“Could I ask you a question?” she said.
“Sure.”
“How did they get their meningitis if it isn’t catching? Something they ate? You can’t get it from a dog, can you?”
“For Edward, it’s caused by one of the germs that live normally in people’s throats but most folks don’t get sick from it. He didn’t get it from his food nor from a dog. And not from an insect or a cat or dirt. Same with Amanda. That’s not how a person gets meningitis.”
“Doesn’t sound like bad news . . . for the other children, you know.”
“No, ma’am. It’s not bad news. Mostly, it’s uncertain news.”
“Do I need to do anything?”
“Not a thing. Not now.”
As soon as she hung up, she called Sarah and told her about the man from the health department.
“Good. I’m glad you finally called them.”
“Actually, I didn’t call them. They called me.” She switched the receiver to her left hand and swirled the mop in the sudsy water.
“So, what’s the deal?”
“Well . . .” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Eddie has a really bad kind of meningitis and they aren’t sure what kind Amanda has yet. She isn’t as sick as Eddie.”
“How about the other kids?”
“They’re fine.” Rose Marie paused a moment, swirled the mop again, and then added, “I guess I don’t know about Chris. His grandparents came from Baltimore to watch him.”
“What’s going to happen Monday?”
“What do you mean?” Suspicion crept up her back.
“Can the kids come back to your house on Monday?”
“Of course they can. The other kids are fine.”
“I hope they stay that way. Mother, I gotta go. Let me know what you learn.”
Later that evening, long after the sun had dipped behind the maple trees, Rose Marie pumped the rocking chair back and forth, slowly. With the approaching night, the kitchen grew dim but she wanted to stay inside rather than go out to the patio. She couldn’t enjoy her garden or the sense of promise that hung in the clear spring air or the chickadees that pecked at the seed in the feeder. She couldn’t enjoy anything—not even a glass of white zinfandel. When Beefeater nuzzled his nose into her lap, asking about their evening constitutional, she shoved him back to the floor and snapped, “Not tonight.”
She was waiting for the ten o’clock news, hoping to hear something about the meningitis cases and yet hoping not to hear it. She’d run the channels every half hour since the children left but found no reports about Amanda and Eddie. She considered calling Davey’s mother to ask where she had heard about it. After further thought, she figured that wasn’t a good idea.
She heard a hum. She stopped rocking, tilted her head, and listened to the night sounds. She heard it again. Louder. Then it faded away. Shortly, the hum returned. Finally she saw it, the first mosquito of the season to make it into her kitchen. It flitted against the wallpaper, bobbed and darted its way toward the ceiling, no bigger than a piece of fuzz, no heavier than a breath. She kept rocking. She didn’t care if it bit her. At least she wouldn’t get sick from it. Nobody would. The health department guy had said the kids didn’t get meningitis from bugs.
The ten o’clock news didn’t mention anything about the kids. The broadcaster talked only about a threatened strike by the city bus drivers and a fire that burned a restaurant across town. Nothing about meningitis.
Chapter 20
Jake
T
he elevator slowed to a stop and the doors parted. Inside, Jake moved to the back and a phlebotomist, her blood-drawing equipment in a carrier at her side, exited. A young man stepped in. His hair was tousled as if he’d blown in with a cyclone, his shirttails fluttered against his butt, his pants were deeply wrinkled at the knees. He pushed number three. As the doors closed, he leaned his head against the elevator’s wall.
“Well.” The young man sighed. He took a deep breath. “Well.” Then another deep breath. He scratched his head, rubbed his stubbly chin, and sighed again. “Well, I guess now I’m a dad.” A broad grin bloomed on his face.
A new dad. Jake studied him, the fatigue that clouded his eyes, the proud set of his shoulders. The fellow had just crossed that threshold of no return—parenthood. Somewhere in the obstetrics unit, a life had just begun, as happened several times a day. But for this man, it was a monumental, once-in-a-lifetime event. His newborn child, wrapped in either a blue or pink flannel sheet after its long, exhausting journey into the world, would lie sleeping in its plastic bassinette beside the mother’s bed.
At floor three, the new father stepped out of the elevator. The doors closed behind him.
For them, it had been the day the green vase broke. That was his and Anna’s code for the afternoon Chris was born, the Monday Jake became a father for the first time. Anna had been in labor for several hours, her contractions occurring every ten to fifteen minutes. The obstetrical nurse said to stay home until the pains were five to seven minutes apart.
Anna had paced. Back and forth across the living room floor, from the bay window to the dining room, over and over. With each contraction, she grabbed the back of a chair or the edge of a table, hunched over her bulging waist, and—her face twisted into a grimace—drew in a long tortured breath. Then, shortly, she began pacing again. With one particularly hard contraction, she lurched for the edge of the side table, hooked her fingers in the doily, and sent the green vase they bought in Chinatown crashing to the floor.
“Okay,” she said, panting. “That’s it. We’re going to the hospital.”
Jake, gowned, masked, and gloved, had sat on a stool in the delivery room beside Anna’s head. Her matted hair was plastered to the sheet, sweat poured past her ears and down her neck. She pushed. She groaned. She took deep, gulping breaths. She panted shallow little puffy breaths. Finally the obstetrician said, “Okay, Anna, with the next push, we’ll have a baby.”
Her eyes widened. She inhaled—long and deep. She dug her heels into the stirrups, grasped the edges of the bed, and pushed. And pushed. Her swollen face flushed until it grew red as a raspberry and still she pushed. He was afraid she would burst a blood vessel in her head. Or she would starve herself, and the baby, of oxygen. He stroked her hair. “Breathe, honey,” he murmured. A low groan rose from the bottom of her chest, like the throttled cry of a strangled animal. She took another breath and pushed again. The baby’s head slid out of her and into the gloved hands of the obstetrician.
There, against the arm of the doctor’s gown, lay his new little boy. Screaming. Gasping. Arms and legs thrashing. Wet, tawny hair. Blood-streaked skin. His son. He had watched babies being born, had delivered a few himself as a medical student. But, this was different. This wasn’t just the birth of a baby. This was the dawn of his son’s life. The start of his own new life as a father.
Later, after Chris had been bathed and Anna and the baby moved to a ward room, he held his son while Anna slept. He unwrapped the blue blanket and examined every part of him. So delicate. So perfect. Tiny, pink fingers—clinging, trusting—curled around his seemingly huge, rough pointer finger. “I’m here, buddy,” he whispered as he kissed his son’s forehead. “I’ll always be with you.”
Six months ago he had also been in the delivery room when Eddie was born. He was already a father by then, an experienced dad, so Eddie’s birth didn’t have the same, life-altering effect as Chris’s. But, still, it was the beginning of a new, precious life.
The elevator slowed as it approached floor five. Here, in this unit, was another life-altering experience. Although he was a seasoned dad, he’d never before been the dad of a desperately ill child. The elevator doors parted and he walked slowly down the hallway to the pediatric ICU.
His pager sounded. Jake answered.
“Please hold for Dr. Ellis,” said the secretary.
He had been waiting for this call. Yesterday Dr. Farley had told him Eddie would get an EEG. He didn’t need to explain why. Jake knew. It was to measure the electrical activity over Eddie’s cerebral cortex, routine for patients with severe intracranial injuries. It was to determine if Eddie was brain dead.
“Jake? I have the preliminary report on your son’s EEG.”
He held his breath, tried to read something into the tone of her voice. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest.
Before he could respond, she continued, “Good news. The tracing shows activity, albeit slow-wave activity.”
He guessed it was good news. Being almost dead was better than being securely dead. Maybe a tiny bit better.
The bold, black letters, as stark as mud against the white cardboard background, read A
UTHORIZED
P
ERSONNEL
O
NLY
. He was a physician, and, of course, authorized to enter. Yet he paused, his palm motionless on the stainless steel push-pad. Part of him wanted to fling open the door and stride confidently inside—man of the world, doctor of the hour. Another part of him shriveled with the sense that he was trespassing. This wasn’t an ordinary hospital unit, after all. Here he was a father, not a physician, and his little boy lay in one of the cribs.
The glass door automatically slid shut behind him and a cross-current laden with the usual ICU odors—ionized air, antiseptic, hand-washing soap, clean linen, the plastic from the IV bags—drifted past. At the nurses’ station, he rounded the corner where the peach-colored paint, victim of run-ins with gurneys and supply carts and portable X-ray machines, had been chipped down to the white plaster. It looked like a row of open sores.
Across the room, Anna, limp as an empty sack, slumped in her chair, her right hand folded over Eddie’s hand. Her left fist clutched a wad of Kleenex against her head. He had begged her to go home last night, to get some sleep. She had refused. Maybe she believed her hospital vigil, sustained by cat naps while folded in a chair, would bring something good, something miraculous. She didn’t usually play the martyr, but these weren’t usual times. Probably she was angry, too furious to speak. In the past, she had never screamed nor thrown things, never sworn nor made absurd threats. She had an uncanny ability to contain her ire, to modulate emotion with language that was clear and to the point. Several years ago, after he had stupidly poured boiling water into her grandmother’s crystal pitcher, she’d wept as she gathered the wet, shattered glass from the kitchen floor. Her only words—spoken like spilled acid—were, “Next time, think ahead.” The set of her jaw that afternoon, firm as the floor beneath her knees, was beautiful, inviting. He leaned toward her with a kiss of apology, but she had turned away, saying, “I don’t feel very loving right now.”
And then there was last Thanksgiving. She had climbed on the kitchen counter to retrieve the turkey platter from the top shelf of the cupboard. He had pulled the bird out of the oven and asked her to fetch the carving knife from the utensils drawer.
Her eyes were daggers, her words gunshot. “You’re demanding that I get down from here and fetch you the knife? Right?”
“I asked, nicely.”
“Can’t you see that I’m up on the counter, unable to reach the damn knife right now?”
“You can get the knife after you’re down,” he said. A part of him felt vindictive and defensive, another part conciliatory.
“This is our home, not the operating room,” she said in a voice that would have frozen the water in hell. “I am your wife, not the scrub nurse.”
But, always, the rifts between them were soon over. He would tell a silly joke or pat her on the fanny or speak to her in sad sack tones through Chris or Bullet—“Tell your mommy I really love her”—and she would sigh, soften her scowl, and laugh in her songbird, I-just-can’t-stay-mad-at-you-very-long way.
But nothing as serious as Eddie’s illness had happened to them before.
He leaned against the counter at the nursing station and watched her, crumpled and haggard, from afar. This form in the chair was not the person he had married. The old Anna had confidence and self-assurance built into her bones. Usually her maple syrup–colored hair swung in a smooth, graceful wave with every turn of her head. Now it hung behind her ears in greasy clumps. When she walked, her clothes used to move over her shoulders and sweep across her backside like flowing water. Now her shirt puckered across her shoulders in sweaty creases.
“Good evening, Dr. Campbell.” The ward clerk smiled at him.
He nodded, continued to watch Anna. He had always been proud to be at her side. Male passersby in hallways and on sidewalks, strangers he had secretly hoped to outdo even though their paths would never cross again, seemed to lock their eyes on her, their gazes drawn out well beyond a mere glance.
She straightened up, patted Eddie on the chest, and slumped back into her chair again.
He thought of the way water dripped off the tips of her hair when, surrounded by a floral-scented cloud, she stepped from the shower; the way she rubbed lotion in gooey circles until it disappeared into her cheeks; the way she leaned toward the mirror, dabbing mascara on her lashes.
Apparently, now she didn’t care. Two days ago he had brought clean underwear, slacks, and that shirt, now limp and wrinkled. He assumed she had given herself a sponge bath in the visitors’ restroom before she put on the clean underwear, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe this was yet another way of punishing herself. Or maybe she was letting herself become raggedy to match how she felt.
He walked to Eddie’s crib and placed his hand on her shoulder. She shuddered at his touch.
“You scared me.” Her voice was thick, groggy.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were asleep.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” Her empty eyes, now open, stared at the wall.
“Anna,” he said, his arms motionless at his sides, “why can’t you just let yourself rest for a while? Please come home for the night.”
“Quit badgering me.”
“Eddie needs you to rest.”
“Quit it, Jake.”
The photo taped to the metal headboard looked nothing like the baby in the hospital crib. Somehow, back then, the photographer’s camera had created an exact replica of Eddie, his animated hands, his buoyant grin, his glowworm face. Even in the two dimensions of the picture, his arms and legs, wrapped in the blue outfit Anna’s parents had sent, seemed to spring out of the photographic paper and into the third dimension, fueled by the total body excitement that only a baby can muster. His thin, pineapple-colored hair was parted and combed to one side, a few stray strands falling toward his eyebrows. His fingers clutched an orange and black plastic ladybug that had originally been Bullet’s toy. Chris had squeaked it under Eddie’s nose the day of the photo and, after Eddie finally managed to grab it, he wouldn’t let go.
This was the photo Anna carried in her purse. She undoubtedly wanted it on his bed to show everyone in the ICU that her baby was really a vibrant little boy, that the baby in the hospital wasn’t the true Eddie.
The child in the crib was still as a stone, its face no longer laughing, its cheeks no longer dimpled. The endotracheal tube pulled at one corner of Eddie’s little mouth, twisting his lips into a sneer, and a gastric tube snaked out his right nostril. The flannel blanket that covered his chest rose and fell to the rhythm of the ventilator. Jake had heard that sound maybe a thousand times during his medical career without really listening. Now, he heard it in a new way—the delicate wheeze, the subtle click of mechanical breathing, the sounds of keeping his son alive.
Before, he had swept in and out of the ICU bays without noticing what was there. Now all the hospital things loomed large, as vivid and contorted as Wonderland must have been to Alice. The stethoscope dangling from an IV pole, the way the blue-tinged walls reflected off Eddie’s sallow skin, the lack of privacy and dignity, the urine bag half full of lemon yellow pee and tied to the crib rail, the metallic smell of antibiotics—all of it odious. He reached over the rail and touched his son’s head. His fingertips stuck in the globs of electrical jelly glued to Eddie’s hair. The nurses hadn’t washed it off yet after his EEG.
When would this nightmare end? Ever? Would any day be normal again? Would Anna ever smile? Would Chris have a brother who would climb trees, shoot marbles, race bikes down hills with the wind whistling past his ears?
“Jake,” Anna whispered.
“Yes?”
“Stoop closer. I have something to tell you.”