2
When Leah finally saw her sister, she was shocked at the sight but also relieved it wasn’t worse. A young nurse was checking the levels in the IV drips and pumps arrayed on the far side of the bed and recording information into a digital clipboard.
“Can I kiss her?” Leah asked.
The nurse shook her head once firmly.
Leah nodded. It would’ve been an awkward effort anyway with the breathing tube taped to her mouth. “Touch her hand?” she asked, her eyes and expression raised in a coy child’s request.
The nurse—she reminded Leah of Penni with her open and honest face—smiled but whispered, “Sanitizer first” and tilted her head toward a wall-mounted dispenser beside the door.
Leah had flooded her hands with sanitizer just outside the cubicle’s door, the pungent fragrance still filling her nostrils. But she silently returned to the door, received a clear dollop on her fingers from the battery-powered dispenser, and vigorously rubbed it into her hands. The fabric of her disposable gown crinkled loudly from the effort. She stepped forward to the edge of the bed, reached between the rungs of the guardrail, and lightly brushed her sister’s left hand resting atop the white sheet. It felt deathly cold. Leah thought the sensation might be the result of the sanitizer evaporating from her skin, so she withdrew her fingers, wiped them lightly on the sheet, then touched Brooke again. She still felt cold.
“She’s being kept in a minimal metabolic state, to reduce the spread of the infection and buy us time to get it under control.”
Leah was reassured, more by the presumption of success in the last words than the explanation in the first. “She’ll be O.K.?”
The nurse paused her data entry and looked directly at Leah from across the bed. Her honest and kind face was made at birth for moments like this, but it would also be the cause for her to transfer to a less stressful assignment following the inevitable burnout. “Before I look at the chart, I can tell the severity of the illness by the number of IV pumps.” She nodded toward the crowd of digital boxes on several stainless steel IV trees. “Mrs. Redmond has nine.”
“That’s a lot?” Leah asked, already knowing the answer.
The nurse nodded.
Leah didn’t stay long that first time, partly out of kindness to herself—to recover from the initial shock—but mainly to give Dave time in the room before going home to a regular night’s rest. She and Davey had decided, with Dave’s silent assent, that Leah would take the overnight shift, eleven to seven, for the next few days, releasing Dave and his son from their draining round-the-clock vigil and giving them the time and energy to deal with informing family and friends—and, by implication, preparing for a possible sudden crisis. With that decision, Davey had run home—he lived with his wife Shannon in a suburb of the city, about a half-hour away—to get a shower and a change of clothes. He’d return by eleven to take his dad home and stay with him overnight.
While Leah waited for her shift to start, she gained brief audiences with the resident on duty and the head nurse, arranged through the ICU’s family advocate, a kindly retired gentleman named Ralph with a bald head, bushy eyebrows, and a quick and easy smile. She gathered from these interviews that the next forty-eight hours would be critical as the infection would either be brought under control, and they could start trying to bring Brooke’s compromised organs “back online,” or the infection would worsen and begin to damage her “critical systems” irreversibly.
“What about the cancer?” Leah asked.
The young resident seemed surprised by the question. “One battle at a time,” he said before his phone beeped and he rushed off to another crisis.
Leah thought of calling Penni and Jodie, but wasn’t sure how recently Davey had called them. She didn’t want to overload them with information or anxiety. So she sent them a joint text message—At the hospital. Will stay overnight. Call if you want to talk. Love Aunt Leah.
Around ten Davey returned. He swapped places with his father and spent a few minutes in the cubicle with Brooke, then stopped by the nurses’ station to confirm with the head overnight nurse, a stern woman with close-cropped gray hair named Janet, that Leah would be staying with Brooke throughout the night and would be the family’s frontline representative.
Janet nodded but said, “Final decisions are Mr. Redmond’s”—meaning Dave senior.
The younger Mr. Redmond nodded. “We’ll hope for no final decisions—tonight or ever.”
Janet managed an encouraging grin that stretched her lean face. “We’ll hope that.”
Then the two David Redmonds left and Leah had donned her disposable suit and fabric booties and hairnet and entered Brooke’s cubicle. She pulled the room’s one chair—armless with a stainless steel frame and gray vinyl seat and back—close to the bed on the side away from all the high-tech equipment and pumps, sat down and leaned forward and took her sister’s hand. Brooke, lying on her back facing the ceiling with the breathing tube taped to her closed mouth, gave no sign of recognition or awareness. Whatever sedatives they were pumping into her bloodstream, their effect was powerful, her unconscious, as far as Leah could tell, absolute. She wondered if Brooke could dream, or had any awareness at all; and if she did, would that be a good or a bad thing under the circumstances.
“Her brain is active.”
Leah looked up quickly. The voice seemed to have arisen from nowhere.
A nurse stepped forth from the shadows beyond the lit bed. She was young with pale skin and red hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her face and neck were as white as her uniform, giving her a ghostly appearance that was accentuated by the shadowed room and the eerie pale-green digital glow from the monitors. “I’m Sheila McIntyre. I’ll be caring for your sister overnight.”
Leah started to stand.
The nurse waved her down. “No formalities in ICU,” she said with a gentle smile.
Leah nodded and remained seated, still holding Brooke’s cool hand. “I’m Leah Monroe, Brooke’s sister.”
Sheila nodded. “I know. Janet told me. Welcome to the overnight shift.” She checked the IV bags and pumps as she talked.
“You work every night?”
“Well, not every night; but only overnight—four days on, three off.”
“Must be hard.”
“No, not really. Not once you get used to it. And it allows me to get my daughter every day after school. I like that.”
“What about mornings?”
Sheila laughed. “My mom. She gets the hard part. I’m not a morning person and neither is Peggy. Mom says morning grumpiness must be genetic.”
Leah laughed. “My son got it from his father.”
“How old is he?”
“Freshman in college.”
“So you’re off the hook.”
“For morning wake-ups, yes. But now it’s done, I sometimes miss it.”
Sheila laughed. “I’ll tell my mom.”
Leah looked to Brooke’s unmoving face then to Sheila’s ethereal one. “Is she O.K.?”
A flicker of gravity passed over that face. “She’s stable at the moment, but we need to identify what’s attacking her and where.”
Leah nodded. At least all the caregivers had their stories straight.
“You can help,” Sheila said.
“How?”
“Talk to her. Your voice will calm her fears and help her heal.”
“What should I say?”
“Whatever you want. It’s the sound of your voice that matters. And don’t mind me. I’ll be coming and going all night long, and I’m sworn to secrecy.” She made a cross above her heart.
Leah laughed. “That was the most sacred sign Brooke and I had as kids.”
“Mine too, with my sister. Now I use it with Peggy.” She finished her readings. “Press the call button if you need anything. And you can take that hairnet off if it’s uncomfortable. Overnight service has its perks!” She turned and exited, pulling the wide oak door shut behind her.
And so Leah was left alone with her comatose sister. She wasn’t sure if it were the time of day, though who would know in this windowless room buried deep in the pulsing heart of the hospital, or the prospect of the long night before them—that’s how she thought of the challenge ahead, as being before them, in plural, though how could Brooke know what faced her?—but whatever the reason, this solo visit felt so much more fraught than the earlier one when Davey and Dave were just around the corner in the family lounge, ready reinforcements or consolation in a crisis. This time she was alone, Brooke’s sole link to family and past against the ponderous workings of the vast and inscrutable medical system, however personalized its presence in the angel-faced Sheila. Leah was both line of defense against the dehumanization of the pumps and digital readouts, and bridge to the soul of love and life residing within that prone body this vast organism—just then the hospital seemed that, a living though alien being—was straining to keep alive. And how was she to fulfill her role as that defense and link?
Talk to her! Sheila had instructed.
Did she somehow know that for more than half their lives—the formative half, the close half—she’d not been able to talk to Brooke, that their communication had been entirely in sign and gesture and eye contact, methods unavailable now. And touch, available now but only in one direction, as Leah’s fingers lightly brushed across the back of Brooke’s hand and wrist and eased into the crack between that wrist and the hospital sheet, found the soft inner flesh that seemed both warmer and moister, though maybe that was just the effect of the sheet. Her fingertips paused there at the depression at the base of the thumb, waited for a pulse, some sign of life other than the numbers. But if a pulse was there, it was so faint as to seem imagined, perhaps was imagined. This inconclusive pulse was worse than none at all, and Leah abandoned the search. Instead she ran her fingers lightly along Brooke’s wrist the way Brooke would do when Leah felt sad or lonely. Brooke called it tickle flesh; and though it was originally a game they played to pass the time, it had evolved into Brooke’s main method of tangible consolation and support to her deaf sister, freeing Leah to close her eyes and cry or sleep or giggle. Tickle flesh had been Brooke’s IV pump of love into Leah’s vein.
So now Leah strived to return the gift, her warm fingertips lightly rubbing Brooke’s cool inner wrist. And she unburdened her heart of words she couldn’t speak back then, and hadn’t had the chance or impetus to speak since she’d been granted a voice.
“I’m sorry about Danny,” Leah said in a firm whisper directed straight at Brooke’s unmoving eyelids. Danny had been Brooke’s boyfriend during her last two years of high school. A year after Brooke had gone off to college and broken up with Danny, Leah had lost her virginity to him in the cab of his pickup the night before her debutante ball. When Leah told Brooke the next morning, she immediately concluded the exchange was rape and came close to killing Danny in a subsequent confrontation. The sisters had never again talked of the incident.
“I’m sorry I went to his truck that night, sorry I got inside, sorry I betrayed you.” She paused and took a deep breath then continued. “But I want you to know that Danny didn’t rape me. I’m not sure what it was, but it wasn’t rape. Some part of me wanted him to do what he did. I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time. I wanted to tell you in fairness to Danny and in apology to you.”
Leah’s heart was pounding, and she wondered if Brooke could feel the beats through her fingertips and into her wrist. If so, she gave no sign—her eyelids didn’t flutter, her eyeballs beneath those lids didn’t move. Leah wasn’t sure if she were glad for this stillness or disappointed. After all these years, she expected Brooke to sit up in bed, get wide-eyed and scream “What!” And she would lean back, bow her head in contrition, and wait for Brooke’s storm to pass before continuing.
But there was no storm. She continued anyway. “I received word through the grapevine what you did. Danny’s brother told his cousin who told Jackie who told Marie who told me that you beat the crap out of Danny and gouged his truck. Did you really pull a switchblade on him? Where did you get such a thing? What nobody could figure out is why you beat him up. Only Danny knew, and he wasn’t talking. And nobody in a million years would’ve guessed that Little Miss Perfect Deaf Girl had climbed into his truck that night, let alone what happened once inside. Now Danny’s dead, so only you and I know the truth.” She paused in silent respect for the deceased. She’d heard from Momma maybe fifteen years ago that he’d died in a grain silo accident on his family’s farm. She thought at the time she needed to contact Brooke and set the record straight, for the sake of Danny’s memory—or for him, wherever he was, watching her with that penetrating gaze. But she’d never followed up on that intention.
She continued her monologue, her heart rate calmer now, more closely resembling the blips marching past in silence on the screen above Brooke’s head. “Well, only I know the truth, which is why I’m telling you now, so you’ll know. And maybe you can forgive me. But mainly I hope you’ll forgive Danny.
“I saw him once more, that fall in the school parking lot. It was on a Tuesday early in the semester. I know it was Tuesday because I had study hall the last period on that day and left early, before everyone else. Don’t ask me how he knew my schedule. Was he spying on me or did someone mention it in passing or was it another example of his unfailing intuition when it came to me? I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.
“There was a black pickup parked next to the station wagon; and it was backed into the space so that its driver-side door was next to my driver-side door. I still didn’t think anything about it till I went to unlock the door and the window to the truck rolled down. I turned at the movement and there was Danny, sitting in the driver’s seat, gazing down at me with that same lopsided grin. But the old mocking playfulness was gone from his eyes, replaced by something like sadness and hurt.
“And what I felt seeing him for the first time since The Night was not anger or regret or fear. What I felt was gentleness and compassion and a kind of love—something primitive and elemental and unformed but still love. That’s when I knew that what had happened in his truck that night was not coerced or even manipulative, unless it was some hidden part of myself manipulating him. I suddenly felt very sorry for him, that he had gotten blamed for something that was outside his control or mine.
“I smiled—I know I smiled because my cheeks hurt the way they did when my smile was bigger than my face—and gestured to his new truck, black instead of red. He shook his head and signed Not new, just repainted. When had he learned to sign? Did you know about that? Anyway, I signed back Why black? Are you in mourning? It was a joke, but he nodded yes. And then I put it all together—the stories about you beating him up and gouging his truck with the switchblade, him seeking me out, his sad eyes. If I’d felt instinctively sorry for him earlier, I felt consciously sorry for him then.
“I signed It wasn’t your fault. His eyes lifted. Danny was the only person I ever knew who talked with his eyes, or at least talked to me with his eyes—and I’ve watched people’s eyes, closely, all my life. He said—his lips moving now, no signs—‘Are you sure?’ And at that moment I was sure and nodded back. Then his face got somber again as he signed Tell your sister! His gestures were vehement. His sign for sister was followed by a violent whirlwind. I must’ve laughed because he caught my attention with a slap of the dash and stared at me and mouthed slowly and deliberately ‘I am serious. Tell her what you just told me, but do not tell her you saw me.’
“What did you do to him, Brooke? He was scared to death! I nodded slowly and he relaxed just a bit. But then someone came out into the parking lot and he slumped down in his seat and signed from down there I need to go. I understood it was for the best, that he should leave, especially since part of me wanted to get back in that truck now painted black and leave with him. But I knew I couldn’t, partly for myself but mainly for you—that I knew if I got into that truck with him you’d never speak
to me again. And that was a price I was not willing to pay, not for some gut feeling I didn’t understand. Truth was, that feeling scared me. I’d never felt something inside myself that I couldn’t control. And I wasn’t going to risk my whole life for it. So I nodded to Danny’s head peeking above the door frame, at my eye level in that tall truck. I signed It’s good to see you, ending with my hand flung outward from my heart in a clear gesture we both understood and would not withdraw or regret any longer.
“Then I leaned forward and kissed his forehead through the open window. Can you believe that, Brooke? In broad daylight in a public parking lot seventeen year old Little Miss Shy Deaf Girl kissed a boy! Well, not any boy. I kissed Danny Ashford, the one to whom I’d lost my virginity four months before.
“I’d managed to keep my emotions in check up to that moment, but then I lost it. I felt faint and thank God I’d unlocked the door to the car so that I could open it and fall into the seat, using the steering wheel to steady me because by then my eyes were closed against the dizziness. I pulled the door shut behind me and waited for my swirling head to calm. When it finally did and I opened my eyes, Danny and his truck were gone. Loud as his truck was, I’d not heard it leave, sealed in the bubble of my loss and the station wagon’s hot interior.
“When I’d recovered enough to put the key in the ignition and start the car, I fully intended to drive straight home and go up to my room and sit at my desk and write a letter to you at Center and keep my promise to Danny—to explain that the incident wasn’t his fault, that he’d certainly not raped me, and that you shouldn’t blame him. But instead of going straight home I drove to Memorial Hall, to the very spot in the parking lot where I’d first gotten into his truck, alongside you the night of your deb ball when you were wasted and I was trying to hide your condition from Momma and Father, the same spot where I got into his truck on The Night, before my deb ball. And I realized sitting there in the empty parking lot on a bright Tuesday afternoon in September that I couldn’t make sense of all that had occurred on that spot in June darkness, and to try to bring it into the light and sort it all out would fail, would cause more harm than good. So I abandoned the idea of writing you a letter of explanation, betraying Danny that quick out of a desire to protect us, or maybe just out of cowardice, wishing to protect myself.
“But not anymore, Brooke. I’m sorry for betraying you, that night and since. However impulsive and ill understood my feelings were, I should’ve controlled them, for your sake and mine. And I’m sorry to Danny, for letting you assume something awful about him that was not true. I think in your heart you knew he didn’t rape me, that he was not capable of that. But you believed it to protect me, and to protect us. I’m grateful for that sacrifice, from both you and Danny. Only now do I realize just how great that sacrifice was.” She paused, thinking the following but refusing to speak it—And now it’s too late for all of us.
Leah glanced around the dimly lit cubicle. Her confession, and all the feeling it summoned from their youth, had not moved the numbers on Brooke’s screens or raised the glow in the room one iota. She sighed deeply—a guttural moan of loss and regret. But from somewhere Danny’s scent and presence filled the space, provided a palpable pressure, like oxygen pumped into the cubicle. The sensation produced in Leah a swell of joy that originated from the very center of her being. She didn’t know who or what was in the room, but she’d trust the force as munificent and accept its gifts gladly.
And she spoke these words as much to that presence as to her comatose sister or even herself. “I didn’t have sex again until my wedding night with Whitfield, and then it was different. In my heart and soul, the only time I’ve fully shared my body and all that I am was that night in Danny’s truck.”
The room was suddenly empty again of everything except her and her sister. She laughed at her vivid imagination and said to Brooke, “Now isn’t that a fine kettle of fish,” recalling an old saying of Momma’s she’d not used since childhood. The saying served just fine and freed Leah to rest.
Awhile later, the vibration of the cellphone in her lap roused her from her slumber, lying with her head on her arm resting on the bed’s guardrail. The vibrations came in two short pulses then stopped. She checked first Brooke’s face, hoping again to see her open eyes and signs of recognition; but no change there—the same pale unmoving wax mask of one who maybe used to be her sister. Then she looked quickly about the room, wondering if Sheila or some other nurse or doctor had waked her. But the cubicle was empty, and no sounds or signs of unusual movement from the nurse’s station beyond the windows high on the wall.
Then she remembered her phone and fished it out from beneath her sterile gown. The glowing screen announced message from Jodie’s mobile. Leah glanced at the current time—3:27 AM. Even adjusted for the time-zone difference, it was late. She tapped the icon marked View Now.
Is Mom going 2 die? The message glowered in stark simplicity.
The message woke Leah like a slap, not so much for the heightened fear and isolation it intimated from her frightened and isolated niece (that compassion would follow) as in grim warning of what should’ve been obvious but she’d been avoiding since the call in Atlanta—Brooke could be gone in an instant. Leah cradled her phone like a lifeline, Jodie’s bald message burning its way into her retinas and beyond.
Then she took a deep breath and focused on caring for her niece across three thousand miles of night-shrouded continent. She slowly tapped out the following response: Your mom is resting comfortably inches from where I sit, still very much alive. She briefly weighed the honesty of her message then hit Send.
The response was nearly immediate (how could Jodie type that fast?). Then put her on.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Leah laughed. She then took a deep breath and focused on composing an accurate and concise summary. Brooke in drug-induced coma. Fighting severe infection. Stable at present. Need to find source of infection. Hope to know soon. She didn’t even reread her words before sending the message.
Jodie’s response came after several minutes. Thanks Aunt Leah. Should I book flight?
Now Leah’s response was nearly instantaneous. Sit tight.
Let me know.
I will let you know.
K.
Leah took a deep breath, suddenly doubting the decision she’d impulsively and unilaterally made. Shouldn’t she have checked with Dave or Davey? What if Brooke took a sudden turn for the worse and Jodie couldn’t get here in time? To calm her fears, she focused on Jodie’s face, but not of the thirty-five year old set designer in LA but of the two year old toddler running to embrace her legs on her arrival home for spring break. It was that face that looked back at her floating above the phone’s screen as she typed. Are you O.K.?
I’ll survive.
Do you want to be here?
Do I need to be?
Not yet.
Then I’ll wait.
Good. For the second time Leah could’ve let the text conversation end. But the toddler’s face reflected in the phone’s screen wouldn’t let her leave. Still in LA?
Yes.
Alone?
LOL.
Leah waited. She looked up at Brooke. “Your elder daughter is trying to decide how much to trust me.” And she swore she heard Brooke say “Good luck” even though neither her lips nor eyes moved. The response—real or imagined (and who here could say?)—made Leah laugh.
Jodie’s follow up came after about five minutes, so long Leah thought maybe she’d opted to drop the matter. Male or female?
You tell me Leah shot back.
It’s a girl! Then, almost immediately—Do NOT tell Mom!
Leah laughed. I won’t. But she knows.
Then why is she always trying to marry me to a penis?
Leah shook her head but wouldn’t hide behind prudishness. Penises produce grandkids.
No. Uteruses produce grandkids. Penises are optional.
I’ll tell Brooke.
; NO!
Just kidding.
I know. Besides, Penni and her penis have the grandkid angle covered.
Always room for more.
Not from this uterus.
Are you happy?
There was a long pause. Leah wished she could hug Jodie and tell her everything was alright. Was there a text symbol for embrace? Finally, Jodie’s response came. Working on it.
That’s my girl.
Take care of Mom.
I will.
That’s my aunt. XXXOOOXXX!
So there was a text symbol for embrace, or the best substitute available. XXXOOOXXX!