by Rick R. Reed
But she was looking at him, weak as a kitten, and clutching her arm. It seemed like she was trying to say something. Mac knelt down beside her. “What happened, Dee?”
Barley began licking up the jam. Mac pushed him away. Hard. It was for his own good. He could lick up glass along with the jam. Mac took about less than a minute to quickly clean the mess up. One medical emergency in the house was enough for one night. “No!” he yelled at the dog, hating himself for startling him and the subsequent look of hurt and shame in Barley’s eyes. He retreated to a corner and lay down, head on his paws.
“Did you fall?” Mac tried to keep his voice calm, even. At Dee’s age a fall could be very serious.
She clutched her arm harder and winced, a little cry escaping her. “Call 911,” she managed to say, with labored breath. “My heart.”
“Oh God. Just stay right there, Dee. I’m calling.” One thing Mac knew about Dee—she had a bad “ticker,” as she called it. If she was having a heart attack, this would be her third. He moved quickly to the landline phone on the wall and called for help. Once he’d given their location, what they needed, and answered a few questions, he hung up. He rushed into the living room and pulled a throw pillow off the couch, along with an afghan Dee had once made hanging off one arm.
He knelt and lifted Dee’s head to slide the pillow underneath. He adjusted the afghan over her. “Hang on, Dee. Help is on its way. You’re gonna be fine.” Mac reached down to hold her hand. He had to look away for a second, not wanting her to see the tears pooling in his eyes. What if she wasn’t okay? She was old, and three heart attacks? Mac wondered what kind of prognosis she truly had.
He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself, trying not to worry about the worst happening. He needed to be strong, to get Dee off to the hospital, where she could be helped.
She shuddered, and Mac looked back at her, panic rising within him like some kind of bird fluttering around inside, its wings beating helplessly against his innards.
Dee was white, almost as white as the tile on the floor beneath her. Her mouth hung open, slack, and a line of drool ran down her chin. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused.
He leaned close to see if he could feel or see some breath coming out of her. His own heart beat harder, in sympathy or panic or both. “Dee?”
Slow, ragged, and tortured breaths came out of her, hardly there at all. But Mac clung to the fact that there was something. “Sweetheart,” he said, brushing a stray lock of gray hair away from her forehead. “Stay with me. Stay here. Okay?”
In the distance a siren wailed. He whispered a prayer of thanks.
Dee’s gaze remained unfocused, and her body had gone slack. Mac lay down beside her and draped an arm over her. She felt frail, as though beneath the pale, bluish skin were bird bones, fragile as kindling.
Barley moved from his place in the corner and lay down beside Dee as well, resting his head on her thigh.
They lay there that way until paramedics pounded on the front door.
MAC SAT alone in the waiting room at Swedish Medical Center. When they rushed Dee out with an oxygen mask over her face, he was sure he’d never see her again, at least not alive. He’d called a cab he couldn’t afford to take him to the hospital, alternately fretting and praying all the way.
There was little he could do, other than wait. The nurse at the front desk in the intensive care unit—a young Latino guy with a beard—said he wouldn’t be able to see Dee because he wasn’t family, but that he would keep Mac posted on her condition.
She’d been immediately rushed into surgery, and all Mac knew was that they were probably, at the very least, going to place a stent in her heart, to join the pair she already had in there. Beyond that, who knew?
Surely they’d make her better. Good as new.
Right?
Mac lowered his head to his hands, doing his best not to cry.
Time passed slowly. Mac tried to read the old magazines on the coffee table before him, People and a Newsweek, but could barely focus on the pictures, let alone the text. He walked the hospital halls. He went downstairs and got a coffee from Starbucks. He even, to his surprise, dozed a little.
Finally there was word. Mac perked up when an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in blue surgical scrubs, approached.
“Hi. Are you Mac?”
The guy extended his hand. “The nurse told me your name and that you were here for your landlady, Mrs. Weeda. I’m Dr. Dennison.”
“Nice to meet you. She’s more than my landlady, though. She’s a good friend and really, to me, a lot like family.” Mac wanted to make the doctor and people here in the ICU in general understand their close bond. Dee really had no one to come see her, and he wanted to be allowed to comfort her, to hold her hand. “Is she okay?”
“Why don’t we sit down.”
“Uh-oh.” Mac joined the doctor on the pleather chairs in the waiting room.
“Sorry. I guess asking someone in this situation to sit is cause for alarm. The fact is I’m just pooped.” He stretched his legs out before him. “Mrs. Weeda is doing okay. She had a minor heart attack, and she’s now the recipient of two shiny new stents—one brand-new and the other a replacement for one that had been in place for more than ten years—and she’s holding up okay. She’s a tough lady.”
“That’s the truth,” Mac said, smiling. His heart felt lighter. “So, things look good?”
The doctor sighed. “Cautiously good. At her age we have to be careful. We’re gonna keep her here for a little while, maybe a week or so, to run some more tests and to keep an eye on her. She’ll be in the ICU overnight, and then we’ll most likely get her a bed in a regular room. We’ll take good care of her.” He glanced down at the tile floor and then back up at Mac. “I don’t know if you know her history, but this is her third heart attack. The stents will help with the arterial blockage that caused this latest attack, and she should be feeling better pretty rapidly. But her age, combined with the damage the other attacks have done—well, I just want you to be realistic.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying the next twenty-four hours are critical. Sometimes, in cases like hers, we see another attack. And we don’t want that to happen, because the consequences of that could be—”
He caught himself before going on, but Mac had a good idea of what he was about to say. Words like terminal and fatal danced in his worried mind with all their attendant dread. He simply nodded.
“They said I can’t see her—at least while she’s in the ICU—because I’m not family.”
The doctor held up his hand. “It’s okay. I’ve let them know to allow you in. Is there anyone else who might want to visit?”
Mac thought of Dee’s two distant children, far away, and how he should call them. In all the time he’d lived under Dee’s roof, he thought it was odd he’d never met them, never even seen them. But surely they’d want to come. “She has a couple grown kids. They don’t live around here, but I’ll try and get in touch with them as soon as possible.” He glanced down at his watch, surprised to see it was a little after five in the morning.
The doctor nodded. “You should do that.” He stood. “She’ll be coming out of the anesthetic pretty soon, but she’ll be woozy. If you want to go in and see her, she’s right through there.”
And he indicated the glassed-in ward behind him. Mac glanced over and saw that curtains were pulled around most of the beds. He started to walk away, brisk, but stopped and turned.
“No more than a few minutes, okay?”
Mac nodded and watched as the doctor hurried away.
In the ICU, machines whirred and beeped. There was the smell of disinfectant in the air.
Dee lay, looking shriveled and even smaller. Mac turned quickly away from the sight, his hand to his mouth. Dee appeared diminished, fragile, and weak. These were not terms he would normally associate with her. There was a tube up her nose and an IV attached to her wrist. She was
hooked up to a monitor that beeped every few seconds. A TV above Dee’s bed broadcast, ironically, an exercise program with the sound muted.
He moved close, and Dee’s eyes fluttered open. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was hoarse, gravelly. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” She tried to smile.
“Where else would I be, old woman? You scared the daylights out of me.”
With an effort she mustered up a grin. She touched his hand. “Thanks, Mac. You’re the only one who cares.”
“Oh now, don’t say that. I’m gonna go home in a few minutes, and I’ll call your kids. I’m sure they’ll want to come out and see you.”
“I wish I could be sure.” She looked away.
“Don’t talk like that, Dee.”
“If I pass on, then they’ll come and see their mom, not because their hearts hurt but because it would be bad form not to.”
Where’s this coming from? Mac had always thought it odd that Dee rarely spoke of her children and that there were no pictures of them around the house.
“Don’t talk like that, Dee,” Mac repeated. “For one, you’re not ‘passing’ unless it’s gas. The doc told me your ticker was now almost as good as new. No worries at all.” Mac smiled and tried to convey a confidence he didn’t feel. “And for another, I know your kids will want to know how you’re doing. They’ll be concerned.”
“Okay, Mac.” She turned away again and mumbled something.
“What’s that?”
“I need to go back to sleep.”
And on the tail end of the words, she fell asleep, or at least seemed to. Mac slipped from the room.
AT HOME, Mac took Barley outside and then brought him back into the kitchen to feed him. When he was done, he asked, “Can I coax you upstairs to my room, Mr. Barley?” Mac laughed as the dog headed for the stairs. It was almost as though he’d understood every word Mac said.
“Oh, you’re just like your daddy—easy.” He trudged up behind Barley, who could almost take the stairs two at a time, despite his relatively smaller size. Mac felt both overjoyed and sad at the same time that the dog seemed so excited to be home and back to their routine.
In his attic room, Mac got himself settled on the four-poster with Barley at his feet but found, very quickly, that he couldn’t sleep, despite the fact he’d been up all night. His eyes burned, and his limbs felt extra heavy. Yet, despite all the physical signposts of fatigue, he couldn’t shut his mind off.
A thousand things were going through it. Most prominently, of course, was Dee and her prognosis. For many reasons, when Mac considered the very real possibility that Dee might not make it, he knew it would change his life immeasurably. She’d become kind of a stand-in for his grandma Grace. He’d often thought that if concepts such as the power of attraction worked, the universe had brought the two of them together. Dee needed Mac because she’d gotten too frail to keep up with the care on her house. And his rent, although far below market value even for a room in Seattle, did help her out. Yes, she owned the house free and clear. But property taxes, especially for a lakefront location like Dee’s, were outrageous.
But the fact of the matter was, Mac had needed Dee more than she needed him. Her presence in his life was like a kind of security blanket and a comfort, especially since Mac could never seem to find a man with whom he could make a relationship work. In fact, his failed attempts at romance had been so frequent and disastrous—Phineas Blake was only the most recent in a long line of losers—that he’d all but given up where matters of the heart were concerned. Sometimes he thought he wasn’t so bad off with just a loving and loyal canine companion and a salty-yet-sweet older woman in his life. More often than he cared to admit, it seemed like enough.
He also thought of Flynn, his mind turning naturally in the dark-haired man’s direction. He felt like there was a real spark of attraction—maybe even a big spark, like fireworks—on both their parts, but he’d seen how wrong things could go with men, especially younger men, that he found himself hopelessly gun-shy.
Whatever. He didn’t want to be disappointed again. And the best way to avoid disappointment was to not allow himself to hope in the first place.
The last thing Mac thought of was actually the first thing that should have popped into his head. He felt a little stab of guilt for overlooking it for so long. And once he’d realized the oversight, he knew sleep was out of the question. It was time for action.
He got up out of bed and headed downstairs, with Barley padding along behind him like his shadow.
In the kitchen, Mac opened the back door to let Barley out again. He returned to the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and then went on to rifle through Dee’s junk drawer, where he knew he’d find her leatherette-bound address book.
Book in hand, he tracked down the son, Frank, in Phoenix first. He dialed the number and got voice mail. Frank sounded, from the short message, very all-business and none too friendly. He left a message saying to call him, that it was urgent, and hung up.
Claire, in San Francisco, was next. He remembered that Dee had said she was a social worker, so that boded better for at least a friendlier voice!
Claire picked up on the third ring. Her voice was warm, and it reminded him of a younger Dee. There was something almost velvety about the voice that immediately put Mac at ease.
“Hey there, this is Mac Bowersox. I’m your mom’s tenant. I rent out the attic space. Anyway, I just wanted you to know she suffered a heart attack last night—”
Claire’s gasp interrupted his flow.
“She’s stable, though, so don’t worry.” Mac didn’t know if he was giving false hope. He wanted to believe Dee was going to be okay more than anything.
“So, she’s coming home soon? She’s all right?”
“Well, they said they wanted to keep her for a few days to check things out, make sure everything’s good.”
“I see.” Claire sighed. “She’s gone through this before and always pulls through, stronger than ever, it seems like.” Claire went silent for a moment, as though she was thinking. What she said next stunned Mac. “Well, keep me posted!”
Claire seemed so dismissive, and Mac couldn’t get his head around her callousness. If someone had called from home and told him that Grandma Grace had had a heart attack, he’d be on the next plane back, just to be sure she was okay, simply to be there with her, letting her know he cared. “Oh, okay. Um, I thought you might want to come up and see her? You know, this is her third heart attack. And I know how much good it would do her to see you.”
“I’m quite aware of that, Mr. Bowersox. I’m just very busy here, and if she’s stable and in no immediate danger, I can’t afford, either financially or time-wise, just to drop everything and fly up to Seattle.”
What a bitch, Mac thought, but he said, “I get it.” Oh boy, do I get it. Dee had explained how she hadn’t always been the best mother, but he assumed that water had long ago flowed under the bridge. It was beginning to look like that wasn’t the case.
Still, he really wanted to do this for Dee. “You know, I didn’t want to worry you too much, but I might have painted too rosy of a picture at first.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You know, she’s got a tough spirit, but she’s pretty old, and this being her third attack, the doctor’s very concerned. That’s why they’re keeping her in the ICU now. He says the first twenty-four hours are critical. Given her age and health, I just don’t know how optimistic to be. I really think you should come see her.”
“Well, how about you just let me know if she takes a turn for the worse? I can be on a plane pretty quick. And flights from here to Seattle are pretty short.”
“Yes, I guess they are,” Mac said. He opened the back door to let Barley in. “I’ll be sure to keep you informed.”
“Thanks, Matt. I don’t mean to sound like I don’t care, but I was just on my way out. Okay? Bye.”
She hung up before Mac could say another word. Matt?
Mac replaced the phone in the cradle, shaking his head. Dee had told him she’d stopped drinking for her kids, that she had been a coparent when they were growing up. He assumed they’d forged a new path, found common ground, been a family. And maybe they had and things fell apart again. Or maybe Dee had revised her history a bit, seeing her family in a rosier light than reality dictated. Mac thought how we all tended to do that, to one degree or another. After speaking with Claire, Mac couldn’t blame her if she wanted to put a bit of a fairy-tale spin on her own personal history.
Poor Dee. It was beginning to look as though she might actually need him as much as he needed her after all. Crises really brought out either the best or the worst in people.
The phone rang, and Mac picked it up quickly.
It was Dee’s son, Frank, in Phoenix. He got right to the point. “Is my mom okay?”
“Oh, buddy, I would love to tell you all is well and you have nothing to worry about, but she’s in critical condition. The doctors say the next day or so will determine how she makes out. I know she’d love to see her kids.” This time Mac wasn’t going to beat around the bush. If Dee’s daughter couldn’t be bothered to visit, maybe her son could. “Do you think you could maybe come up to Seattle?”
There was a long pause in which Mac’s sympathy and hope both plummeted. Your mom’s in danger of dying—do you really take a long pause to think about it? Mac felt a little sick in the core of his gut.
Frank disappointed Mac but didn’t surprise him. “Well, I’ll see what I can do, but things are really hectic here. My daughter’s down with the flu, and I have work….”
Seriously? Mac was simply too exhausted, and the tension and the pity for Dee all caught up with him. “You sound like your sister.” And before he could edit himself, he added, “Heartless.”
“Excuse me?” Irritation rose in Frank’s gravelly voice. Mac realized he’d probably lit a fuse and didn’t give a damn.
