Chapter 6
Anna
O
utside the bedroom window, first light tinted the inky sky with a tangerine blush. Alone in her bed, she coughed and a glimmer of awareness edged into her sleeping mind. She didn’t fully realize yet it was morning. Her back had pressed against the mattress for too long and needed a new position. She folded her pillow and rolled onto her side, curling her spine into a comma. With that turn, her left foot slipped into a place on the sheet, now cool and empty, where Jake usually slept. She withdrew her foot, nestled into the warmth of her half of the bed, and pulled the covers over her shoulder. She coughed again. Her mind began to unfold. Simple thoughts replaced sleep. Cozy. Snug. Secure. Bathroom. It’s so comfortable here.
Soon her neck felt stiff. She rolled onto her stomach. Pain. Searing pain. In her chest. She rolled back onto her side. Her groggy mind cleared even further. Her breasts ached into her armpits. Now her mind was fully free of sleep. Her breasts were tense, too full, sore as boils.
She opened her eyes to the peachy halo around the clouds that dotted the dawn outside the window. Why hadn’t she heard Eddie cry for his middle-of-the-night feeding?
As she stepped into his bedroom, she looked through the crib rails. He was asleep and still. She often crept into his room to watch him breathe, to observe her baby deep in the innocence of sleep, in that dreamy world that was his alone, a place she could never enter. She wanted to be sure he was still alive. Whenever she did this, she felt silly. Of course he was alive.
This morning, like every other morning, he was safe in his crib, breathing in and out, a peaceful rocking motion. She folded her arms under her heavy breasts to ease the pull on her chest. It was the most comforting sight imaginable—her baby quietly, gently breathing.
But as she drew closer to Eddie, she saw that his breaths were not even, were not the usual, steady to and fro. Instead, they blew out of him in jerks and stutters. With each breath, he uttered a soft grunting noise—an airy, mournful whimper. What was wrong with his face? It looked like chalk. “Eddie,” she called. “Eddie.” She pulled her baby from the crib. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t stir, but lay motionless in her arms. She jostled him, kissed him on the forehead. His skin was clammy. He still didn’t move. Why was he like this? Something was terribly wrong.
Thought fragments stumbled through her mind as she rushed him into the bathroom. He’ll be okay. He just needs a little tussling. Hot water. Jake. He’s got to be okay. Police. Cold water. 911. Of course he’ll be okay.
She turned the handle on the cold water faucet and sat on the open toilet seat, clutching him to her throbbing breasts. His head hung limp over her elbow; his arms and legs dangled against her belly. Forward and then backward, driving, driving, again and again, she rocked as if the intensity of her movements would bring color to his ashen face.
“No,” she called out loud. “No. Jake, why can’t you be home?”
Thought piled upon thought. Her heart galloped. Her breaths—deep gulps of air—came in quick jerks. Her body prepared to flee, she was ready to run. She could jump straight up; she could leap from rock to rock; she could cover a half mile in no time; she could run away. She had to get him to the emergency room.
She laid him on her bed and pulled a plaid, cotton shift from the closet. She tugged it over her head, down over her nightgown, and slid her bare feet into her clogs. Gathering Eddie in her arms, she ran into Chris’s room.
“Wake up,” she shouted. “We’re taking Eddie to the hospital.”
Chris wiggled under the covers and was then still.
“Now,” she called again. “Get up.”
He scrambled to the floor and stared at her with glassy eyes. The early-morning sunlight streamed through the window and sparkled off the patch of golden hair kinked above his ear. “I can’t go in my jammies.” His voice was thick and whiny.
“Yes, you can.” She grabbed at him.
“No.” He twisted out of her reach.
She stooped down, eye to eye with him. Her voice trembled. “Honey, Eddie’s really sick. We have to go now. Nobody will care if you’re in your jammies.” She dug her fingertips into his sleeve and dragged him down the hallway.
Her Subaru swerved around the corner into the emergency room driveway. EMTs were unloading an ambulance parked at the entrance. They pulled a stretcher from its rear door, set it on the pavement, and snapped the clasp that raised the bed to waist level. The patient was wrapped from chin to toes in a dark-colored blanket. She saw its head—a genderless face framed in gray hair and pitted with the creases of old age.
Her foot stomped on the brake. The car jerked to a stop behind the ambulance. A strange, gurgling sound rumbled from behind her. She listened. It came again—from the backseat.
“Mommy, Eddie looks funny,” Chris called.
“Funny, how?” She twisted her shoulder toward Chris and glanced backward. She winced as her seat belt dug into her aching breast.
“His eyes are rolling around.”
“Oh, God,” she gasped. She clambered out of the car. The soles of her clogs sank into an oily puddle. A man in a scrub suit stood in the hospital’s entryway. She screamed at him, “My baby’s having a seizure. Please help me.”
Inside, the damp, heavy air seemed to part in front of her as she ran after the man who carried Eddie. Smells of sour breath, disinfectant, fluorescent lights, rubbing alcohol, and old meat floated in sickening waves around her. Occasional electronic beeps punctuated the clatter of distant conversation.
A nurse—her name tag said M
ARY
—laid Eddie on the scale. She wrapped a tiny cuff around his upper arm, pumped it up, and let it deflate. She stuck a thermometer into his armpit and, holding his elbow against his side, trapped it in the folds of his skin. She placed a stethoscope against his chest, stared at the clock on the wall, and bobbed her head to the beat of his heart.
In the boxes on the ER record, the nurse wrote,
10.1 kg, 65/40, 40.8° C, 80,
and
120
.
Anna didn’t know what these numbers meant, other than readings from Eddie’s body.
“Is that okay?” she asked. “Are those numbers normal?”
“High fever,” Mary answered, her voice pulsing with urgency.
Anna’s thoughts raced in forty directions yet went nowhere as they tried to grab the moment, tried to keep her far away, tried to bring her close, tried to convince her this wasn’t happening.
Mary carried Eddie into the nearest alcove.
Anna followed with Chris in tow.
“My husband is Dr. Campbell,” she said. “He’s here at the hospital. Could someone page him?”
She stared at her baby lying on the gurney. He looked like a rag doll. His eyes were shut, his knees bent, his lips slightly parted, his face pasty. Against the long, smooth sheet, he seemed very, very small. She shook her head, thinking he must be someone else’s child. This wasn’t the laughing baby that belonged to her. But those were Eddie’s clothes. The cotton sleeper with the rabbit embroidered on the front was a gift from her cousin, Jennifer. Last Christmas, she thought. No, the Christmas before. No, Eddie wasn’t born then. It was last Christmas. She shook her head again, trying to untangle the scrambled thoughts inside.
A doctor, tongue blades and ink pens stuffed in her breast pocket and a stethoscope dangling from her neck, slipped into the alcove and introduced herself.
A harsh light glared overhead. The walls seemed to move inward. Anna felt as if she were being crushed. She stared at the middle-aged, black-haired doctor, seeing and yet not seeing her. This woman, this stranger in the white coat, had stepped boldly forward to take care of her sick baby. She would help Eddie. The plastic ID badge pinned to the doctor’s pocket read D
R
. J
UNE
E
ASTERDAY
.
“He looks dead,” Anna whispered. “Is he dead?”
The doctor slowly shook her head as she leaned over Eddie, caressing his soft spot. She cradled his head in her hands, moved it up and down as if weighing a melon. She pulled the wrapping off one of her tongue blades and tossed the rumpled paper toward the end of the gurney.
Anna watched it bounce off the sheet and fall to the linoleum. She stooped to retrieve it, but stopped midcrouch—it didn’t matter that the paper wrapper was on the floor.
Dr. Easterday edged the tongue blade between Eddie’s lips and shined her penlight into the back of his throat. She worked quickly and confidently, laying the head of her stethoscope over the left and then the right side of his tiny chest. She tucked her fingertips into each armpit and moved them along each clavicle. She bent and then straightened his elbows and knees. She rolled him over, ran her fingertips over his back, and then turned him frontward again. She prodded his belly, tapped below his kneecaps with the rim of her stethoscope, pushed a finger into the skin over his shin. Her eyes, steady and deep in their sockets, never left Eddie. She seemed to be studying every breath, every heartbeat, every inch of him.
Dr. Easterday stood up straight and turned to her. “Mrs. Campbell,” she said, the snap of authority cutting her voice, “Eddie’s a very sick baby.” She paused a moment, shifted her weight to the other foot, and then continued speaking. Her voice was like velvet, softened by a Southern accent. “I’m worried about meningitis. That’s an infection of the tissues surrounding his brain.”
Anna’s head throbbed. The light overhead seemed to dance in circles, shining, flickering, turning. Bright spots floated like glitter before her eyes, sparkles that didn’t disappear when she closed her lids. She reached for Chris’s shoulder. He buried his face in the folds of the shift that covered her nightgown and began to wail. The doctor’s voice sounded wobbly, far away—like an echo ricocheting through a long, narrow, empty space. This wasn’t real. It was a bad dream. She wasn’t standing in the ER with Eddie on the gurney. Any minute now it would all evaporate.
“. . . very serious infection,” the doctor continued. Her words filled the air, drowned Chris’s sobs. She spoke of a spinal tap, of sending specimens to the lab, of starting antibiotics.
“Okay,” Anna whispered. She didn’t understand what the doctor had just said or what she had agreed to. It didn’t matter, as long as Eddie would be all right.
She lifted Chris and straddled him on her hip. He laid his face against her shoulder, and his fingers, probing like pincers, picked at her hair. She felt an arm slide across her shoulders.
“You and your older son may wait in the lounge,” Mary said. “It will only take a few minutes and then you can come back.”
Anna stood firm as the nurse pushed against her shoulders. She couldn’t leave. Eddie couldn’t stay here alone.
“We’ll take good care of him.” Mary nodded toward the gurney. “Your older son won’t want to watch this procedure. It’ll take only a moment.”
She didn’t know what to do. Eddie needed her to stay. Chris needed her to take him to the lounge. Eddie. Chris. Which son would she pick? Why did she have to choose one and leave the other?
Guided by Mary, she carried Chris to the waiting room. A breath of chilly air brushed against her arm. She stood, shivering, beside a giant aquarium. A school of angelfish glided to one end of the tank, turned in unison, and glided back to the other end. Back and forth. Over and over. Their rhythmic movements—monotonous, hypnotic, synchronous—filled her mind.
After what seemed a very long time, she felt someone at her side. She turned. It was Jake. A white lab coat covered his wrinkled scrub shirt and pants. Scabs of dried blood dotted the paper booties over his shoes and his hair was stuffed beneath a gauzy green cap.
“What happened?” he asked.
She tried to explain. “He was limp, hardly moved. He had a seizure.” The words spilled from her in jerks. “The doctor thinks he has meningitis.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jake groaned. He wrapped his arms around her and Chris, leaned his cheek against the top of her head. He was strong. Now everything would be okay.
She set Chris on the floor.
“Daddy?” Chris leaned against Jake and pulled on the hem of his scrub shirt. “Daddy?”
Jake sank into the nearest chair. A tortured grimace, its creases carved into the shadow of beard stubble, spread over his face.
“Mommy made me come in my jammies.”
Jake patted Chris’s hair. “It’s okay, Son. It’s okay.” Then he pulled him into his lap.
Chapter 7
Rose Marie
S
team rose like a ghost from the teakettle, floated across the kitchen, and settled on the window. Rose Marie watched the children smear finger paint on the pages of yesterday’s newspaper. Sawyer plunged his palm into the bowl of red paint and slapped it on the photo of a goalie. Meghan, a smudge of blue on her cheek, dipped a fingertip into the purple paint and drew circles diagonally across the page. Amanda printed a string of green
x
’s on the want ads. In the meanwhile, a bead of condensed mist loosened its grip on the windowpane, skittered down the glass, and puddled on the sill.
This was her third mug of tea for the morning. She smiled at the orange fist prints Davey had made and said, “Good job.” When she looked sideways at his picture, she saw a row of pumpkins against the black and white and gray of the newsprint. His mother, who wore oversized jewelry and tie-dyed caftans, would especially enjoy receiving her Mother’s Day gift wrapped in this wildly colored paper.
“Where’s Chris?” Sawyer asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Probably he and his mommy are still sick.”
The clock on the stove read 9:35. Chris and Eddie hadn’t come yet and their mother hadn’t called. It was unlike Anna to be negligent. She had never failed to call before if the boys weren’t coming.
She didn’t want to charge Anna for today, especially if she was ill, but the rules were clear—no-shows had to pay. Even if Anna was still sick, their father could figure out how to get the boys to day care, couldn’t he? Or, at least, to call?
Time for the morning snack. “Anybody hungr—” she asked and, before she finished the question, Davey yelled, “Me.”
“Wash the paint off your hands.” She set the dishpan, with soapy water warmed in the teakettle, on the center of the table. “And here’re the paper towels. When your hands are dry, you may get a muffin from the sideboard.”
As the children scrambled away from the kitchen table, she called, “One. One muffin each.”
Ten o’clock. Still no word about Eddie and Chris. She dialed the Campbells’ home phone number and heard Anna speaking from the answering machine. She left a message.
After the paints were put away, after the morning snack, after she had taped the damp, handprint-filled pages of newsprint to the back door to dry, she set up the second activity of the morning. She enjoyed helping the children with their projects, marveled at their movements, their patience, their tenacity, the speed with which they learned new skills. Their brains were like little blotters, soaking up everything that hit the surface. New songs? They sang like choirboys. A French poem? Twice through and they sounded as if they were born in Paris. Now, Meghan, Amanda, Davey, and Sawyer gathered, elbow to elbow, around the kitchen table while she showed them how to string Cheerios onto pieces of twine.
“Moisten it to a point.” She drew the end of the string over her tongue. “Hold it close to the tip—otherwise it’ll flop over. Then stick it through the hole.”
They were making necklaces for Mother’s Day presents. Chris would feel terrible if he didn’t have a necklace to give to Anna. He didn’t like to be left out of anything. She dumped two handfuls of cereal into a plastic bag and laid a hank of twine on top. Next time Chris came, he could either work on the necklace or take the packet home.
The children’s legs dangled like tassels beneath the kitchen table. Beefeater wandered from chair to chair, his nose surveying the linoleum, his tongue gobbling up stray pieces of cereal as soon as they hit the floor. He was a perfect day care dog, loyal, gentle, tolerant of kids and their foibles.
“Come here, Beefeater,” she called. The points of his ears, usually turned down, now stood straight up, and he lifted his nose into the kitchen’s air. “Here, boy . . .” He padded across the floor to his mistress. “Good dog.” She held out a half-eaten muffin.
She turned back to the children. “Hey, Sawyer.” She tapped the boy’s chubby hand as it palmed another fist full of
o
’s into his mouth. “No more eating or you might not have enough Cheerios to finish the necklace. Keep stringing.”