Travelers Rest (12 page)

Sausalito moved to Jane’s side and cupped her elbow with one large hand. “Don’t worry, Miss Jane,” he said gently, guiding her out of the room. “Dr. Truman will take care of everything.”

Jane wanted to bury her face in the young Ugandan’s shoulder and cry out her fear. But before she could so much as speak, the nurse appeared in the doorway and barked at Sausalito, “Go to the supply closet and get a new catheter. Quickly.”

Sausalito disappeared and Jane was alone. In another moment, a young doctor she didn’t recognize rushed by her and into the room. She could hear him speaking to Truman, but she couldn’t understand the words.

Please, God,
she thought,
let Seth be all right.

The voices inside sounded serious but calm. Sausalito came down the hall with a coil of tubing in a plastic wrapper. He nodded as he reached her. “Don’t worry, Miss Jane,” he said again. “Everything will soon be all right.”

He disappeared into the room. Jane stared at the floor, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone passing by in the hall. She squeezed her hands together.
Please, God . . .

She waited. Several tension-filled minutes ticked by. Jane felt light-headed with fear and her stomach turned. Finally Truman stepped out into the hall and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be all right, Jane. Dr. Harrington’s got everything under control.”

She let out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. “Thank God,” she said.

“Yes. He’s been given something for pain, and he’s resting more comfortably now. They’ll be monitoring him closely for the next few hours, just to make sure.”

“What exactly happened in there, Truman?”

Truman lifted his hand from her shoulder and wiped at the beads of perspiration that had sprouted along his brow. “There was a mucus plug in the tubing that wouldn’t allow his bladder to empty. Basically, when something like that happens, the body rebels in an effort to let you know something’s not right.”

“You mean, your body pulls a major stunt over something so minor?”

Truman smiled patiently. “Well, to you and me, it’s a minor deal. When our bladder’s full, we know it and we do something about it. But it’s not that way for Seth. He doesn’t know when his bladder’s full, so the catheter is supposed to be taking care of all that for him. Since it was plugged, it wasn’t working. We just now emptied about 1000 cc’s of urine out of Seth’s bladder. Normally, we’d be looking for a bathroom at 350 cc’s.”

Jane studied Truman’s face for a moment. “So that made his blood pressure skyrocket?”

“Yes. It’s a condition called autonomic dysreflexia.”

“But did it happen because the catheter tubing is going directly into his groin?”

“Oh no.” Truman shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

“Well, why is it? Going into his groin, I mean. I didn’t know he had an incision like that.”

“It’s just a different kind of catheter. It’s used for long-term situations, when the tubing won’t be removed after a day or two. Less chance of infection that way. Though obviously there’s still the possibility of mucus plugs. At any rate, there are many causes of dysreflexia, not just a problem with the catheter. The larger problem is that many doctors don’t recognize the signs when it happens.”

“But you did.”

Truman nodded. “I’ve seen it a few times in my career.”

Jane moved her head slowly from side to side. “What if you hadn’t been there? What if no one had reached him in time? Could he have . . .”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

Truman wiped at his brow again. “I could use a drink,” he said, sighing wearily. “Can I buy you some chocolate milk?”

16

F
or several long minutes as they sipped chocolate milk from pint-sized cartons, neither of them spoke. They seemed first to need time to come down from the panic, to travel from the frenzied episode on the fifth floor to the quiet, sweet normalcy of the canteen.

Jane breathed deeply, savoring the sense of relief. Then she said, “If his blood pressure had kept going up, couldn’t he have had a stroke?”

Truman nodded. “Almost certainly he’d have had a stroke.”

“An episode like that could kill him.”

“Yes.”

Jane thought about that a moment. “Thank you for saving his life, Truman,” she said quietly.

Truman took another swig of milk and settled the carton on the table. “Dr. Harrington saved his life. I don’t practice medicine here.”

“Oh. Okay.” Jane nodded her understanding. “But I’m glad you were there.”

“I am too.”

Another silence followed. Then, “Truman?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve done a lot of reading about spinal cord injuries, but I had no idea anything like this could happen. I mean, one minute he was fine, even joking with Sausalito, and the next . . .”

“It’s insidious, Jane. The body suddenly revolts without warning.”

Jane finished her milk and closed up the lip of the carton. “It makes me realize how vulnerable he is. And about how ignorant I am when it comes to his condition. What else don’t I know? What else could happen to him at any time?”

Truman frowned and looked down at his hands, as though he didn’t want to answer. “Lots can happen that you’ll have to be prepared for.”

“Like another episode of this . . . whatever you called it?”

“Dysreflexia. Yes. That and blot clots, pneumonia, bedsores that turn septic. And on and on. Virtually every system in his body has been left compromised by the injury and the resulting paralysis.”

“So you’re saying he could die at any time.”

“Well . . .” Their eyes met briefly, but they both looked away. “Chances are that Seth will live a long time. Just in the past few decades we’ve gotten very good at keeping people like him alive.”

“People like him?”

“People with spinal cord injuries at or above C-5. Still, the higher the injury, the lower the life expectancy.”

Silence again. Then, “What does that mean in terms of years, Truman?”

“If you’re asking me how old Seth will be when he dies, I can’t answer that. If I could, I’d be God.”

Jane tried to smile.

Truman went on, “But it’s possible he’ll live into old age.”

“And it’s possible he’ll die tomorrow.”

“Any one of us could die tomorrow, Jane.”

Jane breathed deeply, let it out. “I suddenly realize the uncertainty of life, and I don’t like it very much.”

“None of us does, but we have no choice. This is the story we find ourselves in, and we have to see it through.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She shrugged. “That reminds me of what Laney used to say—”

She was interrupted when a young woman with a small boy in tow moved quickly across the canteen and stopped in front of one of the vending machines. “Make it fast, Jeffrey, we’ve got a bus to catch,” she said, digging around in her wallet for some change.

The little boy pressed one plump finger against the glass. “I want . . . I want . . . I want . . .” His finger moved from pretzels to peanuts to candy bars.

“Sometime in this century, please, Jeffrey,” the mother said with barely restrained patience.

“Umm . . . .”

“Come on, kiddo, choose. Or I’ll choose for you.”

“These!”

The woman dropped the coins in the slot, pushed the appropriate button, and claimed the bag of chips. “Here you are. Now let’s go.”

She grabbed the boy’s hand, passed by Jane, unsmiling, and rolled her eyes.

She doesn’t know what she has,
Jane thought. Jane would give anything to have a little boy or girl to buy potato chips for, even if it meant waiting for a later bus.

“What were you saying, Jane?” Truman asked.

“What?” She looked back across the table at Truman. “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

“You’re deep in thought, though.”

Jane nodded. “I can’t help thinking that I have a wedding dress hanging up in my closet at home. I’ve chosen the invitations. I’ve got four friends lined up as bridesmaids, just waiting for me to decide on a color scheme so they can order their dresses. And . . .”

“And?” Truman prodded.

She held up her hand and touched her forefinger to her thumb. “I was this close to my dream coming true.”

Truman leaned forward over the table. “Who’s to say it won’t still come true?”

“I think—” She stopped and sighed heavily. “Maybe I should just accept the fact that it isn’t going to happen. I mean, I suppose there are worse things than never getting married.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure. But listen, Jane, you’re so young. You’re far too young to say you’ll never be married. If you don’t marry Seth—and who knows but maybe you will—but if you don’t, there will be someone else. I know it’s hard to imagine that now, but I believe I’m right. Most people marry, after all.”

“Did you, Truman?”

Truman laughed lightly. “Well now, I guess I’m the exception to my own rule. No, I never married.”

“But why not?”

“I almost did once. But—” He looked down at his hands and shrugged.

“Tell me about her, Truman.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“What was her name?”

Truman looked up, looked resigned. “Magdalene,” he said. “Her name was Magdalene Hearne. Everyone called her Maggie.”

“Pretty name.”

“Pretty girl. She was beautiful and sweet. Smart too. As they used to say, she was quite a catch.”

“So what happened?”

Truman frowned, sticking out his lower lip so that the fleshy inner pink was visible. He took a deep breath. “Someday I’ll tell you, Jane. But not today.”

Jane nodded. “All right. But soon, okay?”

Truman stood and threw away the milk cartons. “Well, back to rounds,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t work here.”

Truman put a finger to his lips and winked as he moved toward the door.

17

O
n Friday evening Jane returned to Pritchard Park to listen to the drums. By the time she arrived, the event was in full swing, with at least three dozen drummers beating out a syncopated rhythm. The tiny park itself was crowded, even more so than the week before, the dance floor a rolling wave of human flesh.

Jane found an open spot on one of the concrete tiers and sat down. She had come straight from the VA hospital, where Seth lay in a foul mood, unwilling to do much other than complain. She’d been there most of the afternoon and had intended to stay through the supper hour, but she’d finally had enough. She didn’t want to stay and listen to Seth grumble. Neither did she want to go home. She didn’t want to go back to the loneliness of the Penlands’ house and the pull of the liquor cabinet. She knew its warmth, and she knew its cold destruction, how one led so subtly and relentlessly to the other. She knew what was at the bottom of the bottle, because her mother had repeatedly fallen into it. Head first, no safety net, until the day she simply stopped coming up for air.

———

Peter Morrow had found her. Jane’s father, who would one day tell her all, had found his wife dead in the tub, her head resting on a pillow, her arms crossed snuggly over her chest as though she were hugging herself good-bye. She wore her favorite nightgown, the white silk, now stained a bloody black from the gashes in her wrists. Her skin was pasty, the expression on her face one of bewilderment, as though she were trying to understand what she had done. On the floor of the bathroom lay an empty bottle of valium and an almost empty bottle of bourbon. Meredith had killed herself in the Rayburn House on a Tuesday in April while Grandmother and Laney were serving the guests their lunch. She had taken her life right there under all of their noses, as though she were thumbing her nose at them and at the world at large for having forgotten her.

Laney was sent to the school to fetch twelve-year-old Jane and bring her home. Her father was too distraught and her grandmother too preoccupied with damage control to deal with Jane herself. What would become of the Rayburn House now that Meredith Morrow had committed suicide right there in one of its rooms? Would people continue to frequent the bed-and-breakfast, or would they recoil in horror, leaving the family’s main source of income to dry up?

Jane still remembered the school principal, a pale little man with a receding chin, coming to the classroom, calling her out. Laney was with him, looking uncommonly stern as she reached for Jane’s hand. As they moved through the otherwise empty hall, Jane felt sick with fear. “What’s the matter? Am I in trouble for something?” She squeezed Laney’s hand to emphasize her terror.

Laney didn’t answer right away. The principal left them with a curt nod at the school’s main exit. Laney pushed down on the steel bar and opened the door. Outside in the school yard she led Jane to a bench beneath a trio of pink dogwood trees that had only just burst into bloom. Together they sat under the aching beauty of a thousand pink blossoms as Jane waited for Laney to speak. Finally, voice trembling, Laney said, “Jane, honey, your mamma’s gone.”

Jane didn’t understand at first. All she knew was that she wasn’t in trouble, and that was good. A sigh of relief swept through her as she asked, “Where’d she go?” Where would her mother go on an early spring day such as this, with winter newly past and all the promise of unfolding color ahead?

Laney’s large black eyes throbbed with tears. She frowned and pursed her lips, struggling to speak. That’s when, for Jane, the fragile relief caved into fear once more. “When’s she coming back, Laney?”

The tears spilled over and slid down the smooth dark cheeks as Jane watched their journey curiously. “Honey,” Laney said, “your mamma’s not coming back. Not ever.”

Jane sat in stunned silence as realization dawned on her. She tilted her head back and looked up in wonder at the delicate pink petals pasted against a milky blue sky. How could there be such a thing as death in a world that offered so much beauty? How could it be that her mother was dead and would never be coming back?

She thought that she should cry, but there were no tears. Not yet, anyway. Just confusion. Jane turned back to Laney and asked, “What happened? Was there an accident?”