How Do I Love Thee (15 page)

he couldn't breathe. Gasping for air, Laura Carson struggled to keep from blacking out and not to panic. It wasn't as if this hadn't happened many times before. Above her, she saw the faces of emergency room doctors and nurses. Behind them, she saw her anxious parents.

“We got her here as fast as we could,” her mother told one of the doctors. “It came on so suddenly. We didn't have any warning.”

“Yes, Mrs. Carson. We're doing all we can for Laura.”

A doctor eased an oxygen mask over Laura's face. A nurse shot a syringeful of medication
into the IV line already hooked to her arm. Immediately Laura felt her breathing slow, her heart stop its awful fluttering. Electrodes were stuck onto her heaving chest and hooked to a bedside heart monitor. The green squiggly line looked like an electronic scream. Laura knew that in a way it was a scream—a cry for help from her virus-damaged heart. She should be used to it. It had been going on for four years, this failing of her heart, this struggling, stutter-step dance it did when she least expected it. She also knew she ‘d never get used to it.

“How are we feeling, Laura?” The doctor leaned over her.

His face came into focus slowly. Why did doctors always speak in the first person plural? As if they were victims too? This doctor wasn't. He couldn't possibly know what it was like to live like a broken toy, never knowing when she'd wind down. “I'm … fine,” she managed to say, “She's not fine,” her father contradicted. “I want her heart specialist called immediately.”

“Dr. Simon's already been paged. She should be here soon.”

As if she'd heard her name, Dr. Simon breezed into the room. She was a tall, slender woman in her forties, with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a severe bun. She wore no makeup. “What's up?” she asked the ER doctor.

He rattled off a list of medical terms, which Laura ignored.
My heart's lousy
, Laura wanted to say sarcastically,
And you-all con't fix it.
The muscle, weakened by a virus when she was twelve, had turned her into an invalid, and there didn't seem to be anything medical science could do to change it for her.

“Look, Laura, I'm going to have to admit you,” Dr. Simon said, looking down at her.

“No—” Laura gasped, trying to pull off the oxygen mask.

Dr. Simon held down Laura's hand. “I know it's not what you want, but we have no choice.”

“School—”

“Can wait,” die doctor said firmly.

“I… just started back …” Tears welled in Laura's eyes.

“I know. But there's no choice. You've got pneumonia in your left lung, and that's making
your heart work harder. We all know it
can't
work harder.” Dr. Simon's voice was soft and kind, but the blow it delivered to Laura felt devastating.

“How long this time?” Laura asked, blinking back tears. Over the past year, she'd spent a total of six weeks in the hospital. Now, here at the start of the final two months of her junior year, she was going to have to drop out of classes once more. It wasn't fair.

“As long as it takes,” Dr. Simon answered.

Laura's mother took her hand. “I'll get your teachers to prepare work for you. You'll be able to keep up.”

“Keeping up isn't the problem,” Laura said. How did she explain that her long absences from school made her a social outcast? Cliques were set. Friends were bonded. Boys had already chosen girlfriends and dates to the junior-senior dance. Laura only had one true friend—Bonnie Tyler—and with this newest sentence of hospital imprisonment, she had little hope of fitting in again.

“I'm sorry, honey.”

Laura nodded, resigned. She had no arguments left. She was going to be hospitalized regardless.
Arguments and tears took breath and energy, and at the moment, she had neither.

Laura's room in the teen wing of the hospital's pediatric floor was private and overlooked the Hudson River. The trees lining the river's banks were just beginning to emerge from their winter's sleep, and their branches appeared to be trimmed with green lace. “Nice view,” Laura's father said. “I'll get an orderly to push your bed closer to the window so you can enjoy it.”

The staff had welcomed her when she'd come on the floor. Most knew her name, as she knew theirs. Not much turnover, which her father always said was a sign of employee contentment. He ran his own small computer business and employed several workers. But Laura didn't care about nurses loving their jobs—she just liked seeing familiar faces.

A nurse named Betsy set up an oxygen tent above Laura's bed. “We'll get these vapors going and you'll feel better in no time,” Betsy said.

“Not soon enough.” Laura knew the drill by heart: Oxygen tent until her lungs cleared.
Meds in her IV lines to heal her lungs and calm her heart. When she came out of the tent, more days in bed hooked to oxygen. Then, slowly, she could get up and venture down the hall in a wheelchair to the game room. Finally she could begin walking. And then one day, when Dr. Simon deemed it all right, she could go home. Until the next time. And there was always a next time.

Her father asked about moving the bed.

“I'll have to get longer tubing,” Betsy said. The oxygen hookup came out of the wall above Laura's bed. “But it shouldn't be a problem. I'll have someone come up and position the bed later.” She patted Laura's arm. “Nothing's too good for one of my favorite patients.”

Laura said, “Thank you.”

“You should get some sleep,” her father said.

“Yes, honey,” her mother concurred. “Sleep now. Let the medications do their job. We'll come back this evening.”

“Call Bonnie for me- She'll be wondering why I'm not in school.”

“I'll let her know,” Laura's mother said.

Through the plastic film of the oxygen tent,
Laura watched her parents leave, wishing she could go home with them. The oxygen made a faint hissing sound, and soon her eyelids felt heavy. She wanted to sleep and wake up when this nightmare was over. She wanted a healthy heart. She wanted to be normal. She wanted to ride her horse on their farm in upstate New York. Laura Carson wanted her life back.

Laura dreamed that she was adrift in a boat on the Hudson River. She lay stretched out on a pallet of spring flowers, her long blond hair trailing onto the floor planks like the Lady of Shalott in a poem she'd read in English class. She was a petal floating on calm water, lazy, at peace, and free of pain. From the far bank, she heard soft, sultry guitar music. Laura tried to raise her head and search for the musician but couldn't. It was as if she were tied to the pallet, unable to move. Her heart, her poor, sad heart, began to pound crazily.

She woke with a start, only to realize that her hospital bed was actually moving. She let out a cry. The bed stopped. A male face peered through the plastic film of her oxygen tent. Even through the distortion of the plastic, she
saw that he was Latino, his face strong boned, his eyes dark brown, and his hair thick and black.

“Forgive me for waking you,” he said. “I thought I could move your bed to the window while you slept. I did not mean to frighten you, Sleeping Beauty.”

“
ho are you?” Laura asked. The head of the bed was elevated because it was easier for her to breathe and rest in an upright position.

His face broke into a heart-stopping smile. “I am Ramon Ochoa—at your service. I work the four-to-midnight shift as an orderly. You would not remember me because I was but a janitor when you were last here. But I remember you—the beautiful girl with the heart like paper.”

She felt a self-conscious jolt. So she was the girl with the paper heart to him. Ramon wore green hospital scrubs. An earplug was tethered
to the pocket in the center of his chest. “I was dreaming,” she said. “I heard pretty music.”

Quickly he reached into his pocket, and the music faded. “I listen to classical guitar music while I work.”

“You don't have to turn it off.”

“Later,” he said with another smile. “I'm sorry you are sick and in the hospital again, Laura.”

He said her name with familiarity, as if they were old friends, and she found it strangely exciting. “I'm sorry too. I was hoping I wouldn't have to come back … especially so soon.”

“I don't like to see you sad. Maybe when you wake in the morning the sun will be shining on the river. That's why I moved your bed while you were sleeping, to surprise you with the sunrise. Except I woke you instead. For that, I am also sorry.”

“I don't mind. Really. Sleeping is all I have to do. Sleep and dream. I was dreaming that I was floating on the river in a boat.” She didn't know why she told him that, except that she was fully awake aid didn't want to be alone. Plus, she liked hearing him talk, the slight Spanish accent, the lyrical rhythm of his voice.

“And what happened in your dream?”

“Nothing … it was dumb.” She didn't want to admit that she'd seen herself as a dead medieval princess.

“Dreams are never dumb. They are our fears and our deepest wishes. They tell us about ourselves.”

She wondered if she was afraid. Or was she longing for peace and serenity such as she'd felt in the dream? “So you only came into the room to move my bed?” she asked.

“When this room is empty, I come and stand at the window and look down at the river. I think the water has stories to tell. And secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?”

“The secrets belong to the river.”

“Do you live near the river?”

“I live very far from it, but I have gone down and walked in the woods alongside the river many times.”

“Has it told you any stories?”

“A few.”

“Like what?”

He laughed. “You should be a lawyer. You ask so many questions.”

“What has it told you?”

Ramon leaned closer. “It has told me that if I do not return to doing my job, I will no longer be working at the hospital.”

She made a face. “That's sneaky. You just don't want to tell me. It's not like I can go down and listen to the river myself, you know.”

“That's true.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Perhaps I will fell you later.”

“When?”

“You would like me to visit you again?” He looked surprised.