by Gail Cleare
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Author’s Note
About the Author
The Taste of Air
Copyright © 2016 by Gail Cleare All rights reserved.
First Edition: August 2016
Print ISBN-13: 978-1-940215-81-5
Print ISBN-10: 1-940215-81-1
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Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
For Bruce, my soul mate and astral twin, who gave me the courage to roar.
Chapter 1
Nell ~ 2014
Her day began with reassuring rituals. Make the beds, start a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher. After lining up shiny crystal tumblers inside the glass-fronted cabinets, she filled the upper shelves with neatly nested plates, bowls, and cups. Her finger found a chipped edge, and she tossed the imperfect saucer into the garbage. It was expensive china, but she would order a replacement. The house always looked fresh, with cut flowers on the dining room table. It smelled of roses and sandalwood. When Nell walked through her beautiful, decluttered, well-organized home, balance and serenity followed.
She had pulled on a jacket and was typing a grocery list on her cell phone when it rang. Nell didn’t recognize the caller ID but answered just in case, as she knew good mothers did.
“Eleanor Williams?”
Not the school. They never call me that.
“Yes?” She didn’t feel like being patient with a telemarketer and reached for the off button.
“Mrs. Williams, I’m calling about your mother, Mary Ellen Reilly.” An elevator bell sounded in the background, and a voice was talking over an intercom.
Nell frowned and put the phone back to her ear. “What about her?”
“This is Hartland General Hospital in Vermont. Sorry to call with bad news, but your mother is in our intensive care unit.”
This had to be some kind of weird mistake.
“You must have the wrong person. My mother lives in Massachusetts. I just talked to her yesterday.” Nell paced in front of the kitchen island.
“She gave us your number.” The woman sounded impatient, then her voice softened. “This morning, Mrs. Reilly named you her legal health care proxy.”
Nell steadied herself against the spotless granite countertop and sat down on a barstool. Mom was supposed to be safely tucked into her apartment at the Maplewood Community, not three or four hours away in some hospital. Can this be for real?
“Is she okay? What happened?” Nell threaded her fingers through her cropped hair and tugged.
“Your mother was admitted early this morning with a respiratory infection. Her condition is listed as serious.”
That was familiar territory. Every year, Mom caught a nasty cold and had a terrible time getting rid of the cough. She’d been diagnosed with walking pneumonia the previous winter and recovered at home, but this time, she’d been hospitalized. At her age, it could be a disaster. Nell reached for the notepad and pen and noticed her hand was shaking.
What was Mom doing in Vermont? She hadn’t mentioned a trip.
“Is someone with her?” Mom used to go on little weekend jaunts with her girlfriends from the senior center until Nell and Bridget convinced her to stop driving.
“Not that I’ve heard.” The woman’s tone was insistent. “Can you get here soon? The doctors want to see you.”
“Okay,” Nell said, her voice faltering. “Where are you located exactly?”
Her usually perfect script looked nearly incoherent when she scribbled the address with the letters and numbers staggered across the page. She stared at the note while a trickle of panic washed over her. Mom was counting on her to take charge. She’d asked for Nell, not Bridget, which was flattering, but now she had to live up to it.
The past few years, they’d been nearing the point where their mother-daughter roles would reverse. When Nell turned forty the previous year, the term middle-aged developed a new meaning. She was literally in the middle, between her children and her remaining parent, caring for both the younger generation and the older one. Bridget didn’t have kids and worked full-time, so it was different for her.
Nell pictured her mother three months before, when everyone was together on vacation in Florida. Out on the golf course, playing a slow but sociable eighteen holes, silver-haired and slender, Mary Reilly was still beautiful at seventy-five. Except for the annual chest cold, Mom was in good health.
Grabbing the phone again, Nell dialed her mother’s cell number. It seemed worth a try. The call went directly to voicemail, so Nell speed-dialed Bridget.
“Good morning, sister dear. What’s up?” Her older sister’s musical voice answered the telephone with a slight Southern drawl, something acquired since she’d moved to the suburbs of Washington, DC. The loud bubbling in the background meant Bridget was enjoying her usual morning soak in the hot tub.
“Not good. We’ve got trouble.” Nell shouted into the phone to be heard.
“Trouble? Honey, trouble is my middle name,” Bridget sang out.
“Bridget. Pay attention, this is important.” Nell raised her voice again. “Turn off the jets so you can hear me.”
The bubbling stopped.
“What’s got you all riled up so early in the morning?”
Nell told her what had happened. T
here was a moment’s silence.
“This is our mother you’re talking about? For sure?” Bridget’s playful tone had disappeared, as had her faux Southern accent.
“Apparently so. She gave them my number. How did she get so sick all the sudden? And what is she doing way up in Vermont?” Nell calmed herself with a deep breath, waiting for the inevitable commands that would come next.
“I can’t even guess. This is totally bizarre. You’d better get up there fast since she asked for you this time. I’ll call Maplewood and give them hell.” Bridget jumped into crisis-management mode and took charge as she had always done since the day Nell learned to walk and started to follow her around. Then her voice faltered. “Okay, Nell? I can cancel my client meetings and be ready to hop on a plane whenever you need me.”
“I’ll go see what’s happening,” Nell said. “Call you this afternoon.”
“Love you. Talk soon.”
Nell headed into David’s study to go online and buy a ticket on the noon flight to Vermont from nearby Newark Airport. She tried not to think about the terrible things that might be about to happen and focused on getting herself out the door. After calling her husband, she spoke to the housekeeper and the babysitter and emailed the other parents in the carpool. Then she went upstairs to throw some things in a bag, all the time wondering what in the world her mother was doing in Vermont all by herself.
At one o’clock, Nell’s plane landed in Burlington. Lake Champlain glittered beyond the city center, stretching wide along the western horizon with the misty mountains of upper New York State behind it in the distance. She rented an economy car, bought a map, and turned south, leaving the urban area behind.
Her mind was caught in a repeating loop of worry about Mom, but eventually, the fantastic landscape penetrated her consciousness. Softly rounded bright-green mountains filled the view in all directions, row upon row of them, receding into the pale distance. Weaving her way through valleys, where black-and-white cows grazed in vast, grassy fields, Nell felt as if she’d entered a fantasy world. It reinforced the eerie sensation that the whole day had been nothing but a dream.
The bright blue sky soared overhead, a gigantic bubble of pure clean air. It invited her to roll down the windows and breathe deep. Back home in New Jersey, the air was yellow and gritty, the colors dull. Here, the palette was almost fluorescent. The planet seemed alive, wild, and pulsing in a way that the concrete hive where Nell lived never did.
When she turned off at the exit for Hartland, a winding country road led past farms and houses toward the village center. The iconic white spire of a Congregational church appeared, then the cluster of Colonial-era buildings that surrounded the town green. She parked in the hospital lot at the far end of the green.
Nell caught a glimpse of her tense eyes in the rearview mirror. She gave her short, blond hair an efficient tousling then locked the car and followed signs to enter the lobby with a whoosh of revolving glass doors. A woman in a pink uniform sat at the reception desk, talking on the phone. Nell glanced at her name tag. VOLUNTEER – Doris Barton.
Doris ended the call and looked up at Nell with a friendly smile. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mary Reilly.” The lobby was deserted. Nell wondered how many beds the small building could possibly accommodate. She might have to move Mom someplace where they had the latest technology and more expertise.
“Are you her daughter?” There was too much sympathy in the woman’s eyes.
Nell nodded as a nervous throb tightened her stomach.
“Could I see some identification?”
Nell passed over her driver’s license and picked lint off her black jacket while the woman made copies. She balled up all the little bits of fluff and stuffed them into her pocket before Doris turned around.
“Here’s a copy of the health-care proxy she signed, for your records.” She handed Nell a document.
Mom had listed Nell’s legal name, Eleanor Reilly Williams, with her address and cell phone number. It was definitely Mom’s handwriting. In that moment, Nell surrendered to the reality of the situation. She folded the paper and slipped it into her purse.
“She’s in Intensive Care.” The woman pointed to a doorway. “I’ll call and say you’re on the way. Down that hall. Just follow the signs.”
Walking through long corridors, Nell found her way deeper into the building. The walls turned from sage green to pale blue to dusty rose. The hallways became dim and hushed, with the citrus scent of cleaning solution in the air. When she pushed open the door to Intensive Care, two nurses wearing scrubs pointed her toward one of the white-curtained doorways.
In the middle of a nest of stainless-steel machines, blinking LEDs, and electrical cords, Mom lay on a metal bed that looked like a giant praying mantis. Her eyes were closed. She looked so pale that she virtually disappeared into the sheets, and only the blue veins showed. Her limp white hair blended in with the pillowcase. She seemed frail and paper-thin, a ghost woman.
A fat gray tube fastened onto her open mouth like a huge parasitic worm. Rhythmically blowing air into her lungs from a nearby machine, it looked like some kind of torture, and tears streamed down Nell’s cheeks as she picked her way across the room to stand by the bed. The situation was much worse than she’d imagined. Someone she hardly recognized had replaced the strong, vibrant woman who’d raised her.
She laid her hand over her mother’s, trying not to disturb the IV line held in place with bloodstained tape. Nell listened to the machine breathe. Her mother’s face looked serene, as though she were miles and years away. Her chest moved up and down.
A young nurse wearing purple scrubs entered the cubicle. “I’m Jennifer. I’ve been taking care of Mary since about seven this morning.” She smiled at Nell. “We gave her some medication to help her rest. It should last for several more hours.” She reached up to adjust one of the tubes. Their eyes met, and the woman silently commanded Nell not to get hysterical.
Thinking again that her mother was counting on her, she suppressed the impulse to panic and tried to focus on practical matters. She cleared her throat and straightened her back. “How is she? Where’s the doctor? Can I talk to him?”
“The pulmonologist was here a while ago. She’ll be back later,” Jennifer said. “The hospital’s doctor on duty came by this morning, and he’ll be back at the end of the day. A chest X-ray confirmed Mary has pneumonia. She’s on antibiotics through the IV. Her heartbeat is slow and steady, CAT scan normal, blood pressure good, and she’s stable. Her general health seems fine. The machine is breathing for her, so she can rest and fight the pneumonia.”
Nell blinked, absorbing the information. “That thing.” She pointed at the ventilator. “How long will she need to have it inside her?”
“We try not to keep them on the machine for more than a couple of days, so they don’t get too dependent. It can be hard to wean them off. We may have to put in a feeding tube later if the doctor decides to continue with the ventilator. She needs nourishment to stay strong.” The nurse reached up and adjusted the line running to Mom’s arm.
Nell pictured a tube running down her mother’s throat and into her stomach, and she shuddered.
“You can sit here and wait or get something to eat. Maybe some coffee?” Jennifer said.
“I could definitely use some caffeine.” Nell rubbed the back of her neck, where a sore muscle twinged. “Are you sure she won’t wake up?”
“The cafeteria is right downstairs. Here’s the ICU number. Give me your cell number, and I’ll call you if anything changes.”
“All right, I’ll go in a little while.” Nell took the business card Jennifer offered and wrote her number on the nurse’s clipboard. She got a tissue out of her pocketbook to swab the tears from her face. “First, I need to know how Mom got here. Can you tell me what happened?”
Nell sat in the chair by Mom’s bed and watched her sleep. She started to calm down as the sense of urgency faded. Her mother seemed to be resting in comfort, not in any pain. While she sat, Nell reorganized the contents of her purse and tossed all the day’s crumpled tissues into a trash can. Everything fit after that, which made her feel much better. So did the steady sound of the machine breathing and the peaceful expression on Mom’s delicate face. It looked as if she was dreaming about something happy. Nell wondered what thoughts had smoothed the worry lines on her mother’s brow.
She’d been up before dawn to get the kids ready for school and felt so tense the muscles in her shoulders quivered. Nell stood up and tried to stretch the kinks out of her back. Then she went in search of coffee, wandering out the way she had come in. Mom’s care seemed logical and under control for the moment, though it would be good to talk to a doctor soon and find out more.
She looked at her watch. Back at home, the kids would be getting out of school about now. The housekeeper should be finishing chores and starting to cook dinner. Nell would call in a little while to check on everyone, but she wasn’t worried. Things ran smoothly at Nell’s house even when she wasn’t there in person to supervise. It was all about building a system, a routine. Everyone knew what was expected of them.
When she was a child, it hadn’t been so simple. Mom’s behavior was loving and consistent, but Daddy’s approval had come and gone for no apparent reason. That was probably why she always needed to please people. When Mom felt better and found out how well Nell had managed, she would be impressed. As soon as the doctor came back, Nell could get all the facts and start making decisions. But she might as well get a few things out of the way while she was waiting. She needed a place to stay and something to eat.
