SICK
Sick Psychological Thriller Series Novella 1
Christa Wojciechowski
Copyright © 2015 by Christa Wojciechowski
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by Christa Wojciechowski
A special thanks to
My sisters
Gina Jaramillo and Tia Wojciechowski
who are always the first to see my work.
Thanks for always “getting it.”
My beta readers
Joan Neptune, Roseanne Wojciechowski,
and author A.R. Rivera
for trudging through the sloppy copy
and offering their priceless suggestions.
My editor
Candace Johnson at Change It Up Editing
for working with me through the hard times
to help me polish this book.
I also want to thank my husband, Marco, for his keen insights
and for being the most handsome beta reader ever.
John returned from surgery smelling of salty Betadine and dried blood. The metallic odor mixed with the sweetness rising from his body—the scent of healing wounds and drugged sleep. His eyes trembled beneath their lids. The anesthesia was wearing off. He would wake up at any moment. I held his hand, as I always did, and hummed his favorite lullaby.
This was one of John’s most serious surgeries. He fractured his neck after taking a fall down the stairs, and the surgeons had to fuse his cervical spine together. He would be limited in the way he could move his head from now on. I tried to imagine what was to come. The quality of his life, our life, was getting progressively worse.
His eyes fluttered open and he saw my face. He smiled angelically and then winced. “The pain,” he whispered. “Tell the nurse I need more.”
The recovery room was empty. We only had the company of the machines–the heat blowing into the warm air blanket that hovered over John’s body, the monitors beeping out the rhythm of my dear husband’s heart; no matter how many times he went under, that steady, determined beat never ceased.
“Suze,” he rasped, grabbing my wrist.
“Yes, the pain.” I patted his hand and stood up to go look for the nurse, a robust young woman of mixed race who was stationed behind a small counter in the adjoining room. She was writing on some charts. “Miss,” I said, “my husband is in terrible pain. Could you give him a little more medication, please?”
She looked up with a pleasant smile. “Sure thing, Mrs. Branch.” She grabbed the arms of her swivel chair and hefted herself upward. She prepared the medication over the drug cart that was parked next to the counter. Then we both returned to my husband’s bedside.
“You got some pain there, Mr. Branch, huh?” she said.
He gazed up at her with glassy, pleading eyes.
She took the cap off the syringe and inserted the needle into the IV. “I know that spinal fusion is no joke. Now you just relax.”
“Thank you,” he whispered. He smiled weakly, gratefully, like an old dog that’s been patted on the head.
The nurse recapped the needle and walked away, but before she reached the disposal bin, my husband spoke again.
“I don’t feel it, I don’t feel anything,” he said.
“Good,” I said, “you’re not supposed to feel anything.”
“No, I mean I don’t feel the drug,” he said. “What did she give me? Ask her what did she give me?”
“Just wait a few minutes,” I said. “Give it time to act.”
“What did you give me?” he yelled toward the nurse.
She rushed back to us. “You’re okay, Mr. Branch. It was just some Tramadol, that’s all. I know it may feel intense, but it’ll taper off soon.”
“Tramadol? Is this some kind of joke?” He panted heavily and glared up at the nurse. “Don’t you see I’m in pain here? I have screws in my vertebrae. There is cold, hard metal in my body!”
“Calm down, Mr. Branch,” she said. “It may just take a minute to settle in.”
“I need morphine,” he said. “That is what is indicated after a surgery like this.”
“I’m not permitted to give you any more morphine, Mr. Branch.”
“But this is unbearable.” He moaned, and then turned to me, desperate. “Suze, please, do something. It hurts. It hurts.”
“Are you sure you can’t give him something stronger?” I asked the nurse. John had a high tolerance to pain medication. He always joked that he needed an equine dose to get the same effect as normal people.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I was told not to.”
“Sweetie, just relax,” I smoothed his forehead. “Shhh. Keep still. You’re going to make it worse.” He always liked when I did that, smoothed his forehead, but it wasn’t working.
“The morphine!” he said. “This is inhumane! Cruel, negligent!”
“John, you’re making a scene,” I said.
“Oww!” His face reddened. He tried twisting his head. “Oww!”
“Sir, you can’t move around like that,” the nurse said. “You just had neck surgery.”
He jerked his head from side to side. “I can’t stand it. The pain! It hurts. It hurts!” He struggled against his neck brace, the skin under his jaw pushing up into slender rolls around his face.
“Sweetie! What are you doing? You’re not supposed to move,” I said. I thought of the tender bones, the bruised tissue, the sutures. The strange tingle of nausea nagged at the sides of my throat. I looked up at the nurse. She was dumbfounded, and although I was worried, I was also embarrassed.
“Bring me a doctor! I must see a doctor!” He writhed against the collar. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped, grabbing at the lip of it and yanking it down against his pale collarbone.
“John!” I grabbed his hands, “Please!” I turned to the nurse. “You must get him something.” I said. “If he keeps this up, he’ll end up paralyzed.” The woman stood looking over him, indecisive. “Miss,” I said, “I’m a nurse–his nurse. He’s been taking opiates for years. His tolerance is enormous. He needs more. Trust me.”
John heaved and howled, jerking like a panicking animal. The nurse nodded and then ran to a phone on the wall.
“Sweetie,” I said, wiping his clammy forehead. “It’s going to be okay. Shhhh. They’re getting it. Just hold on. It’s almost over.”
He whimpered, his pout exaggerated by his bulky chin being pushed up by the foam and metal brace. The thinning hair on top of his head stuck up in a curl. The rest was growing out thick and shiny reddish-brown on the sides. He looked like a helpless infant. Poor John.
The nurse returned with another syringe. She glanced at me and huffed, as if I were some conspirator. She didn’t seem to believe that he was still in so much pain. I felt like she had expected me to take her side.
I was just as surprised at his behavior. John had undergone so many operations that it was like a job for him. He usually waved to me as he was wheeled away on the stretcher like a man leaving in his car for work–always so brave. He accepted all his illnesses and remained dear, without bitterness. He sometimes got frustrated if they didn’t manage hi
s pain correctly, but he usually got what he wanted quickly enough.
I’d never seen him like this though. I was frightened. He moved so erratically that an outsider might think he was purposely trying to undo all the surgeons had just fused together. His pain must have reached an unprecedented level, and I was glad not to be the one who had to endure it. He was the stronger one, trained and hardened against his nervous system.
The young woman injected the drug into John’s IV. Within seconds he sighed and smiled. “Thank you. Very kind of you,” he said to the nurse. She walked off without a word. He patted my hand. “So much better now, Suze. You’re my angel.”
*
Almost a week later, we brought John home in an ambulance. He looked into my eyes the entire ride, holding onto my hand. He squeezed hard and winced over the slightest bump, but he never broke eye contact with me and never lost the wan smile on his small, pretty lips. It seemed that it was during his most difficult medical problems that he managed the most serene disposition.
He struggled to put on this show for me. He didn’t want me to be afraid for him, and I couldn’t imagine what he was really going through. I pictured the doctors screwing into his bone. I felt the meaty inside of his skin rubbing against the metal bolts in his neck.
The ambulance pulled through the blackened wrought iron gates of John’s family’s estate and up to the giant brick mansion that he had grown up in. “Not here,” I said. “Pull around the side.” The driver shrugged at his partner and pulled around to the back.
Beside the main house and set farther back was a four-car garage, the domain of Old Pete, the Branch’s aging groundskeeper. Next in line was a small two-story, all brick with white trim to match the mansion. This was the guesthouse. At the very end of the gravel drive was the old servants’ quarters, identical to the guesthouse, though slightly smaller and not as meticulously kept as the rest of the estate. John said when he was a boy, he called the main house the mother duck. The two small houses were her ducklings. We lived in the ugly duckling.
The ugly duckling became our home after the family corporation collapsed. The Branches were in markets and mergers and other financial trading that was far above my head. John took over after his father died, which was before we were married. The stress was intense and relentless, and John’s and the company’s health declined in tandem. His occasional health problems became chronic, and he was diagnosed with a complicated blood disorder that rendered him weak and bedridden. The board was left up to its own devices, and the man John trusted to manage the family fortune, his Uncle Richard, ran the empire into the ground. I didn’t know the details of the disaster except that the words Uncle Richard were always spoken like a curse instead of a name.
Whatever was left of the family fortune went to doctors, hospitals, and rehabs. Shortly after our sixth wedding anniversary, we were forced to sell the mother house to a wealthy family from the Middle East. We could never remember if it was Oman or Dubai, but they were from one of those sun-scorched lands of dunes and sand that bubbled from beneath with oil. Their name was difficult to pronounce, so we always referred to them as The Arabs. They allowed us to rent the servants’ quarters from them until we found a new house, but we’d overstayed our temporary arrangement for more than three years.
It was just John and me now, in the ugly duckling, but we had to be grateful. We could barely afford to pay rent much less move, and The Arabs were very forgiving about our late payments. They also kept the Branch’s long-term employees–Pete, Greta, and a handful of gardeners and maids–so it really didn’t seem that much had changed at all. I never liked the oppressive echoing space of the mother house anyway. It was as if the bitter, dissatisfied spirit of John’s parents infected the mortar, the stone, and the beams. I was a miniature beneath its high ceilings, and the scale of it made me feel isolated and vulnerable.
The vehicle stopped in front of our duckling. John reluctantly gave up my hand as I pulled away to climb out of the ambulance. The sun was fading into a colorless sky. We were somewhere between summer and fall, a time of year where it could be hot and sticky or dry and chilly. Today the weather leaned more toward fall, and a biting wind began to blow. I sensed Old Pete in my peripheral vision, hovering around and pretending not to be spying on us. I dug the keys from my purse, unlocked the door, and pulled it open as wide as it could go.
The house was cluttered; stuff was piled up to the ceiling. When we lost the estate, John insisted I try to squeeze in as much as I could of his parents’ vases, paintings, outdated clothing, old records, and furniture. The only area I made sure I kept clear was the hallway to accommodate the constant coming and going of my husband via ambulance.
It was messier than I liked. I had gotten spoiled by having the maids, but in the tiny, cramped servants’ house, I felt life-sized again. And there were priorities now. Cleaning wasn’t one of them. Taking care of John had become my life’s work, and I did the best I could to keep him happy and comfortable.
Besides being John’s nurse, I had a full-time job as a medical clerk in the local podiatrist’s office. I held onto that small weekly paycheck for dear life. It afforded us the bare necessities. The rest of my money went directly to medicine and old medical debts. Whenever we got close to paying one off, John would have another complication, and we would slip into the hole again. Out of the whole Branch line, he was the only one plagued with these chronic illnesses, as if he were chosen by God to bear the maladies of the entire family.
I walked inside and pulled off my coat as the two paramedics–burly, bearish men in puffy red parkas–rolled the gurney up the sidewalk. They removed the stretcher and effortlessly carried John, his arms folded across his chest like a mummy, up the creaking stairs.
I heard a knocking and then a singsong “Hellloo!” Greta, the Portuguese woman who ran the household, sailed in. She was a fifty-something widow who somehow sent her son to MIT on her humble housekeeping wages. She was stout, with sloppy, penciled-in eyebrows and harshly dyed yellow hair. Now she took on more of the role of a nanny to The Arab’s five children, and she seemed pleased with her new job–always full of vitality that I alternately envied and hated. Being around the children made her shine with a joy that was alien to me.
“How is Mr. Johnny?” she asked.
I heard him groaning upstairs as the men arranged him in his bed. I gave her a tired smile. “It’s been a difficult day,” I said.
“Poor thing. You look terrible,” she said.
“I could fall down right here and sleep for a week.”
The men tromped down the stairs. They reattached the stretcher to the gurney in the tight space at the foot of the stairwell. Such strong men, I thought. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to be married to someone who could carry me.
I thanked them, and I offered them a cup of coffee. I was relieved when they declined. I just wanted to not do anything for a second.
“Suze? Suze?” John’s voice strained from the bedroom.
“Go to him,” Greta said. “I made soup at the main house. I’ll go to the kitchen and bring you some.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had real food,” I said. The mainstay of my diet was mini Nestle Crunch bars I bought by the five-pound bag at the discount store.
John called again. “Suze! What are you doing down there?”
“You better go,” Greta said. “I’ll leave it on the stove for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. I turned and forced my legs up the stairs. I entered the dark cell of our bedroom, a messy den where we were forced to share our matrimonial bed with illness and pain.
What the paramedics must have thought of us. The bed was unmade, wrinkled, stained. A pile of bedding, the last pair of soiled sheets I’d changed, lay in the corner. Dirty, rumpled clothing was tossed here and there. Orange prescription bottles and candy wrappers cluttered the nightstand. There, the dusty lampshade leaned sideways as I had knocked it weeks—maybe months—ago. Debris was tossed over
the ornate antique furniture of John’s late mother, the wealth buried beneath the rubble of ever-present sickliness. Pale, anemic light forced its way through the mucky windows, and a crust of bacteria incubated in a sour glass of milk on the dresser. I was afraid to look under the bed to see what might be lurking there.
“Suze,” he said, reaching an arm into the air.
“What’s wrong?” I walked over and grabbed his hand. “You need something?”
“I just wondered where you were,” he said weakly, putting on his cute face.
“Aw. You missed me already?” I knew it was time to go along with the infantile role-play we resorted to so often–one of the absurd habits we fell into after years of marriage, a superficial communication used to avoid talking about the desperate state we were in. I began tucking the loosened sheets back under his mattress. “I need to change these,” I said.
“Sheets can wait,” he said. “Please, come and lay with me. It makes me feel better.” He patted the bed; his neck was held stiff and straight; he could only move his eyeballs. It was comical, but I didn’t have the energy to laugh.
I gently sat beside him, my bones sinking into the heavy comfort of our over-worn mattress. The bedding had absorbed the dank smell of our bodies, and I was contented to be enveloped in our residue, away from the blinding sterility of the hospital. I lay my head back against the headboard. John took my hand, and in the short moment I closed my eyes, I began to twitch in the entrance of sleep.
“Suze?”
I was sucked in by drowsiness and struggled to answer. “What, sweetie?”
“Read to me,” he said.
“I’m, well … I’m honestly so tired right now,” I said.
“But it will distract me from the pain.”
“I’ll turn on the TV.”
“It’s not the same.”
I blinked my eyes open and looked up at him stuck upright and immobilized. It looked like torture, yet he still wore a pleasant, expectant expression. He was being such a good boy. I propped myself up on my elbows, shook off the sleepiness, and asked, “What will it be today?”
SICK: Psychological Thriller Series Novella 1 Page 1
