Scarlet didn’t even wait for the elevator, instead, she ran up four flights of steps in a matter of seconds.
“Can we get a softer bulb in this thing?” Wendy Thomas asked a nurse checking Petula’s chart while holding up Petula’s lamp. “It’s really harsh and it makes her pores look huge!”
Scarlet and her mother walked in the room, holding hands, unified against whatever news would come. Dr. Patrick entered just behind them. She began immediately in that neutral matter-of-fact tone that doctors affect whenever the news is not good.
“We’ve ruled out several things based on the results of her bloodwork, one being a small cyst on her ovary that we thought might have ruptured and caused an infection.”
“A cyst? My aunt had a cyst and it had teeth! Not just like front teeth, but molars!” Wendy Anderson said, fighting back a deposit of her stomach contents. Still, if Petula had a cyst, they both secretly wanted one too.
“But her white blood cell count is dangerously elevated and her fever is raging,” Dr. Patrick mumbled, ruling diseases out or in, as she examined Petula more closely. “Something so acute would have to have a recent cause… .”
With that, Dr. Patrick pulled the sheet down further, revealing Petula’s feet.
“You took off her new Chanel nail polish!” Wendy Anderson exclaimed. “She’s gonna be pissed. You can’t even find that shade on eBay anymore!”
Normally Scarlet would have bounced the Wendys out of the room a long time ago, but in an odd way, their shallow comments were comforting now. Scarlet stood there cringing at her sister, partially exposed, being poked like a med school cadaver, and stripped of her polish as well as her dignity.
“That’s it!” the doctor said, pointing to her nail.
“Uh-oh …” Both Wendys, Scarlet, and Kiki gulped hard in unison.
“Your daughter has contracted a staph infection” — Dr. Patrick squinted and moved in closer to one of Petula’s big toes — “from her recent pedicure.”
“She wasn’t drunk?” Scarlet asked.
“No, she was losing consciousness, and if it weren’t for you rushing her here, she might not have made it,” Dr. Patrick said, tucking her long ash blond bangs behind her ear.
“See that little cut on her toe — that’s where the infection got in,” Dr. Patrick said. “Those nail salons are not safe and certainly not sterile.”
“It’s Pearl Harbor all over again,” Wendy Thomas erupted in a bigoted shriek. “A sneak attack!”
“I told her not to go to that salon,” Wendy Anderson continued. “I heard that Kim Makler lost her big toe there and now she can’t wear any strappy heels this spring.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Mrs. K asked, completely oblivious to the Wendys’ ridiculous comments.
“The next twenty-four hours will tell us more,” Dr. Patrick responded, ordering the nurse to triple the antibiotic dose Petula was receiving.
Scarlet looked over and saw the Wendys’ “concern” as a new pic line was inserted, but she suspected they were just happy to be involved in such a dramatic situation. Being this close to Petula at possibly the hour of her demise would put them in line to inherit her position, her “it-ness.” This could make their high school careers and establish a new legacy for them as leaders, not followers. High school, after all, was a game of every girl for herself.
“Don’t go shopping for a Louis Vuitton casket cozy just yet,” Scarlet quipped. “She’s gonna be fine.”
The Wendys left the room, and then just as quickly regrouped, discussing fantasy funeral arrangements and where they would shop for their couture mourning attire.
“Everyone shows grief in their own way.” Dr. Patrick shrugged upon their exit. “I guess.”
Scarlet put her arms around her mother.
“Actually, this is a critical time. There is nothing more we can do but wait,” Dr. Patrick said, causing Mrs. K to break down into tears.
Scarlet made a promise to be there for her mother to lean on, but whom would Scarlet have to lean on? Damen was still out of touch, in every conceivable way.
Kiki definitely needed Scarlet, but Petula, she decided, needed her more. After picking up a change of clothes at home, Scarlet kissed her mom and reassured her. Before she could get out the door, her mom stopped her and reached into the hall closet.
“Please take this with you,” Kiki asked through a voice made hoarse from nonstop sobbing. “She’ll need it when she wakes up.”
Scarlet wasn’t the sentimental type, but she felt tears coming on as she gently took Petula’s Homecoming gown from her mother’s hand. It was beautifully detailed, specially made just for her. Feeling the fabric run through her fingers, Scarlet understood for the first time why Homecoming was so important to Petula. Why she had gone to such lengths to rebuild her reputation and her voting constituency in the past year. Petula not only wanted to be Homecoming queen — she needed to be. Scarlet didn’t say another word.
When she arrived at the hospital she carried it in and hung it where Petula could “see” it, just as her mom had requested. It might not have had any effect on Petula’s condition right then, but seeing it definitely made Scarlet feel better. Exhausted, she plopped down on the chair, took off her Rockabilly trench, balled it up as a pillow, and slowly fell asleep.
The sound of shuffling feet woke Scarlet suddenly. They were too heavy to belong to the nurses or aides, she thought. She opened her eyes and tried to focus.
“Where have you been?” Scarlet asked, lifting her head from the olive green pleather hospital room recliner. She stood up and walked to the familiar figure in the doorway.
“What do you mean?” Damen said quietly, hugging her tightly enough to almost make her forget her troubles. “I just got back in town and rushed right over.”
Scarlet still wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not, but if it was a dream, it was a good one.
“I’ve been trying to reach you since last night,” she rambled. “I called and called, but your cell phone said out of the area, and it kept going to voicemail …”
“Well, why didn’t you just leave a message for me?”
“And you were in such a rush to get off the phone the other night,” she went on. Before she went any further, she hit the brakes and just flat-out admitted, “I thought, maybe, you just didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Why would you think that?” Damen asked.
But the look of distress on Scarlet’s face was so pronounced now that he knew the answer to that specific question was not important.
“I didn’t call because I was in the library cramming for a test,” he explained. “And” — he paused — “I was coming home anyway.”
“Coming home?” she asked.
“For Homecoming, to surprise you,” Damen said as he hugged her again. “I know it’s not your thing, but I missed you so much.”
No kidding, Scarlet thought to herself.
“I went straight to your house and your mom told me what was going on,” Damen explained, bug-eyed. “I couldn’t believe it.”
He had every right to be stunned, everybody was, but Scarlet was trying to decipher from the tone of his voice whether Damen was expressing simple astonishment, or feeling something more, something deeper, like, oh, sympathy, regret, or … rekindled love. This was so not like her that she made a conscious effort to get out of her head and back into the conversation.
“Mom’s a wreck,” she said. “She’s in such denial she won’t even come here until the news is better.”
“Yeah,” Damen laughed nervously. “She had all Petula’s shoes out and she was polishing them when I got there.”
“Last night she was lining up all her fake eyelashes and press-on nails in size order,” Scarlet confided. “She’s lost it and I’m not far behind, to be honest.”
This offhand confession to Damen was the first time Scarlet had spoken out loud about her feelings for Petula’s plight, and the fact that the words had come out of her mouth frightened her. He held her close again, brushed the hair from her puffy eyes, and after a minute, they both walked into the hospital room. Damen pulled the blue curtain back and looked Petula over — studied her was more like it. Scarlet watched his every move for telltale signs of revived passion. She couldn’t help herself.
This was the first time he’d seen her in ages. Since the Fall Ball last year, when she’d flipped out. He’d been sort of preparing himself to see her at Homecoming. But seeing her like this was sad. If Petula was anything she was proud, and though she probably wouldn’t mind being on display, she would totally chafe at being so available.
“What happened?” Damen asked.
“The doctors say she got an infection from a pedicure,” Scarlet explained. “The one she wouldn’t have gotten if she wasn’t going on a date with Josh … the date she wouldn’t be going on if I hadn’t taken her boyfriend.”
“You’re not really blaming yourself for this, are you?” Damen asked her gently.
That was nice of him to say, but how could she not, Scarlet thought?
Petula was at death’s door and there were probably a million medical reasons why, but for Scarlet, the only relevant cause was her own selfishness. The doctors wouldn’t find it in the Merck Manual, but she was the reason.
Damen walked over, picked up Petula’s limp hand, and held it in his. It hurt Scarlet to see him standing there so concerned. He fixed the blue blanket and looked at all the machines. He then brushed Petula’s hair out of her face, gently, just as he had hers. Scarlet wanted to get up and leave the room, but she didn’t. Petula and Damen had a history together and nothing was going to change that. If he didn’t care about her, what would that say about him as a person, Scarlet thought?
“She’s gonna be okay,” Damen reassured Scarlet, his voice wavering.
“I don’t know,” Scarlet sighed.
“What are the doctors saying? Are they good doctors?” Damen asked, fighting back tears.
“There’s nothing more that can be done for her,” Scarlet said, also fighting back tears — not only for Petula, but for herself as well. “We just have to wait.”
Damen turned to Petula and started to reminisce about their past. He tried everything to bring her back, just the way you are supposed to when someone is comatose. For Scarlet, sitting there listening, his memories seemed a little too fresh. Too vivid.
“Hey, remember when you said you’d rather be dead than have your hair frizzy?” Damen asked desperately, trying to get her to regain consciousness. “Well, it’s starting to frizz.”
Scarlet’s jealousy was overcome for a minute by the sight of his genuine compassion, the thing she liked most about him.
“Wake up, Petula. I need you …” He paused. “… to wake up.”
Scarlet couldn’t stand there and witness such an intimate moment for another second. Whatever her motivation, selflessness or selfishness, didn’t matter. She needed to do something to bring Petula back. To restore things to the abnormal, dysfunctional way they had always been. If the doctors couldn’t help, she would find a way on her own. She’d only just learned CPR from the poster at Identitea, the cafe at Hawthorne where she worked, but Petula seemed beyond her reach no matter what she might try.
And then it came to her.
Charlotte.
Chapter 5
Dead Sound
In a manner of speaking
I just want to say
That I could never forget the way
You told me everything
By saying nothing
—Tuxedomoon
If you can’t say something nice, lie.
Words not only help us express emotion, they distance us from it as well. They can be a useful safety net, protecting your heart from overexposure, parceling out your true feelings in carefully crafted syllables rather than gushing sincerity. They can also be misinterpreted, doing damage by creating an impression in someone else’s mind that wasn’t intended. Sometimes, things really are better left unsaid.
Charlotte stepped down the phone bank corridor to chat with Pam, and apologized for her outburst the day before, but Pam was talking away to God knows who and waved Charlotte off. She then turned to Call Me Kim, who was gabbing away as usual. This was definitely heaven to Kim, who had a permanent red-ring phone impression on her face. Just as Charlotte started to trudge back toward her desk, she thought she heard her phone ring.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod.” Charlotte stopped and shouted out loud, frozen in place at the prospect of getting her first call.
The excitement level in the entire room suddenly jumped too, with all the interns peeking around their cubicles, eyeing one another with relief and urging Charlotte to hurry up and get it.
“Hells Bells!” Metal Mike screeched, his AC/DC fixation still detectable.
“Off the hook,” DJ yelled to supportive chuckles from Jerry and Bud.
Charlotte hadn’t felt so special since the Fall Ball, and the fact that all this was over a stupid phone call was overwhelming evidence of how much things had changed. Her hesitation delayed her just long enough for Maddy, who was closest to Charlotte’s cubicle, to snatch the receiver before the third ring sounded.
“Hello,” Maddy answered sweetly, but her expression quickly turned sullen.
Charlotte arrived a second later, anxious to take the call.
“Is it for me?” Charlotte whispered excitedly, bouncing in place on the balls of her feet.
Maddy didn’t respond and Charlotte didn’t interrupt out of respect for the caller and so as to not distract Maddy. The puckered and serious look on Maddy’s face was one Charlotte hadn’t seen from her before.
“Maddy?” Charlotte asked more impatiently.
Maddy extended her index finger stiffly and turned her back to Charlotte, the universal sign for “just a minute” or perhaps “this is more important than whatever you have to ask me.”
“That could work,” Maddy said encouragingly to whomever.
Charlotte could barely hear what she was saying, apart from the fact that Maddy was quickly wrapping up.