Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed

by Judith Arnold

  Soon, Curt thought, he and Peter would be two men together at the mirror, sharing that manly ritual.

  Jessie collided with him in the hall near the top of the stairs. “Hey, Dad! Amanda and Kirsten and I are going to the mall tonight, okay?”

  She was already halfway down the stairs before he answered, “It’s a school night.”

  “Dad.” She favored him with a classically scornful glare, lips pursed and eyes rolling. “I’m a senior, I got into college and I don’t have any homework due tomorrow. And we’ll be home by ten, anyway.”

  “All right,” he said, aware that he didn’t have much clout with her anymore. She was eighteen, old enough to drive, to vote, to enlist in the armed forces if she wanted. He and Ellie had done their job with her as best they could, and she’d turned out pretty wonderful. If she wanted to go to the mall with her friends, Curt couldn’t stop her.

  Jessie gulped down her dinner and waltzed out of the house, leaving Curt and Ellie to linger over their food, refill their wine-glasses and share the news of their days. In only a few more years, all their dinners would be like this—just the two of them, catching up, bouncing ideas off each other, sipping their wine. Ellie resting her feet in Curt’s lap under the table. Curt absorbing her words and the glow in her eyes and undressing her in his mind. No worries about kids barging in on them. No demands to be driven here or there, to sign this or that form, to critique an essay on Anna Karenina or the Emancipation Proclamation.

  Ellie would be devastated, at least temporarily, when all her babies flew the nest. But Curt would distract her. Sex in the kitchen. Sex in the family room. Sex on the stairs, like in that movie she’d loved so much, with the actor who went on to play James Bond in a few 007 flicks. Watching one’s children grow up and leave home could make a person melancholy, but there were compensations.

  Curt volunteered to clear the table while Ellie went upstairs to check on Peter. She returned after a minute and carried the casserole dish to the refrigerator. “I don’t think Peter’s going to be eating tonight,” she reported. “He’s out cold. Or maybe I should say out warm. I think he’s running a fever.”

  “Should we call the doctor?”

  Ellie shook her head. “I gave him some ibuprofen, and he rolled over and went back to sleep. There are lots of little bugs making the rounds at the moment. It’s the end of a long winter. Kids are run-down. We’ve got about a dozen cases of strep throat at my school. If Peter’s throat is bothering him tomorrow, I’ll take him in for a culture.” As Curt rinsed the dishes and she stacked them in the dishwasher, she told him about the student at her school who’d been diagnosed with croup earlier that week. “It’s got such a distinctive cough,” she said. “At least Peter doesn’t have that.”

  Finished with the dishes, Ellie settled at her desk to pay bills while Curt reviewed his notes from a complicated case he’d gotten dragged into at the firm—professors from two different universities suing each other over research they’d collaborated on. It was like a divorce, except that the baby they were fighting for custody over—their research—had a monetary value. Curt’s firm and the firm representing the other researcher had to figure out what that value was and how to divide it. No matter what they negotiated, the settlement was doomed to end with hurt feelings and bristling resentment. He hated cases like that.

  At nine-thirty, he tossed the file aside and beckoned Ellie to join him on the sofa. They caught the last half of a college basketball game on TV, Ellie nestled against him. After a few minutes she dozed off, her head heavy against his chest and her breathing deep and steady. She roused herself when Jessie bounced in at around ten-thirty, carrying a few bags with boutique logos on them. Curt and Ellie followed Jessie up the stairs, but while she no doubt intended to spend at least another hour exchanging instant messages with her friends, her drowsy parents were ready to tumble into bed.

  Curt almost didn’t have enough energy to make love to Ellie. Almost. He could always muster the energy for that. Fortunately, Ellie was too drowsy to demand acrobatics and fireworks tonight. All she wanted was what he wanted: the closeness, the release, the gorgeous lethargy that settled onto them afterward and escorted them to sleep.

  He climbed out of bed ahead of Ellie the next morning. He usually rose before she did; since he had a longer commute to work, he got first dibs on the master bathroom. Once he was showered and dressed, he went downstairs to get the coffee started.

  Jessie was already in the kitchen, wearing a snug shirt he’d never seen, and even snugger jeans. “Hey, Dad,” she greeted him, amazingly cheerful for 7:00 a.m. No one else in the family was a morning person. Curt liked to joke that Jessie was their foundling, having inherited some other family’s circadian rhythms. Whenever he said that, she’d always retort, “Yeah, my real family left me in a basket on your porch because I looked exactly like you.” Of all three children, she did resemble him the most.

  “You want French toast?” she asked, pulling the container of eggs out of the fridge. “I’m making some for myself.”

  French toast was too much bother this early in the morning. “Plain toast is fine for me. Get out the milk for your mother. She’ll probably have cereal,” he mumbled, waiting impatiently for the coffee to finish brewing so he could pump some caffeine into his body.

  “Curt?” Ellie’s voice shot down the stairs. She sounded wide-awake, too—but not bubbly like Jessie.

  Her sharp tone was enough to rouse him fully. He bolted for the stairs. “What’s up?”

  “It’s Peter.” Ellie stood at the top of the stairway, but as soon as he drew near, she spun and raced down the hall to Peter’s bedroom. “He’s burning up, Curt. He’s spiking a fever. We’ve got to get him looked at.”

  “For a fever?” Kids got fevers sometimes, and Peter was a strong, strapping boy. Couldn’t they just dose him with some aspirin or something?

  “A high fever.”

  Ellie’s terse comment rattled Curt. If Peter had a high enough fever to alarm Ellie, aspirin wasn’t going to do the trick.

  Curt trailed her into Peter’s room. The computer screen saver was still spinning, spraying colors around the room and splashing odd hues across Peter’s pale face. He lay in bed, his eyes half-closed and his respiration shallow. Curt didn’t have to touch him to feel his fever. Waves of heat rose off his body.

  “Hey, buddy—what’s going on?” Curt asked gently.

  “My head hurts,” Peter groaned. “My neck…”

  “I can’t get him in to see his doctor this early,” Ellie whispered to Curt. “We’re taking him to the hospital.”

  The hospital? For a fever?

  He drew in a deep breath. As Ellie had said last night, she was the medical professional. If she thought Peter needed to go to the hospital, Curt wouldn’t argue.

  With a nod, he turned and strode from the room. He descended the stairs so quickly he didn’t feel his feet touch them. In the kitchen, he grabbed his wallet and keys and switched off the coffeemaker. “Peter is sick,” he told Jessie bluntly. “We’re taking him to the hospital. Call your mother’s school and tell them she won’t be coming in today.”

  Jessie’s eyes widened with alarm. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing serious, I hope. We’re just going to make sure.”

  “Do you want me to call your office?”

  “No, I’ll call them.”

  “What about me?”

  He shrugged. “Go to school.”

  “Curt?” Ellie was yelling for him again.

  Jessie looked so worried he hated to abandon her. “Keep your cell phone with you,” he said. “I’ll call you as soon as we know what’s going on.”

  “Okay.” She sounded shaky.

  “Hey. He’s going to be fine,” Curt promised, then he kissed Jessie’s forehead and dashed back up the stairs.

  Peter was too weak to stand. Curt managed to hoist him over his shoulder, one hundred and forty pounds of muscle and dangling limbs plus the blan
ket in which he was wrapped. Somehow they made it down the stairs, through the kitchen and out to the garage without banging into anything.

  Ellie sat in the backseat with Peter as Curt drove through town in the murky morning light. A cold rain was falling, or maybe it was sleet, tapping like pebbles against the roof of his car. He felt chilled, even with the car’s heater blasting. Was heat good or bad for someone running a high fever? Damn it, did they really have to take Peter to the hospital?

  What kind of illness caused a kid to spike a fever? Peter had been vaccinated for all those childhood diseases—measles, mumps, whatever. Strep throat? Ellie had said that was making the rounds. She’d also said she thought Peter was run-down—but kids didn’t spike fevers from fatigue.

  Ellie spoke calmly throughout the drive to the local hospital. Sometimes Curt realized she was talking to Peter, who occasionally emitted a quiet moan. Sometimes she was talking to Curt. “He’s okay,” she’d say. “It’s just some weird virus, I’m sure. We’ll get his fever down and bring him home. He drank some of the Gatorade last night. That should have helped.” At one point Curt heard her speaking into her cell phone, leaving a phone message for Peter’s pediatrician.

  At the local hospital, he skidded the car to a halt at the emergency room entrance. “Let’s get a wheelchair,” Ellie said.

  “No, I’ll carry him.” Curt eased his overheated son out of the backseat, trying not to stagger under Peter’s limp weight, and carried him to the broad glass door. It automatically slid open and he rushed inside.

  He hated hospitals. Few people didn’t hate them, of course, but even when Ellie had been on the staff of Children’s Hospital during the early years of their marriage, he’d despised visiting her there. On those rare occasions when they could meet for lunch, he’d ask her to join him at a luncheonette down the block from the hospital. The glaring lights, the squeaky soles of everyone’s shoes, the smell of pine and antiseptic heavy in the air, the eerie hush, the aura of mission and menace that surrounded all the employees, from the most revered doctor to the lowliest orderly…he hated it.

  And now his son had to be here. His son, arms wrapped loosely around Curt’s neck and so much heat simmering through layers of pajamas and blanket that Curt began to sweat…His son was sick.

  Oh, God—make this be nothing serious.

  A young man in blue scrubs approached with a wheelchair and helped Curt to lower Peter onto the seat. An older man in a security-guard uniform approached and told Curt he had to move his car. “You can’t leave it blocking the entry,” the guard scolded.

  Curt swallowed the impulse to tell the man what he could do to himself. “Go park the car,” Ellie murmured in a soothing voice. “I’ll stay here with Peter and take care of the paperwork.”

  Swallowing his rage, Curt nodded. He would rather park the car than fill out forms and recite insurance-policy numbers, anyway.

  He stepped through the automatic door and out into the gray morning. The rain and sleet stung his face. He dove into the car, cruised the small lot outside the emergency room for ten minutes without finding an open space then gave up and drove around the building to the visitor’s garage. Before leaving the car, he yanked off his necktie—he wouldn’t be needing that this morning—and left a message on his secretary’s answering machine, telling her to reschedule his meeting with Professor Benzer. “My cell phone’s on if you have to reach me,” he told her. “Call me if you need me. If things go well, I may get to the office this afternoon.”

  He reentered the hospital through the front door and took a minute to orient himself. Even the main entry, with its carpeted floor and framed paintings, its tweedy upholstered chairs and the little cart selling gourmet coffee in one corner, gave him the willies. He could still smell that sterile hospital scent. He could still feel the tension humming in the air just beyond the lobby.

  He wandered through a maze of halls until he reached the emergency room. Ellie and Peter were gone. He’d expected them to be—he wouldn’t have wanted his son sitting around all this time, waiting for a doctor’s attention. But the absence of both of them in the brightly lit area, with its sleek desk and fluorescent lighting, plastic chairs and milky curtains, kicked him in the gut.

  Where were they? The hospital monster had swallowed them.

  He managed a few deep breaths to steady his nerves before approaching the desk. “I’m looking for my wife and son,” he said. “Peter Frost is my son’s name. He was running a fever.” Good. He sounded calm, authoritative, far more confident than he felt.

  The nurse behind the desk checked something on her computer and nodded. “Follow me,” she said, beckoning him toward one of the curtained-off areas. She pulled back the curtain to discover no one behind it. “Oh, maybe they’re here,” she said, leading him to another curtained area. Behind that curtain, an elderly man sat on the table, one hand cradling the other wrist. “Hmm,” the nurse said, frowning.

  You’ve lost my son. Curt wanted to throttle the woman. You’ve lost my son and my wife.

  Before the nurse could peek behind any more curtains, Curt spotted Ellie approaching him from the far end of a corridor. She was alone. “There’s my wife,” he said, breaking from the hapless nurse and jogging down the hall.

  As he neared Ellie, he scrutinized her face for a clue of what was going on. She seemed tired but not panicked. “Where’s Peter?” he asked.

  “They’re running tests.” As soon as Curt reached her, she let her shoulders slump, as if she was passing an invisible burden from her back to his.

  “You couldn’t stay with him while they’re doing that?”

  “They wouldn’t let me. Even when I said I was a nurse.” She managed a feeble smile. “The doctor said we should get some breakfast and then check back here. It’ll take a while.”

  The thought of breakfast caused his stomach to lurch. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Maybe some coffee,” he suggested.

  They followed the signs to the cafeteria. Even though food was being sold and eaten there, the place smelled of antiseptic cleansers, and it was so brightly lit Curt could imagine surgeons performing appendectomies on the long Formica tables. He grabbed a tray and herded Ellie down the aisle of food offerings, pointing out the pastries, fruit, yogurt and omelet sandwiches to her. She shook her head. He didn’t blame her; none of the platters sparked his appetite.

  He filled two mugs with coffee, handed the cashier a few dollars and carried the tray to a table. They sat facing each other. Did he look as pinched as Ellie? As haggard?

  At least she didn’t seem frightened. “They figure it’s some kind of infection,” she told Curt. “They put in an IV to get some fluids into him and they’re going to run a bunch of blood tests. While they wait for the results, they’ll be cooling his body down with ice baths.”

  “How was he feeling?” Curt asked, recalling Peter’s succinct answer to that question last night: shitty. “Is he scared?”

  “He was too wasted to be scared,” Ellie said. “He was half asleep.” She drummed her fingertips against the thick ceramic surface of her mug, stared into the steam for a moment then sighed. “It’s probably either something viral or bacterial.”

  “Which is better?” Curt wanted to know what to hope for.

  She shrugged. “If it’s bacterial, they can pump him with antibiotics. Viruses are sometimes harder to treat.”

  All right. He’d hope for bacterial. “He’s going to be okay, right?”

  Ellie gazed at him. Come on, Ellie—tell me what I want to hear. Convince me. You’re the medical professional. “He’s strong,” she said. “He’s always been as healthy as a horse. Whatever he has, he should be able to fight it off.”

  That wasn’t as definitive an answer as Curt was hoping for. He forced down a few sips of coffee and tried not to wince at its metallic flavor. A fever? A freaking fever? How sick could Peter be? How serious was a fever?

  They struggled to fini
sh their coffee, then hiked back to the emergency wing. As they approached the waiting area, they spied a doctor at the far end of a hall, marching toward them. “That’s Dr. Kaye,” Ellie said, accelerating.

  Dr. Kaye. The name rang a bell. The kids’ pediatrician, Curt remembered, abashed that he hardly knew the woman. Ellie had always handled all the doctor’s visits for the children. Curt had met the doctor only a few times.

  “Hi, Mrs. Frost, Mr. Frost,” Dr. Kaye greeted them when they met mid-hall. Dr. Kaye’s smile looked a bit forced and pensive. She wore wool trousers and a turtleneck beneath a starched white medical coat. Gold, button-shaped earrings glinted through her curls.

  Curt started praying again. Please, God. Make it something fixable, something curable. This is my son.

  “We’re running some more tests on Peter,” Dr. Kaye said, dispensing with chitchat. “He’s just undergone a lumbar puncture—a spinal tap,” she clarified for Curt. “We’ll run a culture on that to confirm our diagnosis. But we’re pretty sure it’s meningitis.”

  Curt’s muscles seized. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. How bad was that? People didn’t die of meningitis, did they?

  “Viral or bacterial?” Ellie asked.

  Dr. Kaye’s smile grew even more pensive. “Bacterial. I’m guessing streptococcal. He’s had his HiB vaccine, so it isn’t that.”

  Bacterial was good, wasn’t it? Ellie had said bacterial infections were easier to treat, that Peter could be pumped with antibiotics—

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Kaye continued, her gaze shuttling between Curt and Ellie. She must have seen something in Ellie’s face—recognition, comprehension—because she turned fully to Curt. “Bacterial meningitis is, unfortunately, the more virulent version of the disease. Viral meningitis usually resolves itself in a matter of days. With bacterial meningitis, we’ve got to bombard him with antibiotics and try to keep the swelling in his brain down.”