The Second Heart (8 page)

Vi flicked on the light, and the cats blinked
at them in protest. Sabrina jumped down from the window and
scuttled under the bed, while Sammy remained where she was, yawning
widely. Meredith sat down on the bed next to Sammy, who meowed
sleepily in welcome. “Hi sweet kitty,” Meredith crooned, stroking
the cat’s glossy black fur.

Vi crouched down on the floor and lifted up
the dust ruffle, peering into the darkness under the bed. “Come on
out, cat,” she commanded, matter-of-factly. Sabrina lay down
against the wall under the center of the bed. Vi reached an arm
under and tried to grab her, but she was just out of reach. The
large cat tapped her tail impatiently, as Vi continued, “Come on
you worthless sack of fur. I’m going to pet you!”

“Wow, you silver-tongued devil,” Meredith
observed sarcastically. “It’s a wonder she can resist your
charms.”

Vi stood up. “I can be very persuasive,” she
countered. “Would you mind getting off the bed for a moment?”

Meredith obliged her, pulling Sammy into her
arms. The black cat snuggled against Meredith’s neck and purred
loudly in her ear.

Vi bent down and gave the bed a firm shove,
moving it away from the wall. Quickly, she reached down and grabbed
Sabrina, hauling her up onto the bed before she had a chance to run
away. “Got you!” She grinned and looked up at Meredith. “See?
Persuasive.”

Sabrina lashed her tail back and forth,
yowling in protest. “Oh shut up,” Vi said, holding the cat in place
with one hand while petting her with the other. The cat continued
to squirm and hiss, attempting to escape from Vi’s firm grasp.

“Try under her chin,” Meredith said
suddenly.

Vi reached around and scratched the underside
of the cat’s chin. Sabrina immediately relaxed her body and arched
her neck back, allowing Vi full access. She began to rumble with a
deep purr, and Vi smiled happily. “There you go, kitty. That’s the
spot, eh?” Then to Meredith she asked, “How’d you know she liked
her chin to be scratched?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said distractedly.
“Lots of cats like to be scratched under the chin.”

After that, Sabrina warmed up to both of them
considerably, and they spent an hour or so chatting and playing
with the cats. Meredith decided to go to bed early, since she still
felt tired and queasy.

Scowling at the flimsy nightgown that VI had
packed for her, she decided to wear some of her father’s athletic
shorts and a tee shirt to bed. That was more her speed.

As she was snuggling in under the covers to
sleep, Sammy curled up next to her on her pillow. Meredith smiled,
happy that the cat would be her little companion for the night.
After giving the cat a few scratches behind the ears, sleep
overcame her.

It was still
dark in the bedroom when Meredith opened her eyes again. Her
stomach continued to ache, and she figured the pain was what had
woken her up. She resolved to get herself a midnight snack of more
antacids and toast.

Meredith folded the blanket back, careful not
to wake Vi. The night air was cold and uninviting, and she hated to
leave her warm cocoon. As she stood up, the nagging pain in her
stomach deepened into a gut-twisting cramp. Gritting her teeth, she
doubled over, clutching at her midsection. After a moment, the pain
receded and Meredith walked gingerly from the guest room and into
the hall bathroom, flicking on the light.

She splashed her face with water and looked
at herself in the mirror. Her complexion was sallow, and her
normally clear eyes looked bloodshot and tired. She felt physically
weakened, like she wanted to sleep for years on end.

Her stomach cramped again, and Meredith
squeezed her eyes shut, seeing stars. Her knuckles were white from
gripping the edge of the counter so tightly. The pain was all
encompassing, and she sank to her knees while tears streamed down
her cheeks from the corners of her closed eyes.

Once again, the cramp receded, leaving
Meredith feeling weak and hollow. The last time she had felt pain
this intense was when she had had a ruptured appendix, a few years
earlier. Thinking of that, she fingered one of the small scars on
her abdomen. She pulled herself back up to a standing position
using the bathroom counter as a brace; her knees wobbled for a
moment, and then held.

Quietly, she made her way down the hall to
the master bedroom as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She pushed
the door open and went into the room, hoping that she wouldn’t trip
over anything. As she walked toward the bed, another cramp tore at
her gut, and she cried out as she fell to the floor. Reflexively,
she pulled her knees up toward her chest while she lay on her side,
gasping for breath as the pain overwhelmed her.

In the bed, Amelia sat up and pulled the
chain on her bedside lamp, bathing the room in soft light.
“Meredith? Sweetheart?” Alarmed, she leapt from the bed and knelt
at Meredith’s side.

As the cramp released its tension, Meredith
felt as if all the energy were draining from her body along with
it. “I’m really sick, Mom,” she managed weakly.

“I can see that, sweetie.”

“I need to go to the hospital. I think I’m
dying. Or at the very least, I want to die.” She offered a small
smile to combat the stricken expression on Amelia’s face.

“Rob, wake up,” Amelia commanded toward the
bed.

Sleepily, Rob sat up and stared confusedly at
the two women on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“Can you walk?” Amelia asked.

Meredith nodded and started to sit up, but
another cramp took hold. Amelia pulled Meredith’s head into her lap
and stroked her hair as tears streamed down Meredith’s face,
soaking Amelia’s flannel pajamas. Normally a grin-and-bear it sort
of girl when it came to pain, Meredith felt helpless under the
onslaught. A small whimper escaped her as she tried to distance her
mind from the agony that wracked her body.

When the cramp passed, Meredith said, “We
need to hurry. They’re getting worse.”

Rob already had his shoes and coat on, and he
and Amelia helped Meredith to get up off the floor. Once Meredith
had found her footing, she and Rob headed down the hall toward the
car while Amelia threw on some flip-flops and grabbed her
purse.

The car ride to the hospital was grim,
peppered by bouts of cramping that Meredith was powerless to
ignore, leaving her sobbing uncontrollably. Amelia sat in the
backseat with her, stroking her hair and murmuring while shooting
worried looks to Rob in the rear-view mirror.

At last they arrived at the emergency
entrance to the hospital. Rob pulled up to the curb in front of the
double doors, and Amelia and Meredith went inside to sign in while
Rob went to park the car. The waiting room was packed with people,
which wasn’t surprising, given the weather.

The triage nurse at the front desk took their
information and gestured to the overcrowded waiting room before
moving on to the next patient. There were no empty seats to be had,
so they made their way over to a wall where at least they could
lean or sit on the floor while staying out of the way.

As they walked, Amelia leaned in closer to
Meredith. “Listen honey, I know you’re in a lot of pain.”

Meredith nodded.

“Sometimes when someone is
obviously
in a lot of pain, they’ll let you cut the line for pain killers.
Got it?”

Meredith gave her a blank look.

“Make a lot of noise, Mere. They’ll give you
drugs just to shut you up.”

Comprehension dawned on Meredith just as
another cramp started to twist apart her insides. Instead of trying
to hold in her pain as she had before, she let it all out in a loud
groan that caused everyone in the room to turn and stare at her. As
the pain intensified, she sank down onto the floor against the
wall, shrieking all the while. She found that releasing the sound
actually helped her to cope with the anguish that consumed her. It
was something she could focus on, something she could
do
, in
response to the pain.

After the cramp faded back into the
now-familiar ache, a nurse came over to them and told them that she
was authorized to give Meredith something for pain management while
they waited. Meredith and Amelia’s eyes met, and Amelia stifled a
smug smile.

“That would be great,” Meredith said
breathily.

“Come with me, then,” the nurse said. She was
an older woman with closely cropped iron gray hair. She wasn’t
overweight, but she seemed stocky, like a miniature tank. Standing,
Meredith was an entire head and shoulders taller than the
no-nonsense nurse.

Leaving Amelia in the waiting room, Meredith
followed the nurse through a door and down a hallway littered with
gurneys and other medical supplies.

Once they were ensconced in a small exam
room, the nurse prepared a syringe. “Is there any chance you could
be pregnant?” she asked.

“Definitely not,” Meredith responded.

The nurse scrutinized her face, as if trying
to decide whether Meredith told the truth. After a brief pause, she
said, “I’m going to give you morphine, which will probably affect
you one of two ways.”

Meredith nodded, waiting for the nurse to
continue.

“Either way, you’ll feel a lot better. Some
people who take it get very chatty, and others get pretty
nauseated. Let’s hope you’re the chatty type. Just in case you’re
not though, I’m going to give you some anti-nausea medication to go
with it. Do you have any allergies to medication that you know
of?”

“No,” Meredith said. The nurse’s nametag
said,
Eleanor
.

“Okay, then.” Eleanor held the syringe up at
eye level and tapped it before pushing out the air bubbles. A small
amount of the clear liquid squirted out of the syringe and onto the
tile floor. “I’m gonna put this in your thigh, so I need you to
pull the leg of your shorts up. You’ll feel a poke, okay? But
nothing like those stomach cramps. Ready?”

Meredith did as she was told and tried to
focus on something other than the needle that was being shoved into
her leg. As Eleanor bent over, Meredith caught a glimpse of a
necklace that the nurse was wearing under her shirt. It had an
unusual red stone pendant that was about the size of an acorn. The
stone was a deep scarlet, with even darker veins of burgundy
throughout. The setting was simple, a plain silver chain with a
delicate claw that curled around the polished stone.

“All done,” Eleanor said gruffly, handing
Meredith a little paper cup of water and a second paper cup with a
pill in it. “Now take this for the nausea, and when you’re ready
you can head back out to the waiting room.”

“That’s an interesting necklace you have on,”
Meredith said. “What kind of stone is that?”

Eleanor’s steely gray eyes met Meredith’s
cool blue ones. The nurse regarded her curiously for a moment
before saying, “I wouldn’t know. I found it at a garage sale.”
Eleanor gestured to the cups in Meredith’s hands. “Now, bottoms
up.” With that she gathered up her paperwork and left Meredith
alone in the exam room.

Meredith downed the nausea medication just as
another cramp came on. She lay down on the exam table until it had
passed, and then she went back out to the waiting room. Rob had
joined Amelia next to the wall, and they both looked at her
expectantly when she walked up to them.

“They gave me some morphine, but it hasn’t
kicked in yet,” Meredith told them.

“Well give it twenty minutes. Hopefully by
then you’ll be a new woman and we can figure out what’s going on,”
Rob said.

As Rob predicted, once the medicine started
working on her, Meredith found the cramps uncomfortable but
manageable. As they sat waiting in the crowded lobby, the sun’s
rays started to peek through the glass double doors at the
entrance. Slowly, seats started to empty as patients were seen, and
Meredith and her parents were able to relocate from the floor to a
small bank of seats in a corner next to a stack of outdated gossip
magazines and a fake ficus tree.

Meredith wished that she had remembered to
grab her cell phone before leaving the house; playing games would
have helped to pass the time. She couldn’t even call Vi to let her
know where they were, since she didn’t know her friend’s phone
number by heart. She sat quietly, playing with one of the plastic
leaves that had fallen from the ficus tree. She twirled it around
in her fingers and folded it in a number of different ways. It
always sprang back into its original shape.

Next to her, Amelia thumbed through one of
the magazines. She let out a surprised gasp when she read that a
well-known actress had gotten married, showing the story to
Meredith.

“And then she got divorced, six months ago,”
Meredith updated her.

“Oh,” Amelia said, put out. She returned the
magazine to the little table next to their chairs. She was quiet
for a moment, gazing out the windows at the front of the waiting
room. “Hey, it’s stopped raining.”

Meredith and Rob both turned to look out. It
had indeed stopped raining, though the sky was still gray and
overcast in the early morning light. They all looked out in
silence, contemplating the weather more seriously than they had
ever done previously in their lives. Was it just a break in the
storm, or did it signify better news?

“Do you think everyone was freaking out over
nothing?” Meredith asked hopefully. She was beginning to feel a bit
giddy, and thought she might be one of the “chatty types” that the
nurse had mentioned.

“Well, I’m not sure it’s over nothing,
sweetheart,” Rob said, patting her on the arm and smiling ruefully.
“Our world is changing whether we like it or not.”

“That’s it, I’m moving to Mars,” Meredith
joked. She giggled at her own humor while Rob chuckled
politely.

From across the room, a nurse called out
Meredith’s name.