Chapter 11
Rose Marie
T
he phone rang. It must be Anna. Finally she’d learn what had happened to the Campbell kids.
“Hi, Rose Marie. This is Jake Campbell.”
She moved the phone receiver from her left to her right—her better—ear. It was odd for the boys’ father to be calling. Anna must be really sick. “Is An—” she began.
“We have bad news about Eddie,” he said.
Her body froze but her brain galloped. Was he dead? Hurt? Lost? She gripped the phone receiver against her ear, held her breath.
“We’ve been in the emergency room since six this morning.” He made a deep, stuttery sound, halfway between a choke and a cough. “Eddie has meningitis.”
“Oh, God.” She sagged into the rocking chair. “Gosh, Dr. Campbell.” She couldn’t think of the right words. “That . . . that’s awful. I’m so sorry. How is he? Is he okay?” She didn’t know exactly what meningitis was, but it sounded bad. Dr. Campbell sounded bad.
The phone was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Well, he’s very sick—on his way up to intensive care.”
His voice was thinner, rougher than usual; it sounded as if he were speaking into a pillow. Occasionally, when he picked up the boys, he looked tired with baggy eyes, slumped shoulders, a weak smile. Sometimes he needed a haircut, when his hay-colored hair curled, cockamamie, down his neck. He must look like that now.
She scratched her ear. “How’s Anna?”
“She’s pretty upset.” His words were so quiet she could hardly hear them.
“This’s awful. Just awful. How’d little Eddie get something like that?”
“We don’t know.”
She tried to remember what she knew about meningitis. She’d read something a couple weeks ago but, at the time, paid little attention. Maybe in
Newsweek
. Probably in the
Free Press
. It was some kind of infection, as she recalled, and it was bad. She combed her fingers through her hair, trying to arrange her thoughts. Certainly worse than strep throat, or pneumonia. As bad as rabies? How about Ebola? Or AIDS?
“Dr. Campbell,” she said slowly, stumbling to find the right words. “Meningitis is . . . uh . . . meningitis isn’t catching or anything, is it? I mean . . .” She paused and dug her fingernail deep into the groove in the rocking chair’s arm where the wood had split. “I really hate to ask this but . . . will the other children get it?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Silence, heavy and awkward, hung between them. Finally he said, “I don’t think so.”
From the corner of her eye, she could see Sawyer eating the Cheerios again. She waved her hand at him, shook her head, and mouthed the words, “No. Quit. Now.”
“Rose Marie, I have a huge favor to ask. I’d like to bring Chris over in about a half hour. Could he spend the rest of the afternoon at your house?”
She twisted the phone cord around her finger two turns and then answered, “Sure.” She had planned to go to the grocery store. She’d go later. Also, she still didn’t have hot water. She’d heat more on the stove. “Absolutely,” she added. “Of course he can.”
“He’s here at the hospital with me. I have a bit of work to finish and Anna won’t leave Eddie to go home with Chris.”
“He can stay here as long as necessary,” she said. “He could even stay overnight. Whatever works best for you, Dr. Campbell.”
“Thanks a lot. We really appreciate this.” After a moment, he added, “Figure out how much we owe you for the extra time and add it to this month’s bill.”
She was relieved to hear about the payment. With Eddie so sick, it would have been crass to discuss money.
“One more thing,” he said. “Are any of Chris’s clothes at your place? He’s still in his pajamas and is pretty mad about that.”
“Oh, I think we can find something for him to wear.”
The doorbell rang. Before unlocking the latch, she peered out the window. Jake, pale, looking bewildered, dressed in rumpled hospital clothes, stood on the porch. Chris, in his pajamas, snuggled in his father’s arms.
“Come in,” she said as the door swung open. “Come right in.” She gave her voice a lighthearted, falsetto lilt. She wanted Chris to see her as a carefree, happy person.
“Thanks again, Rose Marie.”
“How’s Eddie?” She lifted Chris from Jake’s arms and sat down on the sofa. She cuddled him against her chest and slowly rocked from side to side. Chris was uncharacteristically quiet.
“Well, he’s holding his own,” Jake said. “He’s breathing with the help of a ventilator. His heart seems strong.”
“You’re just in time for lunch, Chris,” she cooed, patting his back. “We’re having hot dogs and lime Jell-O.” She looked up at Jake. “Would you like a bite to eat, Dr. Campbell? You’re probably starved. We have plenty.”
“Oh, no, but thanks. I have to get back to the hospital. I’ll try to pick him up by seven o’clock.” He bent over and kissed his son’s forehead. “Good-bye, buddy. See you later.”
Chris’s head nodded against her bosom. “Bye, Daddy,” he mumbled.
“As I said, he can stay here tonight if that’ll help.”
Jake shook his head. “I’ll take him home.”
After Jake left, she carried Chris to the rocking chair in the kitchen and cradled him on her lap. The other children were eating lunch. She rocked to familiar sounds, the scrape of spoons against plates, the soft thud of a milk glass being set on the table, the low murmur of kid talk. Chris needed cuddle time.
He squirmed off her lap and whined. “My mommy made me wear my jammies.”
“Well, that’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” she said as she twisted her mouth and narrowed her eyes, trying to give Chris a whimsical, “how odd” look. “Let’s find some regular clothes for you.”
After lunch, while the children rested on their nap pads, she brooded. The rockers of her chair rumbled against the kitchen linoleum. What had she read about meningitis? Her mind sifted through the memories. She was sure she had read about it in the newspaper. Students from Michigan State. Or was it Wayne State? Or both? Kids in Detroit? Helen Keller had it and that’s why she was deaf and blind.
“For Pete’s sake,” she said to no one, “why can I remember the Helen Keller part but not what meningitis is?”
Even when Beefeater stepped on her feet on his way across the kitchen floor to the last of the fallen Cheerios, she kept the chair in motion. The rhythm of the rocking—insistent, repetitive, monotonous—helped organize her thinking.
Sarah would know about meningitis; she kept track of things like that. She dialed her daughter’s cell phone number.
It was a relief to hear Sarah’s voice. She was always calm, logical. “Honey, I need help,” she said and explained that Eddie was in the hospital, that he had a bad infection. Quoting word for word what Jake had said, she tried to describe meningitis.
“Jeez, Mom, that’s awful. Is Eddie going to be okay?”
“Well, Dr. Campbell says he’s in intensive care. Said his heart was strong.”
“That’s good . . .”
“I asked him if the other kids could catch it and he said he didn’t think so, but I’m not so sure. I remember reading about college kids. Something about it spreading in the dorm. Or, maybe they worried it would spread in the dorm. I can’t exactly remember. I hope my other children can’t get it.”
“I don’t know anything about that. Let’s see . . .”
She pictured Sarah in thought. Her daughter’s fawn eyes would be staring upward and to the left and her broad, fleshy chin would be jutting forward.
Beefeater pawed at something trapped under the sideboard and made a high-pitched, screechy noise. A Cheerio? A fragment of dog biscuit? A mouse—Heaven forbid? She grabbed him by the collar, shoved him into the pantry, and closed the door.
“I’ll get on the Internet and see what I can find. In the meanwhile, I think you should just stay cool.”
She could barely hear her daughter’s words over Beefeater’s howling and the scritch-scratching of his paws on the pantry door. She rapped on the wall, hoping to keep him quiet. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Sure it is.” Sarah hung up the phone.
She couldn’t stop fretting about poor Anna with a terribly sick baby. Among the mothers of her current flock of children, Anna was the most careful. She had surveyed the house meticulously before letting Chris stay there, inspected the electrical outlets for safety plugs, looked under the kitchen sink for poisons, checked the integrity of the fence latch. Eddie was always spotless when he arrived at her house, sunny highlights twinkling off his wispy hair, clean fingernails, dry diaper, and sleeper smelling of Downy. How could such a hygienic baby get such a bad infection?
She heard a cough. Then another cough. Must be Chris. She started across the kitchen floor, stopped to listen, heard nothing, and then returned to her rocking chair. The kids were all still asleep.
Where was the Webster’s? She needed to learn about meningitis. Roger had used it every night to look up words as he worked the crossword puzzle in the
Free Press
. The book was old, but the meaning of that word wouldn’t have changed much.
The dictionary wasn’t in her bedside cabinet or on the shelves beside the fireplace. Finally she found it in the kitchen, wedged between the
Betty Crocker Cookbook
and a tattered, paperback copy of
Hawaii
.
Meningitis:
n. Pathol. Inflammation of the meninges, esp. of the pia mater and arachnoid, caused by a bacterial or viral infection and characterized by high fever, severe headache, and stiff neck or back muscles.
So, she was right—it was an infection—but what did the rest of that mean? When Eddie was last at her house, he had no fever and his neck and back didn’t seem stiff. How on earth would you tell if a baby had a headache?
The phone rang. It was Sarah’s friend, Barbara, the talkative pediatrician.
“What kind of meningitis does he have?”
“I don’t know.” She found the question puzzling. “What kinds are there?”
“Well, several. It’s an infection of the brain and is caused by different types of germs,” Barbara explained.
She grimaced at the words “infection of the brain.” Poor Eddie. Infection sounded like pus. Did Eddie have pus in his brain?
Barbara continued. “Most cases caused by viruses are benign and require no treatment. Those caused by bacteria are more serious. And there are several different bacteria that can cause meningitis. Some are contagious, some are not. Antibiotics are used to treat the bacterial kind.” Barbara then asked when Eddie had last come to her house, and about the kids’ vaccinations.
“Their vaccinations are fine,” she answered, almost before Barbara finished the question.
In reality, though, she wasn’t certain. The parents had filled out the health forms when the children first enrolled in her day care home, but she couldn’t remember what they had written. She didn’t want Barbara, or Sarah, to know she hadn’t paid closer attention to that. Besides, she wanted information, not inquiries.
Finally, Barbara said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lustov, but without more details, it’s impossible to know if the other children are at risk of getting what Eddie has. You need to discuss this with the pediatrician who advises your day care. He, or she, can talk to Eddie’s doctors and help figure out what to do.”
Outside the kitchen window, two blue jays fought for a foothold at the bird feeder, and four chickadees were lined up in the trees, waiting for the jays to move on. She closed her eyes and shook her head at the memory of Barbara’s comments. She’d never had a “pediatrician who advises your day care.” None of the other day care ladies that she knew had a pediatrician advisor, either. They had never needed one.
When she applied for her day care license, she had typed up a health policy, copying, exactly, the example in the pamphlet from the State Health Department. Besides providing the wording for a health policy, the booklet described what to do if a child had diarrhea, a fever, a rash, or strep throat. It also suggested rules for giving medicines at the day care, tips for serving meals, and techniques for changing, and discarding, diapers. She couldn’t remember it saying anything about meningitis.
After the children awoke from their naps, she herded them into the backyard. The breeze, as fresh as clean sheets, blew from beyond the fence and rustled the canary-colored blossoms on the forsythia branches. Overhead, clouds floated like wads of white insulation.
Amanda yelled at Sawyer to get off the tricycle. A hank of her hair blew into her open mouth. Her face was stiff with determination as she grabbed the hair and hooked it behind her ear. “Get off the trike, Sawyer, or I’ll tell Rose Marie,” she yelled again. Meghan and Davey headed for the sandbox and Chris leaped, spread eagle, against the chain link fence. The toes of his shoes jammed into the metal mesh, his fingers clutched the steel wire. He looked like a spider hanging on its web.