Summer Breeze

by Catherine Palmer

  “Nausea, dizziness, and staggering. Sounds like intoxication. Listen, Lydia, I need to know if Luke drank any alcohol,” Derek barked at the girl as someone handed him a towel. “You’d better tell me the truth. What did you kids get into? Was it beer?”

  “Luke’s not drunk,” Kim cut in. “It’s his diabetes! His blood sugar must be off. I don’t know what to do! I can’t think! Where’s his kit?”

  She looked at Lydia, who shrieked, “I don’t have it! Was I supposed to bring it? It’s Luke’s kit, and—”

  Lydia caught her breath as her brother suddenly began to convulse. Kim let out an involuntary wail and tried to gather her son in her arms. Pressing the towel against the gash on the side of the boy’s head, Derek urged everyone to calm down. And suddenly the insulin kit appeared in Miranda’s hand.

  “I found it in his bedroom,” she huffed, out of breath. “In all the excitement of the day, he might have forgotten to take his insulin.”

  “Lukey’s bleeding to death!” Lydia screamed. “He’s going to die!”

  “Someone get the girl under control,” Derek shouted at the crowd as he snatched the kit and handed it to Kim. “Mom, take Lydia to the house.”

  “I’m not leaving my brother!” Lydia cried out. “Make him stop shaking! You have to help him!”

  Kim tried to block out her daughter’s hysteria as she fumbled with the insulin kit. People had crowded around, edging closer, cutting off the afternoon sunlight. She pushed at Lydia’s skinny arms as the girl tried to grab her brother.

  “Don’t let him die!” Lydia sobbed. “He’s all I have. He’s my only brother. He’s my best friend.”

  “Scoot over, Lydia,” Kim ordered. Luke’s convulsions had eased, but he was groggy and unfocused. “I have to test his blood.”

  “He didn’t eat lunch, Mom!” Lydia was down on her stomach, arms around her brother. “We forgot about the snacks you sent with us. Why won’t his head stop bleeding, Derek? What are you doing to him? Wake up, Lukey! Please don’t die!”

  “Please, God, please,” Kim whispered as she tested her son’s blood and read the indicator. “His glucose is low—but he shouldn’t have had a seizure. Why isn’t he more alert?”

  “Probably the head injury,” Derek said. “I’m on it.”

  Kim could hear a siren in the distance as she filled a syringe with insulin. “Please help my son, Lord. Please help us.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Derek was saying. “We’ve got him under control, honey. He’ll be fine.”

  While Kim injected the insulin, Derek checked Luke’s pulse again. “We need to get a saline IV going. He probably needs potassium, too. Hang in there, Luke. You’re doing good, kiddo. Lydia, for pete’s sake, will you let your brother have some air?”

  “You shut up!” Lydia shouted suddenly at Derek. “You don’t know anything! You’re supposed to be an officer and smart about helping people, but you’re just wiping Lukey’s blood and letting my mom do all the work. You can’t make me—”

  “Put a muzzle on that mouth, girl, or I will!”

  As the emergency medical personnel clustered around Luke, Kim sensed Derek leaving her side, pressing people back, dragging Lydia away. The EMTs began asking questions, checking Luke’s vital signs, starting an IV drip. Kim told them everything she knew. She watched helplessly as they lifted her son into the back of the ambulance. And then, before she could clear her head, she was inside the vehicle speeding toward Lake Regional hospital in Osage Beach.

  The EMT team worked over Luke while Kim brushed back tears and tried to make sense of what they were saying. She heard words that had passed through her mind a thousand times since her son’s diagnosis—diabetic ketoacidosis, counterregulatory hormones, electrolytes, ketones.

  She struggled to answer their questions. When had Luke’s blood last been tested? By the shore, she told them, ten minutes ago—or was it five?

  Had he experienced a recent infection—strep throat, pneumonia, an intestinal virus, or a urinary tract infection? A cough and runny nose, she said. Oh, why hadn’t she paid closer attention to her son? Had he undergone any trauma other than the head injury in the past twenty-four hours? Nothing. Nothing she could recall, but he had been outside with Lydia since breakfast.

  Kim told the team everything she knew, and it seemed not nearly enough. That morning, she and her mother-in-law had argued over the right way to make a seven-layer dip. At the sound of their bickering, Luke and Lydia fled the house and began swimming in the cove and playing with the other children. As everyone slowly gathered in the commons area and waited for the pork steaks to cook, the meal had been delayed. So what had Luke eaten that day? When had he last given himself a dose of insulin? What had he done while she was busy in the kitchen?

  “I can’t believe it,” Kim murmured as the ambulance stopped in front of the hospital’s emergency room and the EMT team transferred Luke to the waiting medical staff. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t watch him. And Lydia! Where is—oh, thank God!”

  Kim’s breath hung in her throat as Derek and Lydia burst through the ER door and ran toward her. Miranda was right behind them, her sandals clattering on the hard floor and her blonde hair sticking out in all directions.

  Still wearing her wet bathing suit, Lydia grabbed her mother and began weeping all over again. “Where’s Lukey?” she sobbed. “Where did they take my brother? I hate Derek! He made me ride in the car instead of the ambulance, and he doesn’t even know what ketones are!”

  Kim glanced at her husband, who had leaned one shoulder against the corridor wall as he caught his breath. Obviously fighting for control, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Kim. And then a doctor hurried toward them. More questions. Lydia crying and raging. Miranda wringing her hands, sandals clacking along the floor as she paced. Derek, jaw clenched, staring.

  The doctor vanished, and someone ushered them all to the ER waiting area. Kim had barely sat down when Lydia curled into her lap.

  “It’s Derek’s fault,” the girl whimpered. “He’s supposed to know how to help people in trouble, and he didn’t do anything.”

  “Stop that, Lydia,” Miranda spoke up firmly. “You can’t hold your stepfather responsible. We all played a part. This morning it crossed my mind that Luke might have forgotten to check his blood, and then I got busy with the seven-layer dip. Your mother was so insistent on doing it her way—”

  “Wait—you’re blaming me for the problem in the kitchen?” Kim stared in disbelief. “You were the one who made an issue of the dip, Miranda. In fact, you criticize everything I do. I could have put that dip together in five minutes, but I spent half the morning trying to convince you that I knew what I was doing! And you … you …” Hearing her own senseless rant, Kim burst into tears and buried her face in her daughter’s shoulder.

  Lydia wrapped her arms around her mother. “You should just go back to St. Louis, Grandma Finley,” she said. “And take Derek with you. We don’t need either of you. It’s always been Luke and Mommy and me, ever since I can remember, and we were doing just fine till you people came along.”

  “Lydia, no,” Kim cried.

  “You, young lady, should have been watching your brother.” Miranda pointed an accusing finger at the girl. “If I didn’t know about the diabetes, I wouldn’t have any trouble believing you two had gotten into someone’s liquor cabinet! You’re both just looking for trouble, aren’t you? Like the day you ran away from me at the library. How did you expect me to find you at your friend’s house two streets over? The fact is, you were both raised to be wild little things. If my son hadn’t married your mother and brought some order and control into your lives, you’d probably be headed for juvenile court by now!”

  “That’s enough, Mom,” Derek growled. “Everyone be quiet for two seconds.”

  “How can you expect us to be detached and unemotional like you, Derek?” Kim demanded. “We don’t even know what’s happening to Luke! They’ve shut us away here in the wai
ting room, and the least you could do is tell them you’re with the Water Patrol.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So you could go in there and check on him! You’re an officer. You’re trained for emergencies.”

  “Not diabetic emergencies,” Lydia tossed out. “Derek doesn’t know anything about diabetes, and you know why? Because he doesn’t care. I bet he never even read the printout I made. He only cares about his work. He’s not our real father. Luke could die, and Derek would be glad, Mom, because that would be one less person to take you away from him. That’s all he wants. Just you and his dumb job.”

  “Lydia.” Kim tried to push her daughter off her lap, but the girl clung on tight with fingers like steel bands. “Lydia, stop being disrespectful to Derek. He loves you and Luke, and he takes good care of us—”

  “No, he doesn’t! He doesn’t know what ketones are! All he does is ride around in his stupid speedboat looking at girls in Party Cove. Big deal! Officer Finley, Officer Finley, la-di-da! Who cares?”

  “Is that the way you let your children speak to adults, Kim?” Miranda cried. “You should take that girl outside and—”

  “I will deal with my daughter when this crisis is over,” Kim snapped. “At the moment, all I care about is my son’s health! Derek, don’t just stand there like a concrete block. Go in there and make them tell us what’s going on!”

  As Derek roused himself from the wall he’d been leaning against, the emergency room door burst open and in marched half of Deepwater Cove. Patsy Pringle and Cody Goss led the pack as Steve and Brenda Hansen, Charlie and Esther Moore, Brad and Ashley Hanes, Opal Jones, Bitty Sondheim, and a number of others flooded into the waiting area. Pete Roberts brought up the rear, his beefy arms wrapped around a watermelon.

  The throng had nearly reached Kim when the door at the opposite end of the room opened and a nurse beckoned the family. Lydia leaped out of her mother’s arms and began to run. Kim cast a backward glance at Derek, saw he was speaking to Miranda, and headed after her daughter.

  “Ketones,” Derek told Steve Hansen as the two men stood in the hospital room’s doorway. Two days had passed since the Fourth of July fiasco, and Derek had finally succeeded in sending his wife home to bed. Luke was holding his own now. The diabetic crisis was safely behind them, and the doctor planned to release the boy the next morning. The stitches meant Luke’s head would be sore, but the mild concussion should have no lasting impact. Working the late shift gave Derek the opportunity to relieve Kim, who hadn’t left her son’s side since his arrival at the emergency room.

  “What are ketones?” Steve asked. The real estate agent had dropped by the hospital after dinner with a client at his country club. They had sealed a lucrative land deal, and Steve was in a good mood despite the late hour.

  “Ketones are chemical by-products,” Derek explained. Recalling Lydia’s shouted accusations, he had made sure to ask the doctor everything about Luke’s condition.

  “Are they good or bad?” Steve asked.

  Derek rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “They’re bad. They affect the kidneys. Luke forgot his insulin on the morning of the Fourth. He told his mother that he’d been popping in and out of the basement bathroom all day, but he didn’t think anything about it. When he got dehydrated, he felt dizzy and fell and hit his head.”

  “I guess I hadn’t realized it could get that serious so quickly.” Steve studied the sleeping boy. “Charlie Moore told us he has diabetes, but I guess his is not the same kind as Luke’s.”

  “Charlie has type 2. That can be serious too, but it’s different.”

  Steve clapped a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “Brenda mentioned some of the things Lydia was saying to you out there on the commons. Kids can be pretty tough to handle at times, and you took on the twins sort of late in the game.”

  Derek shrugged. “Being a stepfather is harder than I thought. Kim says I live in my own little world.”

  “What man doesn’t? We see our role as a job, and we do the best we can with it. For years I thought I was a good husband and dad—doing my part, playing my role. And then Brenda accused me of abandoning her.”

  Surprised at the frank revelation, Derek glanced at Steve. Derek liked Steve Hansen well enough, and he respected the man’s dedication to his wife and children. Steve had built a good reputation as a businessman with his real estate agency. He had always seemed cheerful and his family successful.

  “You abandoned Brenda?” Derek asked. “That doesn’t sound like the Hansens of Deepwater Cove.”

  “Well, I was gone a lot, especially when the new agency had just started to build up steam. Brenda started missing the kids and struggling over some things, and I was never around. We had a rough time, and I wouldn’t ever want to go through anything like that again. But we learned a lot. Brenda and I are working hard to pull our marriage back together. I’d sure hate to see you and Kim fall into the same kind of trouble.”

  Derek frowned. “I don’t think we have any big problems. Kim and I are crazy about each other. It’s this diabetes thing … and my mother being around all the time. And I do have to work a lot of hours, especially in the summer. But I try.”

  The men fell silent, watching the lights on Luke’s monitors blink on and off. Derek reflected on the arguing and shouting that had taken place at home in the past few weeks. Lydia had become a real pain in the neck, and Luke’s diabetes was stressing everyone out. Kim clearly didn’t like having Derek’s mother in their home, but he couldn’t understand why. Miranda looked after the twins so Kim could go back to work. Kim enjoyed her job, and that income was something the family couldn’t surrender.

  “Maybe the real problem is not you at all,” Steve suggested. “Brenda had focused her whole life around our children before they left home. I’ll bet Kim is frustrated over her inability to be with the twins more—especially with one of them sick. But I know Dr. Groene counts on Kim. So what do you do?”

  “Turns out he’s diabetic too. Type, like Luke. He’s been great.”

  “Could Kim stay home with the twins permanently? That way, your mother could go back to St. Louis. Maybe then you could all get back to normal.”

  Derek shook his head, realizing there was so much more to the financial situation than anyone understood.

  “Have you and Kim ever thought of talking to Pastor Andrew? I wish I’d listened better to his advice when Brenda and I were having trouble. He might have some ideas that could see you through this rough patch.”

  “The guy’s been in and out of here every day visiting with Luke and Kim, but I don’t feel that comfortable around him, to tell you the truth. I’m not a churchgoer, you know. I don’t mind Kim and the kids attending. I just haven’t felt the need.”

  Steve’s eyebrows lifted. “Maybe not yet.”

  Derek glanced over at him. “I’ve always handled things my way, pal.”

  “Well, you’ve got our prayers whether you want them or not.” Steve gave Derek a nod. “I’d better head home. Brenda and Cody baked a chocolate cake this evening, and they’re waiting up for me.”

  At the thought of Cody’s wide blue eyes, Derek smiled and his shoulders relaxed. “Eat a piece for me,” he said. “Desserts are few and far between at our house these days.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  “Thanks for dropping by,” Derek said. “I’ll tell Kim you were here to check on Luke.”

  “Actually, I came to see you. I called Kim before I left the club, and she told me you were at the hospital. I wanted to visit with you awhile.”

  “Thanks.”

  Steve shook Derek’s hand and headed down the hall.

  Lydia settled into the soft, black vinyl chair at Patsy’s station inside the Just As I Am beauty salon. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and said, “Cut it off.”

  “All of it?” Patsy lifted a hank of the girl’s thick, dark brown hair. “Honeybunch, are you sure about this?”

  “I’m pos
itive. Luke and I are turning eleven in three weeks, and we’re tired of being treated like little kids. We’re going into the sixth grade this fall. That’s middle school, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I know how old eleven is, and I also know that you have some of the prettiest hair in Camden County. I’d put you in the running to wear Jessica Hansen’s homecoming queen crown one of these days. You’ve got your mother’s big brown eyes and your own sweet smile. You don’t want to cut off your hair so close to school starting up again, do you?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said firmly. “Up to my ears. I want it short and sassy, like Tiffany’s.”

  Lydia opened her purse and pulled out a school photograph of a girl who didn’t have half her beauty. What had gotten into that giggly little pumpkin who used to hold her twin brother’s hand as they selected goodies with their mother in the tea area?

  When Lydia called the salon to make an appointment, one of the other stylists had taken the message. Now Patsy was beginning to wonder if Kim Finley even knew what her daughter was up to.

  “Tiffany’s got some natural wave, see?” Patsy said, pointing to the photo. “Your hair wouldn’t look the same even if we did give it that style. Does your mother want me to cut it so short, honey? Or did she drop you off here just for a trim?”

  As Lydia’s pretty lips pinched shut, Patsy noted the film of pink lip gloss coating them. She also saw a dusting of frosted eye shadow on the girl’s eyelids and some clumpy mascara stuck to her lashes. Hmmm. This was beginning to spell trouble with a capital T.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Patsy said. “You sit tight while I call your mom at Dr. Groene’s office. She can tell me exactly what the two of you discussed.”

  “No, wait!” Lydia caught Patsy’s arm. “I rode my bike over here by myself, and I’m spending my own money for this haircut. My mother has nothing to do with it.”

  “Really? Don’t you still live at home?” Patsy swung the chair toward the mirror and snapped a plastic cape around Lydia’s neck. “My parents always said I could make my own decisions when I lived in my own house and paid my own bills and ate my own cooking. Until then, I was under their thumb.”