Crossing Oceans (22 page)

“Mama Peg.”

Of course. The only rational one among us. I kissed Isabella’s clammy forehead. “I’ll be back soon, Bells. Your daddy wants to visit with you awhile. I love you.”

David sat in the waiting room alone, slapping a rolled-up magazine against his open palm, staring at a black television screen. Upon seeing me, he stood.

His eyes welled as he opened his arms. “Oh, Jenny.”

The tears I couldn’t seem to release at Isabella’s bedside now spilled freely as I fell into his arms. He held me tight, whispering, “Our girl” over and over. I pulled back and touched his rough, unshaven face. So much was exchanged between us as I met his gaze.

“I’m sorry, Jenny. I’m so sorry for everything.”

The wall of offenses I’d constructed against him over the last six years imploded with that apology, leaving me trembling in the aftershock. “I’m sorry too,” I said. “David, I stole so much from you.”

Flashes of Isabella’s first laugh, first word, and first birthday raced through my mind. He had no idea the treasures I had stolen from him.

After a time, he swiped his arm across his wet face. “Any change in her condition?”

I shook my head.

He exhaled and nodded. “I guess I should warn you that my father’s on his way.”

Though I dreaded having to face Dr. Preston, I said nothing. I figured he had as much right to be there as any of us.

He glanced over my shoulder. “Can I see her?”

“Of course. But, David, she looks bad.” Besides Isabella and my mother, I’d never felt so connected to another human being as I did to David in that moment. No one bore the yoke of this burden with me as evenly as he did. There was a strange comfort in that. I placed my hand on his face and looked him squarely in the eyes. “She’s going to be okay.” I had never wanted to believe anything so badly.

“Of course she is,” he agreed.

* * *

When we returned from home, showered and fed, my father excused himself to use the restroom while I was left to deal with the Preston clan, who had converged upon the PICU waiting room. My gaze immediately landed on Lindsey. Standing alone in the corner, she wore a warm-up suit that looked like something Mama Peg would wear. She wasn’t quite the same delicate creature without makeup and tailored clothes.

Uncle Ted spotted me first. He hurried over and smothered me in an embrace that reeked of cooking grease. Just as nausea began to summon up the contents of my stomach, he released me. “Jenny, how is she? How’s our girl?”

Everyone’s eyes were now on me. David’s relatives studied me with anticipation. “She’s in a coma.”

“Says who?” a man bellowed from behind me.

I cringed at the sound of his voice, braced myself, and turned around.

A squatty, well-dressed man fixed his beady eyes on me. At five feet five, it wasn’t uncommon for Dr. Alfred Preston to be underestimated at first sight, but that always proved to be a mistake. He was in my eyes a modern-day Napoleon. The only person in town who didn’t seem to fear him was my father.

He dipped his head at me. “Genevieve.”

Too weary for small talk, I simply mimicked his gesture. “Dr. Preston.”

“Who said that my granddaughter’s in a coma?”

What does it matter who said it,
I wondered. “Dr. Reid.”

“Since when is he a neurologist?” The way he looked at me made me think he expected an answer.

Unnerved by his gaze, I finally shrugged.

“She’s on a ventilator?”

“She is,” I said.

He frowned at me. “Who wrote that order?”

I was in no mood for a browbeating from him or anyone else. “You can stop talking to me like I’m your nurse. She wasn’t breathing. What did you expect them to do?”

He continued his interrogation as if I hadn’t spoken. “Did another doctor talk to you about it? Did they tell you what they were doing and why? Did they consult with specialists?”

I just looked at him. Eventually he’d have to realize the stupidity of this conversation.

He took off his glasses and slid the earpiece into his mouth, looking self-important. “Dr. Reid is a pediatrician, not a pulmonologist, Jenny.”

I crossed my arms. How could he not know how presumptuous he sounded? I had the strongest urge to fire questions at him in French, demanding that he answer me. If I had known French, I would have.

He stared at me for the longest time the way David always did when he was on the cusp of finding a solution. Finally he blinked. “How long was she hypoxic?”

I tried to make my annoyance with him obvious by letting out an exaggerated sigh. Why did it always seem that brainiacs were too dumb to realize they were talking over everyone’s head?

He raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to answer.

“I guess you could ask Dr. Reid. Excuse me now.”

My father appeared beside me, locking eyes with his nemesis. Fear for what scene he might make caused my heart to race.

I turned to him. “When I go back to see Bella, don’t you dare start anything.”

Dr. Preston trailed his gaze slowly down the length of my father, daring him to defy me.

My father glowered back at him. I was glad I couldn’t read his thoughts. Most likely they were homicidal.

Dr. Preston pulled his gaze from my father and addressed me. “Stay here, young lady. I’m going to take care of—”

My father squared his shoulders. “Don’t tell my daughter what to do.”

Here we go.
“Dad, don’t.”

His face reddened. “You go see your daughter, pumpkin. I’ll handle him.”

Pumpkin?
The last time my father referred to me as
pumpkin
, it was to praise me for learning to tie my shoes.

Dr. Preston looked up defiantly at my father, having to bend his neck back so far it looked like it might break. “You may not like me, Jack, and I might think you’re a lunatic, but my granddaughter is lying in there dying, and I’m going to do something about it even if I have to do it over your dead body.”

Something snapped in my father—I could see it in his eyes. I stepped between them. “Dr. Preston, if you can help Isabella, then please . . .”

His gaze never left my father even as he spoke to me. “Jenny, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but you need to in this case. I’ve studied under the finest pediatric specialists in the world. There’s plenty in medicine I wouldn’t pretend to know, but this—
this
—is where I excel.”

“He killed your mother,” my father growled behind me.

“For the five hundredth time, your wife wasn’t my patient.” Dr. Preston turned to me. “What your father doesn’t seem to grasp is that your mother mentioned she was getting frequent headaches and was tired. As a
friend
, I suggested she start taking iron and ibuprofen, thinking maybe she had some anemia, but told her she needed to make an appointment with her doctor. I did not diagnose her and I certainly didn’t kill her.”

“I know,” I simply said.

My father glared at Dr. Preston. “Don’t you let him near my granddaughter.”

“
Our
granddaughter,” Dr. Preston replied. “Your family seems not to understand the concept of fifty-fifty genetics.”

I turned and looked at my father. His eyes were as wild as the night he’d learned of my mother’s cancer.

I gave Dr. Preston a severe look and shook my head in warning.

Fear seemed to replace impudence as his eyes at last grew wide with understanding. “Let me go find out her condition at least.” He hurried away faster than I’d ever seen him move.

Looking embarrassed and unsure, David’s family mumbled excuses and apologies as they scattered, leaving us alone.

My father licked his lips. “Jenny, you can’t be serious about letting that quack have anything to do with her care.”

“If he can help . . .”

He gave me an incredulous look. “He killed your mother.”

I thought about trying again to dispel this long-held belief of his, but in his irrational state of mind, the only thing it would accomplish would be to further infuriate him. “Daddy, I know you think he messed up, but you don’t get to be chief of staff for no reason. What if he can help her?”

He shrugged. “I don’t care what he can do. He’s not touching my granddaughter.”

The gravity of his words shocked me. Was hatred really a more powerful emotion than love? “Listen to yourself.” Unable to stand the sight of him, I walked away.

He stood alone in the hallway, wearing his bitterness like some warped badge of honor.

Down the hall, as far away from him as I could get and still see the doors to the PICU, I leaned my back against the wall and waited for Dr. Preston to reemerge. A custodian rolled a container of murky fluid past me, sending a waft of bleach my way. I bent my arm over my face to keep from smelling it. I hadn’t vomited in nearly forty-eight hours and I wanted to keep it that way.

After more than an hour, Dr. Preston strode through the pneumatic doors, accompanied by another man. This doctor couldn’t have been much older than I was. His face was almost as red as his hair. The poor thing wore the expression of someone about to face a firing squad. With a hand on the man’s back, Dr. Preston guided him toward me. “Dr. McNeal, this is Isabella’s mother.”

Shaking his hand left mine cold and wet. I looked at my palm, then at him.

“Oh, sorry. Just washed them.”

Dr. Preston gestured to his companion. “Dr. McNeal is an associate of Dr. Reid.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

Dr. Preston turned to the redhead. “Tell that child’s mother why you have her on a paralytic.”

He gave Dr. Preston a questioning look. Dr. Preston simply stared at him.

“Well, Ms. Preston,” Dr. McNeal began.

“Lucas.”

His face mottled. “My apologies, Ms. Lucas. If your daughter was to wake up and feel a ventilator forcing air into her lungs, that would be pretty frightening, as you can imagine. She would panic and might try to rip the tube out. This obviously would—”

“Wait,” Dr. Preston said. “Would you repeat what you just said?”

“Repeat what, sir?”

He bent his head to the side like a confused dog. “The part about
if she woke up
.”

“If she wakes up and finds a ventilator—”

Dr. Preston put his glasses back on. “But she’s in a coma; that’s what Dr. Reid told her mother.”

The man furrowed his brow. “You know as well as I do that they can come out of it without warning.”

Dr. Preston nodded like a simpleton. “Yes, that’s right. That’s right. But if she’s on a paralytic, how would we know if she started coming out of it, do you suppose?”

Sweat beaded on the younger doctor’s forehead. “After a while we’ll wean her from the medication and reevaluate.”

“Oh, stupid me. I thought that airway pressure release ventilation had eliminated the need for paralytics.”

“We’re not using APRV.”

Dr. Preston’s nostrils flared as red crawled up his neck. “Yes, I’ve been made aware. So we have her on continuous respirations and paralytics. How long are we going to leave her in this forced coma?”

Confusion and alarm filled me. I looked back and forth between the two doctors, but they were focused on each other. “Forced? I thought—”

Dr. Reid stepped off the elevator wearing a wrinkled lab jacket and flew up the hall in long strides, looking as irritated as Dr. Preston.

At the sound of his footsteps, David’s father turned. “Oh, look, it’s the great Dr. Reid.”

Dr. Reid glared at him. “I got your emergency page. This couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Reid. Did I wake you from your nap?”

“I’ve been on call for two days straight. I need to sleep sometime.”

“I realize you need your beauty rest more than most, but this is important. You see, someone told this young woman that my granddaughter was in a coma.”

He threw me an accusatory look. “She is.”

Dr. Preston’s eyes narrowed. “A chemically induced one.”

Dr. Reid gave David’s father a look that could have killed. “As per protocol, Dr. Preston, after I saved the child’s life, I assessed her faculties and found her to be completely unresponsive.”

Dr. Preston’s mouth turned up in a hint of a smirk. It seemed to me a small miracle that he had made it to his age without someone beating the life out of him. “For which we are eternally grateful, Doctor. Thank you for doing your job. I was told that we got her back on the very first shock, but that certainly doesn’t take away from your claim to heroism. Now then, since you’ve been given your proper due, would you please tell me how you’ll know if she becomes responsive?”

Dr. Reid’s eyes looked like they were in danger of popping out of his head. “We’ll wean her and reevaluate.”

The redheaded doctor broke in. “That’s what I just told him.”

When Dr. Preston turned his attention to him, the young doctor looked as though he might soil himself. “When?” Dr. Preston asked.

Dr. Reid’s words were sounding increasingly clipped. “I haven’t set up those parameters yet.”

“The longer she’s on the ventilator, the lower her chances of a full recovery, wouldn’t you agree?”

My gaze ping-ponged between them. The tension in the air was thick enough to suffocate, but something told me that this exchange might mean the difference between Isabella living and dying. Though I didn’t fully understand the debate, I realized they had two very different opinions on what was best for my daughter. I wanted to hear it out.

Dr. Reid tapped his large sneaker against the floor. “I realize this, Doctor, but hypoxemia might also have equally dire consequences if she doesn’t breathe on her own, don’t you think?”

“I gave the orders to wean her,” Dr. Preston said.

They stared so hard and long at each other that I half expected one of them to draw a pistol. It was Reid who ultimately lost the staring contest. “You have no right to do that; she’s my p—”

Dr. Preston took a step forward, entering Reid’s personal space. “In case your memory is as poor as your doctoring, let me remind you that I’m chief of staff. They’re all
my
patients.”

Dr. Reid closed his eyes and tucked his lips in his mouth in what appeared to be an attempt to calm himself. “If she wakes up,” he finally said, “she’s going to be terrified. We are trying to prevent that. I don’t call that bad medicine.”