I started to tell him I had an emergency situation at the end of the hall. But he looked so small, thin, and frail, his shoulders hunched over as if beneath a terrible weight, that I went over to him. “Sure, what do you need, sir?”
He hobbled over to the closet, one hand gripping the back of his gown to keep his naked butt from showing, a knobby finger on his other hand pointing at a suitcase on a top shelf. “Can you reach that?”
“I think so.” The suitcase weighed almost nothing at all. I pulled it down and set it on the nearest chair.
“Thanks so much. I’m getting out tomorrow, and I need to be packed.”
I hear ya, friend. “Do you need anything else?”
“Yeah, to be about forty years younger.” He glanced back as he said it and gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “But not to worry. That’s not your department.”
“Ring the nurses’ station if you need anything else, sir.”
On my way out, I noticed his room number was 324; that meant John’s room was directly above it, near the stairs. Guidance, I thought. I was being guided. No telling how much time I might have wasted looking for his room. I figured that ICU, like the obstetrics areas in most hospitals, was actually a cluster of rooms, and I hoped that I wouldn’t be prevented from entering the ward.
I hurried on, past several nurses and orderlies headed in the opposite direction, and no one gave me a second glance. Just the same, I was relieved when I slipped into the stairwell. I stood there for a moment, back against the door, anxiety eating away at me.
Stethoscope around my neck. Phone on vibrate. What else? I felt like some kid sneaking out to meet her boyfriend after everyone had gone to bed. Ridiculous. It wasn’t like I was breaking any laws.
I heard voices but couldn’t tell if they were above or below me. Move. Up the stairs, struggling to maintain a normal pace.
Did the rooms in ICU have video cameras?
A little late to worry about that, Sam. You know you’re going in there regardless.
A nurse and an orderly trotted down the stairs toward me, chatting and laughing, and I simply nodded and kept on moving, as though I had every right to do so. You would think I was planning a bank heist or something.
I reached the top landing, pulled the door open just a little, peered out. Half a dozen visitors sat in chairs that lined the wall on either side of the doors to ICU. They probably were waiting to see loved ones. Several hospital employees were visible, hurrying up and down the corridor.
I walked out into the hall as though I belonged here, as though I worked here and knew what was what and who was who. No one challenged me.
Believe.
I headed right into the ICU unit and immediately heard the beeps and hums of machinery from half a dozen rooms in the area. Two nurses were at the station, and neither of them even noticed me. I moved straight toward room 424 and slipped inside.
The twilit room threw me. It was like entering some Neptunian world, something in the ocean’s depths where sunlight barely penetrated. As my eyes grew accustomed to the diminished light, I made out shapes, the contours and corners of the room. I could see a chair pulled up close to the bed on the opposite side. I sensed it was where Nick had held his vigil. Machines and monitors were positioned on either side of the bed where John lay.
As I neared him, my breath caught in my throat. He looked like something in a horror movie, a being like Frankenstein’s monster, assembled in a lab and connected to half a dozen tubes that monitored him, fed him, sustained him. The tubes led to IV bags suspended from a stand next to the head of the bed; another bag filled with blood and urine hung against the side of the bed; an array of machines and monitors beeped and hummed, displaying his vitals. An orchestra of sounds.
It hurt me to look at him, at the pallor of his face, his utter stillness. I moved right up to the edge of the bed and stared down at him and was nearly overwhelmed by such powerful emotions that I gripped the railing to steady myself.
“John.” I leaned over him.
His hair looked wild against the white pillowcase. His beard had been shaved off, and it took me a moment to get accustomed to the sight of him. He looked like the Bob I’d known thirty years ago. I ran my fingers lightly over his chin, my thumb traced the shape of his mouth. He didn’t move. I leaned closer and listened to him breathing. Was it my imagination, or did his breath sound like it was rattling in his chest?
I pressed my mouth to his forehead. He was hot.
“John, can you hear me?”
No reaction. My heart felt as though it were seizing up, then breaking apart, then restructuring itself in some new way. Please come back to me.
I folded back the top edge of the sheet that covered him and nearly keeled over. He had a drain in his left shoulder, and the bandage around it was large. I didn’t fold the sheet down any farther. I didn’t want to see the bandage on his stomach.
I pulled the sheet back over him, walked around to the other side of the bed, sat in the chair where Nick had undoubtedly sat, and took John’s hand. I was careful not to disturb the IV needle in the back of it. “John,” I whispered, “come back. Come back to me, to Nick and Nina, to all of us. Can you hear me?”
No reaction.
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed silently. Then I slipped my hand under the sheets and beneath his hospital gown to gaze at his tattoo of the Archangel Michael. I believed he had always protected me and was protecting John now. When I opened my eyes, I leaned toward him again and whispered, “If you can hear me, squeeze my fingers, John. Can you do that?”
Nothing. No sign at all that he’d heard me.
My phone vibrated, and I slipped it out of my pocket. A missed call from Luke, Paul’s son. I listened to his message: “Sweet Christ, Mrs. DeMarco, I’m . . . so sorry.” His voice was soft, choked. “Am headed for . . . New York. I . . . I got a call a while ago . . . from the hospital administrator. Dad . . . isn’t expected to live. Call when you can.”
I disconnected from voice mail, pressed the phone to my forehead, and murmured a prayer for Paul, for his son, for John, for Prince, for all of us. How had it come to this?
You know how. Just make sure it never happens again. I sat down in the chair right next to him.
That voice seemed to come from some other, wiser part of my being. Maybe we all had that wiser being within us, but we had to arrive at a certain level of consciousness to hear it. Was this wiser being my connection to the divine? And if so, could it bring me some sort of sign that John was going to live? That my pattern with men had been broken by this tragedy? That things would now turn around?
“Excuse me . . .”
My eyes snapped open, and I gazed across John’s bed at an Asian man coming through the doorway. He wore jeans and a wrinkled cotton shirt with a wild print that made him look as if he’d just flown in from Honolulu.
“Yes?”
“I’m Dr. Cho.” He strolled over to the bed with his iPad in one hand, his other hand extended. “And you are . . . ?”
“Samantha DeMarco.” I got to my feet and we shook hands. His grip was firm but not overbearing. He had kind, gray eyes set in a nest of tiny wrinkles, a quick smile, and gray hair threaded with black. I liked him immediately. “I’m just checking in on him, talking to him, encouraging a response.”
“Good, that’s always good. There’s considerable evidence that patients in comas can hear, that it’s the last sense to go.”
To go? What did that mean? Was John on his way out? “Is he that bad off ?”
He scrolled through his iPad. “When the physical body has been badly traumatized, a coma is like a respite, a place of restoration. He’s also heavily medicated, with morphine, for pain. Didn’t you read his chart, Nurse. DeMarco?”
“I was in a hurry and left my iPad in my locker downstairs.”
“The shoulder injury was se
rious, and the gunshot wound to the stomach was even worse. His fever right now is a cause for concern; so is his dropping blood pressure. Have you checked his vitals since you got in here?”
“I, uh, haven’t had a chance to check yet. I just walked in here a minute before you did.”
“What was your name again?” He eyed the spot on my uniform where I should have been wearing a name tag. “Your name tag is missing.”
“It’s in the locker with my iPad. DeMarco, Samantha DeMarco.”
“Are you new? I’ve never seen you around the hospital.”
“I just got transferred to the graveyard shift two days ago.”
Frowning, he scrolled some more through his iPad, then suddenly glanced up, pinning me with his small eyes. “Wait a minute. Samantha DeMarco. You’re a patient here. Why’re you dressed like a nurse?”
Busted.
“Because they wouldn’t let me see him,” I burst out. “Because I’m not family. But . . . but he was shot because of me, because the lunatic who did this was out for revenge, for . . . Never mind.”
I shut up. I sounded hysterical. And, bottom line, the story was too damn complicated to explain in fifteen seconds, which was probably all that I had before he called security.
He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at me in an unsettling way, until I could feel his eyes moving around inside of me, as though he were reading me from the inside out.
“I . . . had to see him,” I rushed on. “And I was sitting here, talking to him, asking him to . . . to come back to me, to his son, to the people who love him. That’s all. If that’s a crime, then arrest me, just arrest me.”
With that, I sank into the chair next to John’s bed and took his hand in my own. Dr. Cho stood there for a long moment, proceeded to check the monitors and machines, and entered data onto his iPad. And while he did this, he talked.
“Your name. Now I know why it struck me as familiar. It’s your screenplay they were filming. I’m sorry I didn’t realize that initially. I didn’t mean to be . . . insensitive. Mr. Steeling is a partner in Gallery Studios, right?”
“Yes.” And my lover.
“And Mr. Jannis . . . was the producer.”
“Until he was fired.”
His head bobbed. I could see he was connecting the dots on his own and that he wasn’t going to turn me in to the hospital police or to the psychiatric Big Brothers. “The odd thing is that no one has to be a victim because of his or her past. And I think that’s what this is all about.” He motioned toward John. “His injuries. Our shoulders carry our burdens. His left shoulder took the brunt. The left side of the body is ruled by the right brain. Intuitively, he understood that and chose this injury to make a point.”
Huh? “I don’t understand.”
“We create our realities from the inside out. Through our thoughts, intentions, beliefs. Nothing is random. There are no accidents. The dramas we experience are those we create.”
He was beginning to sound like Tolle. “But how’s he doing? Is he . . . going to live?”
“All things considered, he’s doing remarkably well.” He smoothed his hand over John’s forehead, then checked the drain in his shoulder. “He’s sweating, so his fever is breaking. I’m going to cut way back on the morphine. If we’re fortunate, Ms. DeMarco, and I think we will be, he’ll be out of here in a week or less. He’s physically fit; that’s a big help.” He lowered his iPad and gave me his full attention. “I, uh, appreciate why you sneaked in here. But it’s probably a good idea if you sneak out in the next ten minutes or so.”
“I-I’m in a room downstairs,” I stammered.
“The head nurse on duty tonight is a bitch on wheels, and she keeps a close eye on her ICU patients. I’m going to have Mr. Steeling moved out of ICU tomorrow morning and into the general population.” He turned off the drips on two of John’s IVs, emptied the catheter bag. “And after he gets out, maybe you should surprise him with a trip—some romantic spot where the weather is warm and perfect and the two of you can thrive.”
Was this Dr. Cho for real? “Got any suggestions?”
“I do, actually. Savannah is particularly beautiful this time of year.”
My eyes suddenly awoke to the feel of John’s fingers. As I looked up I realized that I must have been dreaming. John’s fingers twitched against my palm, and I glanced down at our hands, wondering if I’d imagined it. “John?” I whispered, leaning close to him. “Can you hear me? Move your fingers if you can hear me.”
His fingers twitched again. “Oh, my God, Dr. Cho, his fingers . . .”
I looked up—and Cho was gone.
Just gone. Was this a dream?
“What the hell.” I slipped my hand away from John’s, stood, hurried over to the door, and looked up and down the hall. No Cho. I turned and saw that John’s head had moved, that it was facing the door. Facing me. And his eyes were open, cognizant, aware, fully present.
“Sam,” he whispered, and I rushed over to him, slipped my arms under his head, lifted it gently, and kissed him.
“John. You came back. You came back.”
“Someone . . . was here . . .”
“This doctor who . . .” I pulled back, away from him, but his eyes were shut again, his body felt limp. I pressed my ear to his chest, heard the steady beat of his heart. As I raised my head, I felt his breath against my cheek, like a caress.
Okay, he was alive, definitely alive.
It was nearly midnight; I didn’t want to get caught in here by the bitch on wheels, as Cho had called her. “John, I’ll be back in the morning.”
I disengaged myself from him, slipped out of the room, and stole back down the stairs to the third floor. I saw only two other employees, and neither of them paid any attention to me. I thought of how quickly Dr. Cho had disappeared and wondered if I had hallucinated him. That had to be it. No other explanation made sense, but why?
In my room, I quickly shed my nurse’s uniform and shoes, put on my hospital gown, and crawled into bed. A nurse, Lita Hernandez, appeared ten minutes later, saw that I was awake, and asked if she could get me something to help me sleep.
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
She went through her checklist on her iPad. “You’re being released in the morning.”
“Thank God.”
“Frankly, I’m not even sure why you were kept overnight, Ms. DeMarco.”
“Me neither. Can you tell me how John Steeling is doing?”
“Are you related?”
“We’re lovers.”
Lita started scrolling through her iPad. “Wow, this is remarkable. As of the ten p.m. check, Mr. Steeling was listed as still being in a coma, with a fever of one-oh-three; his blood pressure was very low, and internal bleeding was suspected from the wound to his stomach.
But as of the most recent check, his temperature is normal, his blood pressure has stabilized, and he’s conscious and hungry. The drain will probably be removed from his shoulder tomorrow morning. He has definitely turned the corner. In just two hours.”
I knew right then that I hadn’t hallucinated Cho. Ghost, spirit, angel? He was my divine sign that a significant shift had occurred. And as crazy as this may sound, someone was looking out for us, and I surely wasn’t going to question this . . . at all.
NINETEEN
Eight weeks after Paul’s rampage—at the end of July—Brooklyn Story was scheduled to resume shooting. John had been released from the hospital less than a week after the shooting, just as Dr. Cho had predicted. We had attended memorial services for Barbara, who had died on the scene in the park, and for George Prince, who, despite the doctors’ best attempts, had died within forty-eight hours of being shot.
Paul had survived his injuries and was recovering, according to Luke, in a psychiatric hospital on Long Island. Once he was released, he would be face mult
iple homicide charges. Isabella had flown back to L.A. with Liza, King, Marvin, and Flannigan, and she would be staying with Liza until I returned to the West Coast. Since Brooklyn now seemed off limits for filming, King had decided the rest of the filming would take place in L.A.
John and I decided to fly into Savannah Airport, rented a car, and drove toward the historic district. Instead of taking the interstate, we followed an alternative route that showed up on my GPS. After all, we weren’t in any hurry. These roads followed the Savannah River south to the city. I felt as though time had slowed or stopped altogether. Maybe it was the tremendous trees that lined the road; live oaks and cypress trees loomed like giants, their massive branches forming braided canopies overhead, webs of Spanish moss hanging from them. Or perhaps it was that the past was steeped in the very air we breathed.
Established in 1733, Savannah was the first colonial and state capital of Georgia. I could almost see the Southern gentry sipping mint julep tea on the wide front porches of their plantations, women decked out in their finest clothes and fanning themselves in the heat.
We lowered the windows, and the rich, warm scent of the river, the sea, and the salt marshes blew through the car, an aroma that was somehow liberating, uplifting, and blissfully distant from the tragedies of New York. The salt marsh seemed to extend all the way to the curve of the blue dome of the sky in the distance. The tide looked as if it was coming in, and pools of glistening water broke up the continent of brown reeds. Birds swooped over the marsh—gulls, cranes, blue herrings, and others I couldn’t identify.
I slipped off my sandals and pressed my bare feet against the glove compartment. My blue toenails looked odd against the black of the glove compartment, like a line of chorus girls on Broadway. The breeze blew up under my sundress, puffing it out like a balloon.
“Mary Poppins,” John said with a laugh, and brought his hand down gently against the skirt and then slipped his hand under it and caressed my thigh.
Hello Hollywood Page 27
