The Promise of Stardust (39 page)

Or maybe there was a miracle—waiting and doing somersaults.

I settled in again, watching the ventilator make Elle's chest rise and fall. She'd take a breath on her own. Then the ventilator. Again the ventilator. Still the ventilator. Then her.

Phil entered the room and sat down beside me.

“How was court?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I said she wasn't in pain, and she wanted children.”

I looked up at him. “She's taking a few breaths.”

“I heard,” he said. “Her brain stem didn't herniate, but I told you what her cerebrum looked like. She'll never have any meaningful quality of life.”

“You don't think she's feeling any pain,” I said.

“No, Matt,” he said. “No pain.”

I closed my eyes, and we sat in silence for a few minutes. He went through the motions of doing another neuro exam on her, no differently than I had done not long before. As he checked her reflexes, he said, “In court, I didn't say any more than I had to about how she believed that the quality of life trumped the longevity by miles.”

“Okay.” I didn't have enough energy left to get into the debate of whether or not I was wrong again. It might not be ethical to sacrifice one life for another, but morality be damned. My heart was breaking, truly breaking. The thickness and heaviness in my chest was something that could only be heartbreak. I said, “If you think I'm indifferent to what this has done to Elle, to her dignity, you're wrong.”

“No. I don't think that. I thought I should tell you what happened there. Listen, I had to come back to the hospital anyway. I have to take the Nguyen kid back to the OR. He's developing hydrocephalus from the accident.”

“Shit.”

“I know, but I can fix that. I wish I could fix Elle.”

   40   

Two days later, with Clint leaning against the sink, I digested the lab report. Elle was going into kidney failure. There were two possible causes: the APS could have thrown a blood clot to one of her renal arteries or the antibiotic treating her pneumonia had seriously damaged her kidneys.

Elle was damned either way.

“It's probably the antibiotic,” he said. “I changed it. We can hold off on dialysis for a while.”

The word
dialysis
gave me that kicked-in-the-balls feeling. Even if her body were healthy, the odds against saving the baby were staggering.

“The good news is the antibiotic is doing its job. The pneumonia is resolving,” he said.

Medical treatment had substituted one form of execution for another. I couldn't trust my voice to utter a single syllable.

“I'll keep you posted,” he said as he left.

Despite my efforts to stay awake, I found my head in an odd upright kink against the wall or the window more often than not. In my REM sleep, I dove into blackness, where I dreamed of stacks of cartons falling on an empty baby crib, Elle's body in a casket, an urn with her ashes, and holding a shotgun in my mouth.

I pulled into a parking slot along Back Bay next to my mother's car. Mom opened her door, slammed it shut, and climbed into the passenger seat of my Taurus.

“I was so happy to hear from you, honey,” she said.

I called her just hours before and suggested we meet, but I still didn't know quite how to blackmail her.

“Are you going to tell me what's on your mind?”

I stared at my hands. “I needed to get out of the hospital,” I said, thinking I didn't want to have witnesses overhear our discussion.

“I've taken a leave of absence,” she said. “I was thinking I could come in and relieve you, so you could take more breaks.”

My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. “I don't trust you near Elle.”

“I'd never hurt her.” Mom averted her gaze.

“You aren't coming near her. You got that?” I snapped.

“I have a responsibility to her.” She hugged her purse to her chest. “This is killing me, fighting with you, trying to make you face such a hard truth. It doesn't get easier, being a parent.”

“Why don't you give me a chance to find out for myself?”

“Oh, Matt. Under any other circumstance.” She stared straight ahead and blinked. “You have to be realistic.”

“Blythe says—”

“She's wrong. Blythe is wonderful, as good as they get, but she doesn't have a milligram of pessimism in her. And no matter what you think Elle would have wanted under these circumstances, she was just so damned terrified of ending up like Alice.”

“It's not the same. Elle's not in pain.”

“Maybe not, but she didn't want this. I love Elle as much as if she were mine. I do. Not more than I love you, but she's like my own. I doubt you remember this, but Alice spent a couple of weeks in the hospital when Elle was a baby.”

“I know. You love her. You've always loved her. You took care of her when she was a baby. None of that's relevant. The fact is Elle is
my
wife. That's
my
child.” I considered how I was about to commit blackmail against my own mother. This was a line I thought I'd never cross. “I have a diary Elle wrote. From the day Alice died.”

Mom shifted, her head cocking to one side. “That must have been difficult to read.”

“You killed Alice.”

The blood drained from my mother's face.

“You used the Percocet they prescribed for me when I broke my leg the previous summer, and you spiked Alice's feeds with it. I'm not completely horrified, but let's face it, Mom; you killed her, and you left Elle alone to watch her mother die.”

Mom shook her head. “You don't understand.”

“I understand everything. If you don't withdraw your petition to remove Elle's life support, I'll go to the authorities with this.”

“You wouldn't. I didn't kill Alice. I—”

“You put her out of her misery? Okay, I'll buy that. The police might not.”

Mom stammered before she found words. “I didn't do it. But maybe I should have. No maybes. I should have, but all I did was crush one pill and add it to the feeding. One. I showed Elle how to do it. There were eight pills left. I told her she could slip one in every six hours as Alice needed them—if the nurse had gone to the bathroom or stepped out for a smoke.”

“You're saying Elle overdosed Alice?”

“I don't know. It may just have been time. Elle said it was her fault that Alice died. I was always afraid to ask what happened to the last seven pills.”

“I don't believe Elle would have done it. And it says in here that
you
gave her the Percocet. Not Elle.”

Mom stared at her hands. “I don't know. During the night Alice stopped breathing. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was from the one pill. Maybe it was just time. God knows, it was long overdue.”

I rubbed my temples, not wanting to believe that either Elle or my mother intentionally killed Alice. Their purpose was to make her comfortable. These days in hospice care, it's routine: we make the patient comfortable.

“You have to accept that Elle didn't want to live like her mother.”

“No, she didn't. But Elle is
not
in pain. No pain. She isn't feeling anything, and even if she were, she would have done anything for her child. I would do anything for this child.”

Mom shook her head. “It's so early. It's almost impossible that she could hold on long enough to give birth to a living child. Not with her history of miscarriages. Even when she was pregnant with Dylan, she went early. She gave me her medical-decision-making powers, and then she gave them to Adam. She never asked you, did she?”

Now it was my turn to shake my head.

Mom covered my hand with hers. “I know what I said in court, but she must have known deep down, you'd never be able to pull the plug. Matthew, if you love her, and I know you love her, you have to let her go.”

Maybe my mother was right in one regard. I had never let go of Elle.

   41   

When Mom set the loaf of still-warm corn bread in front of me, driving through nine hours of traffic became worth it. She plopped down at the head of the table. “How's Carol? I was surprised you were coming home without her.”

“She's working this weekend.” Which meant Carol was pulling an on-call stint for three straight days. I scarfed down a buttered slice of heaven. With my mouth still half full, I mumbled, “It's hard getting up here together with our schedules.”

Mom's lips tightened, and I expected another snarky remark about Carol, the city girl, as Mom called her. Instead Mom changed the subject. “Elle was home from Houston, but she's gone.”

My head snapped up. “I haven't seen her in ages.” Or talked to her since I told her Carol and I were engaged—although I'd tried. There'd been a few e-mails, a few voice mails. “Elle's been a little distant lately, busy preparing for the Hubble mission.”

My mother grimaced as she stirred her cocoa. “I'm so proud of her, but after the
Columbia
disaster the idea of her climbing into that shuttle terrifies me.” Mom forced a smile onto her face. “She was driving to Acadia tonight. It's too bad you missed her.”