Chapter 16
In Leo’s experience, hospital waiting rooms were the same all over the western world, and the one in Saint Luke’s emergency room was no different—same hard plastic chairs, same smell of disinfectant and cleaner, same sense of fear and sorrow.
Leo peered over at Holly, who sat next to her, still holding her hand. Had she been sitting in a waiting room like this after her father’s accident too? Did this remind her of that horrible day?
But if Holly was thinking of the past, she gave no indication of it. Her attention was firmly on Leo. “Want me to get you a coffee or something from the vending machine?” She looked from Leo to her mother.
Both shook their heads.
“No, thanks.” The last thing Leo needed was for the caffeine to make her even more jittery. She could barely sit still as it was. For the fifth time in as many minutes, she glanced up to the large wall clock, whose hands seemed to barely move. Why was no one coming to let them know what was happening? A CT scan shouldn’t take this long, should it?
She wished someone would turn off the television mounted in the corner. Some soap opera played with the sound off, ignored by the handful of people in the waiting room.
Her mother’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum as she paced back and forth.
Leo leaned forward and put her elbows on her thighs without letting go of Holly’s hand. It was her lifeline in all this chaos. “I’m sorry about…about before.” She wasn’t sure why she was thinking about it now, but the words bubbled out of her. “I don’t want you to think I’m a person who throws things if she doesn’t get what she wants. That’s not who I am.”
“I know.” Holly caressed her fingers with her thumb. Her forearm rested on Leo’s thigh next to her arm. “I was just as much to blame. But it’s not important right now. Let’s focus on your father, okay?”
For a moment, Leo wanted to lift her hand to her mouth and press a kiss to her palm. She was so insanely grateful to Holly that there were no words for it.
“I didn’t hear him,” she whispered. “Last night. I never heard him. What if he called for me or screamed out and I just…I slept through it?”
“Look at me.” Holly tugged on her hand until Leo raised her gaze to her eyes. “You did nothing wrong. It could have happened on any other night when your mother or I kept an eye on him, and we wouldn’t have heard a thing either. None of this is your fault. None. Do you hear me?”
Leo nodded, but a few what-ifs still clung to her mind like stubborn cobwebs. It would take some time until she could shake off the last remainder of doubt.
A scrub-clad doctor pushed through the set of swinging doors. His gaze swept over the people in the waiting room. “Mrs. Blake?”
Her mother stopped pacing—even seemed to stop breathing. “That’s me. How is he?”
Leo shot to her feet.
Holly jumped up with her, their fingers still linked.
The doctor cleared his throat. “As you probably guessed, your husband suffered another stroke.”
“But he’ll be fine, right?” Leo’s mother asked. “He’s survived two strokes already. He’ll make it through this one too…right?”
“Mrs. Blake… This one was much worse than the others. There’s substantial swelling in his brain, and it’s putting pressure on the brain stem—the part of the brain that regulates important life functions such as his breathing and heart rate.” He cut himself off as if realizing they were too overwhelmed to grasp all the details. “We don’t expect him to recover from that.”
“N-not recover?” Leo’s mother stammered. “What does that mean? Will he die?”
“I’m sorry. We’re doing all we can, but the odds of survival are very remote. You should prepare for the worst. I don’t think he has long.”
Leo swayed, feeling as if he had punched her. She gripped Holly’s hand to stay upright.
Her mother burst into sobs, grabbed Leo in a desperate hug, and buried her face against her shoulder. Warm tears soaked Leo’s shirt.
She let go of Holly and wrapped both arms around her mother.
The doctor met her gaze over her mother’s head. His face was a professional mask, but compassion shone in his eyes. “We’ll be sending him up to the stroke unit in a minute. You can stay with him if you want to.”
Leo couldn’t speak, but Holly did it for her. “Thank you. We’d like that.”
The door swung shut behind the doctor, but his words continued to echo through Leo’s mind. I don’t think he has long. She pressed her hand to her mouth. He will die. Oh God, he will die.
Her father’s hospital room looked like the bridge of a spaceship. A large monitor dominated the space at the head of his bed, and Leo couldn’t look away from the green and white lines moving across the screen in a hypnotizing pattern. Constantly changing numbers were displayed next to them, but they meant little to her.
A breathing tube was taped to her father’s mouth, but there was none of the hissing, pumping, and beeping she had expected. This wasn’t like the scenes she had seen on TV at all. An eerie silence filled the room, interrupted every now and then by the shrill alarm of a monitor in one of the other rooms.
Leo almost wished for more sounds, anything to distract her from the unmoving figure in the bed. Her mother was talking to him, stroking his pale face around the breathing tube, and kissing his forehead, but he never reacted.
This was what she’d expected when she had first gotten her mother’s call, four weeks ago. Now, after she had talked to her father just last night, it caught her unawares. Part of her still couldn’t grasp that the patient lying motionless beneath the white hospital blanket was him.
The only thing that felt real was Holly’s presence. Since there were only two visitor’s chairs, she stood behind Leo like a guardian angel, one hand on Leo’s shoulder. “You can hold his hand if you want,” Holly whispered to her.
Leo glanced back at her.
Holly gave her an encouraging nod.
A clip was attached to his finger on the right, measuring the oxygen in his blood or something, and her mother had a careful grasp on that hand, so Leo took hold of the other. Somehow, she had expected his skin to be warm, as it had always been, but now it was cool against her own. A shiver went through her.
Holly rubbed her shoulder, sending a bit of warmth back into her.
Grateful, Leo reached up with her other hand and put it on Holly’s for a moment. She sat very still, watching his shrunken face. When was the last time she had held his hand like this? Had she ever? She must have, as a child, but she couldn’t remember.
Her mother slid her chair closer to the bed and reached across his lap for Leo’s other hand.
Leo let go of Holly’s hand to hold her mother’s.
Her fingers were warm, especially in comparison to his. Tears trickled down her mother’s face, but she didn’t reach up to wipe them away. One, then another dripped onto the stark white sheet.
Leo’s heart went out to her mother, but no tears came for her. This was all too surreal. She didn’t even know what time of day it was or how long they had been in here. The blinds on the large window were down, shutting out the rest of the world. It might as well have ceased to exist for all she knew.
“If you want, you could play him some music,” Holly said quietly.
Grateful for anything that would interrupt the awful silence, Leo fumbled her cell phone from her pocket and searched for Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.”
Soon, the low, soothing strains of violins filled the room.
She sat there for what felt like hours but could easily have been minutes. Her father’s hand in hers seemed to become cooler, and the numbers on the monitor fell slowly but steadily.
“Dad,” she heard her own voice croak out, as if that could call him back from where he was going.
A muscle twitched in his face.
Had he heard her?
“Dad?” she tried again.
Wasn’t it ironic? Except for last night, they hadn’t talked in fourteen years, and she hadn’t wanted to, and now she longed for a single word or sign of recognition from him.
She watched him so intently that she jumped when the blood pressure cuff buzzed. For a moment, she had thought his arm was moving. But when the blood pressure cuff deflated, all went still.
“We’re here,” she whispered anyway.
Her mother gripped her hand more tightly, and Holly’s fingers fanned out over her shoulder as if trying to soak up her pain.
A piercing alarm from the monitor interrupted the peaceful ebb and flow of the violins.
Even though Leo had known this would happen at some point, panic swept through her. She wanted to run to the door and call for help, but her mother didn’t let go.
Rapid footfalls approached, and a nurse came in, followed by a doctor. Neither asked any questions. One of them turned off the shrill alarm while the other switched off the ventilator before murmuring “sorry for your loss” and quietly leaving the room.
Leo’s mother buried her face against her husband’s unmoving chest and wept.
Slowly, as if any jarring movement would disturb his peace, Leo slid her hand out of her father’s and turned off the music on her phone. When silence fell, she latched on to Holly’s hand, hoping she would keep her afloat in a sea of pain and grief.
Later, she couldn’t have said how long they stayed with her dad, what words they exchanged with the hospital staff, or how they got back home. The only thing she knew was that Holly stayed by her side through it all.