Fireflies (13 page)

The neurologist paused. “One more thing. In a panic attack, the patient usually feels tingling only in his hands, but
you
described tingling in your feet as well, and that makes this one of the most extreme examples of a panic attack I’ve ever diagnosed. You need rest. A lot of it.
Now
.”

“But my son …”

“Is under constant professional care. In the four hours you’ve been down here …”

What?
David thought, pulse rising.
Four hours?
It seemed as if he’d been in the Emergency Ward for only forty-five minutes.

“In the four hours you’ve been down here,” the neurologist continued, “I’ve asked for several reports on your son’s condition. His physicians tell me he’s doing fine. He’s weak, but that’s to be expected, given what he’s been through. The main thing is, he’s stable, and his treatment seems to be effective.”

“No! He’s going to die!”

“Should I call for help?” the resident asked.

The neurologist studied David.

“Maybe we ought to sedate him,” the resident added.

“No,” David said. “No, please, don’t sedate me. Don’t put me to sleep. My son …”

The neurologist scribbled on a prescription pad. “But sleep’s exactly what you need. Your daughter can have this filled at the hospital pharmacy. I’m prescribing Valium for you.”

“Valium?”

“Whatever you’ve heard about the drug, don’t let the name shock you,” the neurologist said. “Don’t give yourself another attack. These pills won’t knock you out. But they will make you groggy. You’ll feel like taking a nap. You’ll wake up calmer, rested. After your daughter gets this prescription filled, I want her to take you home and put you to bed.
And to make sure you take the medication
.”

“But my son … !”

“Two days from now, you’ll adjust to the medication. You’ll feel a little slow perhaps, but much less excited, and you’ll be able to function. By then, you can come back and visit your son, as long as you don’t try to drive. In the meantime, your wife will be with your son. The doctors will supervise him constantly. He’s in good hands. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Two days from now? David thought.

Two days from now?

But that’ll be too late!

The glass doors hissed open. A nurse pushed David in a wheelchair from the Emergency Ward. Beneath a concrete canopy, in a curve of the driveway where hours earlier David had seen attendants unloading a patient from an ambulance, Sarie was waiting in her yellow Fiesta.

The nurse stopped the wheelchair, opened the Fiesta’s passenger door, and eased David inside.

His every movement remained an effort. His vision continued to swirl. Nonetheless he noticed Sarie move a small white paper bag—a pharmacist’s green bill was stapled to it—off the passenger seat so he could get in.

The nurse shut the door. “Get some rest now, Mr. Morrell.” She added to Sarie, “Make sure he takes those pills. Put him to bed as soon as he gets home.”

“Don’t worry,” Sarie said. “I guarantee my Dad’ll be a model patient.”

Sarie put the Fiesta in gear, then steered around the curved driveway, heading toward the Emergency Ward’s parking lot. The pivot of the car made David’s mind reel. He wanted to clutch his skull, but given what he planned to do, he didn’t dare alarm his daughter.

She turned right, onto a road that passed several university dormitories and a recreation building. Students thronged the sidewalks. The warm June sun was low in the sky, casting shadows. David raised his watch, squinting at its hands. Seven-thirty in the evening, and as near as he could tell, he’d entered the Emergency Ward shortly after two o’clock.

He couldn’t understand how the time had passed so quickly.

Time! He didn’t have much time!

“I’m sorry I took so long coming back,” Sarie said. “The hospital pharmacy closes at six, but I managed to get them to stay open long enough to fill the prescription. Then I wanted to go back upstairs and see Matt.”

“I hope you didn’t tell him what happened to me.” When David had collapsed, he’d been in a conference room with two doctors. In theory, Matthew didn’t know about the panic attack.

“No. Mom didn’t tell him either.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to upset him.”

“But I took Mom aside and told her what the neurologist said was wrong with you. Mom’s worried. She says you have to take care of yourself.”

David nodded, the effort painful.

“Mom says she can stay with Matthew. I’m supposed to ask a neighbor to bring up a change of clothes for her. When we get a chance, Mom and I will trade places. She’ll come home and see if you’re okay.”

“Oh, I’m okay,” David said with effort. “You heard the neurologist. I’m in perfect physical shape.” He stifled the bitterness in his voice. “Except I’m terrified.”

“But Matthew’s doing fine.”

“No! He going to—!”

Stop! David thought. You can’t alarm her! You need her help!

“Matt’s going to what?” Sarie asked.

“He’s sicker than he’s ever been before.”

“But that’s because the chemotherapy this time was stronger than he’s ever received.”

David pressed her hand. “Of course. He’s bound to be sicker this time. Forgive me. I’m just a little confused.”

Fireflies.

Power chords.

Sarie turned right again (more swirling in David’s head), proceeding down a main road toward an intersection, where if they turned left they’d be heading home.

But if they turned
right
, they’d go back to the hospital, not to the Emergency entrance in the rear but to one of the entrances along the front that David always used when he went up to stay with Matthew.

“Sarie, don’t ask questions. Turn right.”

“But …”

“Don’t ask questions, I said. I know it’s the wrong direction. It’ll take us back to the hospital.
Just turn right
.”

“But I’m supposed to … What about the pills you were ordered to … ?”

“I’ll swallow them. I promise. I’ve got something I have to do first. If it works, I promise I’ll take the pills. I’ll go to bed.”

“But what do you want to do?”

“I can’t explain it now. Just do what I say. Listen to me. I’m begging. Turn to the right.”

Sarie stared at him. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

“So sure you can’t imagine.”

Devotion made her acquiesce. “Okay, Dad. I don’t want to get you more upset, but I don’t want to be irresponsible.”

“Trust me.”

“Didn’t you tell me never to trust anyone who says that?”

“This is different.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your father.”

Sarie had almost passed through the intersection. “And I’m your puzzled daughter. I hope I’m not making a mistake. Trust you? Okay, then, Dad, hang on. Here we go.” She jerked the steering wheel toward the right (David’s skull came close to exploding) and drove down the lane that would take them to …

The ramp, where David had parked early in the afternoon. Now the family had three cars at the hospital: David’s Porsche, Donna’s Voyager, and Sarie’s Fiesta. The gang’s all here, David thought bleakly.

“Dad, that neurologist is going to be pissed at me.”

“But I’m going to love you more. That’s a wonderful trade-off, don’t you think? And believe me, no matter if you think I’m going crazy, just keep trusting me. I’ve never been more sure of anything. I know I’m right.”

David staggered from the Fiesta, Sarie holding him up as he wavered from the parking ramp. Strangers frowned at them.

“But what are we doing?” Sarie asked. “Where are we
going?
Tell me.
Explain
.”

“I can’t. You wouldn’t believe me. It’s too complicated. But maybe forty years from now we’ll talk about it.”

“Forty years from now? You’re scaring me, Dad.”

“With a lot of help from you”—or God, or I don’t know what, David thought—“we’re going to save Matt.”

Sarie frowned.

Again David went through the entrance he always used. Again he went down the corridor that early this afternoon had seemed so familiar and yet so distant in time. With Sarie holding his arm, he did his best to keep from wavering, to keep from attracting attention.

They reached the large mirrored room that contained the chairs and the grand piano. Sarie guided him toward elevator E.

“No.” David recalled the terrible pressure he’d felt descending the elevator toward the Emergency Ward. “I can’t take elevators anymore. We have to use the stairs.”

Sarie opened a door beside the elevator.

David’s footsteps echoed as he staggered into a stairwell. He peered up toward seemingly neverending stairs that made him think of a mountain.

“Keep holding my arm. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll manage this.” He gripped the railing. They started up.

At each landing, David wanted to sit and rest, but breathless, he fought harder upward.

“Dad, you’ll make yourself sicker.”

“I don’t matter.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Keep holding me.”

The higher David climbed, the weaker his legs felt. He had a sudden recollection of his nightmare about his death forty years from now and a thought he’d had of life being like a steep flight of stairs that got harder and harder to climb as he got older.

That memory from his nightmare made him stop in distress. Everything he’d done since waking on his kitchen floor had been motivated by his frantic conviction that the nightmare was more than just a fainting spell. The scenes from his nightmare depicting how his life would be for the next forty years had been so vivid, so real that he’d believed in them.

But now he realized that in none of those nightmarish memories had he suffered a panic attack the day before Matt contracted septic shock. In none of those memories had he been rushed to the Emergency Ward. In none of them had he and Sarie struggled up these stairs.

Was his nightmare really only that? Just a nightmare, the consequence of nothing more than a fainting spell? Were his premonitions about Matthew only the consequence of a vivid dream and too much tension for too damned long?

“What is it, Dad? You stopped. What’s wrong? Do you need to sit down?”

“I just thought of something.”

Maybe the neurologist was right. Maybe I should go home. Maybe I’m being hysterical.

Fireflies.

Power chords.

Wavering on the stairwell, he seemed to float above his deathbed and drift through a brilliant doorway.

No! It’s too real!

With tingling certainty, he understood now why the panic attack and the Emergency Ward hadn’t been in his nightmarish memory, why he couldn’t recall Sarie helping him stagger up these stairs.

Because they’d never happened. Forty years from now, how could he remember what had never occurred?

What he
did
remember was that after he regained consciousness on the kitchen floor, he’d been so shaky, so disoriented he’d been forced to stay in bed till tomorrow afternoon; and when he’d finally felt steady enough to return to the hospital, Matthew had contracted septic shock.

That day in bed was what had happened in his memory. Not any of the events of this afternoon and this evening. But now the neurologist wanted David to spend the next two days away from Matt.

No! I’ve been given a second chance!

An
alternative
to the past. Somehow, for God knows what reason, I’ve been allowed the chance to come back and
change
the past.

The more he thought about it, the more irrational the notion became, and yet he’d never felt saner in his life. Faith. He had to
believe
. Because if he did go home and spend the next two days in bed, if Matthew did die from septic shock, in that case David would
certainly
go insane.

“Dad, are you sure you’re okay?” Sarie looked pale. “You’re shaking.”

“I just needed to rest for a second. Come on. We’ve got a job to do.”

David struggled higher. They reached the third level.

Sarie started to guide him upward toward the fourth.

“No,” David said. “We’re here. Open this door.”

“But the Bone Marrow Ward’s on the
seventh
floor.”

“We’re
not
going to the Bone Marrow Ward.”

“Then where
are
we going? There’s only one place I remember going to on the third floor.”

The Pediatrics Ward, where Matthew had received his conventional and then investigational chemotherapy, where David had mistakenly gone instead of to the Bone Marrow Ward at the start of the afternoon.

The blond nurse was still on duty, evidently working a double shift. “You’re back again.” She looked surprised. “Has something happened? Have you got good news about Matt?”

“Doctor …” David gave a name, the physician they’d first met when Matt was diagnosed. “Is he on the ward?” The effort to ask the question increased his dizziness. “I know he makes his rounds this time of the evening. Is he”—David’s heart raced, the start of another panic attack—“is he here?”

The nurse frowned at Sarie supporting her father. “He was. I’m not sure if he went home.”

“Please,” David breathed, “find out.”

“Sit down over here,” the nurse said.

“No, I’m not sure I’d have the strength to stand again. Just find him.
Get him
.” David leaned against a wall.

The nurse left quickly.

“Dad, you ought to be at home.”

“Matt’s all that matters.
We have to save him
.”

“But he’s not in any danger.”

“Danger? You don’t have the faintest notion. It’s a second chance. We can … !”

“Yes?” The physician David had been hoping to find was suddenly before him. “What do you mean, Mr. Morrell? Save Matt? Second chance?”

“Thank God, you’re still here.”

“One of my patients had a complication. Otherwise I’d have been home for dinner now. What’s wrong? You’re out of breath.”