Chapter Twenty
Catherine spent the rest of the afternoon and the early evening in the hands of doctors, heavily drugged. They did an ultrasound of her liver, then a small biopsy. They were running tests for hepatitis and cancer. Joanna went from thinking this was a cruel joke to knowing it was some manifestation of karma to feeling numb all over, all in the span of three or four seconds. Finally, when she was in the waiting room, reading the same pregnancy magazine for the third time, Dr. Nestor called her aside and told Joanna the news was good—her mother had cirrhosis.
“That’s good?” Joanna exclaimed.
It was good because it was manageable, he said. But she would have to quit drinking immediately. One drink, and she could be dead. She’d have to begin taking a whole host of pills, ones that were actually prescribed for her, and nothing else. But in a few days, she could actually go home.
Joanna sat in her mother’s room, waiting for her to wake up. The most entertaining things in the room were her mother’s monitors, the gentle, subtle changes of her pulse rate and blood pressure, the amount of oxygen present in her blood. Catherine’s face was still free of makeup, and she looked both younger and so much older concurrently.
Then her mother opened her eyes. “Hi,” Joanna said.
Catherine made little smacking noises with her lips and tentatively touched the tube that fed oxygen into her nose. “Jesus. I must look awful.”
“You look fine.”
She stared up at the ceiling, placing her hands over her sternum again. “Well,” she breathed. They looked at each other for a moment. Catherine sighed dramatically. “They’re telling me I took too many pills.”
“Yes.”
“And my liver’s shot. It’s going to kill me, I bet.”
“The doctor actually said it could be managed.”
“Mark my words. These doctors don’t know anything.”
Joanna looked away. A little smile curled on Catherine’s lips. “You think I’m overreacting.”
“I don’t know.” She counted three long breaths. “I’m sorry for what I said before,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gotten you worked up.”
Her mother shifted, not answering. “So, where’s Scott?”
“I don’t know. I think he left.” On a trip outside, she’d noticed Scott’s car wasn’t in the parking lot. She’d tried not to think about their conversation very much; it made her feel too gloomy and ashamed. Where had he gone? Back to Pennsylvania? He’d seemed so changed after what she said to him, as if she’d opened his eyes to how he truly appeared.
“Did you have a fight?” Catherine asked.
“No.” Joanna let out an exclamation point of a snort. “Scott and I aren’t close enough to have a fight.”
“You seem pretty close.”
She flexed her calf muscles. She had to say something. “Contrary to how it seemed, I would not want to marry him. Any old Bates-McAllister won’t do.”
Catherine pressed her lips together sternly.
“Is that why you said that stuff about me and him? And about the photos of his family? Making it sound like I was some kind of crazy, obsessed teenager? Because you thought he was in love with me?”
“I didn’t tell him you were obsessed.” Catherine crossed her arms.
“I heard that very word come out of your mouth.”
Catherine weakly crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t mean obsessed, necessarily. Enamored. Entranced.”
“But you weren’t enamored and entranced? I just … dreamed all that up?”
“Well.” Catherine flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t know. I mean, I was going through all kinds of things, Joanna. It was a long time ago.”
Joanna stared at the front walkway. The black plastic bag in the trash can was empty, and it flapped in the wind against the can’s mesh sides. A couple passed, their heads down, their faces somber. No one looked happy at hospitals.
She picked at a string on her sweater. “I think Charles is having an affair,” she admitted, bracing herself.
Her mother’s sheets rustled.
“With his old girlfriend. The girl he dated in high school.”
“Are you sure?”
She couldn’t meet her mother’s eye. “I talked to her on the phone before I came here. She was telling me where they were going to meet. Either she’s really ballsy or she thought I was the cleaning lady.”
“It could’ve been a misunderstanding. Did you confront him about it? Ask him if that’s what he was doing? I figure he must’ve called you since you’ve been here, right?”
Joanna watched several nurses rush down the hall. “He did call. But I didn’t ask him, no.”
“Why?”
“He would’ve denied it.”
Catherine struggled to sit up. “So, what, you talked to him on the phone and pretended it hadn’t happened?”
Joanna gazed out the window. The sky was an ashy gray. A man with a walker hobbled down the sidewalk. “She’s better for him, probably. They come from the same background. They both went to Swithin.”
“So?”