Second Chances

by P. D. Cacek

  He’d wake up. Of course he’d wake up.

  Eva rubbed her arms under the thin robe one of the nurses had brought her and wondered if she should call and ask her husband to bring her a sweater from home.

  Then remembered he wasn’t speaking to her at the moment.

  After the doctor’s little revelation about the aspirin, her husband had actually accused her of causing Curtis’s attempted…Curtis’s accident because she’d stopped giving him the Thorazine.

  If the doctor had simply kept out of it, she could have reminded her husband what Curtis had been like on the drug, but that hadn’t happened. Not only had the doctor sided with her husband, and the almighty prescription drug industry, but went so far as to suggest the aspirin caused the bleeding in Curtis’s stomach and not the fall.

  As if baby aspirin could do any harm.

  It was baby aspirin, for God’s sake!

  But whatever caused it, Curtis had bled a lot and the accident had caused some minor swelling in his brain – “It’s not uncommon in cases of strangulation, Mrs. Steinar.” – and now he was sleeping peacefully.

  Just like a baby.

  Eva pulled the robe tighter around her shoulders.

  “Oh, my God, Eva, I’m so sorry.”

  Eva turned as her next-door neighbor, Sue Ramos, rushed into the room. The spry seventy-two-year old had babysat Curtis when he was a toddler, before his genius became evident, and still brought over cookies every time she baked. Eva had called the older woman right after her husband stormed out, taking the car with him. Eva had to go home and pack some of Curtis’s things for when he woke up, knowing how much he’d hate the indignity of being in a backless hospital gown.

  “This must feel like a nightmare,” her neighbor said, wrapping her arms around Eva’s shoulders. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Eva hugged the woman’s arms. “You’re doing it. Allan had to leave…work, you know.”

  “I know, I was married.” She gave Eva another quick hug then stood up and walked to the bed. “He looks like he’s sleeping.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  The woman nodded. “How is he?”

  “The doctors say he came through the operation just fine –”

  “Operation! My God.”

  “– but we’ll have to wait until he wakes up before they can run more tests.”

  “Of course,” her neighbor said and leaned over to brush a damp lock from Curtis’s forehead.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that he hates being touched.”

  “Oh. Of course, sorry,” she said and moved away from the bed when Eva stood up. “Do they know what happened?”

  “An accident,” Eva said quickly, and was almost happy when a nurse or intern or doctor, everybody who worked in the hospital wore scrubs and clogs, walked in and asked if he could speak to her for a moment. “Will you excuse me for a minute, Sue?”

  Eva saw her neighbor smile in consent and followed the doctor or intern, it had to be one or the other since nurses didn’t talk one-to-one with family members, out into the hall.

  “Mrs. Steinar, have you and your husband given any thought about donating Curtis’s organs?”

  It wasn’t a doctor or an intern, it was a vulture.

  Eva left without answering and returned to the room to find her elderly neighbor leaning over Curtis and pulling down his left eyelid with her thumb.

  “Sue! What are you doing?”

  The ex-babysitter moved her hand away and stood up. “I had some medical training when I was younger,” she said. “I was just checking Curtis’s eyes…you know, his visual reflexes. So, are you ready to head out?”

  If there had been anyone else she could have called for a ride, Eva would have thrown the old woman out, but given the circumstances, she simply smiled and left the thin robe draped over the chair as she walked back to the bed.

  He looked like he was asleep.

  “I’m just going home for a moment, Curtis, but don’t worry, I’ll be right back with your laptop so when you wake up you can finish whatever experiment you were working on. I know geniuses are always working on something.

  “Just wake up, Curtis. Do that for me. Just wake up.”

  Chapter Eight

  Boulder, Colorado

  Jessie folded her hands in her lap and listened to the soft voices of the congregation’s prayer circle in the corridor outside Carly’s room. Abbie’d told her there’d been a similar contingent outside her room when she’d been unconscious, but when she woke up the group said a prayer of thanksgiving and joined those holding vigil outside the ICU.

  Hospital regulations wouldn’t allow more than five or six in the hall at once, but Abbie said the rest of the congregation stayed in the lobby and took shifts so neither Jessie nor Carly would be alone and without God’s words through their ordeals.

  After her sister told her that, Jessie had never felt more loved or less deserving of that love.

  All of it was her fault. Again.

  Jessie took a deep breath and let it out. Please, God, let her be okay.

  “I know,” a voice to her left said, “it’s hard, but you have to keep your faith, Jessica. God saved you and we know he’ll save Carlene as well.”

  Jessie nodded without looking up to see who said it. Not that it would have mattered; they’d all been telling her the same thing, more or less, for the last three days.

  Only three days, a miracle some of them said, but she still looked like the star of a low-budget horror movie. The stitches had stopped oozing, but they itched, and a few of the bruises that decorated her face had only that morning begun to turn from overripe plum to a gorgeous shade of bilious yellow-green.

  If Carly woke up and saw her she’d scream – Get away from me! Freak! – so maybe it was okay that she was still unconscious. The only reason she was sitting there like a gargoyle was because, after explaining Carly’s injuries – a fractured skull, cracked collarbone, pneumonia – her doctor had thought it might help if Carly heard her best friend’s voice.

  Jessie had almost told him that wasn’t her.

  The door opened and Jessie braced herself when her father came out into the hall. “Ready?”

  Jessie looked up at her father and decided not to lie. “No.”

  “I know, it’s going to be hard, but if it’s any consolation, I’m very proud of you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Can’t help it, you’re my kid and I’ll always be proud of you.” He walked around to the back of the wheelchair and Jessie felt it shudder when he gripped the handles. “One. Two.”

  Jessie remembered the silly game they played when she had to take medicine or get a bandage ripped off. He’d count to two and when she was ready she’d say three.

  She took another deep breath. “Can we talk later, just you and me?”

  “Of course we can, you know that.”

  “Okay. Three.”

  Jessie held her breath as they entered the room. Carly’s parents looked up and smiled. They looked a lot older than the last time she’d seen them. Almost as if it’d been three years since the accident instead of three days.

  “How are you feeling, Jessica?” Mrs. Wingate asked.

  “Sore, but okay.”

  “Well, you look just…. You look fine, dear.”

  Jessie nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Carly?” Mr. Wingate reached over the bedrail and touched his daughter’s shoulder. “Jessica’s here. Can you open your eyes and say hi?”

  Jessie leaned forward in her wheelchair and swallowed the scream that suddenly filled the back of her throat. They’d shaved off Carly’s beautiful hair and given her a halo of cold steel that encircled and was screwed into and through the thick gauze turban they’d wrapped around
her head. She was sitting up, back propped with pillows to keep the metal brace holding her neck and head together upright.

  Carly was lucky she was unconscious; it would have been really hard to sleep in that position.

  All things considered, Jessie realized she’d gotten off lucky. When she’d fallen through the ice, just as she was going under, she’d careened off the broken edge – giving herself one hell of a black eye and opening up a few facial gashes. Carly had hit face-first too, but hadn’t been as lucky. She’d split her upper lip and probably knocked out a few teeth. Jessie couldn’t tell because of the breathing tube they’d taped to her mouth, but it was easy to see that she’d broken her nose by the lavender-yellow-green bruises that covered both her eyes.

  Yeah, she wasn’t lucky at all.

  “Come on, honey,” Mr. Wingate repeated, “say hi to Jessica.”

  “It’s okay,” Jessie said because Carly couldn’t. “She doesn’t have to.”

  Mrs. Wingate stood up and walked over to Jessie to give her a hug. “But she will. You’re Carly’s best friend, she loves you so much. And she’ll tell you the same thing when she wakes up.”

  Jessie doubted that because she knew exactly what Carly would say.

  Get away from me.

  I hate you!

  Freak.

  “Yeah,” Jessie said, “I’m sure she will.”

  Mrs. Wingate stood, walked around to the back of the wheelchair and began pushing Jessie toward the bed. “I think she knows you’re here.”

  Freak!

  FREAK!

  “Talk to her, Jessica. Go on, it’s okay.”

  No, it’s not. She doesn’t want me here. “Hi, Carly.”

  Nothing. Thank you, God.

  “Um, it’s me, um, Jessie…Jessica and, uh, I, um I just woke up so, uh, you can wake up now too. Okay? I know it’s hard and your throat’s going to hurt, but you can do it. You’re the strongest person I know, Carly, so come on and wake up, okay? Just wake up and say hi. Okay? Just wake up and I promise I won’t bother you anymore. Just wake up.”

  When her breath finally gave out, Jessie collapsed against the vinyl backrest and jumped when someone touched her shoulder.

  “That was lovely, Jessica,” her father said. “Shall we all join hands for the invocation?”

  Forming a circle, they clasped hands and closed their eyes.

  “Hear me, O Lord,” her father said, “for I am as you made me, one with my body and soul, whole and complete, an individual created and blessed with a soul which you have given to me alone. In one body and with one soul I came into this world complete, and with that same body and soul I shall leave it. My eyes see, my ears hear, and my mouth speaks to the glory of the one and only life I was given and to the one true death I will receive when I am set free. I have but one body and one soul that I can call mine and I will shun those that hide behind a stolen face. One body, one soul for this world and for all eternity. Hear our prayers, O Lord, for thy daughter who now lies here broken and in need of your strength. We beseech thee, O Lord, to bring our beloved Carly back to us, alive and whole, her soul safe and protected within the body you gave her. But, if in your wisdom you choose to call her home—”

  Carly moaned.

  Mrs. Wingate broke free first, racing toward the bed with Jessie right on her heels. Jessie wasn’t supposed to walk except to go to the bathroom or with a nurse accompanying her around the ward, but no one said anything.

  “Carly?”

  Carly’s lips twitched around the breathing tube and her eyelids fluttered.

  “She’s waking up! Carly’s waking up!”

  From the hall came a chorus of Thank Gods and Hallelujahs as Jessie’s father pulled her away and sat her down in the wheelchair. He was laughing with tears in his eyes.

  “It’s a miracle,” he kept repeating, “a real one. God heard us. It’s a miracle. She’s waking up.”

  “A miracle,” Jessie repeated but grabbed her father’s arm when he started to move away. “She really is waking up, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “About that talk…the one, you know, I wanted to have, um, with you.”

  He nodded and made his face go serious. “Sure, we can do that, but how about we do it later?”

  “Yeah, later would be good.”

  Her father kissed her cheek. “Come on, let’s get you back to your room, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Abbs?

  How’s Carly? Is she….

  She’s waking up, Abbs. Carly’s waking up.

  Oh my God! That’s great.

  Yeah…it’s a miracle.

  * * *

  Phoenixville, Pennsylvania

  “So, I’m thinking that instead of going directly to Cambridge, you might consider taking a few courses at Penn State to start. I know, I know, but it doesn’t have to be the campus closest to us. You’re a young man and you want to be out on your own, but would you think about it? It would mean a lot to your father and me, but, of course, we understand if you’d rather not. Still, if you’d think about it, I would appreciate it.”

  Eva finished massaging the cream into his hands.

  “It’s the air-conditioning,” she told him, “it dries out the skin. Do you like this cream? It’s rich in lanolin and vitamin D, and I made sure it was fragrance-free. I know you didn’t like the lavender-scented kind I brought last time, it really was too much, but this one is all right, isn’t it?”

  The tracheotomy tube taped to the center of his throat moved. Eva had told the doctors he could swallow, but they’d insisted on putting in a gastral feeding tube…as if his poor stomach hadn’t already been through enough…and, of course, her husband had signed the consent form while she was down in the cafeteria.

  “I told your father you’d hate it…and you can tell him the same thing when they remove it. I’ll remind you if you forget.”

  Standing up, Eva swung the rolling bed tray into position in front of Curtis and opened his laptop. When it came on Curtis twitched.

  “I know I sound like I’m harping, but would you like to look at the Penn State website? Maybe check out a few of their online courses? I know you must get so bored in here.”

  Eva watched as his glance rolled across her face to a spot somewhere beyond her. The doctors told her he was unresponsive and tried to tell her that even though his eyes were open he wasn’t conscious. They called it a waking coma and Eva almost laughed in their faces.

  They had no idea how easily Curtis manipulated them.

  He wasn’t unresponsive, he was non-responsive, but after the first hundred times of trying to explain the difference, Eva had given up. Let them think what they would, she knew the truth.

  Besides, Curtis had never been much of a talker to begin with.

  Eva tapped the tabletop with her nail until her son’s roving eyes found it and fixed on it. If she’d let him, he’d stare at the computer twenty-four hours a day. His ability to concentrate was amazing. Waking coma, indeed.

  “Mrs. Steinar?”

  Eva turned as two men walked into the room.

  “Good morning.” Eva put a hand on her son’s shoulder. “Say good morning, Curtis.”

  His shoulder twitched.

  “He’s thinking about taking a few classes at Penn State.”

  The men smiled.

  “Mrs. Steinar, I’m Dr. Morrow, chief of neurology, and this is Walter Polster, the hospital’s chief administrator.”

  “How do you do.”

  “Mrs. Steinar,” the hospital’s chief administrator said, “is your husband here, by any chance?”

  “He’s at work.”

  “Well, we’d really like to speak to both of you.”

  Eva sat down. “He’ll be here around six if you’d like to come back.”

/>   The two men exchanged glances before the chief of neurology shook his head.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, Mrs. Steinar. When Curtis was transferred here from the hospital in Haverford, we ran a battery of tests, both neurological and physical, to determine his overall condition and capabilities to get a baseline. Since then we have tested twice and, given the lack of any obvious improvement, I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do for him.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Curtis is stable, but he can’t breathe on his own and needs a gastric feeding tube—”

  “He can swallow, you know that.”

  The man nodded. “But not consistently, there’s always the danger of pulmonary aspiration.”

  “Well, then this is the best place for him, isn’t it?”

  There was another quick exchange of looks and the chief administrator took over.

  “I’m afraid it’s not,” he said. “While we are one of the area’s top rated trauma centers and health-care providers, we feel it’s in Curtis’s best interest that he be moved to a facility that is specifically designed to care for him and his needs. I’m afraid the hospital simply doesn’t have the resources or space to continue palliative support for Curtis.”

  Eva looked at her son. He was still staring transfixed at the computer screen.

  “There are a number of facilities we can recommend,” the chief of neurology said, “that can provide long-term rehabilitation and hospice care.”

  Eva turned, glaring. “Hospice is for the dying, Curtis is alive.”

  “Yes, he is, but in his present state Curtis is susceptible to a number of medical issues his compromised system will not be able to fight. If you wish for him to remain here we will continue to care for your son to the best of our abilities; however, if you hope to see more progress—”

  “We feel,” the chief administrator interrupted, “that it would be better if Curtis was transferred to a long-term care and rehabilitation facility.”

  Eva stood up and walked to the window. Curtis’s room faced the parking lot.

  “Yes, I definitely think Curtis deserves a better facility, one that will recognize his genius and abilities. I’ll speak to my husband tonight.”