The Children's Ward (15 page)

Sixty-two

Betty Jo could not believe it: as hot as it was yesterday on the medical floor, it was equally as cold today on surgical. It was so cold that she could barely hold onto her pen, her fingers were so stiff.

After about fifteen minutes of feeling ice-cold air pouring down the back of her neck, she was yearning nostalgically for the tropical climate on medical.

“Don’t tell me,” she said, to anyone who might be listening, “this is a new experiment in cryogenics. They’re going to freeze us all and bring us back when there’s a cure for stupidity. Meaning the engineers, plural.”

“Don’t worry, Betty,” the charge nurse said, “I’ve already called about it and they said twenty minutes, tops.”

“With engineering, twenty minutes could mean Easter.” She gave up trying to write and put her fingers in her armpits for warmth. Was it her imagination, or was her breath frosting as she spoke.

“Have some coffee and don’t worry about it,” the charge nurse suggested.

“I am sure,” she said, “that the wooly mammoths on the plains of Siberia said to one another: ‘Have some more buttercups, and don’t worry about it.’ “

The charge nurse laughed.

But, with an open invitation to get coffee, Betty Jo thought she might as well.

As her grandfather always said, it couldn’t hurt.

“Hear anything from engineering?” she asked when she got back, exactly twenty minutes later.

“They’re sending someone up.”

“Brave group,” Betty Jo said, sitting at the desk.

“They said the computer shows that it’s seventy degrees up here,” the charge nurse continued. “What’s happening, engineering says, is that it’s only supposed to be sixty-eight degrees, so the automatic air-conditioning is trying to cool us down. And it’s been trying for a while now.”

“Well, all I can say is, I hope none of the patients needs an enema because I’m not going to be the one to break up the ice when it freezes up their—”

“Betty Jo!”

Sixty-three

Abigail carefully punctured the yolk of her egg with one tine of the fork, then pressed down on the center of the egg. Thick yellow egg yolk seeped out of the hole.

It had been a long time since Abigail had been served an over-easy egg; her grandmother preferred scrambled.

She selected a triangle of toast and began to transfer the egg yolk from the plate to the toast, spreading the yolk like butter until the toast was covered with it.

Eyes half-closed, she bit into the toast.

It was as good as she had expected it to be. Wanting to make it last as long as possible, she took tiny bites, savoring the texture of the yolk-laden toast.

When she had finished, she looked at the remainder of the egg. Tasteless, but the nurse would expect her to finish it. Instead she cut it into pieces and then hid the pieces in her empty milk carton.

She ate the two slices of overcooked bacon and finished the toast. Hungry still, she lifted the lid off the bowl of cooked cereal. Lumpy and gray.

She wasn’t that hungry.

Nobody was that hungry.

Abigail looked over at Courtney.

Courtney had not slept well during the night, if she slept at all.

Courtney was resisting.

Courtney did not want to dream.

Abigail understood this without knowing how she knew. She also understood that Courtney was getting sleepier.

Abigail smiled.

Outside, the rain was coming down steadily.

At home Abigail had always looked forward to rainy days. Somehow it was quieter then, and she would open her bedroom window so that she could hear the rain sound. Even cars driving by were a part of it, the hiss of tires on wet asphalt.

Alone in her room she would be soothed by the cool fresh air and the wet smells.

If her grandmother was otherwise occupied, she would sneak out after a while, in rubber boots and her rain slicker, to find the deepest puddle and stand in it. Not to splash—grandmother would never permit that— but just to stand, letting the cold numb her stockinged feet inside the boots.

Then she would look for earthworms.

Repulsed but fascinated, she could watch them for hours. An older child had told her that you could cut them in two and rather than having a
dead
earthworm, you’d have two live earthworms. But
she had never done it. She saw nothing to be gained by doubling the number of earthworms.

Still, they were interesting to watch.

Usually, she would remember to go home before her grandmother came out to look for her but sometimes she’d be startled by a hand gripping her arm and pulling her to her feet.

“Look at you,” her grandmother would say. “You’re drenching wet. Come inside now before you catch cold.”

And Abigail would be pulled along, her legs moving as fast as they could to keep up with grandmother’s stride. Sometimes she would slip and be lifted off both feet, held up by one arm.

She remembered that…dangling in the air, one arm held painfully, her shoulder aching, unable to reach the ground. She remembered grandmother’s eyes, glaring at her like…just once…she’d like to let Abigail fall to the ground.

She focused her eyes, blinking.

Hammering.

A workman was up on a ladder, pounding nails into a shelf which he had mounted high on the wall between Tessi’s and Courtney’s beds.

Courtney was watching with heavy-lidded eyes. Tessi had her hands over her ears, blocking out the noise.

Russell’s bed was empty.

A second workman pushed through the double doors carrying a television set. He balanced it on a rung of the ladder.

Abigail looked at Courtney and was certain that she had not yet fallen asleep.

All that noise.

She looked back at the workmen who had destroyed the peaceful morning. They were lifting the television onto the shelf. Almost done, then.

A few more minutes wouldn’t matter, she decided.

Sixty-four

“It looks like a big iron lung,” Russell said.

“How would a kid like you know about an iron lung?” The technician pushed Russell’s wheelchair closer to the hyperbaric chamber.

“I read a lot. I’ve seen pictures of people who had polio…in iron lungs.”

The technician raised his eyebrows. “Whadda ya know. A smart kid.” He went to the end of the chamber and unsealed the door. “You’re not gonna fit in here in that thing.” He indicated the wheelchair. “Can you walk at all?”

Russell shook his head.

“Great. So I get to carry you.” He eyed Russell critically. “Well, you don’t look too heavy at least. I’ll tell you I’ve had some two-hundred pound cripples that I had to muscle in there.”

The technician picked the boy up easily, carrying him to the chamber door.

“Watch your head,” he ordered.

It was smaller inside than Russell had expected. With so little room to move in, the technician jostled him about, bumping Russell’s legs in the process.

“Ya can’t feel that, can you?”

“No,” Russell said, tight-lipped.

“Well, there you are.” The technician was breathing hard, sitting back on his heels opposite the narrow padded treatment table. “I’d better strap you in,” he gasped but did not move.

“I can do it,” Russell said, pulling up on the leather straps and crossing them over his chest.

The technician nodded, then reached overhead and flicked several switches on the chamber’s curved ceiling.

“Now you’ll be able to hear me and I’ll hear you.” Crouched over, he walked toward the chamber door. “Hope you’re not claustrophobic.” Then he was out and the door was swinging shut.

Inside the silver chamber, Russell crossed his fingers for luck.

The technician, who had been reading a magazine, stood up when Joshua entered the room.

“Dr. Fuller…”

“How is he doing?”

“Fine. Been in for, let’s see, twenty minutes.”

Joshua went up to the chamber and looked through the porthole. Russell was lying, hands folded across his stomach. “Let me talk to him.”

The technician took off the headset and handed it to Joshua.

“Russell,” Joshua said. “It’s Dr. Fuller. Can you hear me?”

Russell’s voice, though faint, was clear.

“Hi, Dr. Fuller.”

“How are you doing in there?”

“Okay. What’s the oxygen percentage?”

Joshua looked at the LED display. “About fifteen.”

A hesitation. “That’s okay for the first treatment, I guess.”

“I think so. Listen, I’ll see you after you come out.” He looked back through the porthole. Russell waved.

Joshua handed the headset back to the technician.

“What does a kid like that know about oxygen percentages?” the technician asked, putting the headset back on.

“Are you kidding? This whole thing is his idea. He read about a doctor who’s using hyperbaric therapy in spinal cord injuries, and getting results.”

“But those are fresh injuries,” the technician protested. “His DOI is twenty-five or twenty-six months ago.”

“He wanted to try it. And who am I to tell him that he can’t?”

“Yeah, but if it isn’t going to help…”

“Who’s to say it isn’t? If he really believes it will help him, maybe it will. If nothing else, when this is all over, he’ll know that he got every chance.” He patted the polished silver surface of the chamber. “Good luck, Russell.”

Inside the chamber, Russell massaged his upper thighs.

He felt it again.

A tingling in his legs.

He had felt it the first time yesterday after he’d been transferred out of ICU. His legs had grown increasingly warm and heavy and then the tingling started along the instep of his right foot. In minutes both legs were fully involved.

He hadn’t said anything to anyone, not wanting to even voice his hopes.

But now he thought he could feel the pressure of his fingers on his skin. He wanted to try and move his legs but he was afraid. Afraid to try and fail.

The chamber door opened and the technician stuck his head in.

“That’s it,” he said. “Ready to come back to the world?”

It wasn’t a world that Russell had found to be a fair one, but it was one that he suddenly thought he could lick.

Sixty-five

“David, you haven’t even started to get ready.” Tiffany stood in the doorway to their bedroom, gazing at her husband in disbelief. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed in his bathrobe, reading the newspaper.

“In a minute,” he said, not looking up.

“We’re due at the hospital at eleven,” she reminded him.

“Don’t worry about it.” He turned the page, folding the paper noisily.

“I don’t want to be late.”

Now he looked up. “You won’t be late, all right? Just give me a minute in peace to finish this article and I’ll be right with you.”

She turned on her heel and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

At times like this she could not remember what she had ever seen in David White.

She walked down the stairs carefully, trying to avert her eyes from the blackened walls.

The building was structurally sound, they had told her, with the fire damage limited to the surface of the walls. It looked much worse than it was.

It almost broke her heart to see the house like this.

Although it was well before noon, she went straight to the bar in the den for an orange juice and vodka. She used a little more vodka than usual but she needed it.

She was thinking of getting a divorce.

It was funny how things were beginning to come clear to her. David’s high-handed, insolent manner had somehow always seemed to her to be directed at other people, people he assumed to be inferior. Now she noticed that a lot of it was directed at her. He apparently had forgotten that the money which supplied his superiority was hers. That all of his indulgences were financed by the generosity of his wife.

Since Courtney had gone into the hospital, Tiffany had become aware of the fact that David considered visits to his child an inconvenience.

It was for Courtney’s sake that she hadn’t left him before, following the sordid affair he’d had with the red-haired waitress from the country club. Because she’d felt that Courtney needed a father.

She was coming to realize that, as things stood now, Courtney had a father in name only.

It wasn’t fair to Courtney.

Tiffany wanted more for both of them. More of a husband, more of a father. Maybe David could, if forced, change enough to meet their needs, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted him, changed or not.

She finished her drink and poured another.

After the meeting at the hospital, she would ask one of the doctors whether they thought it would be bad for Courtney if her parents were to separate. She also needed to get advice on how to tell her daughter about what had happened to the house.

“Don’t forget,” she said to herself, lifting the glass to her lips.

“Don’t forget what?”

David had come into the room and she turned, sloshing a little of her drink out of the glass. He looked pointedly at his watch.

“A little anesthetic so early in the morning?”

She did not respond. Instead she tossed back the drink and banged the glass on the bar.

She prayed that the doctor would tell her what she wanted to hear.

Sixty-six

Courtney could not keep her eyes open any longer.

The ward was quiet except for the sound of the rain being blown against the window.

Exhausted, she turned onto her stomach, burying her head under the pillow. It felt like the room was revolving, first in one direction, then the other. Behind her closed eyes, specks of light danced in dizzying patterns.

She hovered on the edge of sleep, aware of a heaviness in her arms and legs.

Whimpering softly in her throat, she crossed into the dream.

Her parents were walking to the car, her mother’s heels clicking on the paved driveway.

It was raining but neither of them seemed to be aware of it.

She could tell that her mother was angry.

Her father unlocked the passenger door, pulling it open with a sweeping bow.

Her mother got into the car without speaking, and yanked the door closed.

Her father laughed.

“Don’t worry, Tiff, I’ll get you to the hospital on time,” he said when he was in the car.

“How, by driving eighty miles an hour in this rain?”

“I’m a good driver.” He turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life. He gunned the engine, grinning at her. “And this is a good car.”

“Just don’t get us killed.”

“Such little faith,” he said sadly, and pulled away, tires sliding on the wet pavement.

Sheets of rain poured over the windshield.

“The wipers,” her mother said.

“What?”

“It’s raining. Turn on the windshield wipers.”

He turned them on.

They moved slowly back and forth.

“Isn’t there a faster speed?” her mother asked after a minute.

“Oh, faster? I thought since you wanted me to drive slower, you’d want them slower too.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” She glared at him.

“There’s no pleasing you.” He turned the wipers
to a faster speed.

They had reached the turn-off to the hospital.

Her father accelerated.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s ten to eleven. If I don’t speed up a little, we will be late.”

The car drifted a little in the turns, the right tires near the shoulder of the road.

Her father reached over and turned on the heater, pushing the blower up to full blast.

“A little chilly in here,” he said.

The windows started to fog.

“Damn it,” her mother said, leaning forward to turn the heater to defrost.

Her father knocked her mother’s hand out of the way.

“David!” her mother screamed.

The car began to spin in the road.

“Courtney.”

Someone was shaking her.

She opened her eyes. The dream was over.

“It’s time for your appointment with Dr. Campbell.”

She sat up in bed, still groggy. The nurse put slippers on her feet and helped her into her robe.

She noticed that Abigail was looking at her strangely.