Blue Stars (24 page)

“Yeah, okay,” Lacey had said, cutting off the standard cautions. She knew they didn’t want to raise patients’ hopes—and especially not the families’ hopes. But she couldn’t help it. If Eddie could just see a little … if he’d only get a tiny bit of vision, enough to walk around or avoid big obstacles or handle stairs …

Then what? Lacey couldn’t shake this secret inner wish. Did she think she’d get a pass on her sins, if Eddie could see? Would that make up for how wronged he’d been? It was stupid, but that didn’t matter, of course.
If only, if only,
she found herself thinking, whenever she caught sight of the pink soap dish.

*   *   *

There was no such thing as time in the SICU. Work continued around the clock, and there were few windows and no fresh air. Nor was there any change in lighting—fluorescent tubes ran the length of each ceiling, perpetually on, surgical spotlights rolled from room to room, and even the automatic glare of the bathroom fixtures whirred to life each time the door was opened, day or night. The only sign Ellen and Lacey had that it was 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. was the unfamiliar faces of the nurses and staff on shift. Every few hours they ate some version of the same foods—vending machine granola bars, instant cups of soup, endless coffee—and the wired bodily exhaustion was constant, not noticeably different now from the middle of the day.

Even the arrival of a young aide to bathe and change Michael in the predawn, the one who kindly offered his hand to help Ellen struggle up, stiff and slow, from the chair at his side—even that seemed right on time, appropriate in this never-ending loop of awakeness.

In this world only Michael was asleep. But not for much longer. She’d been told he would be brought out of the coma soon—6:00 or 7:00 a.m.—and kept on observation in SICU for several hours, before being moved, if all went well, to one of the wards. So this was it, Ellen thought. She had to leave the room, and she did, refusing to allow herself to look back, although dread—
What if he…? What if this is the last…?—
sloshed through each unsteady step she took down the hallway.

The waiting room, painfully bright with flowery vinyl-covered furniture, had magazines and a coffee machine. Ellen wanted neither. She sat, hands empty, and only then noticed her in the room’s opposite corner—the woman who’d told her to keep Michael in SICU, the woman with the boots (kicked off now, her bare feet propped up on a coffee table). She was texting, Ellen noticed, and when she glanced up Ellen called across the room, “Are you allowed to do that?”

“What?”

“All the signs out in the hall—no cell phones on this floor.”

“So?” Lacey kept scrolling her messages—Anne, Bailey, a couple work friends, Felicia, several other FRG women. She only ever wrote to Otis but read them all. Thank God Lolo barely knew how to use her cell phone.

“So maybe it causes problems with the machines. Interferes with the signal, like on an airplane.”

At this, Lacey looked up and studied the woman. Back straight, short simple hairstyle, quiet but with a definite no-bullshit aura.
Teacher for sure,
she thought.
Must be her son in there.
“It doesn’t work like that. The only reason they have those signs is so we’re not all zoned out by talking on the phone, clogging up the hallways and getting in the way. Ordering pizza.”

“Oh.”

“That was a joke. The pizza.”

“Yes, I know.”

Lacey went back to texting and Ellen pulled out her own phone and turned it on. Listening to all her new messages—Serena, Wes, Paul, Serena again—took some time, so she sneaked looks at the woman across the room. Slumped down on her couch, chin on chest, blond hair pulled up in a messy bun revealing darker roots underneath. Every few minutes she took a sip from a giant soda cup, or chewed its straw. Her face, though haggard and not quite clean, was intelligent …
Must be her eyes,
Ellen thought. They were a rich aquamarine. Stunning, actually.

But the last message drew Ellen’s immediate attention. Jane, pissed off. “I know you said to wait, but that’s not going to happen. That’s ridiculous, Mom. I need to see him. I gotta talk to him, as soon as he’s awake. Wes says … whatever. So I got a flight—” Ellen raised her hand and dropped it into her lap. Arriving at National at the end of the week, late at night apparently. No mention of where she’d be staying or who would be picking her up. Ellen herself, obviously. She hung up and thrust the phone back into her bag with a little more force than needed, causing Lacey to look over.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes. No, not really.”

“That’s the truth.”

“It’s just— My daughter’s coming. In a few days. Without asking, without even checking if it’s the right time for him to have people here … She has no idea what it’s like here. I told them, just wait until he’s more stable, when we know if … You know.”

Lacey nodded. She knew.

“This is just like her. Swoop in, no concern for what other people need.”
No concern for
me, Ellen thought. She should stop talking but once she’d started it just felt so good to let it out. “Seeing him like this … why? What does she think it will accomplish? Then I’ll be taking care of her, and I really don’t have the energy. Not to mention, she probably shouldn’t be traveling all around anyway.”

“Is she at school or something?”

Ellen let out a big sigh and shook her head. “Do you have kids?” she asked, trying to regain polite conventions.

“A twelve-year-old. My son, Otis. It’s not his son.” Lacey tilted her head back in the direction of the men’s room.
Why did I say that?
“We’ve only been married for a few years. But he was always a career army guy, so—‘what did you expect,’ right? Happens on my watch.”

“No one expects this.”

“I expected worse. The other thing. I didn’t think too much about this happening, about how it would go.”

“Yes,” Ellen exclaimed. “Me too!” She leaned forward. “When I first heard, I thought … I had this feeling that it was my fault, that I’d caused it.”

“How could you have caused it?” Lacey’s heart thumped. She’d felt, of course, the exact same thing.

“I realized that I’d spent so much time being afraid that he’d get—you know—that I didn’t worry enough about this. About just getting injured. ‘Just.’” At this, both grunted. “Magical thinking, I think it’s called.”

“What’s so freaking magical about it? If it was magic, we’d hardly be
here.
”

“Well, I meant—never mind.”

“I know what you’re saying. It’s like you forgot to picture all this”—Lacey swirled a hand at the flowered plastic chairs, the hallway, SICU, all of Walter Reed itself—“and so it happened. And you’re here.”

Ellen sat back. Yes. That was it exactly. The experience of being understood, to have someone speak aloud the deep inchoate belief so troubling that she hadn’t found words for it herself, rushed through her like a warm, salty ocean. Overcome by relief, she felt the sudden shakiness of having carried this burden so long.

The two women smiled at each other.

“I’m Lacey.”

“Ellen.”

“How did it happen to him. IED?”

Ellen nodded. Yes, she needed to focus. “A grenade, they told me. Michael was on a patrol, in Anbar somewhere, I don’t know exactly—” Lacey leaned forward. “He’d been outside a building, with his partner. And then—someone threw it into the road where they stood.”

“Ah, shit. And the other guy…?”

“He wasn’t hurt badly. So he was able to get Michael to safety, before he—” Before he could bleed out. Ellen heard herself speak the facts, but it felt as if they were someone else’s words. “What about yours?” She made herself ask, because this must be what one did.

“Still don’t know much. His Humvee was in some kind of explosion.” It made Lacey jittery, how little they were telling her. She cut off Ellen’s polite sympathy. “What time did they tell you they’d bring him up? Morning sometime?”

“Yes. I tried to get her to be more specific, but it was that head nurse at the desk, Ms. Jameson, and—”

“God, what a cunt.”

Ellen laughed. “Sometimes, yes. Did you hear the way she yelled at that poor woman who pressed the wrong call button? The one whose husband, both his hands were—”

“
Yeah,
I heard her.” Lacey thunked down her soda cup. “She told me I was going through too many gowns and if I wanted more spit cups to
ask
for them, not help myself from the cart. As if I’m not saving them time and effort. I’ve worked with bitches like that. Ones with the stick so far up their…”

“I know,” Ellen said. She was shivering with exhaustion.

“Like the details outweigh the big picture.” Now Lacey was striding back and forth. “Like she wins if she goes home at night having policed every tiny breach of procedure. Goes home solo to her sad cats in her sad one-bedroom—”

“Well—”

“Eats a low-cal dinner, and then gives herself an enema. For fun. What’s wrong?”

Ellen had slipped sideways on the vinyl love seat, and was trying to find a way to rest her head on her arm that wasn’t so painful. “I’m so— I can’t sleep but I just can’t be … All these lights, and it’s so cold…”

Lacey came over and sat in the adjoining couch. “Where are you staying? Mologne?”

“No—no, at the Marriott.”

“What?”

“The one in Silver Spring.”

“You’ve been there the whole time?” How rich was she?

Ellen sighed. “I’ll have to figure something else out. With Jane coming, for who knows how long … and also it’s just too much, all the highway intersections. I hate that drive, especially at night.”

“You should try the Mologne House. Better commute. Especially once they move him to Prosthetics.” Lacey stopped herself from saying
and it’s real nice.
Who knew what “nice” meant to someone with Marriott tastes?

“Oh, but I…”
But I won’t be here
that
long
, is what Ellen almost said, confused. But she’d have to be here, somehow—wouldn’t she? Who else? She raised her head an inch—it did feel better, lying down. “Is that where you are, the Mologne House?”

“For now,” Lacey said darkly. The truth was, she couldn’t afford it. Yes, it was covered, but being reimbursed was not the same as taken care of. She already owed one week back, and even if she moved to a smaller room now that Lolo and Otis went home—which, frankly, she didn’t have the energy for—there was no way. The social worker had mentioned something ominous about Building 18, a lower-cost option farther back in the hospital campus. Lacey knew nothing more except she was certainly headed for a downgrade.

Ellen pushed herself back upright, head pounding. She felt nauseated.

“You don’t look good. You should take a nap.”

“I can’t! What if they come and—”

“So, set an alarm. You’ve got your phone.” Lacey had been considering the same thing for herself, in fact.

But Ellen looked so out of it, greenish around the mouth and silvery hair smooshed up on one side, that Lacey didn’t push it. “All right. We’ll take shifts. You go first, and I’ll wake you up in thirty, forty-five max.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Voice wobbly. “I can’t—”

“Ellen. I won’t let them move him. I’ll get you up, if they come.”

The woman’s blue eyes were steady, determined. Ellen lay down again, grateful. She could trust a person with eyes like that. A soft poof of fabric fell down over her head; Lacey’s jacket.

“For a pillow. Or use it to block the light. I’ve got a sweatshirt back in the room,” Lacey said.

“Thank you. Just for a few minutes.” The jacket’s mingled scents: perfume, tobacco, and a faint, not-unpleasant body odor. Ellen let her eyes swoon closed. “Your turn next,” she murmured, as she heard the door open.

“My turn next,” Lacey agreed. Back down the hallway that led to Eddie, that led to whatever might come next.

16

The process of coming up was terrifying for both women.

As the hold of the medicine dropped away from Michael, he began to snort and huff like an animal, eyes wild beneath his closed lids.
Talk to him,
Ellen was commanded, and so she did—her own strung-out, blurted sentences sounding inane in those tense moments, with the yellow curtains pressing in. But obviously what she said meant little, so she went on and on, describing the hospital and the windy autumn day outside (oh, Ellen—the weather?) and all the e-mails she was receiving, every day, from his friends, and all the calls from Wes and Jane, and how he was going to be fine, just fine, and she was here with him—it was Ellen, did he know that?—and yes, it would feel scary but it was okay, he was okay, and—

Then Michael roared up and knocked a monitor over. Aides jumped in quickly, shoving Ellen aside. She watched him thrash, she shouted, she almost went to her knees when a thin spurt of blood whipped across the room—he had ripped the line out of a shoulder—and she wept, creeping forward and then cringing back. Still, when she could she kept talking, saying anything and everything, in hopes that her voice might find its way into his wild bucking. The doctor adjusted the drip, the aides held him down, and finally Michael opened his eyes.

Ellen made herself come into his view,
it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here.
He hissed and babbled, nothing intelligible, and he stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. Without a shred of recognition. And then he bared his teeth and howled, a scream that made her cry out.

“It’s not working! Put him back under,” she begged.

“It’ll take a little while,” the doctor grunted while he and the aides struggled to restrain Michael. He pounded his legs against the bed, his wrapped-up stump. “It’s all right.”

It was anything but all right. But after several minutes, they gave him some of another kind of sedative and his dumb fury died away.

It was a kind of progress, they explained to Ellen later. His vitals were functioning, and the dementia would lessen the more he became used to being awake. It could take some time, she was warned. They’d try again, and again, and soon he’d adjust.

That night back in the hotel Ellen was so wrung out she climbed into bed in her clothes. Unable to sleep, she made herself write down a few important pieces of information in the notebook that she’d begun a few days earlier, to keep track of the constant medicines and procedures. “Disinhibited” is what the doctor had called Michael’s thrashing. “Emotionally labile.” She copied these terms down, amazed by a world where such cool phrases were used to describe the purely animal pain and fear rocketing through Michael’s every nerve as he was pinned down in a strange bed by three men.