Not in the Heart (17 page)

C
HAPTER
27

I dropped Ellen at the emergency entrance and headed to the garage. There was a valet at the front but I didn't have a tip, plus I needed a few minutes to gather my thoughts, my resolve. I try to project the image that I'm together, but underneath there is always a need to escape, to rush to some other place where the pain and trouble aren't rising like a tide, ready to engulf.

Like a firefighter who walks into a crowded theater and looks for the nearest exit, I checked the parking garage and nearly bolted, but I knew that was cowardly. I also knew there were two women on the eighth floor waiting, ready to judge me harshly if I abandoned them. If I showed up, they would still judge me harshly for all the times I hadn't, but I decided not to let that stop me.

Perhaps it's the antiseptic smell of hospitals that turns me away. Perhaps something happened when I came out the birth canal that makes me want to run. Or it may be flashes of that night and the vision of a guilty man strapped in and awaiting the electrical impulses. So many parallels of things I've seen and things I wish I hadn't seen go into this. Of course, it might just be the fact that I have an aversion to the pain my son has been through in such places.

I found Abby and Ellen embracing in the waiting room on the eighth floor, nurses busy in the background. I couldn't help feeling like an intruder. As usual, Ellen had sized up the situation, had spoken with the head nurse and received the report. A specialist was hurrying in to consult and I saw the money spinning toward the jackpot on the medical slots. It's where my mind always went, not to the heart of my son, not to the possibility of losing him, but to the resultant bills. I hate it that I always think about money.

Ellen spoke in the same technical jargon as the doctors. She was familiar with the big words that separate patient from medical professional. She saw the look on Abby's face and explained, “That means his heart can't find its rhythm. It's under stress. His body can't get the blood it needs.”

“Has this happened before?” I said.

“Yes, but there are complications. The medication they've given him to thin the blood and help the heart pump is working against them.”

“A catch-22.”

“Exactly.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Abby said. “They can fix this, right?”

A man in a white coat emerged. He recognized Ellen and she introduced Dr. Andrew Fanelli, one of the top heart surgeons in the country. I had read on several of Ellen's blogs what an answer to prayer this man had been and how the Lord had transferred him to this area at just the right time for Aiden. I thought it would have been a lot better if the Lord would have just healed Aiden, but I wasn't about to say that as I shook his hand.

When all of that was over, Dr. Fanelli put his hands on his hips and shook his head. He spoke with a Middle Eastern accent, precise and delicate. “I thought we had lost him two times.” He looked at me. “Your son would not give up. But we have come to a pivotal point.”

Ellen moved closer, studying his face.

The man said some things I didn't understand but Ellen kept up with him. “You're suggesting the artificial heart?”

“I'm suggesting we keep him sedated and let the machine get us to the point of transplantation. Do you have an update from the donor?”

“We're hopeful,” Ellen said. “It looks like the heart will be ready on the twenty-first.”

I could tell just saying the words was distasteful to her. One transplant date is another's execution date.

Dr. Fanelli glanced at Abby, then at the floor. He tried to smile. “I know how much this means to each of you. Aiden is in good hands here. The best of care. But you need to prepare for the possibilities that lie ahead.” He looked at Ellen. “Time is not on our side. If the transplant does not come through, there will be very little we can do. I just want you to know the realistic picture.”

“I understand,” Ellen said. She was the only one of us who could actually form words.

“You may see him, but he obviously won't be able to respond.”

The doctor and Ellen disappeared behind the forbidden doors and I collapsed in a chair. Abby sat next to me and took my hand.

“How are you doing?” I said.

“Not good.” She held a crumpled tissue and wiped at her nose. “It was awful, Dad. His face got so pale and he couldn't breathe. He reached out to me and I couldn't do anything.” Abby dissolved into tears and I pulled her close.

“I'm so sorry, honey. You shouldn't have had to go through that.”

“I'm glad I was there,” she said through the tears and the anger. “I wanted to do something.”

“You did. He appreciated you being there.” I imagined the chaos of his room, the alarms and nurses running.

“It's like he's been reaching out his whole life for help but there's no one. He just lays there reaching out.” She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand till her skin was white. “I can't get the sight of him out of my head.”

I patted her shoulder and she put her head on my chest. “This is not over. You heard the doctor. As long as Aiden doesn't give up, I'm not going to either.”

When Ellen returned, she gathered Abby in and held her. The two cried and Ellen whispered words of encouragement, telling her how lucky her brother was to have her as a sister. All the things I couldn't come up with. Finally Ellen pulled away and through the tears asked if we wanted to see him. I wanted to run. Jump out a window. Throw the dice on some other floor, deal the cards to some other waiting room. Instead I stood and followed, feeling my own heart skip.

We entered the darkened room and I could barely distinguish my son from all the cords, tubes, and machines. It wasn't him, just a pallid shell of the boy I had taken to the playground when he was younger. I tried to recall my last words to him and his to me. Was this the end? Would I see his pale face staring up from some casket, mercifully unhooked from the hospital's umbilical cords and ushered into forever?

Abby drove me home and Ellen decided to stay at the hospital, though the doctor and nurses assured her there was nothing more she could do. She had invested too much in Aiden to let him go through the night alone.

I got in front of the computer screen but all the words seemed jumbles. I jotted a few notes I'd been thinking about Townsend but gave up on the writing and collapsed in the corner, staring out the window at the stars that managed to peek through the light pollution. I couldn't get the sight of Aiden out of my mind.

I thought I heard Abby crying and went to her door and stood there, listening, trying to get up the courage to knock. I've interviewed terrorists in enclosed campgrounds in Yemen and heads of state who were targets of assassination and didn't think a thing about it. Why was this so hard?

I returned to my air mattress and went over the conversation I would have the next day with Terrelle. I ran through several scenarios, ways I could bring up the confession, but none of them left me feeling anything but coldhearted.

I lay tossing and turning about the years I had wasted chasing stories and fame and making a name. Where had all of that gotten me? What did I have to show for those years except regret and a gravely ill son?

I heard a car pull up; then the front door opened and closed softly. I hit a button on my watch and saw it was 3:12. Why would Ellen be home? If Aiden hadn't made it, surely she would have phoned. I listened to the movement, footsteps outside my room, holding my breath, hoping she didn't come inside with news, knowing I would have to hear it eventually.

The shuffling subsided and I tried to breathe. When I couldn't take it any longer, I wandered into the kitchen, lit only by the stove light. Ellen's purse sat on the table and her shoes were parked next to her bedroom door. What used to be our bedroom door.

I got a drink from the refrigerator and turned on the light, hoping that might lure her back. When it didn't, I walked to her room and found the door slightly ajar. I pecked on it and whispered her name. The door pushed open on its own and I heard the trickle of water from the walk-in shower, something we both had wanted, along with the big Jacuzzi. The fact that she was showering showed the state she was in. She couldn't get the strength up to run a bath.

I knew the only chivalrous thing to do at this point was to turn and wait in the kitchen. Estranged spouses keep their distance, particularly when showers are involved. But something inexorable drew me into the darkened room. It wasn't just the sound of the water trickling; there was something else: soft sobs, quiet tears escaping a crushed soul. There is nothing worse than the pain of a caring woman crying alone.

I sat on the edge of her bed and listened, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light from the bathroom. My eyes lit on the pictures on her dresser. The old birthday card she still had from me. Photos of Abby in cap and gown and Aiden beaming by her side. Where was I when Abby graduated from high school? Haiti? Cuba? The Balkans? I couldn't remember. I went through the list of stories I had covered that spring and cataloged the other photos. I was in so few of them. For all purposes, my wife had been a single parent during these years, and it struck me how unfair that had been to all three of them.

The shower stream stopped. I didn't want her frightened when she stepped from the bathroom, so I rose and headed for the door.

“Hey,” she said behind me, softly.

I turned to see her silhouette in the muted bathroom light, one of her thick towels covering her.

“Sorry; I heard you come in. I was afraid something might have happened.”

She shook her head and inched forward. “He's stable. I just needed a shower and a change of clothes.”

“You should get some sleep.”

“So should you. It's a big day with Terrelle.”

I nodded and looked at the floor. It was hard to see her in this undressed state. Any move toward her would seem predatory. “Yeah, I've been running that conversation over in my mind.”

“Maybe if I talk with Oleta. If she understands, maybe she could talk with him or send a note. . . .”

I pointed at the graduation photo. “Do you remember where I was when this was taken?”

She leaned down to see and water fell on the glass, like raindrops. She didn't hesitate. “Suicide bombing in the Middle East.”

“How do you do that? Remember every detail?”

“I don't remember everything. They say the memories you have are stamped on your brain through the emotional markers. Times when you feel pain or loss.”

I found myself staring at her legs, at knees that turned slightly inward. That's not a knock—I loved seeing those in-turned knees.

“I'll let you get dressed,” I said.

“Don't go.”

She wrapped the towel tightly around herself and sat on the bed. I sat next to her, unsure of myself, as if we were wading into waters where the ground might give way and we'd be engulfed by the slipstream.

“Are you going to ask him for the confession?”

“I want to, but I don't know how to do it.”

“I think you'll know what to say when the time comes.”

“I hope you're right.”

I watched the water droplets fall from her hair onto the bedspread. Finally she said, “Thank you for coming to the hospital tonight. I know that's never easy.”

“Can't be easy for you, either. Especially when you've had to do it alone for so long.”

She shrugged. “I don't know. In some ways I've gotten used to the place, to the comfort of it.”

“Comfort?”

“The unpredictability. Having to give him over to the doctors again. There hasn't been anything in this whole process I can control. In the beginning, I thought I could and tried hard to do everything right, to have him eat right, take the best medication, stay away from anything that could hurt him. But now, with every trip to the hospital, it's like I'm abandoning him to God. I have to lean on and trust in something bigger than me or the choices I make.”

It made sense. “Kind of like couples who fight all the time and yell at each other. They get addicted to the conflict and it becomes the script. Something they know and are comfortable with.”

She let my words hang there between us. Had I said something wrong? Misinterpreted?

“You know, Tru, no matter how this ends up, I'm glad you came back. It's good having you here.”

“Other than me losing all your money.”

She gave me the Ellen stare. Sometimes that's good; sometimes it's bad. This time I was just glad she was looking at me. “I figured that would happen.”

“If you knew I'd blow it, why let me have it?”

“I don't know. Maybe because deep down I still believe in you. That all of the things that hold you back aren't the real you. That somehow, someway, we can make up the distance between us.”

“So it wasn't a test?”

“If it was a test, you failed big-time. But no, it wasn't.”

“You were trying to lure me back with filthy lucre.”

She laughed. “I've missed you, Tru. Your sense of humor. The way the kids light up when you're there.”

“Ellen, I'm never going to be the man you deserve.”

She took the tone. “I'll agree with that.”

“What?” I feigned shock and pain.

She pulled me closer. “My ideal guy doesn't exist. The person who can always be there, always make me happy. Don't get me wrong—I'm still hurt by your choices. But I've come to see that I can't just walk away from us. I can't let you walk away. That's why I needed you back. I need us to make one last try.”

“I can understand that. I'm quite a catch. No job, my car's been repossessed, lost the cottage to foreclosure, gambling addiction. Can't pay the medical or college bills. You hit all the numbers in the husband lottery, babe.”