The Clone's Mother

by Cheri Gillard

  I left her a few more messages. By the time two hours had gone by, I was jumpy and restless. I tried to sit and read, only to be up looking out the window or redialing within ninety seconds of sitting.

  Ollie was getting pretty perturbed at my lack of serenity. But truth be told, he couldn’t sit and read either. He paced around the apartment almost as much as I did.

  By four o’clock, I pretty much figured brunch was out and my cinnamon roll, as huge as it had been, was used up. I was hungry. I changed into jeans, sweatshirt, and comfortable tennies, then made my best attempt at an omelet. I’d been set on having some kind of fancy egg dish at Ann Sather’s. My watery, gelatinous glob of egg whites and broken yolks didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but at least it filled some of the space in my empty middle. I was too uptight to take time to taste it anyway. I gulped it down in big lumps, checking my watch or the wall clock every other bite.

  By quarter to five, the crossword in the paper had five words filled in. When the phone rang, the piercing ring shot me off the couch like an electrical shock. I swiped so hard at the phone to snatch it up, I knocked it to the floor and had to fumble to get it untangled from the cords and turned around and up to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Kate, this is Joe.”

  It was Joe.

  “You got my messages, huh? I only left about fifty. Where’ve you guys been?”

  “Kate,” he repeated.

  That didn’t sound good. I wonder if I had said something to make Anna angry enough to stand me up. But that wasn’t like her.

  “Something’s happened.” His voice broke. He seemed to be composing himself.

  I waited. The sounds through the phone made me think he was crying.

  I tried to make sense of his words. His voice jumbled out, mixed with choking sobs. I could only catch snippets. He babbled on the edge of hysteria. I heard things like she’s gone—Anna—the baby—shot—they took her.

  I tried to clarify what I thought I heard before I went hysterical too. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but things sounded really bad. Joe raved on. I threw in questions, trying to get him to answer. All of his responses were garbled and confusing.

  “Joe, Joe, listen. Take a breath. Slow down, Joe. I’m not following you, I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

  Surprisingly, he did what I said and stopped long enough to take a deep breath and puff it out.

  “It’s Anna. They shot her and the ba—” He dissolved into sobbing and nothing more was clear. I still didn’t know what had happened—if anyone was dead or alive.

  “Joe, tell me where you are. Can you do that? Joe, where are you?”

  Even with his delirium, I picked up the name of my hospital and that’s all I needed.

  “I’ll be there in a flash, Joe. I’ll be right there. Hang on, okay? I’m going to hang up now so I can come. Okay, Joe? Are you there?”

  Through his sobs he stammered okay and told me to hurry.

  When I hung up the phone, I was shaking so hard I could barely set it in its cradle. The monkeys in my belly winded me. It was like I’d just gotten off a merry-go-round, my head and thoughts were spinning so out of control.

  To the hospital. I had to get there. I knew that much. There was money left from Carl’s twenty. I’d take a cab back to the hospital.

  The ride took forever. It was over in a flash. I couldn’t form a sentence. I was babbling to the cabby. It’s a wonder I got to the hospital. I threw all my money at the driver. He said something. I had no idea what. Who cared? I had to go find Anna and Joe.

  Joe was in the waiting area. He was pacing the room with his arms hugged around his chest. Tears streaked down his cheeks but he no longer sobbed.

  I sprinted up to him and he gave up holding himself to collapse into my arms for whatever support I could offer. I held him a while until he backed away and gestured to the chairs for us to sit down. Unlike last night, the room was empty.

  “They’re getting her ready to go to surgery. I had to wait out here till we go upstairs.”

  “What happened?” The shaking was worse. My voice wobbled.

  “When I got back from the gym, I found her. She was lying in the kitchen. She was bleeding. It was everywhere. Her head. They shot her in the head.”

  His words whirled around, colliding in my mind. They made no sense. It was like he was speaking German to me. The shaking had grown so bad, my whole chair was vibrating.

  I tried to focus, to hear what he said around his stifled sobs. He jumped from one frightful description to another. He kept dropping his face into his cupped hands, mumbling as he did, like he was hiding from the visions haunting his memory. I was going crazy trying to piece together what had happened from his choppy, emotional recounting of the events.

  Some of the German finally started to sound more like English. Anna was bathing the baby and Joe left to go workout. When he came home, he found her unconscious in a pool of blood and the baby gone.

  He couldn’t tell me how the next couple of hours unfolded before he called me. There must have been a 911 call, though he couldn’t remember calling, just that he was suddenly surrounded by people. Paramedics forced him away from her, made him release Anna from his arms to allow them to do their work. Then the police bombarded him with questions, keeping him away from her side.

  After Joe sobbed out the story to me, a nurse in scrubs and cap with a mask dangling around her neck approached us.

  “Mr. McBride?” she said.

  His huge, sad eyes snapped up to her in complete submission.

  “I’m Emily. I’ll be one of the nurses taking care of your wife. We’re taking her to the OR now. If you’d like to follow me, I’ll show you the surgical waiting area.”

  For the first time, as I watched him listen to the nurse, I noticed Joe’s clothes. He wore a navy T-shirt and dark running shorts. Brown stains covered his chest where he’d obviously cradled Anna, and even his arms and face had blood smeared on them.

  He nodded like a lost child and we fell in behind Emily, following her to the OR.

  In the waiting area, she showed us the Coke and coffee machines, the courtesy phone, and explained the surgeon would look for us there when they were finished. Joe and I settled into one of the worn couches and offered nods of commiseration to three other clusters of relatives holding a tearful vigil for some loved-one.

  Joe slouched down, shut his eyes, and let his head fall back into the cushion behind his head, jutting his chin toward the ceiling. A tear trickled down his temple into his blond hair. His arms lay limp at his sides and his blood-smeared knees stuck out knobby from his shorts. I reached over and touched his hand. Without looking, he clenched my hand into his and squeezed it, and we began our long wait.

  Chapter 31

  When the phone rang, the man pacing the floor jerked the phone off the table, cursing.

  “What took you so long?” he said.

  His empty hand clenched and released while he listened and continued to traipse in a tight circle over the carpet in rhythm with his pulsating fist.

  “Hey, back off. I had just as much right to be there as you. I’m not going to become a hermit just so some broad doesn’t see me. Besides, she looked me right in the eyes and had no idea I was the guy she saw before.”

  He chuckled at the memory of her talking to him at the hospital dinner celebration. Without the wig and beard disguise, he was a different man. Kate Johnston had no clue who he was and it gave him a rush to think of how well he could fool her. The stress that had built while he waited for the phone call was seeping away at the pleasure of remembering how he’d pulled it off so easily. But then the tension spiked again.

  “Give me a break, man! I didn’t plan to shoot her. How was I supposed to know she’d have a gun? Her cousin must have spooked her…What? And let her shoot me first?…Yeah, I have the kid.”

  He walked over to a bundle of blankets in the corner of the sofa. The quiet baby lay within the
layers of quilts he had wrapped around her. He felt her cheek. It was warm, but the color had drained out and she looked like something was really wrong.

  “Um, there something you ought to know. This kid’s in bad shape. When the mom went down, the kid went first—right on her head. She seemed okay at first, but then got worse and now I can’t wake her up. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind her not crying.”

  While he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone, he looked again at the floppy, lethargic baby. She didn’t look good. And she didn’t breathe very often.

  “Okay, don’t worry. Stop yelling. I’ll take care of it. We can’t help it. It’s done.”

  He put down the phone and rubbed his hand through his cropped hair. This was one complication he hadn’t planned for, but it was nothing that couldn’t be dealt with. He had preferred the other way, when he just returned the babies to a safe place. But, if the kid died, the kid died. What was it to him, anyway?

  ***

  By the time those double doors finally opened for us, it was long past dark. A green-clad surgeon stepped out, his surgical cap darkened with a ring of sweat and his scrub top pitted out. The one other bunch of anxious people still waiting in the room looked up too, hoping their turn had come.

  “Mr. McBride?”

  Joe jumped up and met him halfway across the room.

  “I’m Dr. Preston.” He reached out to shake hands with Joe, and Joe surrendered his hand to him, letting the doctor give it a couple of fast, solid pumps. “Your wife is in post-op now. We evacuated the subdural hematoma satisfactorily. The brain tissue itself, in a case like this, suffers destruction in proportion to the size and kinetic energy of the missile. The damage can extend far beyond the actual missile track. The degree of devastation will only be discovered over the next few hours to several days.”

  Joe blinked and continued to stare. He swallowed. “She’s alive then?”

  “Most definitely.” He smiled and thumped Joe on the shoulder as if he were an old pal. “I’ll check in with you in a couple of hours and see how it’s going. Meanwhile, hang out a while longer and someone will come get you when she’s transferred to ICU.”

  And he turned and sprinted back beyond the double doors.

  Joe turned to me, his face limp and helpless, searching mine for any sign of understanding to help him know whether or not Anna was going to be all right.

  “That didn’t make any sense, did it?”

  He shook his head, his big sad eyes not blinking.

  “He said she had a blood clot on her brain. But they got it out. She’ll probably be in a coma,” then I added really fast, “but it might just be temporary,” when I saw the only part he could really understand was coma. “They’ll have her on meds that will keep her from waking up for now.”

  Joe trembled so hard, I could see it.

  “Let’s go up and wait for her in her room. I’ll show you where ICU is. Some privacy might be nice.”

  He let me lead him to the elevators and to the intensive care unit. The desk clerk told me where they were going to put Anna and let us wait inside the cubical for her.

  Sixty minutes later, a team from the OR rolled in with her. A ventilator was breathing for her. Several lines in and out of her were attached to IV pumps. Her head was wrapped in gauze and a Hemovac drain came out from beneath the dressing.

  Joe stood in the corner of the tiny room and watched while the staff rolled her bed into the empty spot and transferred her equipment over to the ICU’s IV poles and the brackets on the walls. His eyes darted from one piece of machinery to another.

  Once Anna was settled and the anesthesiologist gave report to her new nurse, the OR crew left. The room went quiet, except for swish-pah, swish-pah of the vent and the bee-bee-bee of the pulse ox and the bing-bing-bing of the cardiac monitor and the low hum of all the IV pumps whirring away as they churned meds into Anna’s veins to keep her alive and stable.

  When her nurse stepped out, I went around the room and lowered the volume of all the pings and bings. They just added stress to poor Joe. He looked at me with saucer eyes like I was shutting off her life support.

  “Don’t worry. Once the nurse got around to it, she’d turn them down too. The alarms are still on, so if anything changes, they’ll let us know.”

  Maybe he breathed a little bit better. Hard to tell. It might have been his first breath since I’d met him in the emergency room.

  “Do you want a Coke?” I asked.

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Okay. I think I’m going to go get me one, and maybe walk around a while. The cafeteria won’t open till two. We can go get something to eat then.”

  “I don’t want to eat.”

  “I know. But you should. It won’t do Anna any good if you starve. She’ll need you to be here when she wakes up.”

  His big lost eyes looked up to me. He had no will to resist me.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  He scooted closer to the side of her bed and took her limp hand into his own. He was giving her a gentle kiss on her fingertips when I slipped out to go in search of something to help me get through the night.

  Chapter 32

  Anna stabilized somewhat during the wee hours, her temperature becoming less erratic. Joe swore she squeezed his hand once on his command. I didn’t tell him that was impossible. Anna was on Pavulon. It was a paralytic drug used for patients on the vent. It kept her from fighting against it by paralyzing all of her muscles. She couldn’t have squeezed his hand if her life depended on it. But I couldn’t be the one to steal his hope.

  By nine Monday morning, I decided to go home and sleep. But before I did, I wanted to swing by Joe’s parents’ condo. I told Joe I’d check on Snoopy, ask the neighbor to feed him, and pick up Joe’s eyeglasses and electric razor.

  I also wondered what kind of mess there was that needed to be cleaned before Joe walked back in.

  Outside their place, the daunting yellow tape—which draws the spectators but horrifies the loved-ones—marked the condo as a crime scene. An officer stood guard outside the door. When I told her who I was and why I was there, she opened the door and yelled into the crime scene investigator to tell him she was letting me in.

  He looked up at me as I came in. He was doing something over a huge brown stain on the white linoleum where I was trying not to look.

  “I’m almost done,” he said. “Then I’ll get out of your way.”

  “I’m just going to the bedroom for a minute. Is that okay?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said as he swished a brush across the floor like he was painting the brown spot on. “Like I said, I’m nearly finished. Somebody can start cleaning up anytime once I’m gone.”

  Joe’s glasses and razor were easy to find, of course. A place for everything, and everything in its place. When I came out, the criminalist was loading up his toolbox. I went to the couch to sit a minute while he packed. I didn’t feel so well. I’d been running in nurse-mode, and probably shock too, since sometime in the OR waiting room. Soon everything would have to crash in on me. But I hoped not before I got home.

  While I waited, I tried to keep my eyes from the kitchen. I glanced at the end table between the couch and wall. Next to a coffee mug on one of the sandstone coasters Anna had bought for her in-laws last Christmas sat a photograph of Anna and Joe. An eight-by-ten in a silver frame. It was my favorite picture of them, taken about six months ago.

  I set down Joe’s stuff and grabbed up the picture frame and held it, gazing at it as memories of times together swam through my exhausted consciousness.

  The guy in the kitchen stood up and said, “All done.”

  He went out and told the officer she could remove the yellow tape. Before the door closed, Millie the neighbor scooted in. She knew Joe’s parents well, taking care of their condo when they were in Arizona each winter, and came as a frequent guest to family events. Clad in an olive jersey sweat suit, th
e energetic septuagenarian brought her tall and lanky form toward me with her arms outstretched to enfold me.

  “Ah, Kathleen,” she lamented as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I folded into her but didn’t cry. Not yet. Everything hadn’t crashed through yet.

  We sat there for a while with my head dropped onto her shoulder.

  “Tell me what I can do for you,” she said.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t think.

  “You on the way to or from the hospital?”

  “From. I work tonight. I need to get some sleep sometime. But I need to clean this up first.”

  “That’s what I’ll do. Leave it to me.”

  “Oh, no. You can’t do that.”

  “Why not? Don’t worry. I’ll get Burt to help me.”

  A widower who lived two doors down. Sort of her boyfriend.

  “I don’t—”

  She cut me off. “It’s settled. You go home. We’ll take care of it. And I have Snoopy over at my place. I’ll keep him there until Joe’s folks get back. They’re trying to get a flight a-sap.”

  Her offer was too good. “Thanks, Millie. You’re wonderful.” I kissed her on the cheek, gathered the things to take to Joe, and got up to go. When I started to put the picture back down by the coffee mug, I pulled it back against my chest, deciding it would be the perfect thing to put at Anna’s bedside. I wanted everyone to remember her as a person, not the Gun Shot Wound in Bed Three.

  Millie walked with me to the door, providing a shield between me and the stain. She still had her arm around me.

  “I wish I could have prevented this somehow.”

  “Millie, how in the world could you have done that? You might have gotten hurt yourself if you’d been anywhere near here.”

  “But I was. I was over here just before it happened.”

  “You saw Anna right before? What was she doing? How was she?” I stopped before the door, wanting to picture Anna fine and well before any of this happened.

  “She was so happy, taking care of her sweet daughter. She was getting ready to meet your friend, and then you for brunch. She so loved to show off little Charlotte.”