The Healing (29 page)

chapter thirty-five

Karen couldn't believe the medical team in the emergency room wouldn't let her stay in the bay with Mike. She couldn't help but think the worst. The only time they didn't let a family member stay with the patient was when they thought the patient might die. Or when they had to intubate someone, strip him, and cut him open.

She paced like an agitated cat until the doctor finally emerged. And she practically assaulted him. “How is he? Is he going to be all right?”

The doctor looked grim. “Mrs. Donnelly, I'm afraid the news isn't good.”

Déjà vu.

Karen tried to wake herself. But once again, the nightmare was all too real. “He has pneumonia?” she asked.

“In both lungs,” the doctor replied.

She swayed, and the doctor gripped her elbow to steady her. “Oh, no,” she said.

“We've already started an intravenous antibiotic, and we're bringing him up to the ICU to monitor him.”

Karen felt herself go pale. “The ICU?” she echoed.

The doctor looked her squarely in the eyes. “Your husband is a very sick man, Mrs. Donnelly. He's barely conscious.”

She felt like her brain had shut down. This was totally different from the numbness she'd embraced while she was in control of things. “But he's going to be all right, isn't he? Once the antibiotic starts to work—”

“I can't make any promises,” the doctor replied, looking more somber than hopeful. “Sometimes infections like these are hard to beat. Especially for someone in your husband's delicate medical condition. We'll know in the next twenty-four hours whether or not we have a handle on it.”

Karen couldn't process what she was hearing. People didn't die from bacterial infections in the third millennium in America. “And if he doesn't improve?” she asked.

“We'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it,” the doctor said evasively. “If you'll excuse me a minute, Mrs. Donnelly. I want to make sure they get your husband upstairs as soon as possible. I have a call in to our pulmonary specialist.”

Karen stood frozen to her spot in the busy emergency room hallway. As soon as she could get her feet to move, she trudged back to the bay where Mike was lying on a narrow bed, hooked up to multiple IVs and monitors, and stared at him with a whole new fireball of fear burning in her belly. His nose was too raw from the cold to insert an oxygen tube, so the mask was still strapped to his face. There were more tubes and wires connected to his body than Karen could count. And after standing in a hub of activity, where people were rushing by and actively participating in the drama of the human race, the sight of Mike so physically powerless was a bitter irony. Nine years before, he was carrying grown men on his back and hauling heavy gear in his own arena of human drama.

Now he was hovering dangerously close to the threshold of death, and he was more of a hero than ever in her eyes.

For Karen, there would be no more proud defiance. There would be no more standing alone against the colossal challenges that plagued her family. That wasn't how the human spirit thrived.

She struck her bargain with God. If Mike pulled through, she would see the man she always loved. She would bring him back to life so that others could see him as well.

“Please give me the chance to make it up to him,” she prayed.

How could someone so gifted, so full of life's noblest qualities, have everything taken away from him? Including the people he loved?

Where were his mother and his sister? Where were Vinny and Joey and Richie and the whole fraternity of brothers from the job? Where was Lori? And most painful of all . . . where was Karen herself?

She practically convulsed with fear and regret. All she could think about, all she could hear echoing in her mind, was the ER doctor telling her, in his tactful, professional manner, there was a possibility Mike might not pull through.

When his eyes fluttered open, Karen dove in, desperately seeking him out through the haze of delirium and medication and misery. “Hi,” she whispered hoarsely.

He blinked and blinked, the oxygen mask fogging and unfogging with the rhythm of his labored breathing. Then his mouth started moving. “Don't tell Lori—”

Karen stroked the graying hair at his temple in a loving, soothing manner. “I don't know if it's a good idea to keep it from her,” she said.

Wetness pooled at the outer corners of his eyes, but Karen didn't know if it was from the effort of talking. Something inside of her, however, told her that they were tears of love. “She has to get better first,” he said, the words formed with no tone or breath.

Karen couldn't hold back her own tears, and her head bounced up and down.

“Okay, babe?” Mike asked. His eyes drifted toward her, but Karen realized he couldn't really see her. “Please?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I'll just call your mother and Vinny. And my sister. Okay?”

His answer was one barely distinguishable nod of assent. Then he drifted off again.

Karen spent the next hour trying to imagine her life without him. She tried to imagine how she would tell Lori her father had died. She tried to imagine how Nora would take it and how his friends would come to terms with losing one of their peers at such a young age.

It was one of the worst hours of her life. By the time Mike was being moved to the intensive care unit, Karen was almost prostrate with fear. While he was in transit, she took the time to run outside with her cell phone and make the necessary calls to their family and friends. Luckily, she got Trish on the line and didn't have to tell Nora her son was gravely ill and in the hospital. When she called her own sister, she felt the distance between them like some harsh sentence of banishment and wished she could cry on Helen's shoulder. She also called Grace, thanking her again for all her help and telling her she was right about the pneumonia. But when Karen called their friends in Massapequa, she lost it. Telling Lisa Bovino that Mike could very well be dying validated the whole unbelievable situation.

Lisa and Vinny arrived at the hospital an hour later.

“Tell them you're his brother,” Karen told Vinny. “Otherwise they won't let you in to see him.”

Karen led Vinny and Lisa into the ICU. As the sights, smells, and sounds of the busy ward closed in on them, she could feel the tension emanating from Mike's best friend. Vinny never fully accepted that Mike had a debilitating disease. How was he going to accept that he might be dying?

They walked past the nurses' station, which looked like a NASA mission control center. Lisa was looking at the floor, but Vinny was taking it all in. “Geez, that Mike will do anything for attention,” he said.

It didn't surprise Karen that Vinny tried to circumvent his distress with humor. She awarded him a wan smile to let him know she understood the joke perfectly. Mike never did things for attention. Once when he received a major award on the FDNY's Medal Day at City Hall, Karen didn't know about it until Richie mentioned it the following weekend while playing cards. To Mike, it was just another day on the job.

Just before they went in, Karen paused. “You haven't seen Mike in a couple of months,” she said. “I just want to warn you, he's lost a lot of weight.”

Vinny nodded, but Karen could see he was bracing himself. He reached behind him for Lisa's hand and took a deep breath before stepping up to Mike's bedside. His eyes began to blink rapidly, as if his brain couldn't process the sight. Or perhaps it was a way to check the threat of tears. “Hey, buddy. Guess who.”

Mike's eyelids cracked.

“Get a little closer,” Karen told him. “He might not be able to see you.”

Vinny swallowed hard and bent over his friend. He didn't let go of Lisa's hand. He clutched it even tighter. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he said a little louder.

The faint crinkle of crow's-feet at the corners of Mike's eyes was as close to a smile as he was going to get. But at least he knew his lifelong sidekick was there in the room.

“What the hell did you do to yourself this time?” Vinny asked. Karen could see he was doing everything in his power to keep up the façade, even though his emotion and grief were palpable.

“Skiing,” Mike said in a wisp of breath. He wasn't wearing the oxygen mask anymore. Now they had his head in a plastic tent.

The sound that emanated from Vinny was a cross between a chuckle and a sob.

Karen knew why Mike's one-word answer got to his friend. She had heard the story a hundred times of how Mike had ended up in the hospital at the age of sixteen. Mike and Vinny had gone on a ski trip to the Berkshires with a group from their high school, and Mike, always a bit of a daredevil, had an unfortunate encounter with a tree. He had busted his collarbone and gotten a pretty nasty concussion, and his parents had to go up to Massachusetts because he couldn't be moved for a few days.

Vinny was usually the one who told the story, and he always liked to describe how he felt when he saw his best friend hit that tree. He had no problem admitting it was one of the biggest scares of his life.

“Yeah, right, skiing,” he said to Mike. It was obvious his resolve was running thin. “It was probably a wheelchair race.”

Karen saw the way Mike's gaze fixed on Vinny. She knew her husband well enough to know what he was trying to convey. He wanted Vinny to know that he cherished every moment they ever spent together. This was the friend who had known Mike since they were four. They were supposed to laugh with each other and
at
each other as they grew old, became grandfathers, and lost their hair. They were supposed to come down with hemorrhoids, arthritis, flatulence, bad circulation, prostate trouble, and cataracts. Not progressive multiple sclerosis and double pneumonia. Especially not before the age of fifty.

Tears blurred Karen's vision. She realized with startling clarity that Mike knew he could die.

Vinny was overcome. “You just get better, man,” he said, his voice faltering.

Mike closed his eyes, as if he knew Vinny was on the verge of surrendering to his emotions.

Karen watched Vinny turn away from the bed, his eyes awash with tears. He managed to refrain from openly weeping, but his face was taut and beet-red. He took Lisa in his arms, and she cried into his chest. Then he invited Karen into his embrace as well, and the three of them huddled together, finding their consolation in each other. “Thank you for being here,” Karen told them.

Nora and Trish arrived an hour later. Karen had been barely able to compose herself after Vinny and Lisa left, and now she had to watch her mother-in-law nearly pass out when she saw her son in the ICU. Karen forced herself to be cordial, but she thought her face would split open. Luckily, Trish must have sensed that Karen was on her last nerve, because she planted herself between her mother and sister-in-law, providing a reliable buffer.

Poor Trish. She should have been able to come to the hospital and have her own moments with Mike. The only sibling she had—the little brother she adored—might be slipping away. But it always had to be about Nora.