by JoAnn Ross
Molly spent the night in Lena’s hospital room with Reece. The time passed so slowly, she glanced down at her watch several times to make certain the clock on the wall hadn’t stopped. Finally, when the bustle outside in the hallway revealed it was time for morning rounds, Dr. Parker entered the room, examined his patient and turned to Reece.
“She’s developed a fever. And it sounds as if she’s got a low-grade pneumonia in her right lung.”
“Then put her on antibiotics.”
The physician exchanged a glance with Molly who, reading the finality in his somber gaze, walked over to the window and looked down at the parking lot.
“It won’t do any good. She’s dead, Reece. The only thing keeping her alive are those machines.”
“You don’t know that.”
“There’s a way to find out.”
Molly closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the cooling glass of the window.
“I’m not going to do that,” Reece insisted. “Goddammit, James, we don’t have any right to play God with my wife.”
“We do it every day with other patients,” the neurologist reminded him.
“Not Lena.”
“You know that legally, it’s my decision to make.”
“She’s my wife. And I’m a physician.”
“You’re not Lena’s physician. You can’t make the decision, Reece. It would be too hard to live with.”
“I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t fight to keep her alive.”
“We’ll disconnect the respirator. If there’s any life in your wife’s brain, she’ll breathe for herself. If not, the rest of her will die, too.”
“She won’t die. She just needs more time.”
The older physician turned to Molly. “Talk to him,” he told her. “Because if something isn’t done to resolve this situation soon, I’m going to have to take it up with the ethics board.” That said, he left the room.
“Don’t say a thing,” Reece warned as soon as they were alone again. “Not a goddamn word.”
Knowing he had to come to this decision on his own, Molly obliged. The only sounds in the room were the beeping of the cardiac monitor and the steady swish of the respirator, its mechanical sigh an echo of the grief they were feeling.
Finally, at Reece’s insistence, another electroencephalogram was taken. The test was examined by four doctors at three hospitals. All four proclaimed the patient irreversibly brain dead.
Chapter Eighteen
It was when the results were given to Reece that Molly finally felt she had to say something.
“They’re right.” Her voice was little more than a whisper, but easily heard in the hush of the room where the deathwatch was now entering into its thirtieth hour.
The look Reece shot her over Lena’s still body was as sharp and lethal as a scalpel. “When did you get your medical degree?”
“Reece.” Understanding that the sarcastic remark was born of deep pain, Molly didn’t take offense. “Look at her.”
“She’s beautiful,” he said doggedly.
“She’s always been beautiful,” Molly agreed. “Inside as well as out. But it’s obvious that her spirit, or her soul, or whatever it was that made Lena the warm, sweet, loving wife, mother, sister and friend she was, isn’t there any longer.”
“She wouldn’t leave me. Not alone. You don’t know her like I do. You couldn’t possibly understand what we have together…. She can’t be dead. She’s the most alive woman I’ve ever known. She’s my life. If she were dead, I’d be dead. And I’m not, dammit!”
He dragged both hands down his face. When he took them away, his eyes were those of a man who’d visited hell and had unfortunately lived to tell about it.
“I can’t let her go, Molly. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I don’t know what Grace would do without her.”
“She’ll be with us, in spirit,” Molly assured him.
“Ah, I was waiting for Sister Molly to make an appearance. This is where I get the lecture about all souls going to heaven, right?”
“Actually, I was going to say that I don’t believe we truly lose the ones we love. That as long as we’re alive, the people we love live on in our hearts.”
“A helluva lot of good that’s going to do me when I have to send Grace off on her first day of school without her mother.”
Even though he continued to resist her efforts to comfort, Molly could feel Reece beginning to accept the inevitable. But that didn’t make things any less painful. At last he agreed to speak with Mercy Sam’s procurement coordinator and signed the organ donor consent form.
A priest was called to give Lena last rites. He entered the room vested in a violet stole, carrying his holy water and the sacred oils. Molly listened as he absolved her sister of her sins—how few and insignificant they must be—and watched as he dipped the tip of his thumb in the oil and anointed Lena’s eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and feet with the sign of the cross.
“Lord have mercy,” he said.
“Christ have mercy.” Molly murmured the familiar response. Reece, standing grim-faced beside her, was rigid as stone. And remained as mute as marble when the priest asked the Lord Jesus to take the purified soul of his servant Lena into his loving arms.
“It’s such a goddamn depressing shame,” Yolanda whispered to Molly a short time later as they left the room to allow Reece to prepare his wife for death in private.
He lovingly bathed her with scented French milled soap, then rubbed perfumed oil into her skin and finished up with a dusting of the Anaïs Anaïs powder she favored. Theo had sent Alex with the powder and oil earlier that day.
All the time, he continued to talk to her in low tones, husband to wife, assuring her that he loved her. That he’d always love her.
And then it was time. Dr. Parker joined Reece and Molly in the room. Molly watched as Reece whispered a private goodbye into her ear.
“No,” he said, when the older physician reached for the machine. “I need to do this.”
“It’s against policy.”
“Then take me up before the fucking hospital board, because it’s going to take every security guard in the damn hospital to stop me.”
When the neurosurgeon only lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, Reece slowly, deliberately went around the side of the bed and disconnected the tube between Lena and the machine. Then he sat down and took her hand.
Looking at her, Reece recalled all the times he’d watched her sleeping. He thought of how fortunate he was that she’d agreed to marry him. How beautiful she was. How perfect.
He was struck with a sudden, almost overwhelming impulse to reconnect her to the machine. If only he could have her with him for a little longer!
Molly drew in a sharp breath as Reece reached up, his hand near the machine. But instead, he merely turned off the respirator, silencing the steady swish swish swish. They all waited. And watched. But there was no sound, no motion from the still figure on the bed that had only days ago been a laughing, loving woman planning her husband’s surprise birthday party.
“I fell in love with her the minute I saw her,” Reece murmured, his voice as quiet as if he were in a cathedral. “Do you remember, Molly? We were in the cafeteria. I’d ordered that sawdust they try to pass off as meat loaf, and a baked potato. And apple pie.”
“À la mode.”
“You remember, too.”
She didn’t, not really. But since he always liked ice cream on his pie, it was an educated guess.
“And then, she came into the room, her face lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“She’d just gotten a job teaching kindergarten,” Molly recalled. It hadn’t been easy for Lena, with all her insecurities to get through college; her diploma, and later, her job, had meant so much to her.
“She couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved children and how this was like a dream come true. Her enthusiasm was so contagious, I knew right away I’d just met the woman
I was destined to spend the rest of my life with.” He sighed and lifted a limp hand to his lips. “Oh, God, I’m going to miss her so much.”
The room was hushed, save for the tiny click of the electrocardiogram attached to Lena’s chest. The noise remained regular and strong.
Then it missed a beat. And another. The three people in the room leaned forward, as if transfixed by the suddenly jerking waves on the screen.
The clicks, each a heart beat, became less frequent. And slower. Then slower still. Until finally they stopped. And there was only silence.
After what seemed an eternity, but was only fifteen minutes, Dr. Parker slowly reached into his white coat, brought out his stethoscope and placed the bell on Lena’s stilled chest.
His face professionally impassive, he wound the stethoscope up and replaced it in his pocket. Then he took a flashlight from another pocket, lifted each lid, one at a time, and directed its thin yellow beam into her eyes. Each was a still deep pool.
Finally, he took the silver end of the flashlight and held it in front of her porcelain pale lips, a mirror to catch a vapor of breath. The mirror remained as dry as Molly’s mouth.
After the attending physician called the death for the record, Reece leaned down once again and touched his lips to his wife’s.
Molly, who couldn’t hear what final words he whispered, watched as he slipped the wide gold band from her finger and put it on the little finger of his left hand, then placed his own wedding band on her slender finger and turned away from this woman he’d loved at first sight.
She saw him hesitate, as if waging some internal struggle with himself. Then, with tracks of tears on his ashen cheeks, he walked out of the room.
Although she knew better, Molly glanced up, half expecting to see Lena’s soul floating over them.
The organ transplant team, who’d been waiting outside the room, entered. Molly was surprised at the quiet professionalism they displayed as they lifted Lena’s lifeless body onto the gurney. Usually transfers were noisy and confused, with all the teams from various hospitals around the country jockeying for position. She suspected the respect being shown this donor was due, in large part, to the fondness and respect everyone at Mercy Sam had for Reece.
Molly stopped the gurney on the way out of the room and touched her sister’s satiny smooth cheek, saying a final goodbye of her own.
Then, with a heavy heart, she went to find Reece.
She located him in the bar across the street appropriately named The ER because so many off-duty medical personnel hung out there. He’d just ordered a double Scotch when she approached.
“I was looking for you.” She climbed onto the stool beside him.
“Well, now you’ve found me.” He tossed the Scotch back and held the glass out for a refill.
The bartender hesitated.
“Hit me again, dammit,” Reece demanded.
The bartender exchanged a look with Molly. “Are you driving? The doc’s already had two doubles.” His expression revealed this was definitely not a usual occurrence.
“I’m driving.” Molly put her hand on Reece’s arm. “Are you sure you want to do this? Grace is going to need you tonight.”
“Grace is going to need her mother every night. But that doesn’t seem to make a goddamn difference, does it?”
He polished off the refilled drink the bartender placed before him. The third drink did the trick; even as the whiskey burned his throat and gut going down, Reece felt a cool pure white glacier moving over his mind that only moments ago had felt as if it were teeming with writhing, poisonous snakes.
Understanding how deeply he was hurting, Molly prayed silently for strength and managed, just barely, to resist reminding him that she’d just lost a sister. She took his arm and was more than a little grateful when he didn’t resist her leading him out of the bar and across the street to the hospital parking lot.
When they arrived home, Theo and Alex were there to greet them. Theo embraced Reece, who remained as stiff and straight as a rod of cold steel. When it was her turn to be hugged, Molly felt as if she were sinking into the comforting warmth of a feather bed. It was more than the fact that Theo’s voluptuous curves had begun to soften with the years. It was the absolute love the older woman offered that was such a comfort.
Later, as the four adults sat in the cozy kitchen, arguing over how to tell Grace, who was sleeping upstairs, Theo was not as gentle with Reece as Molly had been.
“You can’t permit yourself the luxury of wallowing helplessly in grief,” she reminded him. “You have to think of your daughter.”
Reece shook his head and poured another drink from the bottle he’d retrieved from the library. The earlier alcohol had begun to wear off and he could feel the pain trying to break through the cold white ice fields in his mind.
“I am thinking of Grace,” he argued. “I’m wondering how she’s going to learn to do all those mysterious women things—like using a tampon, shopping for bras, getting perms and prom dresses. And how the hell is she going to get married without Lena to take care of all the details and give her all that motherly advice women need before they become wives?”
“It’s not as if you and the child live at the North Pole,” Theo argued. “I’m not going anywhere. I can fill in on the day-to-day details like tampons and perms. And Molly can help whenever she visits. As for the wedding advice, may I point out that Lena didn’t have a mother to share those intimate little details with before she married you.”
“That’s my point. Lena was a basket case when we got married.”
“Grace is stronger than Lena was,” Alex said, entering into the argument that had been going on for nearly two hours. “She has you and Lena to thank for that.”
“Listen to the man,” Theo advised, her voice softening to match the fond gaze she bestowed upon her husband. “He knows of what he speaks. A tragic thing has happened, Reece, and it would be wonderful if we could go back and change things, but we can’t. So, the only thing you can do now is go on and be the best person—the best father—to Grace you can be.”
“I don’t think I can do it alone.” He closed his eyes, wishing he could crawl into some dark cave and suffer his grief in private.
“Ah, baby.” Theo got up from her chair and pressed his head against the pillowed softness of her breasts. “I promise, you’re not ever going to be alone.”
It was, Reece remembered with a flash of unwelcome clarity, the same thing she’d said the day she’d shown up at his family home, where he’d been left in the care of servants, to inform him that his parents had not survived that plane crash. He remembered clinging to her while he bawled his eyes out.
As the glacier continued its steady pace, engulfing him in ice, the part of Reece’s mind that was still functioning wished he was seven years old again, when the horrors of the world could be solved with a hug, a good cry and the hot fudge sundae Theo had fixed them both, bravely daring to invade the Longworth kitchen despite the harridan of a cook that had declared it off bounds for as long as Reece could remember.
Although Molly was not overly fond of platitudes and clichés, because of Grace’s tender age, she went along with Theo’s romanticized explanation that God must have needed an angel up in heaven to help take care of the little children whose mommies hadn’t arrived there yet.
If the adults had thought that would satisfy the precocious child, they were wrong. “But I need her, too,” Grace argued. She turned toward Molly. “Why couldn’t God pick someone else’s mother to help those children?”
Her daughter’s morning glory eyes, dark with confusion, broke Molly’s heart. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
“But you told me that you talk to God all the time. You can ask him to send Mommy home again.”
“I wish I could, sweetheart, but—”
“He’ll listen to you, Aunt Molly,” Grace interrupted. “Mommy said that you don’t have a husband because you’re married to God. So if you ask him
real nice, he’ll have to give in. Like Daddy always does to Mommy.”
“God isn’t going to send your mommy back.” Reece’s slurred voice suggested either he’d begun drinking early this morning or hadn’t stopped last night. “Not even for Saint Molly.”
The acid he heaped onto what had once been a term of fondness stung, but Molly wasn’t about to get into an argument with her brother-in-law in front of Grace.
“I have an idea, honeybun,” Alex said with the calm reassurance that had once made him such a successful police negotiator. “Why don’t you and I go out and water your mama’s garden? I always found that a garden is a real good place to talk to people in heaven.”
“Really?” Grace turned toward the older man with obvious confidence in his veracity.
“Absolutely.” Despite his artificial legs, he picked her up as easily as if she were a feather. “And sometimes, if you listen real closely, you can hear the butterflies and the honeybees passing along messages.”
“Do you think my mommy will send me a message from heaven?” Molly heard Grace ask as Alex carried her out of the room.
“Absolutely,” he said with the same certainty as when, so many years ago, he’d assured two terrified little girls who’d just witnessed a double murder that everything would be okay.
Since Reece refused, it was left to Molly and Theo to choose Lena’s clothing for the funeral home.
“I never would have imagined how difficult this is,” Molly murmured to Theo as they stood in Lena’s walk-in closet later that day.
“It’s definitely one sad chore,” Theo agreed, pausing to admire a garnet knit suit with gold braid epaulets. The color, which could have clashed with Lena’s auburn hair, had suited her perfectly, making her look like a slender scarlet candle topped by a brilliant flame.
