My father looked at me. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess. How about you? You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, son. You lead. I’ll follow.”
We walked across the lobby to a bank of elevators along the opposite wall, our footsteps reverberating on the granite floor. The lobby was cool and quiet and devoid of any sign of life except for a yellow plastic “Danger. Slippery When Wet” sign in the middle of the room. No one at the information desk. No one on either side of the counter in the coffee shop. No one sitting on any of the sofas. The lobby was empty. At this level, the hospital was still asleep.
Two of the eight elevators stood with their doors open. We entered the closest one, punched the button for the ninth floor, and the doors closed silently. The time was ten minutes after eight.
A moment later my father and I stepped out onto Peg’s floor. We had walked only a short distance down the hall when a nurse, hearing our footsteps, peered around the corner of the nurses’ station to see who the intruders were. When she saw my father and me, she immediately came toward us and intercepted us before we reached Peg’s room. From where we stood, I could see that Peg’s door was closed.
“Mr. Herbert?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you’re here. Dr. Werner is expecting you. He’s with your wife now, but he should be able to see you shortly.”
“May I go in?” I asked as I looked down the hall towards Peg’s room, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
“I think it’d be better if you waited here,” she replied. “Can I get either of you something to drink? Coffee? Juice?”
I ignored her offer. “I’d really like to see my wife. I’ll behave. I promise.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Mr. Herbert,” she said.
She looked at my father to give him the opportunity to agree with her, but he didn’t respond, and his expression gave no indication of what he was thinking.
“Please,” I repeated, surprised that I was almost whispering. “I won’t get in the way, and I won’t make a scene. I promise. I just want to see my wife.”
She sighed, started to say no again, and then seemed to think better of it. Several seconds passed. Finally she gave me a tight smile and a barely perceptible nod and reluctantly turned towards Peg’s room, indicating that I should follow her.
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes, Pop,” I said, turning away from the nurse. “Okay? There’s a bench down by the nurses’ station,” I continued. “Why don’t you sit there until I come out?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” he agreed. But he didn’t move. Instead, he remained where he was, looking at me.
“I’ll be all right,” I told him. “Really. You just wait for me on the bench.”
Reassured, he reached out, softly patted my arm and started to walk down the corridor. I turned back to the nurse, let her know I was ready, and fell into step behind her as we walked to Peg’s room.
The nurse opened Peg’s door without knocking, and one of the people inside looked up and started to say something. She put a finger to her lips, signaling silence, shook her head dismissively, and entered the room. I followed her and stepped into chaos.
Peg was lying on her back, no pillow under her head, naked, her legs apart. Her arms were at her sides, palms up. An intravenous line ran into each arm and a third ran into the right side of the base of her neck. Her shoulders and chest were smeared with blood, and she had numerous large purple bruises on her arms, legs and stomach. A catheter tube ran from between her legs to a urine bag that hung off the base of the bed at her feet. She was staring blankly at a spot on the ceiling, blinking only occasionally and then slowly, almost patiently, as if she were no longer involved in what was going on around her.
Eight people were in the room, not including Peg or me or the nurse who had met us, all of them clad in white. Dr. Werner was on the far side of the bed, preparing to inject something into the intravenous line in Peg’s neck. He was standing just behind a man on the telephone giving someone numbers describing levels of potassium, calcium, oxygen, carbon dioxide and the like. An orderly was trying to lean past Dr. Werner to draw blood from Peg’s arm, while a nurse standing on my side of the bed was taking Peg’s blood pressure and calling out the results to everyone in the room. A nurse at the foot of the bed was in the process of hanging another IV bag onto a second stand at the bed’s corner post. In the far left corner of the room, one technician was adjusting knobs and pushing buttons on a large instrument on a cart, while a second technician uncoiled its wires and cables. Still another nurse was adjusting Peg’s oxygen.
Litter was everywhere—rubber gloves, bandage wrappers, bloody gauze pads, pieces of adhesive tape, paper towels, needle covers, IV packaging, a broken syringe, cotton swabs—all over the floor, the night table, even the windowsill.
I stood just inside the door, taking it all in, trying not to panic.
This is unbelievable
, I thought as I surveyed the room and the people.
All these people. All this equipment. What the hell’s going on?
Several seconds passed, and then came understanding.
We’re in trouble. She’s dying.
Dr. Werner looked up and saw me. “Mr. Herbert, you shouldn’t be here,” he said with obvious annoyance. “Please wait outside.”
I shook my head no.
“Mr. Herbert, please. There’s nothing you can do here except get in someone’s way.”
The tone of his voice broke through my shock. “I won’t get in the way,” I said as convincingly as I could. “I’ll stay out of the way. Really.”
He started to respond, but before he could, Peg stopped staring at the ceiling and turned her head towards me. “Hi, hon,” she said softly.
For an instant, all activity in the room stopped.
“Well, well,” Dr. Werner exclaimed. “Good to have you back.”
“Hi, sweetheart,” I replied, looking from her to Dr. Werner, then back to her. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay,” she whispered, “but my feet are cold.”
“Want me to rub them for you?” I asked.
“Mmmmm, yes,” Peg answered groggily.
Dr. Werner looked like he was about to say something to me, but instead, he turned away and directed his attention again to the IV line in Peg’s neck.
The decision had been made. By Peg, not him. I was allowed to stay.
I took the chair that had been pushed into the corner of the room, positioned myself at the base of Peg’s bed where she could see me, and began to rub her feet. I tried to ignore the catheter tube running past her instep and focused on rubbing first one foot, then the other, blocking out everything else happening in the room around us.
Almost immediately, Peg went back to staring at her spot on the ceiling while the doctors and nurses and technicians continued to work on her. I didn’t talk to her because I was concerned that I would interfere with communications between the rest of the people in the room, so rubbing her feet was my only way of letting her know I was still there. I didn’t look at her face because her stare was frightening, and I was unnerved by the blood on her shoulders and chest, her nakedness in front of all these strangers, and by all the paraphernalia to which she was now connected. Instead I kept my eyes down; and when I needed to change focus from her feet to something else, I looked at the clock on the wall and watched the second hand glide silently around its face.
The minutes passed, and gradually the level of activity declined as Peg’s condition stabilized. The man on the telephone hung up and started to fill out a form on his clipboard. The two technicians in the far corner of the room turned off the instrument on the cart, recoiled the wires and cables, and wheeled the cart past me and out of the room. The orderly said something to Dr. Werner, and then he left too, followed by two of the three nurses. Only the nurse who had been taking Peg’s blood pressure remained. She walked over to the far side of the bed where Dr. Werner and the man who had been on the telephone were still standing and adjusted one of the IVs hanging from a pole attached to the headboard. She wiped off most of the blood on Peg’s shoulders and chest and then pulled a sheet over her. While she was lifting up the side rails of the bed, Dr. Werner came over to where I was sitting and indicated with a nod of his head that he wanted to see me outside of Peg’s hearing.
I stood up and followed him out of the room and across the hall, closing the door behind me. As I waited for him to speak, he massaged his temples with his eyes closed. “Peggy went into toxic shock sometime early this morning,” he began finally. His voice was low, and he sounded exhausted.
“Why?” I asked. “She seemed okay last night after her fever broke.”
“Well, she was,” he explained. “And she wasn’t. As I’ve told you, we’ve destroyed Peggy’s cancerous bone marrow, but we’ve also destroyed her white blood cells and therefore her ability to fight infection. When her temperature started to climb yesterday morning, that meant some sort of infection was setting in. Some sort of infection she couldn’t fight. Dr. Porter ordered intravenous antibiotics, and by early last night, according to her chart, her temperature had returned to almost normal. Unfortunately, whatever bacteria started the fever stayed in her system after being killed by the antibiotics. Now, normally Peggy’s white blood cells would have destroyed these dead bacteria. Would have rendered them harmless and gotten them out of her system. But Peggy doesn’t have any white blood cells. So the dead bacteria stayed in her body and then broke down, releasing their toxins into her blood.
“As a result, sometime early this morning, she went into what we call toxic shock. Her blood pressure plummeted, and she began to hemorrhage subcutaneously. Under the skin. That’s the reason for the bruises all over her body. At six forty-five this morning, one of the nurses went into her room to take her blood pressure, could barely get a pulse, saw that she was bleeding subcutaneously and assumed, rightly so, that she was in severe shock. She called the duty nurse, the duty nurse called me, and I called you.”
Dr. Werner ended his dissertation like he always did, in a way that signaled he had, in his opinion, addressed all issues and answered all questions and that there was nothing left to be said.
“When did Peg start to go into shock?” I asked.
“As I said, one of the nurses went into her room at six forty-five and found her in shock.”
“Great,” I said, suddenly impatient with his attitude and feeling anger rise. “That’s when one of the nurses found Peg in shock. That doesn’t tell me when she went into shock. That’s what I’m asking. When did she go into shock? At six forty-five this morning?” I started to wave my arms in exasperation. “Or at ten-thirty last night? In other words, how many times during the night did someone check on Peg? Or was the six forty-five visit the first time anyone went into her room all night? That’s what I’m asking, doctor.”
More questions flooded into my mind as I tried to catch my breath.
“And what about the private nurse we arranged for? The one who’s supposed to make up for the lack of staff over the weekend? What about her? Where was she? Why didn’t she realize Peg was going into shock?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Werner responded quietly.
“Don’t know what, doctor? When Peg went into shock, or whether anyone checked on her until this morning?” I could feel tears welling up.
“Mr. Herbert,” Dr. Werner replied with a sigh, “I understand that you’re upset and that you have questions you’d like answers to. I understand that. But right now the most important thing is Peggy and keeping her stabilized. So you’re going to have to excuse me. We’re getting ready to move her down to the intensive care unit on the fifth floor, and I want to be with her while we do that.”
“One more question. Is she going to be all right? Will she live?”
“I think she’ll be fine,” Dr. Werner answered. “She gave us a bit of a scare, but I think she’ll be fine.” He patted my arm reassuringly. “We’ll talk more later. As soon as we get Peggy settled in the ICU. Okay?”
Before I could answer, the door to Peg’s room opened, and the foot of her bed appeared. Dr. Werner turned away from me and walked across the corridor to help the nurse negotiate the bed through the door. Our conference was over.
As Peg’s bed came into view, I could see that it had been freshly made. The top sheet, crisp and wrinkle-free, was stretched taut over her body, leaving only her head and bare shoulders visible. Her hair was still flat and wet with perspiration, but her head now rested on a clean white pillow. The IV bottles swung from side to side over her head, the result of the turn into the corridor.
Dr. Werner moved to the head of the bed, put a hand on Peg’s arm and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. “We’re moving you to another part of the hospital, Peggy,” he said quietly, gently, “where we can keep a closer eye on you for the next few days.” He waited for a moment. “Your husband’s right here. Once we’ve got you settled, I’ll bring him in to see you. Would you like that?”
Peg opened her eyes at these last words and turned her head first to the right and then, seeing only the nurse and Dr. Werner, to the left, where I was standing at the side of the bed.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi again, sweetheart. I’ll see you in a little while. Okay?”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she answered tiredly, closing her eyes again as she spoke.
“You should be able to see her in about thirty minutes,” said Dr. Werner after a quick glance at his watch. “Come down, and wait for me in the waiting room. The ICU’s on the fifth floor. Just follow the signs when you get out of the elevator.”
“I’ll see you there,” I replied.
The nurse began to push the bed down the hall, and I fell into step next to Peg, my hand on her shoulder.
“I love you,” I said softly.
“I love you too,” Peg whispered, her eyes still closed.
I walked next to her for another seven or eight steps, and then I stopped and watched her bed move down the hallway towards the elevators. I watched Dr. Werner punch the elevator call button, and I watched him and the nurse stand there in silence, their faces raised as they tracked the progress of the illuminated floor lights over each set of elevator doors. I heard the ding signaling an elevator’s arrival, and I watched them maneuver Peg’s bed in the direction of the opening doors. And then the doors closed, and they were gone.