I look at my father again, asleep, drugged, unaware of us. A thin line of saliva trails from his open mouth, down over his chin. It makes me feel ashamed, like I’m looking at something I shouldn’t see.
Dr. Margoni pats my hand. “This is hard, I know, and very sudden for you. But you need to understand that your mother is not coming back from this. The most you can hope for is that she’ll be able to sit in a wheelchair and stare out the window. Her cognitive function has been destroyed.”
“You don’t know that.” My voice sounds desperate to my own ears. “People come back. There are all those stories. People who are in a coma for, like, years, and then they wake up.”
“Maisey.” She drags the chair sideways so she’s sitting directly in front of me. “Think carefully before you decide. I agree that the decision is going to ultimately be yours, given your father’s current state. But I’d urge you to think of the kind of woman your mother was and what you think she would want.”
This kind, competent doctor wants me to let my mother die. I can feel the pressure, a vise clamping my chest, probing at my brain.
I close my eyes to shut her out, to shut out my father and the cop. My world has turned inside out. I feel like I’m floating above the chair. My butt has no sensation. I need to talk to my mother. I need her to be here to talk to. She can’t die; not now. Not yet.
I know what the doctor wants me to say. What my father wants me to say. Definitely what my mother wants me to say.
For once, I don’t care about what anybody else thinks I should do. I open my eyes and try to make my voice authoritative. It comes out as a pathetic little squeak. “Keep her alive. Whatever that takes. God. She’s too young for this.”
Dr. Margoni rubs the back of her neck. Up close, I can see fine lines around her eyes and dark shadows beneath them. She looks older than I’d originally thought. My age, at least. Maybe more.
“We’ve already started her on antibiotics and oxygen, but I want you to think carefully about the other things. She’s unable to eat, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. If the antibiotics kill the infection and she’s able to keep breathing, she will begin to starve.”
“That’s horrible,” Elle says. “You can’t starve her.”
It’s not right for Elle to be here. She shouldn’t even know about this. But I can’t send her to go stand in the hall.
Dr. Margoni includes her in the conversation as if she has every right to be involved.
“Your grandma is unconscious, so she wouldn’t suffer. However, we can insert a central line into an artery and give her some highly nutritious liquid called total parenteral nutrition. Or we can put a tube in her stomach and feed her that way.”
There are no words for how much my mother would hate this, but even so I say, “Do that, the tube thing. Feed her. Don’t let her starve.”
“And if she should stop breathing? You want us to bring her back? CPR and shock her heart? Intubate her and put her on a breathing machine?”
And there I’m stuck. That’s a call I’m not able to make.
“We really do need a decision,” Dr. Margoni says.
I want to put my fingers in my ears and hum, the way I did when I was a defiant little girl and didn’t want to listen to one of my mother’s lectures.
My stomach twists on itself and begins to rise. I feel acid in my throat. I’m going to puke, all over this nice doctor’s shoes.
“No,” I manage to whisper. “If she . . . if she dies, let her . . . don’t bring her back.”
She pats my hand, approvingly. I’m a good girl again. I’ve complied. Inside, I’m screaming.
No. Don’t let her die. Bring on all the tubes, all the machines, all the treatments. Whatever it takes. Don’t let her go away from me.
Dr. Margoni pushes back her chair and gets to her feet. “Dr. York, the ER doc here this morning, says your father is dehydrated and exhausted. His blood sugars are way too high, and so is his blood pressure. I’d guess he was too distraught by your mother’s condition to eat or take his medicine. Dr. York would like to admit him. Is that a problem with you, Officer?”
“Insufficient evidence to make an arrest,” Mendez says. He gives me a human smile, the kind that makes it hard to hate him, and leaves the room.
A nurse bustles in, a guy this time. “So, we’re going to admit, then? Can I have your signature here?”
He hands me a clipboard and a pen, talking all the while. I nod, numbly, staring at the papers he’s given me. All the words run together into a blur on the page, and I sign without any understanding of what it says.
Dad’s eyes stay closed. For a fraction of an instant, I think he isn’t breathing, but then a low buzz, a snore, vibrates through his slack lips. The nurse puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes him, gently. “Mr. Addington. Walter.”
Dad’s eyes fly open. “Where’s Leah?” He scrambles to sit up, arms and legs jerky and uncoordinated.
“Take it easy, Walter,” the nurse says, pressing back on his shoulder.
Dad’s eyes dart around the room and light on me. “Maisey. God. I have to find Leah.”
“Easy,” I tell him. “We’ll find her in a minute.”
He fumbles with the rails, trying to find the catch, but his hands are shaking, and his fingers are stiff. He rattles the railings and starts shouting. “Lower these goddamn rails and let me go.”
Blood starts backing up the IV tube in his left arm. The contraption on his finger pops off. An alarm starts beeping.
Dr. Margoni puts her hand over his clenched fist and looks directly into his wild eyes. “Walter, it’s Dr. Margoni. Leah is being taken care of. I promise.”
“She’s dying. Oh God.” He gasps for breath. His right hand releases the railing and goes to his heart. His skin looks gray. “I can’t—she’s all I’ve got.”
“Dad. Breathe. We’re not going to let her die. Okay? I don’t know what she made you promise, but I’m not going to let her die.”
“I need to be with her,” he says. “Where is she? Leah? Leah!”
“Daddy. Please. Lie back down.”
The nurse pushes a button that sets off another alarm. I grab Dad’s left hand and try to pry it off the railing, wanting to hold it, wanting to salvage the IV, needing him to transition back from wild man to my calm and predictable father.
A woman in scrubs runs in, followed by a man and another woman.
“I’ll get the nitro,” one of them says.
“Give him two milligrams of Ativan,” Dr. Margoni directs. “And let’s get him in restraints.”
“On it!” One of the nurses bustles back out.
“Walter. Mr. Addington. You need to calm down.”
But Dad is beyond reason. He swings at Dr. Margoni, who just barely evades the blow. She wrestles Dad’s arm and starts wrapping it in a soft restraint that she ties to the bedrail.
“Mr. Addington,” Dr. Margoni says again. “Listen to me.” Dad turns his head in her direction, and the nurse uses the distraction to pry his free hand from the bedrails and start wrapping it in the restraints.
“You’ll hurt your heart. You need to calm down. Leah needs you to be calm, okay? She wants you to breathe and just wait here for her.”
A nurse returns with a syringe and a plastic cup harboring three tiny little pills. She injects medication into his IV. Within minutes he stops fighting the restraints, his eyes drooping.
“Open,” the nurse says, as if he’s a child. Dad opens his mouth, and she plants one tiny tablet under his tongue. “Nitroglycerin,” she explains to me. “For his heart.”
Dad sighs. His eyelids drift closed.
“Is he having a heart attack?” My hands are pressed over my own heart, feeling its pounding.
Dr. Margoni smiles at me. “I don’t think so. He gets chest pain when his heart is stressed, like now. Nitro opens up the vessels.”
I stare at the man tied to the bed, quiet now under the influence of the sedatives. If I hadn’t seen him take a swing at Dr. Margoni, I wouldn’t have believed him capable of it.
The doctor seems to read my thoughts. “It’s amazing what even a small illness can do to the mental processes in an elderly adult. I suspect he’ll be much better tomorrow.”
“God, I hope so.”