Diamonds and Cole (25 page)

“Ellen Christopher. What room?”

“Let me see.” The woman ran her fingers down a typed list under a rippled sheet of plastic. “That was Christopher?”

“Yes, yes, what room?”

“That would be, ahh, yes, here it is, 318B. Now remember, B indicates the right side of the room.” She spoke quickly but ended up speaking to Cole’s back.

A blue curtain was drawn around the right side of Room 318. A shadow of a person standing with their back toward Cole could be seen through the curtain. Cole had stood for a long moment trying to decide what to do when the curtain pulled back and a small black woman stepped away from the bed.

“Hello,” the woman said softly.

“Hello.”

“Are you here to see Ellen?”

“Yes, what has happened?”

“Are you her husband?”

“No. He won’t be coming,” Cole said coldly.

“I can’t discuss her case with—”

“Look, I’m all she’s got right now. What’s her condition?” Cole said in a pleading voice.

The woman looked deep into Cole’s eyes, then down at the floor. “I’m Dr. Ewing, Ellen’s physician. She has pneumonia. I’m afraid it is a complication that she really can’t afford right now. We have her on strong antibiotics, but that requires taking her off her ALS meds.”

“How bad is she?”

“I’m not going to lie to you. It is very bad.”

“Is she awake? I really need to— I mean I have to let her know....”

“Please don’t distress her. She’s very weak, and I don’t want her upset.”

“I need to tell her how much I love her.” Cole’s throat felt as if he had been swallowing sand.

“I see.” The doctor looked up at Cole. “Well, that never hurt anyone, did it?” She walked past him and out into the hall.

Cole approached the side of the bed, and Ellie turned and looked up at him. “Hi, big guy. You look like hell,” she said weakly.

“So do you.” Cole smiled and gently nudged her arm.

“Thanks.” Ellie’s lips smiled, but her eyes looked far way.

“I am so sorry I wasn’t there, El,” Cole offered.

“They’ve killed me, Cole,” Ellie said weakly.

“What do you mean? Who?”

“At Eastwood. They put me in the bath.” Ellen coughed, finding it hard to breathe. “They left me in there. The nurse went off duty, didn’t tell the girl coming on duty. I was in the bath nearly three hours. I got a chill from the water getting cold.”

“You’re going to be all right, sweetie, don’t worry.” Cole gently stroked Ellie’s hair back onto her forehead.

“You haven’t called me ‘sweetie’ in a long time.” Ellie smiled and seemed to focus.

“Ellie, there is something you need to know. Something I have wanted to say for a long, long time.” Cole began.

“How we doin’?” a short, slightly overweight Filipino nurse chirped in a singsong voice. “Time to check your oxygen.”

The nurse looked at the dials at the head of the bed and made an adjustment. She gently moved the small tubes feeding oxygen through Ellie’s nose and adjusted the elastic straps around her head. Taking an electric thermometer from a clip on her waistband, she popped on a new tip, and placed it in Ellie’s mouth.

“Your wife is looking better today.”

Ellie smiled, lips tight around the thermometer. There seemed to be a twinkle in her eyes.

“She always looks good to me,” Cole said softly.

“How you feeling, Hon?” the nurse asked, removing the thermometer.

“I’ve been better,” Ellie said with a weak smile.

“Always with the jokes, this one. I want you to keep still and rest. You got a nasty bug, and you got to be strong to fight it off.” With that, the nurse bustled out of the room as quickly as she had entered.

“I would get more rest if they would just leave me alone for awhile.” Ellie said thickly, “I wonder if—” Her words were cut short by a cough. Her coughing continued, and she gasped as she inhaled. Ellie rolled to her side and her knees pulled up nearly to her chest as the harsh rasp worsened.

Cole stroked her back as her thin body convulsed with the cough. Ellie gasped like a drowning person. Cole fumbled for the control that had been laid on the bed. He pushed the button to call the nurse. He was starting to panic. Several seconds passed, and her cough was worsening.

Cole went to the hall. He looked in both directions and saw no nurses in sight. “NURSE!” he screamed at the top of his voice.

The small Filipino woman appeared from a room down the hall. She saw Cole and broke into a run.

“What is it?” she called.

“She can’t breathe. She’s coughing. It won’t stop.”

The nurse immediately hit the red button by the door as she entered Ellie’s room. A bleating alarm rang in the hall, and Cole could see a rotating blue light bouncing off the walls.

“Try to relax, Mrs. Christopher, look at me now.” The nurse was rubbing Ellie’s back with deep rapid movements.

Suddenly the room was full of nurses, and Doctor Ewing ran into the room.

“Who lowered this bed? She needs to be elevated! Get her upstairs, Stat! OR 3 is free. We’ve got to drain her lungs if she’s going to make it. Get her on her stomach. Go, go, go!” Doctor Ewing was out of the room and running toward the elevator.

Cole stood just outside the doorway, trying not to get in the way. The two male nurses were pulling the bed from the room. The oxygen tubes snapped from Ellie’s head and dangled, hissing, from the wall. As she passed Cole, her body was lifting from the bed with each convulsive cough, and all he could see were the whites of her eyes. Cole’s back was to the cool green wall of the hallway. He put his hands on the top of his head and closed his eyes.

“God, don’t let her die. Please, Jesus, just a little longer, oh, God, please, just a little longer.” Cole was rocking back and forth, hitting his shoulders against the wall. “Not now, not yet, not like this, please, oh, please, not like this.”

“Come, please. She’s going to be okay. Come. Sit.” Cole felt the little Filipino nurse’s hand take his and guide him into Ellie’s room to a chair. “You rest here. Keep praying. God listens.”

“How long will this take?”

“I’m not sure. They are very good at their job. Doctor Ewing is the best, you’ll see.” The little woman smiled down at Cole.

“She was doing so well. I can’t believe this,” Cole said aloud but to himself.

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just was a little...you know, overcome, I guess.”

“It’s okay to pray, nothing to be ashamed of.”

“She’s all I’ve got, ya know. It’s not time. I’ve got some things to say yet.”

“You got God, too.” The nurse reached up, unclasped a thin gold chain from her neck, and handed it to Cole.

He looked at the medal she had placed in his hand.

“Saint John of God, he’s the patron saint of nurses and the sick. You pray, he’ll hear you. My father gave it to me when I became a nurse. It works, you see.”

Cole stood and offered his hand in thanks to the nurse. “I’m Cole Sage. Ellie isn’t my wife, but she should have been. Thank you. I think I’ll go get a cup of coffee or something.”

“Good idea. You’ll feel better.”

Cole left the room and, as he made his way down the hall, he slipped the chain and medal into his pocket. He didn’t believe in saints but it made him feel better to know the little nurse did.

The cafeteria was crowded and noisy. Cole got his coffee to go and went out through the side door. The aches and pain he’d thought had gone were back. His neck ached, and his eye felt more swollen. He remembered the pills on the seat of the car the doctor had given him. He didn’t like pills much but, this once, they might be what he needed.

Cole slipped into the car, opened the white pharmacy bag, took two of the small pink pills and washed them down with the bitter coffee. He put the key in the ignition and turned on the radio. He thought of Ellie contorting and fighting for air. Once again, he breathed a prayer and sipped his coffee. His eye felt scratchy and out of focus. He finished his coffee, leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

*
   
*
   
*

Many years before, he had seen Ellie fight for air. It was a hot July day, and Cole had borrowed an inflatable kayak from a friend. They thought it would be fun to take it down the river. Ellie packed a picnic lunch. Cole got some paddles, a portable radio, suntan lotion, and some towels, and they were off. Cole’s parents had lived not too far from the river in those days. The plan was to raft down the river five or six miles from the Crows Ferry Bridge and get out at the small park on the bank about 200 yards from his parents’ house. It was going to be an afternoon of rafting and swimming, then a barbeque with his parents.

A friend dropped them at the bridge and they had set sail with waves goodbye and laughter. The day was glorious and the river smooth. Cole and Ellie had laughed and talked, swam, and even had time for a few kisses along the way. They dined on cold fried chicken, deviled eggs, and some strange pink stuff Ellie’s mother had made. They had let a net dangle in the water behind the kayak filled with cans of Coke. The day was perfect.

They were less than two miles from the park when they rounded the bend at the little town of Sheridan. Ellie was telling a story about something that had happened at work, and Cole was half listening, half drifting when something caught his eye. Fifty yards ahead, several large Spiky Elms had fallen across the river at a narrow bend. At first, he thought they could just maneuver around them, but as he sat up and took a closer look, he realized the trees were completely blocking their passage.

The 50 yards closed quickly, and the current became swifter. Cole told Ellie to hang on while he tried to paddle them to the shore. He realized as he began to paddle that the strong current was swirling just ahead of them. The Elms had created a whirlpool of sorts, and they were in it before Cole could get up enough speed to pull out of it. From their limbs and trunks protruded needle-sharp thorns that grew as long as three inches.

Before they could react, the rubber kayak slammed into the trees. The thorns made a thousand holes in the rubber sides and deflated it almost instantly. The current was pulling the kayak, now a heavy mass of rubberized canvas, under the trees. The contents of their little boat were in the water. Cole hit the side of the first tree and fell headfirst back into the water.

Cole knew he was in trouble. He was a strong swimmer and had spent many summers in the backyard pool. This, however, was different from racing or playing roughhouse games with the neighbors in six feet of calm water. The current was pulling him down. He opened his eyes and saw light above him. The ice chest was drifting by and he thought for a moment of Dorothy when she was up in the tornado in the
Wizard of Oz
and all the things that had passed by her window.

Cole could not see Ellie. He remembered how his father had often spoken of his Navy training during World War II.
Relax
, he would say,
let the water do what it will, then as it eases, you take control
. Cole relaxed, pointed his feet toward the bottom, and let the current drag him down. In a matter of seconds, he felt his feet hit firm sand. With all his strength, he pushed off and, with his arms stroking and pulling as hard as he could, he shot toward the surface.

Gasping and sucking in air, Cole burst from the water. He grabbed the trunk of the Spiky Elm and felt the sharp prick of the thorns in his palms. At that moment, Ellie’s head bobbed up from the water. She faced Cole and screamed for help, then went under. Without thinking, Cole dove after her.

His thoughts were not for his safety, but Ellie’s. He couldn’t let her drown. For the briefest of moments, he’d seen her parents, and him having to tell them she had died.
This will not happen
, he’d thought. Grabbing Ellie’s arm, he’d pulled her towards him. Pulling her closer, he wrapped his arm around her waist and grabbed the top of her denim shorts. With strength he didn’t know he possessed, he pulled her over him and out of the water. Arms flailing, she grabbed the tree.

Cole stroked and kicked back to the surface and again grabbed the spiky trunk. He caught an area where the thorns had either been worn away or broken off. Ellie was lying motionless across the trunk. Her hair was covering her face. Cole saw her ribs and chest expanding and could hear the sound of gagging and gasping coming from her.

Cole broke off a piece of rotting limb from the tree. He used it to knock off thorns from the trunk. Once cleared, he pulled himself up on the trunk and knocked more thorns off with the side of his tennis shoe, careful not to puncture the soles. Just as he reached Ellie, she slipped off into the water. A second before she would’ve gone under, Cole caught her wrists and pulled her out of the water like a crane would lift a heavy load, and stood her on the huge trunk.

Ellie wretched violently and threw up. She had obviously swallowed a lot of the river water. She spit, gasped, and wretched some more. Cole wasn’t sure if she would catch her breath. She bent over, palms against her knees, and heaved great breaths of air. Finally, she’d stood straight.

“You saved my life,” she gasped, pushing her hair out of her face.

Cole looked around. The whirlpool the trees created had caused brush and trash to pile up behind the trees where they stood. In that moment, he realized that if Ellie had gone under the second time, she would have been swept under the brush and would never have resurfaced. His knees buckled. He suddenly felt lightheaded.

“Cole, you saved my life!” Ellie threw her arms around Cole’s neck.

Cole shook all over. Ellie held him tight and started to laugh.

“You. Saved. My. Life, Cole Sage! You’re my hero for real!” Ellie stopped laughing and tossed back her hair. “You are quite a guy.” Her fingers were laced behind his head and she leaned back at arm’s length and looked deeply into Cole’s eyes. “I will never forget what you have done. As long as I live, I will owe to you whatever good becomes of me.” For a long moment, they just looked in each other’s eyes. Then, as if the seriousness was too much for her, Ellie said, “I’d kiss you, but it would taste like puke.” Then she bent down, pushed against Cole’s chest with the top of her head and began to laugh once more.