Chapter Twenty-seven
“So what did the nurse say?” Judy asked, dumping her messenger bag and purse on the chair next to her mother, in the quiet waiting room. A young receptionist sat at the front desk, tapping on the computer keyboard, and the only other people were an older couple sitting together at the far end of the row, watching the news on a TV mounted in the corner, with closed captioning.
“She hasn’t said anything new, since what I told you on the phone.”
“What about why it was taking longer?” Judy slid out of her coat and put it on top of her stuff. “Did you ask why?”
“Yes, and she said she didn’t know, but she’d keep us posted.” Her mother pursed her lips, lipsticked a tasteful pink, which told Judy that she had just been in the bathroom, freshening her makeup.
“So that conversation was at about ten thirty, correct?”
“Yes, I suppose so, if I’m to be cross-examined.” Her mother gestured at the empty chair beside her. “Please, have a seat.”
Judy checked her watch, which showed 12:01. “So that was an hour and a half ago.”
“I can subtract, dear. Sit down.”
“Hold on.” Judy hovered over her chair and glanced back at the receptionist. “I’m saying because it’s been an hour and a half, so it seems reasonable to ask how things are going.”
“Don’t ask any more questions. If there’s something we need to know, they’ll tell us.”
Judy almost laughed out loud. “Mom, I’m a lawyer. If I ran my life that way, I’d be out of a job.”
“Do you have to be a lawyer, every minute?”
“Honestly, yes.”
“You’re not in a courtroom. You’re in a hospital.”
“So what? I don’t think it’s a bad thing, to be a lawyer in a hospital.”
“I do.”
“I don’t,” Judy shot back, defensive. “It’s good to be an advocate when you’re in a hospital. Aunt Barb can’t do it herself, so she needs us to be her advocate.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, sit down.”
Judy glanced back at the receptionist, who was now on the phone. “What’s the big deal? I can’t go ask a question?”
“She’s just a receptionist. She’s not a nurse. She doesn’t know anything.” Her mother inhaled slowly, which Judy recognized as her long-suffering martyr sound.
“She can find it out, Mom.”
“That’s not how it works. The doctor comes out and talks to you, or the nurse. The receptionist doesn’t tell you anything.” Her mother brushed a hair back into its silky blonde topknot, a reflexive gesture, since every strand was in place.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t ask.”
“But what’s the point?” her mother asked sharply.
“The point is that I’m worried something happened!” Judy raised her voice, not bothering to check herself. She couldn’t shake the stress of the morning, the botched deposition, or the Rule 37 motion. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on in there? She’s your sister!”
“No, I don’t want to know.” Her mother rolled her eyes. “She’s my own sister but I don’t care. You’re the only one who cares. Thank God you’ve arrived.”
“Mom, really?”
“That must be it. You love her more than I do. To prove it, you’ll go running around willy-nilly, asking questions that nobody will answer.”
Judy felt her temper give way. “Mom, what’s your problem? That’s not what I’m going to do at all, and you can’t know if somebody won’t answer a question until you ask.”
“Then go ask!” her mother hissed, her blue eyes flashing with anger. Her fair skin flushed under her foundation. “Why are you bothering me? You’re a big girl. You’re a lawyer, twenty-four/seven. If there isn’t a fight, you’ll pick one. You’ll find one. You’re not happy unless you’re unhappy!” Her mother threw a hand toward the reception desk, then turned away. “Go ask whatever questions you want! You don’t need my permission. God knows you never listened to me anyway.”
Stung, Judy pivoted on her heel and charged toward the front desk, where the receptionist was hanging up the phone. “Excuse me, I was wondering—”
“Yes, I just got word that your aunt is out of surgery. She is being taken to the recovery room now and you’ll be able to see her when she wakes up.”
“Great.” Judy felt tears of relief, or maybe frustration, come to her eyes, but she blinked them away. “When will that be?”
“It’s usually an hour or more.”
“Do you know why it took longer?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Is that typical or atypical?” Judy asked, without knowing exactly why. Maybe she wanted to know what to expect when she saw her aunt. Maybe she didn’t trust the hospital to be forthcoming about anything that had gone wrong. Or maybe her mother was right, that if there wasn’t a fight, she’d pick one.
“I don’t know. I’m just a receptionist, not a nurse.” The receptionist’s dark eyes shifted toward Judy’s mother and back again, and Judy felt embarrassed that the receptionist had overheard her mother’s comment.
“Sorry about that.”
“No apologies are necessary.” The receptionist looked away. “Unfortunately, the doctor was called in on another operation and so he won’t be able to speak with you yet. The schedule is running behind, and he’ll meet you in the recovery room just as soon as he can. He’ll be able to answer your questions at that time. I can have a nurse come out and give you an update momentarily.”
“I would like that, thank you very much. Thank you.” Judy walked stiffly back to the row of chairs against the wall and sat down next to her mother, who turned away, fake-reading an old copy of People. “She’s fine and the nurse will see us—”
“I heard,” her mother said, without looking up from the magazine, and Judy turned in the opposite direction and reached for her laptop to get started on a response to the Rule 37 motion. Mother and daughter sat stiffly side-by-side for the next fifteen minutes, until a cheery nurse in a blue scrub cap and patterned scrubs emerged from the door behind the reception desk and made a beeline for them.
“Ms. Carrier?” asked the nurse, and as she approached, a blue lanyard bearing her hospital ID bounced on her ample bosom.
“Yes?” her mother answered, looking up.
“That’s us.” Judy took her laptop off her lap and stood up to meet the nurse, who touched her arm with a friendly, reassuring smile.
“I have good news, ladies.”
“Thank God.” Judy eased back down in her chair, awash in a warm wave of gratitude as the nurse explained that Aunt Barb’s surgery had been successful, but they were still waiting on further pathology tests of her tissue. The nurse said that she didn’t know why it took longer, but that wasn’t atypical, and she promised that the doctor would fill them in in the recovery room once Aunt Barb woke up. Judy’s mother asked about the pain medication, which was Vicodin, and the drains, which seemed to preoccupy her, but Judy felt increasingly too emotional to bother with the medical details. She barely listened to her mother and the nurse, talking about the emptying and stripping of drains. She was just happy Aunt Barb had come through her surgery.
“Well, that’s a relief,” her mother said after the nurse had left, then returned to her magazine.
“I know.” Judy felt the urge to hug her mother, who was evidently memorizing the magazine. “I’m sorry if I was short with you, Mom. I was just upset—”
“We both were,” her mother answered without looking up, then lapsed into silence.
Judy didn’t know whether her mother officially wasn’t speaking to her and let it go. She picked up her laptop, turned her attention to the Rule 37 motion, and tried to draft coherent sentences, writing that she hadn’t been abusive during Govinda’s deposition, hadn’t forced the witness or his lawyer to leave, and hadn’t intentionally hung up on Kelin, but that the conversation had been accidentally terminated by an incoming call, which she explained only as a family emergency. She’d be damned if she’d trade Aunt Barb’s privacy to win the motion, or for any other reason.
One hour stretched into two as Judy worked, keeping an eye on her laptop clock and wondering why Aunt Barb was taking so long to wake up. She finalized the motion, filed it electronically with the Court, then checked her email, which was piling up, and her phone messages, which would have to wait. Frank had texted How’s Aunt Barb? And she texted back, still waiting to hear the details, but it went okay, thx xoxo. She thought briefly of John and felt reassured that the money was safe, even if its ownership caused problems they’d have to resolve down the line.
Finally, the nurse reappeared and escorted Judy and her mother to the recovery room, where Aunt Barb lay sleeping in a hospital bed, her head to the side, still in her plastic cap. Layers of cotton blankets covered her to her shoulders, and oddly, an IV port was stuck in the side of her neck as well as the top of her hand. Her skin had a gravely ashy hue, and her eyelids barely fluttered open when Judy and her mother took their places on opposite sides of her bed.
“Is she okay?” Judy asked the nurse, alarmed, as she set her stuff down on a chair. “She looks so pale.”
“She’s fine.” The nurse closed the patterned curtain around them, giving them some privacy. “She’s had something to drink, but she’s sleepy. We gave her something for nausea, and you can expect her to have a dry throat from the intubation. She’ll be in and out of sleep for the next hour or two, until she’s up for good.”
Judy took her aunt’s hand, which felt chilly. “Aunt Barb, we’re here. We love you.”
Her mother frowned. “Don’t wake her. She needs to sleep.”
The nurse walked to the bed and picked up a white cylinder with a bright green light on one end, which was attached to a covered dispenser on a stalk. “Ladies, this is her pain medication. All she has to do is press this green light. It will dispense morphine every fifteen minutes, but not more frequently than that.” She crossed back to an opening in the privacy curtain. “I’m here if you need anything. I’ll be back to check on her.”
“Thank you,” Judy and her mother said in unison, then when they were alone, silence descended again, for a moment.
“Judy,” her mother said, her tone weary. She sank into an institutional chair on the other side of the bed. Her makeup had worn off and her features finally relaxed, as if she had kicked out the emotional jambs. “Let go of her hand and sit down. It’s going to be a while.”
“I guess you’re right.” Judy was hoping to make peace, so she released her aunt’s hand, rolled over a stool on wheels, and perched on it uncomfortably.
“She doesn’t look that good, does she?” Her mother gazed down at Aunt Barb, with a slight frown. “She is pale, but it’s probably the stress of the procedure. The trauma of it.”
“I’m sure but they got all the cancer, so that’s wonderful.” Judy felt her heart lift, but her mother seemed not to hear her.
“I watched a video of it on YouTube. It’s not a pretty operation.”
Judy recoiled. “I’m just glad it was a success.”
“They have everything on the Internet nowadays.” Her mother’s gaze remained on Aunt Barb. “You can see medical videos of a breast reconstruction, of mastectomies with the flap or without one, same with expanders. Everything you can imagine. Women make their own video blogs, too. Survivors, that is. I found it very helpful. You should take a look.”
Judy couldn’t imagine taking a look.
“It’s a wealth of information.”
Judy didn’t reply, realizing that when she and her mother were talking, it was never real conversation, wherein one person replied to the other. It was more like they both took turns filling up the air with words, in a series of familial non sequiturs.
“We should be quiet so she can sleep,” her mother added, though she was the only one talking, so Judy conceded the obvious, that she might as well work while her aunt was asleep. She leaned over, grabbed her bag, unpacked her laptop, and lost herself in her email for another hour.
“Iris?” her aunt whispered, out of the blue.
“Huh?” Judy placed the laptop on the floor and rolled her stool over to the bed and clutched the bed rail, and her mother did the same thing on the other side of the bed.
“It’s Delia. Barb? Are you awake?”
“Iris?” her aunt whispered again, her eyelids fluttering.
“Not Iris, Delia,” her mother answered, pursing her lips.
“Aunt Barb, it’s Judy and Mom.” Judy reached for her aunt’s hand, which felt warmer. “We’re here, and you’re fine. Your operation was fine.”
“Iris,” her aunt said, more distinctly, and opened her eyes. Her gaze was an unfocused blue, shifting from Judy to her mother, taking them in only vaguely. “Oh, hello … I was thinking of … Iris.”
Judy squeezed her hand. “We love you, Aunt Barb. We’re here for you.”
“Iris was with me … she helped me…” Her aunt’s voice trailed off. “She was there with me … in the beginning, before they put the mask on … I could feel her presence…”
“Really?” Judy asked, surprised, but her mother shot her a look.
“Judy, please don’t encourage this. You’ll have her seeing ghosts, for God’s sake.” Her mother picked up a small bottle of water from the bed table and twisted off the cap. “Barb, are you thirsty? Does your throat hurt?”
“Judy?” Aunt Barb turned her head toward Judy and squeezed her hand, though her grip was weak. “Do you … hear me … about Iris? I mean, I know she’s … gone … but she was there … she told me everything was going to be okay … I felt so comforted…”
“Aw,” Judy said, touched. “I bet that was very comforting.”
“It was and I … I … want to know what happened to her … I want to know … what time is it … today is Monday, right? Is it?”
“Yes, it’s Monday.” Judy checked her watch. “It’s about five thirty.”
“Today was the day … you were going to find out … you’re going to call somebody … about Iris…”
Judy’s mother interjected, “Barb, have some water, will you? The nurse told us your throat would be dry. Are you in any pain?”
Aunt Barb shook her head, agitated. “It hurts, my chest…”
Judy’s mother reached for the white morphine dispenser. “Here. You have pain meds, dear.”
Aunt Barb ignored her, turning to Judy. “Judy, did you … call? What did they … say?”
Judy patted her aunt’s hand. “You mean about Iris’s autopsy? I called earlier today, but they said to call back later and I didn’t get a chance.”
“Call them … I want you to call them … I want to know … I want to know what happened to Iris … I owe that to her…”
“Now?” Judy asked, off-balance. “You really want to know that now?”
“Barb, I can’t stand to see you in pain.” Her mother thrust the morphine cylinder toward Aunt Barb. “Please press the button. You’ll feel better. This isn’t the time to be worrying about Iris. This is the time to be worrying about yourself.”
Judy added, “Aunt Barb, I wonder if they’re even there. It’s after business hours.”
Judy’s mother pressed the green button for the morphine. “Here, let me help. This will make you feel better. Calmer.”
Judy looked over, as the clear morphine ran down the tube. “Mom, she should do that, not you. Don’t you think?”
Her mother raised an eyebrow. “Why? I want her to be comfortable.”
“Call them … Call them … they have to be there…” Her aunt shook her head in confusion, and whether it was the effect of the drugs or she was really concerned, Judy wanted to placate her.
“Okay, Aunt Barb. I’ll go call them and be right back.” Judy released her aunt’s hand, dug in her blazer pocket for her phone, and passed through the opening in the privacy curtain. Signs were posted prohibiting the use of cell phones, so she hurried from the recovery room, through a swinging door past the reception desk, and into the waiting area. Most of the seats were filled with people on phones and e-readers, plus reading some actual books, so she scrolled through her recent phone calls, located the number, and pressed CALL.
“Chester County Coroner’s Office,” answered a young woman’s voice.
“I’m Judy Carrier, and I spoke earlier to the assistant deputy coroner. I’m wondering about the results on the autopsy of Iris Juarez. Would you happen to know if those results are in?”
“I’ll try to find out, bear with me,” the woman answered, and in the background came the clacking of computer keystrokes. “This isn’t usually my job. I’m filling in because we’re shorthanded.”
“I understand.”
“I see a notation that you called earlier and that you’re an attorney with Rosato and DiNunzio, representing the family.”
“Yes, that’s me.” Judy wasn’t about to bother with technicalities. “Do you have the results?”
“No, sorry, I don’t know how to open the file from the pathologist. I don’t have the password. Like I say, this isn’t my job.”
“When can I get the results?”
“It will have to wait till tomorrow. Call or come by. Are you local?”
“Kind of.”
“Sorry about the inconvenience. Everybody’s out at a job tonight, a high-profile case. It’s very sad, you’ll probably see it on the news. One of our local priests, Father Keegan, was killed tonight in a hit-and-run.”