6
Jodie shivered the length of her body in the uncomfortable hospital chair. Life and her sister’s plight had somehow combined to temporarily free her of the burden of her mother’s grave condition. Leah’s text ended that respite.
She looked up at Penni resting peacefully, seeming again at just that moment the vulnerable child she had always wanted to love but never quite found the generosity and selflessness to do so. Today maybe, perhaps already. But how to protect her from this news about Mom? How to save her from heartbreak? She suddenly understood acutely the travail of caring.
She quietly rose and stepped into the nearby bathroom and closed the door.
“Jodie!” Leah exclaimed with an unprecedented mix of relief and anguish (or maybe that was just in Jodie’s mind).
“Leah.”
“I’m so glad I caught you!”
“My phone’s always on and nearby. What’s happened?”
“Brooke was unresponsive when Dave went in this morning. He called Davey then ran up to my room and got me up. Together we tried to get some sign of life but nothing worked. He wanted to call 9-1-1 but they would’ve taken her to the hospital and Brooke specifically forbade that. So he called the hospice nurse while I tried to find a pulse or see some sign of breathing. She was cool Jodie but not cold and her muscles and joints were still flexible. At one point I lay my head over her heart and I thought I felt a slight movement but couldn’t tell if it was a beat or some muscle contraction. At the nurse’s suggestion, Dave brought a hand mirror and set it next to her nose and mouth. We both thought we saw a flicker of moisture on the glass. Then Dave went a little crazy, doing his version of CPR with tears running down his cheeks while trying to push air into her lungs and help her heart beat through compressions on her chest.
“It was awful, Jodie! He wasn’t helping Brooke and he was working himself into such a state. It seemed like a desecration. I finally grabbed his hands from her chest and pulled him off the bed. Just then the doorbell rang and gave him something to do. He went to let the nurse in while I straightened up the bed. Brooke was still unmoving but her flesh seemed a little brighter for all of Dave’s exertions.
“The nurse found a pulse but it took her a while. And we confirmed that she was breathing about once a minute by sticking the mirror in the freezer then holding it in front of her mouth. Her blood pressure is so low it doesn’t even register on the nurse’s cuff. The nurse said her heart may have stopped and been revived by some combination of our numerous efforts, or it may have been barely beating the whole time. In either case, there was probably brain and organ damage. The hospital could prop her up by artificial means, but Brooke’s written and verbal instructions prohibited such an action. ‘So what do we do?’ Dave asked. The nurse responded, ‘Get everyone who needs to see her to come, and fast.’
“Dave’s legs gave way then. Fortunately Davey had just arrived and was standing nearby and caught him and helped him over to the chair. ‘It’s alright, Dad,’ he said. ‘Mom’s at peace.’ The nurse left to get a more sensitive heart monitor. Davey called Brent and Garrett. They’re coming this afternoon.”
“And you’re in charge of contacting the girls,” Jodie said.
“I told Davey I’d handle it. How’s Penni?”
Jodie took a deep breath. “Well, five pounds three ounces lighter as of 5:52 this morning.”
“What?”
“Actually, quite a bit more than that if you add in the weight of the placenta and the blood and fluids she lost—probably about ten or twelve pounds lighter.”
“Jodie, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re a great aunt, Leah; and Mom’s a grandmother. Penni gave birth to a baby girl in the Emergency Room earlier this morning.”
Leah thought I should be shocked but am not—how can that be? “Is she O.K.?”
“She’s fine. She’s getting a transfusion for the blood she lost and is sleeping right now. I’m talking to you from the bathroom so not to disturb her.”
“And the baby?”
“She seemed fine when they took her off to the neo-natal floor. Randall’s down there now checking on her.” Just then Jodie recalled the emergency room doctor’s earlier concerns, and the flashing red light of the fetal monitor. She’d suppressed those memories till that moment, and chose not to share them with Leah.
“How are you doing?”
“Other than no sleep, riding in an ambulance for the first time, and delivering a baby in a hospital cubicle, I’m doing fine.” She could laugh then, at the absurdity of her statement and the experience that underlay it.
“What?”
Jodie summarized the events of the previous six hours, concluding by saying, “At least our drama has a happy ending.”
“That’s amazing, Jodie. Thank you for being there. Hugs and kisses to you both, and the new one.”
“Likewise to you, Leah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll check into flights after I’ve talked to Randall.”
“And Penni?”
“We’ll tell her when she wakes up—somehow.”
“Good luck. Let me know your plans once you decide.”
“Leah?” Jodie said suddenly.
“I’m still here.”
“Do you think Mom knows you’re there?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell her about the baby in case she does.”
“Could you do one other thing?”
“What?”
“Could you hold her right pinkie finger firmly in your hand till it feels like the two skins are one? It’s how we would fall asleep together when I was little. Maybe she will feel like I’m there.”
Leah feared her voice would falter, but it held. “I’ll do it, Jodie; but she already knows you’re here.”
“I never wanted to let her go.”
“You didn’t. I love you. Take care of everyone up there.”
“And you, down there.”
Jodie ended the call and looked up to the reflection staring back at her in the bathroom’s mirror. She wondered who that person was, and what kind of world she’d landed in.
As she stepped into the hospital room and quietly shut the door behind her, a voice asked, “How’s Brooke?”
Jodie jumped. She turned to see Penni looking at her from the hospital bed, the head raised at a slight angle. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“About Mom.”
“I was asking about my baby—Brooke Catherine, named after her two grandmothers. What about Mom?”
Jodie returned to the chair next to the bed. She took Penni’s hand. She noticed that the plasma bag was empty, lined now with only a transparent residue, more brown than red in the room’s fluorescent light. “Mom’s unresponsive. Her blood pressure dropped and they can’t bring it back up.”
“The hospital?”
“Mom left clear instructions—no hospitalization, no resuscitation.”
Penni nodded. “You’ve got to go back.”
“I’ll check into flights.”
“You’ve got to go! Tell her about her granddaughter. Tell her she needs to hang on to see her namesake.”
“I’ll try. First we need to find out how the new Brooke is doing.”
“Where is she?”
“In the nursery. Randall has gone to check on her.”
“He’s here?”
Jodie smiled. “I didn’t think you were awake. He came by about an hour ago, kissed you then headed off to see his daughter.”
Penni managed a smile. “Why’s he get to have all the fun without doing any of the work?”
“Guys,” Jodie said with a wink.
Just then the door to the room opened. They both looked up expecting a nurse but instead saw Randall. His face was ashen. “Our baby needs surgery.” He seemed stunned by each of the words in his sentence.
Penni stared at him, at first unable to grasp the meaning of what he’d said. Then she felt dizzy, as if fal
ling backward into a dark chasm though she was already lying down.
A detached part of Jodie’s consciousness glared at Randall and wondered where his med school training in bedside manner had gone, his professional skill in projecting calm into a highly emotional situation. How dare he drop such news on Penni from the doorway and without the slightest attempt to soften the shock? But just as quickly that same side of her saw the man standing in the doorway as, like her sister, little more than a child himself, now being whipsawed by rapid-fire developments he could barely respond to let alone process. Any prior training in objectivity and calm were useless when you were at the center of the storm, the subject of the crisis. She pressed Penni’s hand in an attempt at reassurance then jumped up to help steady her brother-in-law, who looked like he was ready to collapse. She put her arm around his waist and guided him to the chair by the bed she’d been sitting in.
Jolted awake by Jodie’s touch and called back to reality by her movement, Penni extended her hand—the arm without the transfusion shunt—and slid her fingers between those of Randall’s near hand.
Jodie felt she was intruding on a deeply personal and private moment yet knew she couldn’t leave. She stood awkwardly beside the foot of the bed and waited for them to find the bottom of their freefall.
Penni found it first. “What kind of surgery?”
“On her heart. She has a malformed valve.”
Penni recalled, as from a dream, the ER doctor saying she had to have an immediate C-section. “Is it my fault?” she asked.
Her question jolted Randall out of his despair. “Of course not! How can you say that?”
“Would she have been O.K. if she hadn’t come early?”
“No. Coming early might have saved her.”
“That’s why it happened?”
“I don’t know, Penni. What I know is they’ve identified the problem, the pediatric cardio team says it’s fully correctible, and they’ve got her slotted for surgery this afternoon. I’ve checked out the surgeon—everyone says he’s first-rate.”
Penni stared hard at her husband, her eyes fully clear for the first time since telling the EMS team that Jodie had to ride in the ambulance or she wasn’t going anywhere. “I can’t bear to lose her,” she said with steely calm.
“We won’t.”
“Did you see her?”
He nodded, and a smile slowly spread across his face.
“How’s she look?”
There was a knock on the door.
Randall said, “See for yourself.” He stood and opened the door.
A neo-natal nurse in a pink sterile smock stood beside a rolling cradle with a Plexiglas cover keeping in the warmth and oxygen-enriched air. Randall helped her roll the cradle into the room, raised the cover, and lifted their daughter dressed in a white cotton shirt, cloth diaper, and white booties. He tucked a small blanket around her then gingerly laid the baby in the natural cradle between Penni’s arm and her breast. “Say hi to our daughter.”
“Brooke,” Penni said, beaming down at her newborn gift.
“Brooke,” Randall affirmed.
Jodie calmly observed this touching family scene from the end of the bed. Her eyes eventually focused on Penni’s face, turned in profile and looking down at her daughter. And she knew then where she needed to be for the foreseeable future, had known all along.