather than pass the time at home when it could be spent, instead, talking to Uncle Howard, I decided to pay him a visit.
The autumn evening was pleasant now that the relentless heat of the last three months was behind us, and the pulsating chorus of cicadas was thinner than it’d been all summer. The heat stored up in the bus stop bench warmed my backside, and a welcome breeze stirred the air and made it a very agreeable wait.
The bus delivered me in front of Uncle Howard’s office just after dusk. It appeared everyone else in the sagging two-story complex had long since left their offices for the evening. All the doors, thick with years of paint layers, were closed up tight and the yellowed blinds showing through the grimy windows were mostly down. I climbed the creaky wooden staircase under the glare of a bare bulb, wondering if Uncle Howard had left since my last call. I hoped I hadn’t wasted a trip over.
I was on the top warped step when the door in front of me crashed open. A rushing body burst out the door, careened into me, ricocheted off the weathered banister, and jumped the steps, grunting when he hit the ground. He dashed away into the night before I had a chance to even breathe.
So shocking was the abrupt encounter, it took several heartbeats for me to realize something was wrong. Then without thought, I ran through the doorway and found Uncle Howard. He lay face down on the throw rug. Blood pooling by his head glistened in the reflection of the goose neck lamp dangling by its cord over the edge of the desk.
I checked his carotid and found a very weak throb, but his breath only sporadically rattled through his hindered airway. I shoved away the overturned chair next to him and log-rolled him onto his back. His chest lifted and air sucked into his lungs, lifting his chest.
His eyes opened after the deep breath and by some miracle, he focused in on me.
“Katy-pie?”
“Uncle Howard,” I cried.
“I’m glad…you’re here,” he said in a weak voice.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. I’ll take care of you.” I was crying so hard my words stuck together and came out all slobbery.
“Don’t worry Katy.”
Don’t worry? How could I not worry? Blood was pouring out of his head and that’s just not supposed to happen.
“Look,” he said and smiled. His eyes shined, glassy.
“I’m here, Uncle Howard. I’m ho
lding your hand.” I tried to hold the blood in with my other hand, to make it stop coming out, but it just kept flowing between my fingers.
“The light. So bright.”
“Hang on, Uncle Howard. I’m calling for help.” I couldn’t see the phone, but I found its cord. I reeled it in, fumbled for the handset, depressed the switch hook, and somehow punched in 9-1-1.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay now. I love you, Uncle Howard. Hang on. I’m calling for help.”
The operator answered and asked what my emergency was.
“Uncle Howard…my uncle…he’s hurt, bleeding. Someone was here, he hit me. No, he ran into me. He hit Uncle Howard. On the head. I can’t stop the bleeding. His pulse is weak.”
Uncle Howard reached up into the air. The gooseneck was glaring on him. I thought he wanted to move it. My hands were too busy to do it for him.
His eyes glazed over, but the smile on his face radiated. His blood loss must have been tremendous.
“Is the victim conscious and breathing?” the operator asked.
I was about to say yes, but Howard’s eyelids relaxed and his arm dropped down at his side. I waited for him to take his next breath. And waited. And waited. It didn’t come.
“Uncle Howard,” I wailed. I dropped the receiver on the floor and tried to find his carotid pulse. No lub. No dub.
“Help! Somebody please help me,” I sobbed.
His skin was turning an awful shade of purple. So I got into position and started to compress his heart.
Press, press, press—on up to thirty. I breathed into his mouth a couple of times. Then I did the compressions again. After a minute—or maybe a lifetime—I checked his pulse. Still nothing. I kept going. I kept count while I did the CPR, so I couldn’t talk to him anymore to let him know I was with him.
I don’t know how many cycles I did before the strobing red and white lights of People-to-the-Rescue danced across the ceiling through the slanted blinds. I was too intent on what I was doing to notice.
Before I knew it, several paramedics and firemen poured through the door and were kneeling with me around Howard. I was relieved of my task once someone got a tube in Howard’s airway and began to bag him. Someone else got him hooked up to an EKG, another one worked on getting a line in him, and another got a pressure bandage on that dang leak in his head. It was a good thing there were so many fine people there to take charge—because I keeled over.
My legs were no longer under my command, and worse yet, all my bones had somehow disappeared. Some nice, nearby stranger wearing a fire helmet broke my fall. Then it was like someone unplugged the cord and the power went out.
After I awoke, choking over some smelling salts, the good fellow who caught me helped me up and escorted me outside to get some fresh air. The cool breeze in my face made a big difference. Things started to come back into focus. I realized I might have actually fainted inside. How embarrassing. What kind of nurse would do that?
After someone helped me get cleaned up, a cop wearing a navy wind-breaker with POLICE stamped in yellow across the back spent some time taking my statement. He was Lieutenant Fosdick, a gum-chewing short guy, about four inches shorter than me. But he made up for height in bulk. I think he was Irish, and he looked like one of those third- or fourth-generation cops. His thick red hair stuck up like Velcro.
I tried to describe the man who ran into me. But I couldn’t seem to put anything together. I couldn’t give Fosdick much but that he was real big. Or at least felt like it when he hit me. I hadn’t seen his eyes, and his whole face was more of a dark blob than anything else.
When Fosdick was done with me, he said, “If any other memory surfaces, please call me. Anytime.”
“Okay.” I took the business card he handed me. Then he offered to have me driven home. I said I wanted to stay with my Uncle Howard. By then, they were loading him into the ambulance, someone still pumping his heart for him.
Lieutenant Fosdick gave me a ride to the hospital. While I fretted in the ER waiting room, I called my unit and told them I wouldn’t be in for my shift and explained why. Charge Sarge said not to worry about it, to take more time if I needed it. She said to just let her know when I was ready to come back.
After that, I paced the faded, dull tile of the ER waiting room endlessly, walking back and forth on the worn path across the floor that countless other distraught loved ones had trod for decades before me. When the ER doc finally came out to find me, I knew what he had to say. It was written all over his face. My uncle hadn’t made it.
The doctor asked if I wanted to see him. I declined. I wanted to go home and go to sleep and pretend it had never happened. I couldn’t face it. Not yet.
Chapter 18
A cab took me home with a voucher the hospital gave me. I sobbed for about three hours straight, then finally dropped off into unconsciousness. My sleep was fitful and distorted by harrowing images. I awoke several times, jerked into awareness by nightmares. Ollie went to the couch to sleep. Too much commotion for his sensitive balance.
When a deep sleep finally came to me, I was so worn out I crashed until after noon. Bright sun in my eyes woke me up. I blinked awake in the light trying to figure out what day it was.
I sat up and all the horrors of the evening came flooding back into my mind. For one second it seemed too extreme to be real, then the truth of it sank in. The pain and loss welled up so strong, I had trouble breathing. The tears started again, and they turned to gut wrenching sobs. I slid down off the side of my bed, not sure where I was going. The grief was too blinding to see through. Visions of Uncle Howard’s broken head kept flashing behind my eyes inside of my brain. The feeling of his rubbery purple lips under mine, the sensation of his ribs bending under the weight of my palms as I tried to keep him alive—the impressions were choking me.
The whole experience knotted together in the center of my gut and made me miserably queasy. My sobs turned to retching, and before it could be stopped, I vomited into my wastebasket.
I hurled until nothing remained but my intestines themselves. Ollie was repulsed and took a wide berth to get around my hunched form tangled in the bedspread on the floor. He miaowed at me like I’d ruined his day, and he headed for his box.
While his scratches in the kitty litter echoed through the place and I sat there hiccupping and sniveling into a wadded, soggy tissue, the buzzer to get into my complex rang. I struggled to my feet, deposited the disgusting wastebasket in the bathroom, then just to make the obnoxious sound stop, I pressed the buzzer to unlock the front entrance.
I grabbed a sweatshirt from my living room floor and pulled it over my mess of hair, unconcerned that the shirt was inside out and backwards. My pajamas stuck out of the sleeves and neck of the sweatshirt. My shorts were huge and unflattering, but I didn’t care.
A knuckle tapped on my door. I flung it open, grabbing the doorframe as I did because vertigo left me reeling. Mack stood outside my apartment.
The dizziness grew, my blood pressure dropped, and the nausea hit me anew. I staggered back, held up a finger to signal Mack to wait, but then dashed to the bathroom and slammed the door without inviting him in.
Ten minutes later, I opened the door, teetered out, and collapsed on the couch. Mack stood by the window, drinking a can of soda with Ollie curled in his arm—telling Mack all about my horrible night, no doubt.
I think I said, “Sorry.”
“Wow.”
Wow? How do you answer that?
Mack tried to cover the awkwardness with small talk about stuff outside the window. “Your cat tried to break through the window to get to the pigeons sitting on the power lines out there. And he said I could have a Coke.”
“Nice of you to drop by. And at such a convenient time.”
“You look terrible.”
“Thanks.”
“I heard what happened last night from a friend who works in the ER. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
> “Oh, I’m fine. Can’t you tell?”
“I’m really sorry, Kate. If I can do anything—”
I threw my hands in the air and shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about it.
He reached toward the table and picked up a Styrofoam container. He opened it, revealing a pile of gooey lasagna, pungent garlic bread, and green salad. He stretched it out toward me. “At times like this you’re supposed to bring food. So I brought you some lunch.”
My hand clasped over my mouth and I hightailed it right back into the bathroom. When I came back a few minutes later, I scowled at him.
“That wasn’t nice.” I flopped back down in my spot.
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know it would do that to you.”
Frankly, I was surprised myself at the reaction, but I wasn’t going to give him that.
Now that I was apparently finished puking, I didn’t know what to say. Dr. Schroeder’s words echoed back in my head, “…isn’t going like he planned…he wants out…pushing you away…hates clinging…disappointed.” I just stared at Mack and waited to hear what he would say, if his words would support or refute Carl’s speculation.
“Can we try again?” he asked.
“I talked to Carl.”
“He told me.”
“Did he tell you what he told me? About why you said what you did?”
“He said there was a misunderstanding.”
“Was he telling the truth?”
“He told me I must have mixed up the blood samples. That explained the perfect DNA match in my testing. And he denied again that he transferred to the wrong patient. He denied the whole thing.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me Mack?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know how you men are.” A bite had crept into my voice. “What about the cloning business?”
“Carl said I had misunderstood him when I thought he hinted that I keep up the cloning. See?” he said in a sarcastic growl. “He’s in the clear and I apparently just misunderstood an awful lot of things.”
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