“But she’s brain dead already,” Angie said.
“Yes, she is—ninety percent, we believe, but technically she’s alive as long as her heart continues to beat.”
“Ninety percent?” Gabriel said, hope coming to his voice.
“Well, it could be closer to a hundred percent,” the doctor said, “but to test we’d have to put in the PICC line. However, I’ve read her advance directive, and this is an invasive procedure.”
Angie flashed back to the lunch that had foreshadowed this tragedy. Hadn’t her mother used this exact scenario?
Her father was crying again. “She doesn’t want any extraordinary measures,” he said, choking back tears. “Ninety percent or one hundred, what’s the difference? We have to let her go.”
The doctor’s empathic look made it clear he concurred.
They had to wait for the respiratory team to arrive before any of the machines keeping Kathleen alive could be disconnected. In those tense, tear-filled hours, Angie and her dad passed the time singing some of Kathleen’s favorite songs to her. Paul Simon, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, The Band. Neither Angie nor her father were decent singers, but the music came from the heart and the performance quality didn’t much matter.
Angie went into “handle it” mode. She started to make calls, arrangements, dealing with logistics of dying. She always operated at a higher level during a crisis. This fit that category. She was not frozen by grief, but propelled by purpose. She wrote an obituary while her mother’s heart continued to beat without that PICC line in place. The funeral home offered sympathy, but ended the call by asking her to phone back when her mother “officially expired.”
“Officially expired?” she repeated for her father’s benefit. “What do they think, Mom’s a carton of milk?”
In between, Angie spent a lot of time talking to her mom, telling her all the things she loved about her, the memories she’d always cherish. She sat on an uncomfortable chair, drinking coffee, holding her mother’s hand, talking like a daughter who never had enough time to properly catch up on all she had to say.
She spent some time going over Nadine’s case. When Angie left Carolyn’s house, she’d called another private investigator, Michael Webb, to come in and continue the hunt with Bao. Webb ran a bouncy house business and did PI work on the side as part of Angie’s & Associates contingent.
She was in the middle of explaining her strategy for locating the missing girl when the respiratory team arrived.
Angie went to the waiting room to get her father, who had fallen asleep on a thin-cushioned couch that was too small for his tall frame. “It’s time to let Mom go.” She had nothing more to handle, she realized, and the tears came.
CHAPTER 7
Exhibit D: Excerpts from the journal of Nadine Jessup, pages 7-12
Let’s start here. This is so screwed up! Date unknown. Place unknown. All I have to get down my thoughts is my journal and a pen I brought from home. My phone and wallet are gone and I’m totally freaking out. When I finally woke up, I felt sick, not like I was going to puke or anything, just really weird. My head was fuzzy and it was hard for me to stand. I don’t drink much so I guess I took too many swigs of that vodka in Ricardo’s flask. I don’t even know how to feel except for stupid. I thought this was a good idea, but now I’m not so sure. Where am I? Who am I with? And I don’t have a phone or my wallet!! I’m such a moron (lol just ask my dad).
I needed to get my stuff back, so I walked to the door, more like stumbled, turned the knob, but it’s locked! The door is effin’ locked! Now I’m really freaking out so I turned the handle some more, but it doesn’t budge. So I banged on the door really hard and nobody answered and then I think I screamed, but nobody came. My mouth felt funny. My tongue was like a sponge sucking up every bit of water. And the room was spinning around so fast I couldn’t stand anymore. I went to the futon and just fell down and the next thing I knew my eyes were closed and when I opened them again I saw Ricardo hovering over me.