O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) (16 page)

“You look
beat,” I said. “I don’t have to work tomorrow. You go home and get some sleep.”

“My wife called
a couple hours ago. She wanted to come, but she couldn’t find anybody to watch
the kids.” The thin smile was back. “My kids are a handful. When I used to take
‘
em
over to Dad’s, he used to threaten to tie ‘
em
up and leave ‘
em
out on the
lawn for the
menehune
to carry off.”

“Did Phil
believe in
menehune
?” I said. Hawaiian
menehune
are like Irish leprechauns. They’re a
popular way to get island kids to toe the mark. Nobody knows if the little
dudes would even want kids—especially ones that parents have left outside
because they’ve been bad—but no kid wants to take the chance.

“I doubt Dad
believed in much ‘
cept
the almighty dollar,” said
Moko
. “But the
menehune
thing worked on the kids.
But when my oldest turned nine,
my dad switched from
menehune
to
bribing him with money.
Never too early to teach our ‘family values’ I
guess.”

“Wow. You have
a nine-year-old? How is that possible?”

“I got started
early. That’s why I never did college. Dad wasn’t happy about that.”

“Well, right
now you need to get home. Are you taking the bus? I think the last one comes at
twelve-thirty.”

“Nah, I got my
car here.” He pushed his wide body out of the cramped chair and stretched his
arms overhead. “Man, that chair’s like a strait-jacket.”

“When do you
have to be at work in the morning?” I said.

“
S’posed
to get there by eight.
But I might call in sick.”

“They’ll know
it’s because of Stu.”

“Yeah?
Well, I
am
sick.
Sick with
worry.”
His face crumpled and he hung his head.

“Hey, it’s
gonna
be all right,” I said. “Stu’s in the best hospital on
the island. And they’re pumping enough medicine in him to bring down a water
buffalo. I have a good feeling we’ll see some progress tomorrow.”

He snuffled and
then wiped his hands down his face. “Okay. You really think that?”

“I do.” I gave
him a quick hug and then watched him lumber down the hall to the elevators.

***

When I awoke
there was a pillow under my head. My phone was vibrating in my purse, which I
held in a death-grip in my lap. It took me a couple of beats to come around and
figure out where I was and why I was there.
Rows of blue
chairs; a TV on mute hanging in the corner; sunlight peeking through the trees
in an outside courtyard.
When it all added up to ‘hospital waiting room’
and ‘my brother Stuart’s in the ICU’ I answered my phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Babe.
Sorry to call so early,” said Hatch. “But it’s
getting late here and we haven’t talked in a while.”

“Yeah.
I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve had a few things
come up here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.
My brother Jeff had to go back early and my brother
Stuart’s in the hospital. In fact I’m there now.”

“You’re at the
hospital? What happened?”

“He fell into
the
Ala
Wai
Canal.”

“Oh wow. Is he
okay?”

“Yeah.
He got an infection, but I think he’ll be fine. I
haven’t had a chance to go in and see him this morning but he’s getting boat
loads of antibiotics. How are things in Montana?”

“Great. I know
why they call it ‘Big Sky Country.’ It really grows on you. We went out on a
little lightning-sparked fire just south of here, but we managed to knock it
down in a day. That’s why I couldn’t call yesterday.”

“Wow, your
first fire. Do you get a merit badge or something?”

“Nah.
But the guys did buy me a few beers and I got to skip
being on watch last night. I actually got a full seven hours of sleep.
First time since I got here.”

“Sounds like
we’re both sleep deprived,” I said. “Somebody brought me a pillow last night
but my body still feels like I’ve been on a long-haul flight to China.  I
got here at midnight so—”

He cut me off.
“Sorry,
Babe,
gotta
run.
Smoke break’s over. I’ll call again when I can. Tell your brother I’m thinking
of him.”

“Will do.”
I hung up thinking how strange it was that
firefighters took a ‘smoke break.’

I went into the
ladies’ room and did my business. When I was washing my hands I kept my head
down for as long as I could before curiosity forced me to look in the mirror.
Not good.

My hair was
scrunched flat on one side and my cheek had a crease in it, like I’d been
folded and clamped in a vise. My eyes were as bloodshot as
Moko’s
had been and I was wearing matching purple bags beneath my eyes along with a
scrim of mascara.

I dug through
my beach bag purse for reinforcements but only came up with a tube of lipstick
that was so used up I had to dig it out with a fingernail and dab it on my
lips. Maybe I’d check the gift shop for concealer and mascara. If they didn’t
stock stuff like that, they should.

I sprinkled
some water on a paper towel and tried to carefully remove the smudged mascara
beneath my eyes. The coolness felt so good I went whole hog and wet the entire
towel and ran it over my face. My brother would probably be alert and awake by
now. I hoped it wouldn’t send him back into delirium to get a good look at me
au
naturel
.

I took the
pillow with me when I went into the ICU. Probably someone from the nurses’
station had taken pity on me. I needed to give it back, though. I could only
imagine what a hospital charged for pillow rent.

“I brought this
back,” I said.
“
Mahalo
.
I appreciate it.”

The nurse stood
up and scrutinized the pillow as if I’d brought
roadkill
into her sterile environment. “That’s not one of ours,” she said. “You’ll have
to take it back outside.”

“Really?
It isn’t
mine
either.”

She looked at
me over the top of her reading glasses with a ‘don’t make Mommy say it twice’
glare.

“Okay. I’ll
take it back out to the waiting room.”

I tucked the
pillow into a corner behind a fake potted plant and returned to the ICU. When I
inquired about Stu’s condition, a trace of indecision crept into the nurse’s
eyes.

“Uh.
Wait here a minute,” she said. “I think the doctor
wants to talk to you. You’re the patient’s wife, right?”

“No, I’m his
sister. His wife can’t be here.” I tried to keep the judgment out of my voice,
but I don’t think I succeeded. I mean, if it had been Hatch lying in that
hospital bed there’s no way I’d be home slugging
Pepto
and calling for updates. I’d be there front and center, toting a barf bag if
necessary.

“I’ll get the
doctor,” she said.

The same doctor
I’d seen the day before showed up in record time. “Remember me? I’m Dr.
Malone.” He nodded instead of shaking hands, but that made sense to me under
the circumstances. “I’m treating your brother.”

“Yes, thank
you, doctor.” I’m not sure why I thanked him. It just seemed like the right
thing to say.

“Today we have
a guarded hope that we may be able to get this thing under control,” he said.
He smiled, but it was only one of those mouth smiles that
doesn’t
extend to the eyes. “But, as I mentioned yesterday, it’s going to require some
sacrifice.”

“You mean like
money? Like you want to give him drugs that cost an arm and a leg?” I gave him
a mouth smile of my own. After all, there wasn’t much to smile about.

“Well, in a
manner of speaking, you’re correct.” He paused. “We don’t have drugs to deal
with what we’re facing here. We’re going to have to take the leg.”

It took me
longer than it probably should have to understand what he was saying.

“Take the leg?
You mean like amputate it?” I said.

“Yes.” He
puckered his lips into a weird little “o” and stared me down like he was trying
to hypnotize me. I broke eye contact.

“I don’t… I
mean, uh.” I hadn’t been prepared for that. I’d only met Stuart four days
earlier. And now they were asking me for permission to saw off his leg?

CHAPTER 21

Needless to say,
I begged off. No way was I going solo on a decision like that. I went out to
the courtyard and called
Moko
.

“Sorry to
bother you. Did you get any sleep?” I said.

“Some. I’m
still not going into work, though. I took the kids to school for my wife this morning
to make up for
ditchin
’ her with them last night.”

I thought about
the complicated negotiations one has to make with a spouse. I’d never had to do
that and I wasn’t sure I could ever get used to it.

“Anyhow,” he
went on, “I’m ready to come down and relieve you. How’s our guy doing this
morning?”

“Uh, I’m not
supposed to be talking on my cell. Why don’t you come down as soon as you can
and I’ll catch you up?”

“That doesn’t
sound good,” he said.

“I’ll see you
when you get here.” I hung up. What choice did I have? Lie to him and then
devastate him with the truth when he got there or tell him Stu’s leg was coming
off and have
him
worry himself sick while he dealt
with Honolulu rush hour traffic? It was
a lose
-lose
situation.

Next I called
Natalie. Once again she answered in a voice like sounded like I’d wakened her
from a sound sleep.

“Sorry to wake
you up, Natalie,” I said. “But something’s come up with Stuart. Do you think
you could come down here?”

She sighed.
“First off, I wasn’t sleeping. I’ve been up for hours worrying about Stu. How
is he doing?”

“He’s hanging
in there,” I said. “But something’s come up.”

“Oh? What?”

“The
infection’s worse than they thought. The drugs aren’t going to be able to kick
it all by themselves.” I congratulated myself on my step-by-step build-up to
the grim reveal.

“What’s that
mean?”

“They’re going
to have to get rid of the source of the infection.”

“I’m not
following you.”

So much for my step-by-step.
Apparently, I’d veered off the
path.

“Okay, there’s
no good way to say this, Natalie. Stuart’s leg is going to have to be
amputated.”

“What? Are you
joking?
No way!”

“It’s that or
he may die. The doctor says this is the only way they can halt the spread of
the infection.”

There was a
pause. Then Natalie blew out a breath.
“No way,
Pali
.
I’ll be there in half-an-hour. Don’t let them
touch him.”

***

Moko
showed up five minutes later so I had no time to
regroup after blowing it with Natalie.

He took it
well, but he understood why Natalie had freaked out.

“She’s all
about how things look,
ya
know? She always got the
make-up
goin
’, and perfect clothes and her
car’s
always clean and all that. Probably when you told her
that Stu was
gonna
have only one leg she thought,
‘Oh, no. He’s
gonna
look bad.’ But she’ll come
around. Maybe she needs to hear it from the doctor.”

“I sure as heck
didn’t want to be the messenger on that one,” I said. “But she’d said she
couldn’t stand it here at the hospital. I should’ve told her to come in; or maybe
offered to go out to her house. It wasn’t a good idea to tell somebody
something like that over the phone.”

“Hey, don’t
beat yourself up. Nobody knows what to do here. When Dad got sick, at least we
all had plenty of time to get used to what was happening. With this…” He let it
trail off.

We sat in
silence for at least three minutes.

Finally, I
spoke up. “You want to go see him? I haven’t been in there yet this morning.”

“Shouldn’t we
wait for Natalie?” he said.

“I’m thinking
she may be able to handle the waiting room, but I don’t know if she’ll be able
to deal with seeing Stu. It sounds like the infection’s gotten worse. Who knows
how bad he looks.”

“Let’s do it
then.” He got up and offered me his hand. I took it and hauled myself up out of
the chair.

“Say, did you
come back last night and bring me a pillow?” I said as we walked down the hall.

“No.”

“I had a pillow
under my head when I woke up out there this morning.”

“Probably one
of the nurses brought it.”

“They said it
wasn’t one of theirs.”

By then we’d
come to Stu’s room. We both did the Smurf routine and covered ourselves from
head to toe in blue paper with rubbery hands.

“Natalie
couldn’t do this,”
Moko
said. He was slipping the
string loops on the paper face mask behind his ears.

“Why?” I said.

“Can you
imagine what it would be like to barf while you’re wearing one of these mask
things?”

We went in
Stu’s room and I nearly found out.

CHAPTER 22

Whoever it was
in that bed wasn’t the man I’d met for tea at the
Moana
Surfrider
on Monday. I wanted to ask the nurse what
they’d done with my brother when they’d swapped him for the guy who looked like
a balloon from the Macy’s New Year’s parade in New York.

My gasp was
muffled by the mask. So was
Moko’s
, but neither of us
commented on it. Instead, I reached out my hand and
Moko
grabbed it. He held on as if I was the only thing keeping him upright.