by Jed Power
Chapter 15
The drive from Dan's cottage to Exeter Hospital took only about fifteen minutes. It had been quite a while since he'd been to the hospital. The last time he hadn't been driving and he hadn't been a visitor. Not a good trip. He didn't expect this one to be much better.
He pulled his car into the parking garage and walked the short distance to the Alumnae Plaza entrance. He walked up the concrete steps to the impressive glass-and-brick-covered front, shoved through the glass turnstile door, and found himself at a receptionist's desk in the lobby.
The black man behind the desk gave Dan directions to the Intensive Care Unit. Dan followed them. He found himself in front of a set of locked double doors. A sign instructed visitors to press a button on the wall. He did. Within seconds the doors swung outward, allowing him to enter.
Dan approached a young nurse seated behind a command desk. She was dressed in blue scrubs and a white coat with blue flowers sprinkled across it. "May I help you?"
"I'm here to see my brother, Michael Kelly," Dan answered. He suddenly recalled the feeling he'd had when he was under twenty-one and trying to buy beer.
"Your name?"
"Dan Kelly."
The young nurse studied a clipboard on the desk in front of her. For a long moment Dan had a feeling she was going to question him further. Instead, she turned her swivel chair and pointed in the direction of a group of rooms to her left. "You want 205."
"Thanks." Dan walked quickly to the room marked 205. The door was ajar. He pushed it open and stepped inside. In front of him sat a bed concealed by a wraparound beige curtain.
Dan took a deep breath, almost gagging on the strong sickroom smell. "Shamrock? It's me, Dan."
Silence.
Dan pinched the curtain and slid it slowly around until the bed was fully exposed. He dropped the curtain in shock and took a step back. "Jesus Christ, Shamrock. What've they done to you?"
The Irishman was completely unrecognizable, looking more like the Invisible Man than a real man. His head was fully swathed in bandages. Only his closed eyes, nose, and mouth were exposed. A breathing tube draped from his mouth. Dan stared at the other end, realizing the ventilation machine there was responsible for the faint sighs he was hearing. IV lines ran from Shamrock's arms to bags hanging from metal poles. A heart monitor beeped ominously. The rest of his body was covered by sheets.
Dan swallowed hard. This was worse than he expected. Much worse. "Shamrock?" Dan said softly. "Shamrock?"
He reached out and touched the Irishman's arm. Cold. Icy cold.
He'd been told the Irishman was in bad shape, but for some reason he hadn't thought it would be this bad. He'd figured he'd walk in and find Shamrock sitting up in bed, regaling nurses with his endless repertoire of Irish jokes as they prepared to move him to a regular ward. But the Shamrock laying in front of him couldn't tell a joke if his life depended on it.
The heart monitor's beep became frantic, tiny eruptions of sound that set Dan's nerves jangling. He stared at the erratic peaks on the monitor screen and held his breath until the beeps finally resumed their regular rhythm. Then he turned his attention back to the bed.
"I know it's kind of late, Shamrock, but I'm still going to keep that promise I made. As best I can, anyway. If we'd just had one more day, you'd have told me where you put it. Now I don't have a clue where to look. And without it . . . Jesus, things are going to be hard. If we'd just had that one more day . . . Christ, maybe you'd still be telling jokes back at the High Tide."
He'd been thinking about buttonholing Shamrock's doctor and asking about Shamrock's prognosis. But staring down at the little Irishman all bandaged up like a mummy, with the tubes and the monitor and the throat thingamajig, made Dan reconsider. Probably better not knowing than dreading the future.
Then again, maybe Shamrock truly had the "Luck o' the Irish." Time would tell soon enough.
Meanwhile, he'd do his best to keep the promise he'd made to his Irish friend. After all, his word was about all he had left.
~*~*~
