House Arrest (25 page)

40 ~ Emily

Well, not exactly home. I tried to find a comfortable position on the molded plastic chair. The waiting room was less crowded and Pippa stretched out across three chairs and went to sleep.

I passed the time painting mental pictures of all the things that could still go wrong, listing them, and prioritizing them in order of awfulness. Nan could have gotten the message and sent a squad car to the hospital. When he got home, Andy could have called back to the E.R. to check on Pippa, found out that she was gone, then notified Marge. Some civic-minded busybody living near the park might report my license plate number. The cops could already be on their way to Anna’s house.

My beeper buzzed. I pressed the button and read Nan’s phone number on the digital display. I shook Pippa’s shoulder.

“Is it my turn?”

“No, Nan paged me. I’ll call her back. Wait here, in case they call you.”

“Good luck.”

The phone booth was on the far side of the waiting room, next to the glass doors. The storm was over except for a few solitary flakes. I punched in Nan’s phone number and she answered immediately.

“What’s going on? Where’s Glenning?”

“We’re at the E.R. Waiting. She hasn’t been seen yet.” I was relieved to tell a small truth.

“It’s after one a.m.”

“It’s been insanely busy here tonight.” I could answer that question truthfully too. “Just as we got here, three ambulances arrived. Major accident, I guess.”

“Which hospital?”

“The Medical Center.”

“How’s she doing?”

“The hives are halfway up her leg. They’re getting worse.”

There was a deep sigh on the other end of the phone. I could imagine Nan’s bullshit meter setting off alarms.

“And why’d you leave me a message on my work phone, instead of calling my cell?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think about it, just dialed the first number on your card. Hopefully she’ll be seen soon. I imagine they’ll give her some medicine to stop the reaction, and then I’ll take her home.”

“By the way.” Nan’s voice changed in tone, became more distant. “Judge Thomas decided late this afternoon to sever the cases, to try Glenning separately from the others. He asked me if I thought she would agree to move out of the Pioneer Street house and live somewhere more wholesome.”

“That’s great. I don’t know what she’ll say about moving out though.”

“Tell her I’ll call her in the morning,” Nan said. “Later in the morning. Call my cell when you get her back to her house, so I can reset the monitor, okay?”

“What if they have to cut it off?”

“Then I’ll send a squad car out, and they’ll replace the strap.”

“Not with another rubber one. That’s what she’s allergic to.”

“I’ll figure something out. One more thing.” Now Nan’s voice turned sly. Almost like she was teasing me. “Did you hear what went down tonight in Forest Park?”

“No. What?” I held my breath.

“The cult leader, the one they call Tian? He escaped from jail and hightailed it to the park. The cops had set him up, were ready. Can you believe he fell for the sympathetic guard trick? Anyway, they brought in the whole gang, except your Glenning. She wasn’t there.”

“She was here with me.” Each word felt leaden, mined from someplace deep, hard to locate and hard to extract. “I’d better go see what’s happening with her. I’ll call you later.” I hung up the phone and steadied myself against the wall. My ears buzzed with exhaustion and fear. Maybe a jolt of cold would help the airless tingling in my lips. I stepped outside for a moment, into the frigid air, and searched the sky.

I used to joke with Daddy that I could see Orion in his eyes. They were so dark, almost black. He loved the night sky and the stories behind the constellations. He taught me the myths and legends, never limiting his words to what people thought a little girl could understand. His favorite was Orion, the skillful hunter who thought himself indestructible. But a scorpion was sent to sting and kill him. His mourners placed him in the sky, where they could always see him.

The night sky was clearing, but I couldn’t find Orion.

41 ~ Pippa

Pippa watched the back of Emily’s brown jacket weave between rows of chairs towards the phone booth. Watched her long legs step over outstretched boots, mounds of heaped winter coats, crumpled bags of take-out fries. When Emily was inside the booth, Pippa leaned down to check her ankle where the red raised marks were fading. Emily had insisted that Pippa keep the sock between her skin and the rubber ankle strap. It was too dangerous to fool around with an allergy, she said. You couldn’t manipulate the immune system without consequences.

Maybe Emily couldn’t, but Pippa could.

If the hives were gone by the time the doctors got around to seeing her, she and Emily would both be in big trouble. Emily could lose her job for lying to Nan. Pippa looked at the closed door of the telephone booth, then at the Ladies Room sign on the other end of the waiting area.

At the bathroom sink, Pippa took off her boot and sock, pushed the fleece cuff and long johns as far up her leg as possible, put her bare foot into the sink. She turned on the faucet full blast, splashing water on the ankle monitor and her skin. The sink filled, and she let her ankle and foot soak as long as she dared. What if someone else walked into the bathroom? She dried herself with paper towels, except around the monitor strap. The rash would look worse if her skin stayed damp. She left the sock off, imagining the rubber molecules burrowing through her skin. Walking back, her right foot squished with each step.

She slumped down in the chair, let her head rest against the seat back and closed her eyes. Her ankle started to itch, but she could take a little discomfort. Maybe she could nap.

The tingling started in her hands and feet. It spiraled around each finger, each toe, then tightened. It circled her ankles and wrists. Spiraling then squeezing. The zinging sensation climbed to her knees and thighs, her elbows and armpits. By then her lips and tongue and earlobes were thick and sleepy and prickly. Hornets buzzed in her ears, whirred until they roared. They raced against her heartbeat, stinging and squeezing. The tingling became bursts of impossible light, sparkles marching through her stomach, burning up all the air. There was something wrong with her eyes too. A dreadful shimmering. Electric sparks that illuminated armies of dying embers in rows. Strobe flashes of radiance.

The oscillating dazzles rode her blood and nerve highways. They gathered in her chest, where they ricocheted against each other, sucked up every bit of air, squirreled along her ribs, crawled behind her breastbone. Finally they imploded into a solid mass, a furry animal caught in a blind trap, scratching and clawing and biting to get out, get air.

Get air.

Pippa sat upright, leaned forward to grab her knees. Her hands clenched. They were heavy and cold. But electric too, still tingling with the sparkles circling her muscles up and down her body and squeezing to the unbearable pace of her pulse. She tried to breathe around the thick animal wool blocking her airways, igniting her heartbeats, avalanching her ears and eyes up into her brain which wouldn’t help her, wouldn’t tell her mouth to call for help, to call Emily or the nurse or even the woman still sitting two seats down cradling a red faced infant. She turned to the woman, tried to reach out, felt herself falling.

42 ~ Emily

I gave up on Orion and stepped back into the E.R. I doubted that Nan believed a word of my explanation. I walked slowly back towards the chairs until I noticed the crush of people in blue scrubs in the second row. Then I ran.

Two men were lifting Pippa onto a stretcher. A gray-haired woman held a stethoscope to Pippa’s chest, a thin nurse held a black mask over her mouth and nose with one hand, pulling her jaw forward to open her airway, and squeezing the Ambu bag with the other. They all wore rubber gloves.

“Take off those gloves,” I yelled. “She’s allergic to latex. She’s in anaphylaxis.”

The thin nurse squeezing the Ambu bag turned to me. “What?”

I pulled the woman’s gloved hands away from Pippa’s face. “Latex allergy. You’re making it worse. Take off the gloves and give her Epi.”

“Let’s go.” The orderly at the foot of the stretcher pushed past me through the row.

“Look at her right ankle.” I was screaming now, running after the stretcher. “Cut off the monitor strap. And she’s pregnant.”

“We’ll take good care of your friend.” The skinny nurse shoved past me.

“I’m a nurse,” I pleaded. “Let me help.”

“Wait here.” She peeled the latex gloves from her hands, threw them on the floor, and ran to catch up with the stretcher as it pushed through the double doors.

I stood alone in the row of chairs, their metal arms linked together like one of my father’s picket lines. This was my fault. I had wanted to help, but I made a horrible mistake.

43 ~ Sam

The phone rang. Sam had just tucked Zoe’s checkered blanket around Timothy’s shoulders and returned to help Jeremy recolor digital images on the computer.

Sam grabbed for the receiver. “Emily?”

“Pippa’s collapsed. They’re working on her now.”

“What happened?”

“Anaphylactic shock, probably. From the rubber strap of her ankle monitor.”

“Will she be okay?” He pictured Pippa’s sunshine face, the surprise of her occasional southern accent. Her grin when she had danced the turquoise finger puppet.

“I don’t know.”

“What’s going on, Emily? She was fine.”

“It’s a long story. And it’s my fault.”

“No, I’m sure it’s not your fault.”

Emily interrupted him. “Don’t argue with me now. Are the boys okay?”

Sam looked at Jeremy’s head bent in concentration at the computer. “They’re fine.”

“I’ll call when there’s news.”

“One more thing, Emily.” Sam spoke softly. “At the park tonight, Tian was kissing the blond woman. Seriously kissing. Isn’t he Pippa’s boyfriend?”

There was a long pause. “Yeah. I guess. We’ll worry about that later, okay?”

“Okay,” Sam said, but it didn’t feel right. He understood that Emily didn’t want Pippa to be hurt. But she had a right to know if her guy was cheating, didn’t she?

44 ~ Emily

After I watched them rush Pippa through the double doors, after I spoke on the phone with Sam, after I stood outside gulping cold air and letting my tears freeze on my cheeks, I stretched out on Pippa’s three chairs, using her coat as a mattress and mine as a blanket. I tried to reassure myself. A shot of epinephrine would suppress the allergic reaction, but I didn’t know how long Pippa’s breathing had been affected, whether her baby’s oxygen supply was compromised. I should have been there with her, not outside searching for Orion. I wondered what the story was with Tian and Francie, and why Sam was so concerned. I worried about Nan, and would she let Pippa stay at home if she couldn’t safely wear the monitor any more. Even with these questions swirling around my brain I must have fallen asleep because I woke up to the skinny nurse shaking my shoulder.

“Your friend is a fighter,” the nurse said. “She’s going to be okay.”

“And the baby?”

“So far so good. You can see your patient now. Then we’ll transfer her upstairs.”

My patient. I noticed that word. They knew about Pippa and me. I gathered our coats and followed the nurse. “Thank you.”

“By the way,” the nurse said over her shoulder. “You should have told us she’s under house arrest. We notified the probation department.”

I had a moment of panic, but I had notified Nan, even if I had left out some crucial details. Let that go, I told myself. Pippa and her baby were okay.

Pippa didn’t look so great. She was even more pale than usual, even with the supplemental oxygen through a plastic cannula under her nose and two IVs. But the cardiac monitor showed a normal pattern and the smaller unit above it showed a strong fetal heartbeat. The nurse moved a chair close to the bed for me.

At the scraping sound, Pippa opened her eyes. “Hi,” she said.

The nurse adjusted her oxygen and wagged a finger at Pippa. “You need to rest.”

Pippa nodded then turned to me. “The twins?”

“Sam says they’re fine.” I checked my watch; almost five a.m. “We’ll call him later and let him know you’re okay. Maybe he can bring the boys here to visit, after you rest.” I thought again about Tian and Francie. Maybe I should warn Pippa, before Sam said anything.

Pippa closed her eyes. “Are we in big trouble?”

“I don’t know. The last time I talked to Nan, while you were going into shock, she sounded pretty suspicious. The hospital called her too.” I pointed at Pippa’s ankle. “What happened?”

She turned her face away, toward the beige curtain divider. “I was afraid the hives would be gone by the time they saw me,” she whispered. “I helped them along.”

“You could have died.”

She turned back to me. “You could have lost your job.”

I couldn’t decide if her actions were brave or stupid. Both, I guess, just like mine. When I had a moment, I would have to figure out what I thought about my own actions, about using my knowledge of medicine to subvert the rules, even to a good end. Somehow, I didn’t think that’s what Florence had in mind in the nursing pledge when she wrote the bit about devoting ourselves to the welfare of those committed to our care.

I pondered that conundrum while they disconnected Pippa from the E.R. equipment and wheeled her upstairs to a medical unit for twenty-four-hour observation. “Mostly for the baby’s sake,” the nurse explained, but I figured it was more likely at the request of the probation department. Settled in her new room, Pippa promptly fell asleep and I put my head down on the edge of her bed, close enough so I’d wake up if she moved. I dozed.

Pippa’s visitors started arriving just after 7:00 a.m. First Sam brought the twins, who climbed over the guard rails right onto the high hospital bed, book-ending Pippa with their hugs. Jeremy stayed snuggled up against her, while Timothy leaned over to peer at the wiggly green lines skipping across the monitor screen and inspected the dials and alarms. Pippa smiled at Sam. “Thank you for taking care of them.”

“They’re great kids,” Sam said.

Pippa hesitated a moment, then asked, “Tell me again what happened at the park.”

“When I got there, your friends were dancing. I hid in a small clearing, near these guys. Then Tian came and it got pretty wild.”

I tried to catch Sam’s eye, to avert what I knew he was going to say. Pippa shouldn’t have to deal with Tian and Francie now, when she’d been so sick. Sam refused to look at me.

“Tian was kissing Francie. Isn’t he your guy, Pippa?” he asked.

Pippa blinked a couple of times. She looked out the window towards the dawn’s salmon flush. After a moment she turned back to Sam. “What happened with the cops?”

Sam shrugged. “The weird part was how the cops seemed to know what to expect. They just ran in and started grabbing people. Especially this bald guy. Tian looked really pissed at him, charged him in rage.”

Pippa turned her face to the pillow. I wanted to comfort her, but I had no idea how to explain Tian’s behavior, with Francie or the bald cop. Or Sam’s rudeness either, blurting that out, after Pippa almost died last night. I didn’t have long to think about it, because Gina knocked on the half-open door and entered, followed by Nan. I shuddered to imagine the two of them riding up together in the elevator, discovering they were visiting the same patient and comparing notes.

Gina walked right to the bed and bent down to kiss Pippa’s cheek. “Heard you had a close call, girl. How’re you feeling?”

“Not too bad now, Gina. Thanks for coming.” She turned to Nan. “I’m sorry I left the house without permission, Officer Malloy. I hope I haven’t caused too much mess for you all.” Her accent was more pronounced than I’d ever heard before, but her manners seemed to sit just right with Nan, who waved her hand in the air between them, brushing away Pippa’s apologies.

“It’s okay, Ms. Glenning. It was an emergency and you had to take care of yourself and that baby.” She rested her slender hand on the back of my chair and I stood up. She faced me and spoke softly. “I’m not sure the extent of your role in last night’s activities, Emily Klein.” She held up her hand, palm towards me. “But you apparently saved Pippa’s life and her baby’s too. That’s all I want to know.”

Nan turned back to Pippa, pulled her chair close to the bed. “I’m still responsible for enforcing the court orders in your case, and for your baby’s welfare,” she said softly. “Maybe Emily didn’t get around to telling you with all the excitement last night, but yesterday, the judge ruled to separate your trial from the others.”

“What’s going to happen to them? Tian and everyone?”

Nan shook her head. “After last night, Tian’s charges got a lot worse; he’ll spend some serious time in prison. The rest of them will be charged with drug possession, probably just get probation for a first offense.” She looked at her watch. “They’ll most likely be arraigned and released this morning. I’m not sure about the mother of the twins, though.”

“Francie.”

“Yes. The DSS worker was concerned about the boys.” Nan looked from Timothy to Jeremy, both resting their cheeks against Pippa’s shoulders. “Francie insisted they were with a responsible babysitter.”

Sam crossed his hands over his heart. “That would be me.” He motioned to the twins, who followed him to the far corner of the room. He took a laptop from his backpack and settled them on the floor before sitting on the foot of Pippa’s bed.

Nan turned back to Pippa. “I spoke with the D.A. about you. We clearly can’t put you back in a house arrest monitor. But if you admit neglect, you can finish your pregnancy in a supervised women’s shelter. After your baby is born, you’d be on parole for three years, meeting with a nurse and a social worker every week.”

“So I keep my baby?”

“As long as you comply with their instructions. I could probably arrange for Emily to be your nurse.”

Which I guess was Nan’s way of saying things were okay between us, whatever she suspected.

Pippa smiled. “That sounds pretty good. I could raise my little guy.”

I raised my eyebrows.

Pippa looked at me and wiggled her finger, mimicking the ultrasound technologist’s gesture. I guess she understood more than I gave her credit for. “Gabriel Tian Glenning,” she said. “Gabe.”

“You’re going to name him after Tian?” Sam’s voice was a combination of disbelief and disappointment.

Pippa’s smile was kind. “He’s the father.”

Sam’s mouth curled down in disgust and he pointed at Jeremy and Timothy. “He’s their father too. Tian fathered all the kids.”

“That’s the way they do things, in the Family of Isis.” Pippa looked at the twins. Jeremy held up his drawing for her to admire. Winged Isis danced with giant snowflakes. “Tian was a good father.”

I noticed she said they, not we. She said was, not is.

Nan interrupted. “If you want this deal, you’d have to stay away from Pioneer Street.”

“That’s okay,” Pippa said. “I don’t think I’ll be going back.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. She wasn’t going back to Tian, or to the Family of Isis? Sam looked puzzled too, stroking the pointy end of his mustache and not taking his eyes from Pippa’s face.

“But,” Pippa continued, “they’re still my family. Francie and Liz and the twins and everyone. Even Tian.”

Gina looked at me pointedly, but I didn’t need her encouragement.

“We’re your family too, Pippa,” I said. I wasn’t sure how that would work out, but Anna and I had an extra bedroom, and Zoe would love a baby brother. Sam smiled hugely and gave me the thumbs up. Pippa looked at him and mirrored his grin.

My beeper interrupted my daydreaming. “Anna,” I whispered to Sam, raising my eyebrows.

“She knows,” he said. “I had to tell her.”

“Don’t worry,” Anna answered the phone. “I’m not angry. Can Zoe and I come visit Pippa?” She paused. “Zoe really wants to.”

My beeper went off again, this time displaying the number of the Hampden County Home Care Agency. I told Anna to come on over. Then I took a deep breath and called Marge.

She answered the phone with two words, “You’re fired.”

How could Marge have found out about last night, unless Andy told her we were at the hospital? Maybe I broke some protocol by not calling her first.

“Did you hear me?” she yelled. “I will not tolerate insubordination. You know the rules. My staff does not go over my head and talk to a patient’s attending. Not ever, do you understand, Emily Klein? Come in today and clear out your desk.”

Everyone in the room could hear the slam of her phone in its cradle. I placed my receiver down softly, letting the irony sink in. Marge had no clue about last night. This was all about Mrs. Newman, and I had no reservations at all about what I did for her. I felt a twinge of worry about paying my share of the mortgage and regret about no longer working with Gina. I would miss Mr. S. and Mrs. Glover and Josué.

Gina put her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll file a grievance this afternoon,” she said. “You’ve got good documentation. Patient safety definitely trumps her stupid rules.”

I could find another job, maybe return to Labor and Delivery. I might even look into that midwife program. Helping Pippa and Gabe would keep me busy, figuring out how to circumvent the parole rules once in a while. I looked at Pippa, the oxygen cannula crooked across her sunny face. I pictured her dancing in the snowy forest to honor her family. I remembered placing the pebbles on the stone to honor mine.

I shook my head and smiled at my friends. No grievance.