The exit led into a long hallway, and Claire broke through the crowd ahead of him to hunt for a more accessible route backstage. Jon wheeled to the side of the hall, trying to stay out of the way of the milling crowd.
Claire returned, a look of disappointment on her face. “There’s one step through that rear door, but once you get over that one, there’s a little landing and then a bunch more.”
“Look, why don’t you go say hi and then we’ll head home,” he suggested. “I’ll wait here.”
She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. “I wanted you to meet him, though.” She looked around the hall, a frown on her face. “Well, I’ll just let him know what happened so he’s not waiting for us.”
He watched her walk off down the hall, slim hips swaying slightly beneath the shiny red fabric of her dress.
She was gone for five minutes, during which Jon read the bio notes on every performer in the play as well as those of the lighting crew, the costume designer, and the stagehands. Only a few people remained milling in the hallway when Claire returned. She was not alone. Randy Donovan walked at her side. He was still in his fitted white shirt and dark trousers, still with the high color of his stage makeup staining his cheeks.
“Sorry you couldn’t get backstage.” Randy held out his hand, and Jon shook it, his eyes now on Claire. She looked extraordinary. What other forty-year-old woman could get away with wearing her hair that long? It was dark—nearly as dark as Randy’s dyed hair—and very thick. The silver at her temples softened her, made her look vulnerable. Her cheekbones were prominent, her lips full. Green eyes big and smiling. He could detect few signs of age in her face. She was tall—five eight—yet she had to look up at Randy, and when she did so, her face was radiant.
“We really enjoyed the play,” Jon said. “Thanks for the tickets.”
“Glad you liked it.”
It was rare for Jon to feel the indignity, the inequality, of his seated status. This, though, was one such occasion.
The two grown-ups smiled down at him.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Jon said.
“Thanks.” Randy shook his head. “Weren’t you shocked when Claire went out on that bridge?” He sent Claire a look of admiration, which, Jon thought, made her blush.
“Not much she does shocks me anymore,” he said.
“She’s very courageous.” Randy slipped his hand to Claire’s back, the touch light and brief.
“Yes,” he agreed. “She is.” He could think of nothing more to say, and a few awkward beats of silence filled the hallway.
“Oh, by the way.” Randy turned to Claire. “I found a fountain pen in the pew after you left on Monday. Could it be yours?”
“Yes. Oh, that’s great. I couldn’t imagine where I’d lost it.”
“The pew?” Jon asked. “You mean you ate lunch here?” He had pictured them, stretching out their lunch breaks, in a restaurant. But they’d been here, most likely alone, in the intimate quarters of this dim little chapel.
“Yes,” Claire said. “Randy brought smoked tuna from his restaurant. It was delicious.”
He wondered why she hadn’t told him that, why she hadn’t told him that this was where they’d met. So what? he thought to himself. It’s not like they met in his bedroom.
“I’ll go get the pen,” Randy said. “It’s in my briefcase. Be right back.” He walked away from them, and Claire folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall opposite Jon to wait.
She looked down at him. “You look tired, sweetheart,” she said.
He wanted to turn his chair away from her scrutiny. “Not at all,” he said, although he felt very tired. He felt as tired as he’d ever been in his life.
IT WAS CLOSE TO midnight by the time he got into bed. He watched Claire sitting in her blue robe, combing her hair at the dresser mirror.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said. “I think it’s been a while since I’ve told you that.”
She smiled at him in the mirror. “Thank you.”
“Could we talk, please?” he asked.
She stopped the comb, and her smile was replaced with concern. “What about?”
“In bed?” He patted the mattress, and she nodded. He preferred talking to her there. Bed was the only place he could really hold her.
She slipped off her robe and climbed into the bed next to him, turning off the lamp on the night table. He could detect the scent of her skin cream, and the familiarity of the smell was soothing. He wrapped his arms around her, his hands on her bare skin, and held her as close to him as he could. Breathing deeply, he wondered how to begin. What should he say? In twenty years, he had never felt threatened by anyone, by anything. He knew she sensed his distress, because she held him tightly, too, pressing her cheek hard to his shoulder.
“I love you, Mathias,” she said.
“I needed to hear that,” he said.
She raised herself to her elbow. “Do you have some doubt?”
Drawing her head to his shoulder again, he said, “Let me talk, all right?”
She nodded, her hair brushing his chin.
“There’s something…strange going on with me.”
Her head jerked up, and he felt her alarm. She thought he meant something physical.
“Emotionally,” he said quickly. “I’m feeling…I think I’m too dependent on you.”
“That’s crazy.” She flopped her head onto his shoulder again. “It’s okay for two people to be dependent on each other. Isn’t that what we’re always telling the couples we see?”
“But I’m too dependent. I don’t know how I would manage if anything ever happened to you.”
She sighed. “First of all, nothing is going to happen to me. Second of all, you’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve seen you do things that would make a walking man quake in his hiking boots.”
She wasn’t getting it.
“It’s Randy.” The words slipped out of his mouth, far too loudly.
The silence was sharp and tense. “What about Randy?” she asked finally.
“He’s so slick. He seems fake to me, or—” This was not true. He hadn’t for a moment doubted Randy Donovan’s sincerity. He growled at his ineptitude to say what he meant. “Look, seeing him standing next to you and putting his hand on your back and talking about feeding you lunch made me want to punch his goddamned lights out.”
He’d expected her to laugh. Instead, she lay perfectly still. He couldn’t even feel her breathing.
“You’re making way too much of this, Jon,” she said finally. “You sound as if you’re afraid I’d have an affair with him or something.”
“I’m not sure…” He swallowed hard. “Maybe I am.”
“God, Jon, don’t you know me better than that?”
“Well, frankly, right now I don’t know. He seems interested in you, and I think you’re leading him on. Innocently, maybe. You look up at him with those green bedroom eyes of yours, and—”
She sat up, hugging her pillow to her chest. “I cannot believe what I’m hearing,” she said. “Jon, I love you. You’re my husband, and Randy is a friend. That’s all there is to it.”
“All right,” he said quickly, touching her arm. She was right. He was blowing this way out of proportion.
She stroked her fingertips over his chest. “You know you’re being ridiculous, don’t you?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
“Jon,” she nearly wailed. “You’re saying you don’t trust me. After twenty years of being married to me, how can you say that?”
“I trust you. What I don’t trust is…I don’t know. Being forty, I guess. I mean, you and I have seen it happen far too often. The midlife stuff. It creeps up on you. It eats up the healthiest-looking marriages before anyone knows what’s hit them.”
“It’s never going to happen to us, though. Don’t even think it.”
She lay next to him again. The conversation didn’t satisfy him, but he didn’t know how
to turn it around. After a moment, she spoke again.
“I won’t see him anymore, then,” she said. “Not if it makes you this uncomfortable. It’s not that important to me.”
He sighed. “That’s not what I want.” It was, but he knew he was wrong to ask that of her. “If you say he’s a friend, then he’s a friend. I’ll accept that.”
She leaned on her elbow again, then lowered her head to kiss him, and her hair fell onto his chest. Grinning, she said, “Hey, Mathias, don’t torment yourself over things that will never happen. You and I are going to float through midlife the way we’ve floated through everything else. Understood?”
He nodded and kissed her, and she settled back into his arms. In a few minutes, her breathing became deep and regular. He didn’t let go of her, though. Not for half the night, even though she felt edgy beneath his arms. Even though, at moments, her body felt like that of a stranger.
14
SEATTLE
“PATTERSON’S GOING TO BE wonderful, Vanessa.” Terri Roos sounded more enthusiastic than Vanessa had ever heard her, but it was an enthusiasm she couldn’t possibly share.
“Well, go on,” she said into her office phone. “Tell me what he said.”
It had been over a week since her attempt to call Walter Patterson’s office, and during that time she’d suffered two migraine headaches, innumerable vivid nightmares, and a stomach so queasy she had simply stopped trying to eat anything other than soup. She’d called Terri on Friday to ask if she might be able to make the first contact with Patterson, mumbling some weak excuse about being too busy. As if Terri had any more free time than she did. Yet Terri had agreed without complaint. Now Vanessa had to listen to the results of that call.
“He’s gotten so many victims’ rights bills through,” Terri said. “And he’s already sponsoring something he’s calling the Aid to Adult Survivors Bill for adults who suffered childhood abuse. He admitted he hadn’t thought specifically of programs for adolescents, though. He’s all for including their needs in the bill, but he said it’s going to be a hard sell, and he doesn’t want to screw up the chances of getting the rest of the bill passed by attaching something to it without a good sense that it will have support. So”—Terri stopped to draw in a breath—”we need to get to work. I told him about the network, and he thought we might be able to pull it off. We have to flood him with statistics showing the need for AMC programs. And get this: In May they’re planning to hear testimony on Capitol Hill from women who were abused as children in order to get support for his bill. He said we might be able to piggyback on that hearing.”
Vanessa frowned. “You mean, have teenagers testify?” She didn’t like the idea.
“Well, not necessarily. It could be adults who can talk about the difference a program like the AMC would have made in their lives.”
Vanessa reached up to touch one of the roses in the vase on her desk. Brian had sent them two days earlier. He’d been gone for the past five days but would be home tonight. Thank God. “Is there some cosponsor of this adolescent bill?” she asked Terri. “Someone other than Patterson we can communicate through?”
There were a few seconds of silence on Terri’s end of the line. “There’s no cosponsor yet, but why would you want to talk with anyone else? Patterson’s the best. There’s no one who can help us more, Vanessa.”
She felt the pressure starting in her temples. A few jagged lights, like sparks of lightning, flickered in the corner of her right eye. A migraine. Just what she needed. Wedging the phone between her chin and shoulder, she reached into her top desk drawer for a prescription bottle and shook a couple of the pills into her hand while Terri continued.
“At some point, you and I and a few others from the network should make a little trek to D.C. to have a face-to-face with this guy,” Terri said.
“No.” Vanessa popped the pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry. “I mean, I doubt I’ll be able to get away from the hospital anytime soon.”
Terri was quiet for another second or two. “Are you okay, Vanessa?”
“Oh, yeah. Just battling migraines this week.” She glanced up as Lauren Schenk, one of the nurses on the unit, appeared in her open doorway.
Terri continued talking. “You poor thing,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Well, listen, give me a call when you’re feeling more like yourself, all right?”
Lauren was motioning to Vanessa that she needed to talk. It looked like something that couldn’t wait.
“I’ve got to go, Terri.” Vanessa stood up. “Thanks for taking care of everything.”
“It’s Jordan Wiley,” Lauren said before Vanessa had even set the receiver back in its cradle.
“What’s wrong?” Vanessa followed Lauren out of the office, and they walked rapidly down the long hallway of the adolescent unit.
“Not sure. He’s having trouble breathing. Chest pain. He’s in a lot of distress. Pete Aldrich thinks he’s fine. He thinks it’s anxiety.” Lauren tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, then glanced at Vanessa. “Pete doesn’t know I came to get you,” she said. “But you know Jordy. He’s not the type of kid who complains unless something’s really wrong.”
Pete Aldrich was standing in his green scrubs, leaning over the counter of the nurses’ station, writing in a chart. He looked up as she and Lauren approached, and Vanessa could almost hear him groan. He gave Lauren a look of betrayal before speaking to Vanessa.
“The kid’s fine,” he said. “Nail beds are pink, lips are pink. He’s had a normal blood study. I even did a rhythm strip.”
He turned the chart so that she could read the results of the studies. Normal, as he had said.
“I think he should have a chest X ray,” Lauren said, and Vanessa admired her courage for standing up to the resident.
Pete ran freckled hands through his red hair. “He’s got a vicious cycle going,” he said. “He has some trouble breathing, gets scared, the breathing gets worse, he gets more scared, and on and on.” His tone was singsong; he nodded his head from side to side as he spoke.
Vanessa didn’t utter a word. She closed the chart and walked across the hall to Jordy’s room, Lauren following close behind.
Jordy was hunched over his pillow, breathing rapidly, obviously pulling for air. He looked up when she walked into the room.
“Dr. Gray! Something’s wrong,” he said. “I can’t breathe.”
“Let me take a listen.” Vanessa pulled the stethoscope from the pocket of her white coat and leaned over the boy, setting the disk on his back. She was vaguely aware of Pete appearing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, but she kept her attention on Jordy. At first his breath sounds didn’t strike her as unusual for him, but as she continued to listen, she thought she detected a subtle difference between his left lung and his right. The left was not aerating well.
Above Jordy’s head, she tried to convey her concern to Lauren, who nodded. Pete Aldrich’s arms were folded across his chest and he looked smug, as if he was waiting for her to reach the same conclusion he had.
Vanessa stepped away from her patient. “Well, I can see you’re having a genuine problem here, Jordan,” she said. She didn’t want to alarm him, and so kept her suspicion to herself. After all, she might be wrong. “Let’s get an X ray and see what’s going on, all right?”
Within seconds, Lauren had procured a gurney, and she and Vanessa transferred Jordy onto it.
“Don’t make me lie down,” the boy said, panicked.
“No, sweetie, you can sit up,” Lauren said. “Here’s your pillow.”
Jordy clutched his pillow to his chest as they wheeled the gurney out into the hall, past Pete, whose pale eyebrows were knitted together above his blue eyes.
“You come with us, Dr. Aldrich,” Vanessa said as she passed him. If her hunch about this patient was right, she wanted Pete Aldrich to see what he’d missed in his cavalier dismissal of Jordy’s complaints.
Pete fell in next to her, protesting, arms flailing. “I
don’t have time to humor this kid when there are—”
Vanessa stopped walking and stared at him. “You’re coming with us.” She kept her voice calm, but it was a major struggle. She walked toward the elevator without looking back.
Pete followed them into the elevator, angry smudges of red on his cheeks. He kept his eyes riveted on the door in a furious glare while Jordy gasped and wheezed on the gurney next to him. Lauren held an oxygen mask to the boy’s face and uttered words of comfort.
“We’ll be there in just a second.” Vanessa leaned close to Jordy. “And in a matter of minutes, we’ll know what’s going on.”
Jordy didn’t acknowledge her in any way. All of his effort was focused on his breathing, and she felt increasingly certain of her diagnosis. She had never seen Jordan Wiley in this sort of distress.
After the X rays had been taken, Vanessa, Lauren, Pete, and the technician stared at the image of Jordan Wiley’s lungs.
“Shit,” Pete said. The X ray clearly showed that Jordy’s left lung was 30 percent collapsed.
“Let’s go.” Vanessa pushed past him into the room where Jordy sat fighting for breath. No time to deal with Aldrich. They had a real emergency on their hands. She told Pete to call the cardiothoracic resident and have him meet them in the adolescent unit.
“We know what’s wrong, Jordan,” she said, motioning for Lauren to help her move the boy onto the gurney again. “We’re going to take you back upstairs and fix it.”
“What is it?” Jordy struggled to get the words out.
“I’ll tell you as we’re moving.”
In the elevator, Jordy started to cry. “Suffocating,” he said. A film of sweat covered his face, and his lips were now clearly blue.
Vanessa had never seen him cry. She put her arm lightly around his shoulders. “You have a pneumothorax,” she said calmly. “That means your left lung is partly collapsed. A bubble in the wall of your lung broke, and the air is leaking out.”
He looked at her with new panic in his eyes. “God, does that mean I—”
“It’s treatable,” she said quickly. “It’s not all that uncommon. It can even happen to a healthy person, sometimes. We’ll work fast and get you feeling better very soon.”
Brass Ring Page 13
