Stone Dreaming Woman (30 page)

Shane had been moved to the operating table. He did not even look like a living being to her. His face was waxy white, and a nurse was already shaving the side of his head.

“Don’t bother to shave his entire head,” John barked as soon as he entered the room. “Shave the operative site only. We haven’t time for more. Turn him on his left side and sandbag his head so it won’t move.” The staff jumped to obey his orders. Inside the operating theater, Doctor John Charles Weston was God. Jenny moved up toward his right hand and saw with satisfaction that all the instruments he would require were already laid out.

John positioned himself above Shane’s draped head and held out his hand. “Scalpel, please?” he asked. He was not one of those prima donnas who raged and stormed in the operating room. Instead, he became an icily polite gentleman. She passed him the instrument, not slapping it into his glove, but handing it to him firmly enough that he could grasp it without looking. “Thank you,” he murmured. So the procedure began. Her entire world narrowed to the patient. He had ceased to be Shane. Instead he was a potentially devastating brain injury that she could help alleviate.

Jenny went into an alter reality. She watched her father make a big U-shaped incision that began behind the forehead and ended over the ear, reflected the scalp, removed a section of bone and incised the dura mater, then bared the essence of humanity: the brain. After a long, tense interval, he suctioned out a huge blood clot, then replaced the bone, carefully closed the incision, and bandaged Shane’s head. He was the rare surgeon who did his own closures and his own bandages. And when Jenny went back through the scrub area and pulled the gauze off her hair, three hours had elapsed. Across the room, John Weston was also shedding gloves and his sterile gown.

“Father…” she began.

“The prognosis is grim, as I suppose you surmised. I don’t think he’ll make it.” Her heart, which had died earlier in the day, could not sink any lower.

“Yes,” she said, looking down at the green tile floor.

“But I thank you for your competent assistance. Now I expect you to resign your admission privileges and sign yourself off this case and every other case in this hospital.”

“I can’t,” she responded. “When I signed the admission forms, the administration informed me that you are practicing under my privileges. If I sign myself off this case, I sign you off, too. If you don’t want to follow up yourself, then fine. I’ll resign and we can catch the next train out.” She knew this was a bluff he would not call. He had committed himself to the care of his patient and would not abandon that commitment this side of Armageddon. She peeled off her gloves and dropped them into the scrub receptacle with its burden of soiled gowns, operative linens, and towels. One of the less resentful nurses moved up to remove her gown, but, remembering the blood on her blouse, she waved the woman away with a word of thanks. John considered her for a moment.

“Very well. Keep your privileges until this case is resolved, one way or the other. But as I said, his prognosis is extremely poor. I expect him to expire within the next forty-eight hours.”

“Until then, I will wait in his room,” she said quietly, daring him to forbid her.

“Jenny, you’ll not…”

“I will wait in his room,” she interrupted with the Weston firmness she had learned at her father’s knee. She did not voice an
or else
. It was unnecessary.

“Very well, then. For the duration of his illness. But if by some miracle he does survive, the moment I judge him able to leave the hospital, I expect you to live up to your promise.”

“I will. After all, you taught me to keep my word.”

Chapter Sixteen

Her path to Shane’s room included a side trip to the echoing, tile-floored lobby, where Paul was now waiting with Bob Shepherd. Both men rose when they saw her across the room.

“Please excuse my surgical gown,” she began, before Paul interrupted her.

“Jenny? How…?” She shook her head, and the question died.

“Doctor Weston? How is he?” Superintendent Shepherd asked at the same time.

“He’s still alive, but I won’t sugarcoat it. He had a big blood clot under the outer membrane that covers the brain. The medical term is subdural hematoma. They are extremely dangerous because they put pressure on the brain. Since the resultant swelling has nowhere to go inside the skull, eventually that pressure can cause circulation to fail. Father was able to remove the clot, and it probably won’t come back, but the prognosis is not good. Very few people survive an accident of that type.”

“Oh, God,” Paul whispered, his face going as pale as Shane’s had been.

Bob looked crushed. “Well, then, I know Shane has no family, but is there anyone I should notify?” he asked.

“In point of fact, his grandmother lives near Elk Gap. If…if the worst happens, I’ll take him…the body…there for burial and tell her myself. But I think someone should telephone Angus MacBride. I’d like to be able to tell Uncle Richard, too, but he’s away delivering a guest lecture. He’s not due back until next week. By then we’ll know one way or the other.”

“Could I see him?” Bob asked.

“It wouldn’t do any good. He’s comatose. And if he…if this is…the end, Bob, I know he would want you to remember him as he was the last time you saw him, whole and well and happy. If he does manage to pull through, you and Paul will be the first ones I allow to visit him.”

“If there’s anything at all I can do…” Paul could not continue.

“No, Paul. Not really. Just please, if you will, pray for him. It really does help, you know. Oh, by the way, did Mr. Hildebrand leave after Father told him to go home?” A tic that could have been mistaken for half a smile tugged at the corners of Paul’s mouth.

“Yes. I saw him off myself.”

She had a picture of that. “I imagine you did, and in grand style.”

“You could call it that. He wanted to argue with me. After I pressured him a bit, he let slip that he couldn’t return without a firm marriage commitment from you, which brings to mind…ah…certain doubts about his financial solvency, perhaps? The word ‘dowry’ did come up in our conversation. However, in the end I persuaded him to leave, and on the way I gently informed him that he is
persona non grata
in my territory from now on. I went so far as to tell him that if he came back I’d be watching him like a hawk, and if he so much as said ‘damn’ or spat in the street he’d be under arrest so fast he wouldn’t even see it happen.”

“Thank you for that, Paul. And now I really must go. I’m going to sit with Shane. I’ll let you know the moment there’s any change.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Bob Shepherd said. “The telephone number at the constabulary is 422 and my home is 583. Do I need to write that down for you?”

“No. I’m good at remembering numbers. I won’t forget.”

“Marie and the girls are going to be devastated. Please keep in touch with us, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry. I will.” She took her leave, her heart as inert as a chunk of granite in her chest.

Her father looked up from the far side of Shane’s bed as she entered the room. To her surprise he was gloved, gowned, and masked as he had been in surgery.

“Swap out that contaminated gown, glove up, and put on a mask if you’re coming in here,” he warned her. “It was one hell of a bad prep. I don’t want to expose him to any further risk of infection—not that it’s probably going to matter much in the long run.” Jenny nodded. A nurse helped her with a fresh gown and a mask. By John Weston’s order, a box of gloves also stood on a chair. She took out a pair and put them on, even though they were much too large on her narrow hands. She went to Shane’s side, leaned her elbows on the bed rail, and looked down at him for a long interval. He seemed to be clinging to life by the barest fingernail.
Whoever washed his face preoperatively did a hasty job,
she thought, noting the dried blood crusted around the rims of his nostrils. Silently she went to the sink, found a washcloth and dampened it with alcohol, and gently cleansed his face. Her father said nothing for a very long time.

“Just how close were you?” he asked, looking down at the unconscious man.

“Does it matter?” she responded icily.

“No. Probably not.” She let the matter drop.
Oh, Shane, I wish I could tell everyone that I compromised myself with you, but I don’t imagine Phillip would let that stand between him and the Weston money. He’d almost certainly marry me even if I were eight months gone with your child. Shane, please live. Please don’t give up. I still have one big trump card up my sleeve, and I’ll play it when the time is right. Please trust me, and fight to live. Please.
Then her unspoken plea turned into a desperate prayer.

Outside, night fell while Shane continued to lie comatose. To Jenny that was not unexpected, although she would have jumped up and shouted hallelujah if he had moved in the slightest. She did notice a bruise beginning to highlight his cheekbone, and, if anything, his heart action was growing weaker.

“I know,” her father said, watching her count Shane’s pulse. “He’s going downhill quickly now. I don’t think it’ll be too long.”

She gave him a dirty look and pointedly took the patient’s hand. “I needn’t remind you, of all people, not to talk in the presence of a patient. You were the one who stressed to me that comatose patients may be unconscious, but they’re certainly not deaf. Shane, you can live. You can make it through this. Just, please, don’t give up.” She remembered how much he had made of the scent of her hand cream. She also knew that smell is the last sense to leave and the first to return. Hoping enough of her Honey Almond Cream would escape around her glove for him to sense it, she stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m here, Shane. I’m right next to you. I won’t leave you. Just, please, try to wake up for me? Please, Shane?” He did not respond, nor did she really expect him to. Her father’s expression was a mixture of pity and disdain.

“Well, Jen, I’m going to the cafeteria for supper. Will you accompany me?”

She shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ll stay a while longer. I’m not hungry.” Ignoring the nurse, she pulled up a straight chair and sat next to the bed, merely watching her patient breathe. The rise and fall of his chest was almost imperceptible.

She only napped that night, hoping for the change that did not happen. Instead, her father’s prediction seemed to be coming true. No matter how hard she willed him to live, Shane was in a slow but steady decline. His blood pressure dropped and his heart, trying to compensate, beat faster but more weakly. The only positive sign was that his temperature seemed to be stable.

The next morning, the blood on her clothes necessitated a trip to the nearest dress shop, where she hastily purchased a black traveling outfit and wore it from the store, then left her other garments at a laundry. She was back within the hour, gowned and gloved, at Shane’s bedside.

The afternoon train delivered Angus MacBride. She had wondered all along if Angus could be the slightest bit deaf, because he habitually spoke louder than necessary. But when he paused in the doorway, his voice came out a basso profundo whisper.

“Jenny, lass…” His voice broke, and had her father not been present she would have run into his embrace.

“Who is that?” John Weston asked.

“Doctor Angus MacBride from Elk Gap. He was Shane’s mentor, and he’s been mine. Angus, may I present my father, Doctor John Weston.”

“Doctor,” John acknowledged with a nod. “If you are going to come in here, use a gown, mask, and gloves, please. The patient had a hasty preoperative prep, and I’m a little concerned about the chances of infection.”

“Understandable, Doctor Weston.” Angus parked his cane by the door and complied without protest. It surprised her. The older man could be irascible. Then he took up his cane again and stumped over to stand next to her.

“He’s about twenty hours postoperative for a subdural hematoma secondary to a fracture of the right temporal bone. At first I made it a depressed fracture, but when I got in surgically, I was fortunately wrong. However, he did have a big brain bleed, and I’m not ruling out contracoup injury to the left temporal lobe. As you can see by his chart, his condition is steadily worsening. I’m picking up a little pulmonary edema now. His heart just can’t keep up. I was just considering raising the head of the bed to ease his breathing.” John Weston’s tone was detached and coldly clinical. Angus picked up the chart and read through it, his face expressionless. He replaced the chart, then fished beneath the surgical gown and took his new stethoscope from his coat pocket. It was identical to Jenny’s. He had finally purchased one after she laughingly chided him for repeatedly borrowing hers.

“May I, Doctor Weston?” he asked.

“Be my guest,” John responded with an airy gesture. Angus looked at him coldly. He listened carefully to Shane’s lungs, swapped out the diaphragm head, and listened to his heart. Then he noticed Jenny was not carrying a stethoscope at all. He held his out to her.

“Lass? For all the times I appropriated yours.”

“Thank you very much,” she said with a shy half-smile. Defying her father, she repeated Angus’s examination and nearly wished she had not. Her father had been right, in spades. John moved to the foot of the bed and patiently cranked up the frame until Shane was raised to something less than half sitting. The unconscious man did not react. Then Angus’s faded blue eyes sought Jenny’s.

“What a sorry mess this is,” he said quietly.

“You talked to Paul?”

“Aye, I did. He explained everything.” Angus glared at her father, who affected a mild detachment that made him look very much like Richard. Once again she marveled at the resemblance that ran no more than skin deep.

Driven by exhaustion, she spent part of the night on a sofa in the nurses’ lounge. When she awoke in the early morning hours, she went back to Shane’s room to find Angus in the chair John had vacated.

“Hello, lass. Your father went to rest a bit, too.”