A chill played piano on my spine as I remembered this, and my mood stepped down a sad octave as we walked. That visit more than two weeks ago had made me aware of the terror that had ridden Ada Stowall’s life like a beast from hell.
No one should suffer that kind of physical abuse, let alone from her husband—the person she should feel the safest with. The knowledge of the horrors she suffered was the reason I had such mixed emotions about Eddie. How could anyone raised in that environment be normal?
I tried to make cheerful small talk as we moved through the dull hospital corridors but Abigail wasn’t participating. So instead I concentrated on the cadence of our footsteps reverberating off the walls.
Abigail was anxious, and the closer we got the more her young face showed this.
Perhaps she wasn’t planning on having a happy talk with her mom. Maybe she was bringing ultimatums. My mood music stepped down another eighth. I tried to fight the negativity.
My plan was to deliver Abigail safely to her mother and then disappear for a while. Gloria’s lunch was only an hour. With time walking to and from the cafeteria, they’d have maybe thirty minutes to actually get into trouble with each other.
This could work.
That is if they didn’t get food poisoning, the cafeteria food was bleck.
I knew from my own experience that our fears about having serious talks with important people in our lives could often be overblown. If you remained calm and focused, things usually went better than you expected.
I attempted to convey this thought to Abigail as we neared our destination. Her destination. I was just a passenger, now. Just a listener to an increasingly scary music—perhaps Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Infernal Dance.
At last we were on the corridor where the ICUs were located. Before us was the long, greenish-gray hall I so clearly remembered from my first visit earlier this month.
Again I thought—I hate hospitals.
On the right of this hall were the two large critical care units themselves. On the left were small groupings of chairs, tables and lamps—mini-waiting areas for family members and close friends. I couldn’t remember noticing them before.
We stopped at the check-in station. Abigail flashed a smile and offered a cute wave to someone she knew behind the desk, and we were ushered on without further ado.
She must regularly visit with her mother.
My heels continued to throw echoes against the tile walls as we made our way. But the other footsteps had changed tempo: Abigail was moving faster, changing our duet into a jarring disharmony.
In sharp contrast to the dull corridor, I knew the units themselves to be brightly lit areas, with somewhat incongruously yellow painted walls. The first, the only ICU I’d seen, held three beds. Behind each bed was an array of monitors keeping tabs of the patients.
I also remembered that Gloria’s office would be on the right as I faced the unit itself while the patients were on the left inside these large rooms. All this was clearly visible through two huge viewing windows.
Visitors to the most critical of patients were not encouraged to directly interact with them. They could watch, and quietly wait, as the cluster of folks in front of us now were doing. Their private misery was palpable even from a distance.
Two butterflies danced in my stomach trying to catch the beat, but bouncing off each other rudely. My own pace hastened.
Abigail suddenly broke into a sprint calling someone’s name. Involuntarily I slowed to a stop. Something was trying to force itself into my brain.
The knot of grief just outside this first window—a small family heretofore in solemn repose--turned as one to face her rushing approach. A man and his wife and two teen children, a girl and boy.
And then it hit me, the last survivor of the horrible crash on I-13 was in ICU One!
My slow wits realized this was the family of the surviving boy. They were waiting for God’s verdict on their son.
And Abigail knew them!
What had I done?
For the moment I couldn’t remember the college freshman’s name. Instead I was recalling a handful of bizarre details, mostly the ones in the online messages of John Shaw.
I finally got my legs moving again, wondering what I would say when I caught up to this distressful situation.
Jimmy, that was his name, Jimmy Winters.
As I approached, my eyes were pulled to the right into the gay yellow room. Three bodies were lined up with their feet facing the nurses’ station.
A metronome began keeping beat in my head. Click-click.
I searched for a soon-to-be enraged Gloria. She wasn’t there.
My eyes returned to the parents of this family. But a week of agony seemed to have numbed their senses. They were just staring at Abigail.
Except the boy, who had put his arm around her shoulder.
I began composing words that would extricate Abigail and me from their very private experience as gently as possible.
Time was moving like molasses as this scene played out. I remember it all as a cadenced series of events, perhaps because we had clicked together down the long corridors of the hospital and the echoed sounds of our walk were still repeating in my head.
How was it that Abigail knew this family so well?
The unidentified girl began drifting toward the viewing window, her eyes and mouth widening in horror.
A click. The mother’s face closed as the woman retreated from us. From the viewing window.
Another click. The father slowly stood and crossed his arms in front of his body as if to brace himself for a blow. Or to hold himself together.
Click. Back to the older sister halting her drift toward the glass, her face crumbling.
“Judi…,” the boy said.
Her name was Judi.
I followed her focus into the ICU room at Judi’s unspoken command.
To the occupant of the closest bed.
What?
Click. I nervously stepped closer.
Click. Mother and father began to keen behind me.
There was something wrong with the picture before me. Another step toward the window.
Tubes and wires were everywhere. His head was bandaged but his face was exposed and massively bruised. His eyes were at a swollen half mast, but they were seeing.
Click. Jimmy Winters had raised his head.
He studied his body.
Click. My eyes traveled with his and I finally saw that his body was way too short.
At the edge of my sight, Abigail began to collapse in the boy’s arms, giving herself over to the agony we were all standing before.
Oh no!
Click. I took an involuntary half step back from the glass. It was worse.
One arm was suspended in a sling, but the closest arm, the one not in a sling, wasn’t there either.
Three! He had lost three of his limbs.
Click. Jimmy released his head back onto the pillows. He closed his blood-filled eyes, and entered his final sleep.
The music stopped.
The girl Judi began blubbering and shaking her head next to me. An alarm was sounding, then another.
“But they just finished taking his arm. He’s supposed to be okay, now. He’s supposed to be okay….” the girl screamed.
“He didn’t know,” the father moaned from behind me. “All this time and he didn’t know.”
My mind reeled. The poor boy had been hacked into pieces by surgeons desperate to save his young life.
But Jimmy Winters was having none of it.
His face emptied and his life went away. Jimmy had made his last decision.
An irrationally calm message filled the hallways of Cleveland County General calling the Urgent Response unit to ICU One. It could have been computerized.
It was then that Head Nurse Gloria Pustovoytenko stepped out of her office to rush to Jimmy’s bed--what had taken her so long?
Another nurse followed from another room to the rear.
/>
Gloria didn’t see us. Not at first.
But then she did.
Her daughter Abigail was on the floor out of her view. Jimmy’s brother was at her side. But she saw me.
Gloria’s questioning face turned toward the closed door to ICU and I watched as she debated walking toward it--my heart pounding.
These are the details I remember of the rest of this awful event.
A white coated doctor whipped by me and slammed open the door Gloria was contemplating, and two more staff members followed him. As if flood gates had opened, doctors and other staff members swarmed around her and Jimmy’s bed.
But, Gloria could now hear her hysterical child on the floor at our feet. She stepped away, letting the others have room to get to Jimmy, and rounded the doorway.
She stopped, her face reflecting no emotion. For a moment I thought she had surely expected her daughter to come. But then she shouted.
“What hef you done!?”
The worst thing, I answered her subconsciously.
I turned and stepped aside. There was nothing I could do now but wait for this God-forsaken mistake to play itself out.
But my so-called connection with Abigail had run its course. I was in over my head with this teenage girl. I’d raised boys. They weren’t nearly as cunning as girls.
Chapter 27
The whole situation at the hospital devolved into chaos as doctors and nurses flew around the hysterical family and into ICU. For a few terrible minutes we stood watching as they worked feverishly to save the boy.
But he was gone, and given that they were still contemplating having to take the only limb he had left, it was a blessing.
Then I’d turned my attention to my charge.
Gloria had more than enough to deal with inside ICU. She was no longer staring me down. One crisis in that threshold room often triggered other crises, and now the old man in the middle bed was in cardiac arrest.
I forced Abigail to follow me back to the car. Unfortunately I had to shame her into coming with me, reminding her that she was not even a family member. She’d tried to protest, something to the effect that she wasn’t the only non-family member, but I forged on. I had to get her moving out of the building. She held out until I resorted to reminding her she’d lied and now her mother was probably never going to speak to me again.
Or some such thing. I can’t remember my exact words. But they weren’t lovely.
I knew tomorrow morning when Gloria and I met at Pinto Springs High School this would still be sitting between us like a dead toad.
I told the nurse at the check in station, or whatever it was, to make sure Abigail’s mom knew I’d taken her home and we were gone.
I drove Abigail back home to her grandmother in morgue silence. Fortunately it only took ten minutes. Nana was standing at the door again. No wave this time. No winks.
Maybe misgivings. Had Gloria called her?
I would never know.
The drive up the mountain from Escondido took only thirty minutes, but my return home took twice that due to a dead deer in the road. Deer gawking slowed us to a crawl. Must be a mountain sport.
So I spent an hour flipping switches between fuming at my stupidity and grousing about Abigail’s lie.
My whole afternoon had been gobbled up by her little deception. I was feeling no sympathy for her, thinking she had no business interjecting herself into the Winters’ grief--even if she was friends with one of Jimmy’s siblings.
As I neared our home, I tried to turn my mind back to the rest of my plans for the day, but lurking in the back of my mind—and causing belly angst--was the fact that Gloria and I would be meeting the ACLU in Principal Forsyth’s office early the next morning.
Fifty-seven minutes later I raced into the kitchen. I was late preparing dinner for Sandra and Luis and I began pulling things out of the refrigerator, constantly glancing at my watch. And then the silence hit me.
Where was Wisdom? He always greeted me at the door wagging his aging body as if he was one big tail.
Matt returned home a little after four. If I weren’t otherwise occupied I’d have been pissed.
I heard him rummaging around in the kitchen where he expected to find me.
He called my name and passed through the dining room and into the living room. He muttered something I couldn’t make out, then called my name.
“Rache! Where are you, hon?”
Hon. He always used “hon” when he knew he was guilty of something.
Like being an hour late. Like not being available to help in the preparations for our dinner guests due to arrive in the next half hour.
His voice traveled to the back of the house into the bedrooms. I didn’t hear him for several minutes. Finally he returned to the living room and stepped out on to our back deck.
“Where the hell are you Rache?”
I knew I’d lose it as soon as he neared. A sob rose from my traitorous throat. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to keep things to myself. I didn’t want to share.
Shit.
Another sob.
“Rache, what…oh fuck. What’s happened?”
I was sitting on the tiles holding Wisdom still with the last of my strength.
“Where were you!” bubbled out of my mouth through my streaming tears.
Matt knelt down beside us and put his hand on Wisdom. “Is he bleeding again?”
He hadn’t done his husbandly duties, namely blowing the detritus off the back deck and cleaning up the grill. He didn’t understand!
“Rache, I don’t see any blood, what happened?”
I lost it.
“I can’t Matt. I can’t entertain Luis and Sandra. I can’t deal with anything more today.”
I was bawling like a baby. Then Wisdom moved, or tried to. I held tight.
“Is he hurting? I mean, what’s wrong with him?” Matt said.
“He was out here sneezing his head off, trying to get the damned lump out of his nose, that’s what’s wrong. The growth has broken through the nasal wall again.”
“I don’t see any blood…”
“Not yet! But it’s coming. That’ll be next.”
I watched Matt check himself--pausing long enough to get his emotions under control. I hated him for it.
I hated that he could do that and I couldn’t.
“Okay, Rache. We both knew it was just a matter of time. Here, let me hold him while you go get yourself cleaned up. Luis and Sandra are probably pulling up to the house as we speak.”
“I can’t…” I hiccupped. And now a spike of fear that I would be found in this condition by impending house guests stabbed into my heart. He didn’t understand!
“Hon.” Then I could see it hit him. “How did things go at the hospital?”
“Abigail tricked me.” Okay, I was close to screaming now. Thankfully we lived a fair distance from our closest neighbor. I continued my rant ten decibels lower.
“She wasn’t going to meet her mom, to have a nice chat with her. She went there because that Winters boy was failing and she wanted to be there when he died! What’s wrong with her? Gloria was in charge of his case. When we got there…”
I paused to wipe my tickling face. Matt grabbed the chance to take Wisdom out of my arms. He set the poor animal free and we both watched him with bated breaths.
He moved away from us and shook his thick coat, reclaiming his dignity. Then he took up his constant vigil on the deck, sitting, facing the distant sounds of wildlife off beyond the hills.
But he wasn’t sneezing anymore.
“I think it’s stopped,” Matt offered cautiously.
“Maybe it has. But…” He also meant I was calming down.
“I know, but not yet. Come on, let’s get ready for our guests. You can tell me what happened in the shower.”
“He died, is what happened. His family was there, and about twenty doctors and nurses, and Abigail. She collapsed on the floor outside ICU. I don’t think Gloria will ever trust
me again.”
At that moment I could read my husband’s mind. He was thinking, oh fuck.
Chapter 28
I was racing around the kitchen like a maniac preparing the meal. Matt was on the porch cleaning things up. Wisdom had refused to leave his post on the porch, so Matt carried his dinner out to him. I went out to see if I could help him.
“What are you doing?” He was standing over the dog.
“Nothing.” Matt.
Then I noticed. “He isn’t eating, again.”
“No. Go back to the kitchen and finish making dinner before you start crying all over.”
“I’m okay, just finished the salad.”
Moments later we heard the front screen door slam and Luis and Sandra entered the living room. Luis was used to letting himself in.
“Hey you guys! Don’t start eating without us,” Luis called.
“Sorry we’re late,” Sandra sang from behind him. She was gorgeous. I hadn’t expected gorgeous.
“You’re not the only ones late. I haven’t even charged up the grill yet,” Matt answered.
I placed the dish of pretzels and guacamole I’d been holding on the table, and turned to greet Sandra.
“Hi, it’s nice to finally….” I began.
“Oh darn. I’m starving,” Sandra moaned. “Oh, sorry. Nice to meet you, too. I guess I feel like I know you two already, since he talks about you incessantly.”
Oops. Luis’ surprised expression spoke volumes. I guessed he had no idea he talked about us incessantly. But I know how to make friends, I reminded myself.
“Give me a hand in the kitchen, Sandra. We’re running late, too. You can sneak some salad while we’re working.”
As we entered the kitchen I heard Luis ask, “Hey Matt, what’s with Rachel’s eyes? She have allergies?”
“Nothing. Wisdom had a bad time for a bit but he’s okay now.”
Sandy said, “Who’s Wisdom…and what’s wrong with him?”
The question reminded me that although we saw Luis on a regular basis, Sandy had pretty much remained a mystery to us. She’d been his live-in girlfriend for close to a year now. But we didn’t really socialize with the folks who worked for us; we felt it kept things more professional.
Ripping Abigail, a Quilted Mystery novel Page 10
