O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) (14 page)

Boy,
was I wrong.

CHAPTER 17

A metallic tang
hit my nose before my eyes had time to take in the visuals. The shades in Stu’s
room were drawn; it was dim except for the stripe of blue-tinged light from the
half-open door to the bathroom. The room was crammed with machines, humming,
beeping, and plinking. I half-expected to find a Star Wars robot in the bed
rather than a living, breathing person. The patient in the center of it all
appeared vaguely human, but he looked nothing like my brother Stuart. First
off, his face was swollen, his eyes closed. His hair had been shaved off the
right side of his head and his scalp swabbed with a yellow-brown liquid. A
cottony white bandage covered his ear.

Stu’s arms were
on the outside of the waffle-weave blanket, neatly aligned alongside his rigid
body. Below his waist, the blanket had been tented above his body and a length
of clear tubing snaked from under the blanket to somewhere beneath the bed. God
knows what sort of outflow the tube carried. I had zero desire to peek beneath
the bed to check it out.

“Oh, no,” said
Natalie.

I’d almost
forgotten she’d come in behind me. I turned and caught her eye.

“Why are you
doing this to me?” she whispered.

I rolled a
padded stool from over by the door. “Here, take a seat,” I said. “I’m sorry. I
should have come in first and checked it out.”

Natalie sank
down on the stool and grabbed at a near-by IV pole as if she was having a hard
time keeping her balance. The door opened and a nurse came in, squeaking toward
us on thick rubbery soles. Her hair was covered in a blue cap and she wore a
billowy blue paper gown and blue face mask. Her hands were sheathed in latex
gloves.

“How did you
get in here without gowning up?” she said from behind her mask.

“We just came
in,” I said. “No one told us about—”

“There’s a sign
on the door.” Even with her mouth covered I could make out her fierce frown.

I helped
Natalie to her feet and we left.

“I guess we
need to put all this stuff on,” I said as I lifted a blue paper gown and
disposable cap from a cart outside the door.

“I can’t do
it,” she said. “I’ve got morning sickness. And this is
not
helping.
Besides, he’s not even awake.”

“Stu may not
look awake, but I’ve heard that even people in comas know what’s going on
around them. They can recognize voices and they understand what people are
saying even if they can’t respond.”

“Well, Stuart
wouldn’t want to hear anything I have to say. I mean, he looks terrible, don’t
you think?”

“Yeah, he looks
pretty bad,” I said. “I thought he just fell in the canal. But Barry said
something about a bar fight before he got there. I wonder if that’s when he
injured his ear.”

“Who knows? But
I’ve got to get out of here and get some air.”

“Natalie?”

“Yeah.”

“No smoking,
okay?”

She narrowed
her eyes but said nothing as she clip-clopped toward the swinging doors that
led out of the ICU.

 I slipped
on the required blue garb and went back into Stu’s room. Now that the initial
shock had worn off, he didn’t look so bad to me. His face was discolored and
puffy, but I could still make out Stu’s distinctive sharp nose and high
cheekbones. And, even in sleep, his mouth bore the same near-smirk as I’d seen
on my father’s face a few months earlier.

“Hey, Stu.”
I leaned in to whisper in his good ear. “It’s
me,
Pali
. I see you had a little mishap, but you’re
going to be fine. I got bitch-slapped by the nurse for breaking the rules, so I
know they’re serious about taking good care of you.”

A doctor-type
bustled in followed by an entourage of four younger people I assumed were
‘almost-a-doctors’. Everyone was
covered,
head to toe,
in the blue sterile gear. They looked like a Smurf family.

“Are you his
wife?” the doctor-type said to me.

I considered my
options, but went with the truth. “No, I’m his sister,
Pali
.”

“Very well.
Only family allowed in for the
next twenty-four hours.”

I nodded.

He turned to address
the
wanna-bes
. “What we have here is a male
Caucasian, approximately thirty years of age, brought in by paramedics two
nights ago after being pulled from the
Ala
Wai
Canal. The patient presented with signs of mild trauma,
was treated in the Emergency Department, and released. This morning, he
experienced severe pain in the right leg and head wound.  He also began to
run a fever. He was transported once again to the ER and admitted to the
general surgical ward. But once we realized the possible cause of the patient’s
infection we brought him up here. The lab’s working up a full panel. He’s—”

From that point
on, the guy lapsed into doc-talk, a language I don’t speak. I heard words like
‘sepsis’ and ‘contusions’ and a few other words that have crept into normal
everyday language, but most of it was a jumble of Latin-sounding mumbo-jumbo
that I couldn’t decipher.

The doc then
proceeded to bombard the mini-docs with a flurry of questions. One guy in
particular stood out as the Jeopardy winner. He was a good foot taller than the
rest, but since they were all well-hidden behind their matching blue gowns,
caps and masks, there’s no way I could’ve picked him out in a line-up.

There was a lot
of nodding heads and squinting eyes while the docs discussed Stu’s situation,
but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the discussion. Besides, it was hard to
make out who was saying what behind the blue paper masks.

 At the
conclusion of the teaching moment, the main doc came over to Stu’s side and
gently lifted one of my brother’s eyelids. He shined a penlight into the eye
and made a noncommittal sound like ‘
hmm
.’ He allowed the eye to shut and
then went around the bed and raised the blanket tent over Stu’s legs. He
squinted
his face into what I considered an unprofessional-looking
scowl, but he said nothing.

He gestured for
the others to leave and they turned and marched out.

After they’d
shut the door he turned to me. “Do you have any questions for me?” he said.

“How’s he
doing?”

The doctor
looked at Stu and then back to me. In a gentle voice he said, “We’re doing
everything we can. But just in case, are you aware if your brother has his
affairs in order?”

CHAPTER 18

I was
unprepared for the charge of emotion that shot through me when the doctor
inquired about Stuart’s ‘affairs’. The room blurred and I felt a fist of pain
in my chest. A few deep breaths relieved most of it, but just in case, I eased
my fingertips down to the edge of Stu’s bed and steadied myself. 

“I’m sorry to
shock you,” said the doctor. “But false hope doesn’t serve anyone. We’re
prepared to go the distance to save your brother’s life, but I’m afraid it may
require some sacrifices. I’ve been a hospitalist here for over twelve years and
I’ve never observed a patient decline so quickly. I wish I had better news.”

His eyes looked
genuinely sympathetic.

“You think he
might die?” I said. A second after it was out of my mouth I remembered what I’d
said to Natalie about coma patients and I felt guilty.

The doctor put
a hand on my shoulder and walked me to the door. In a low voice he said, “We’re
doing all we can to get him through this. But there are no guarantees. We’ve
got to get the upper hand on this infection. Once we do, I’ll be in a better
position to give you a prognosis.”

“Did he get
this infection here in the hospital?”

“I sincerely
think he didn’t. And the preliminary results from the lab bear that out. The
type of infection we’re treating here is most likely associated with fecal
contamination.”

“Like from
sewage?”

“Could be.”

“Like from the
millions of gallons of crap they’ve dumped in the
Ala
Wai
Canal since the rainstorm started?”

“I can’t
speculate on the source of the bacteria, but I can assure you this particular
strain is not consistent with any typical hospital contamination. As you can
see, we’ve gone to great measures to isolate and contain the situation.”

“
Mahalo
, Doctor. I appreciate everything you’re
doing.”

“Is there
anything we can do for you or your
ohana
?”

I shook my
head.

“Well, just in case,
I’ll have the nursing
staff notify
social services to
get in touch with you. They’re a good resource at times like this.”

He left and I
went back to Stu’s beside. “Hang in there,
bruddah
.
You’re going to get through this. And when you do, your big
sista
is going to teach you how to tell time on your big fancy Rolex watch.”

I reached over
to squeeze his hand, but pulled my hand back at the last second. Instead, I
patted the blanket next to his arm and left the room. I tossed my disposable
blue gear in the ‘biohazard’ container outside his door. As I pushed through
the swinging doors to the hallway outside I rehearsed how I’d break the news to
Natalie. But no matter how I framed it, there was no easy way around the facts.
Stu had a steep road ahead of him.

***

Natalie wasn’t
in the waiting room. I collapsed in a chair and watched as a noisy group of ten
or twelve people came in and staked a claim to the far corner. While the
grown-ups talked, their boisterous
keiki
began
a game of follow-the-leader through an obstacle course—over and under chairs,
across tables and around lamps in the waiting room. After a few minutes, a
toddler-aged boy fell as he attempted to crawl across a side table in the wake
of an older, more nimble girl. I heard the little guy’s head crack on the edge
of the table as he went down. There was a half-second of stunned silence and
then the screaming started.

“
Ahhh
,” he yelled. “
Keohi
made me!
Ahhh
.”

“Why you do
that?” barked an older woman from the group. “You
keiki
stop that.
This a
hospital, not a playground.”

A younger woman
went over and scooped up the crying kid. “You’re okay. Come sit in mama’s lap,
okay?”

The kid kept
yelling.

“
Keohi
, come get your brother,” she said.

The little girl
crossed her arms and stood her ground. “Why I
gotta
get him? I didn’t do
nothing
. Luka started it.”

For some
reason, observing the everyday push-pull of normal
ohana
life brought back the pain in my chest. I got up and went down the hall to
see if I could find a cup of coffee.

As I passed the
glass doors leading outside, I glimpsed Natalie and Jason on a bench on the far
side of the courtyard.  I went outside to ask if they’d like to join me
for coffee, but before the door closed behind me, Natalie leapt to her feet.
“Don’t you see what’s going on?” she hissed at Jason.  “How can you be so
stupid?”

I stopped. I
was in that no man’s land between wanting to dash back inside before they saw
me, but realizing they probably already had. I sucked it up and kept going.

“Hey, you two.
I thought I might find you out here.”

“Hi,
Pali
,” said Jason. “How’s our guy doing?”

“He’s hanging
in there,” I said.

“I wish I could
see him. But they say only family can go in.”

“You
wuss
,” said Natalie. “Barry went in. Tell them you’re his
brother. What do you think they’re going to do, demand a birth certificate?”

There was an
awkward moment of silence. Then Natalie grabbed her purse and stomped past me
on her way back inside.

“What was that
about?” I said.

“Beats me.
I
s’pose
she’s
gotta
blame someone. But at least she’s just bitchin’ at
me. She’s got it in her head that Barry did it.”

“Did what?”

“Tossed Stu in the canal.
She wants to go to the police, but
I’m trying to talk her out of it.”

“Why would
Barry do something like that?”

“Because Stu owes him a ton of money.
Stu told me Barry’s
had a tough time of it lately and he wanted to sell the boat yard. He had a
buyer lined up and everything. But Stu talked him out of it. He said he’d loan
him a bunch of money after his dad died.
Even talked Barry
into ordering a new crane and some new equipment.
But I guess when it
came time to pony
up,
Stu gave him excuses instead of
the cash.”

“How do you
know all this?”

“Hey, I’m not
only Stu’s best
friend,
I’m a bartender at a private
club. Most guys would rather bend my ear and leave a big tip than pay a shrink
to listen to them. Anyway, Stu told me he was working on bringing in another
investor. But Barry said he was done with Stu’s promises. I never thought Barry
would go so far as to hurt Stu, but Nat seems to think he did.”

“Tell me about
the scuffle that took place at the bar on Tuesday,” I said.

“Oh that.
There’s this guy, Robert
Torstrick
. He’s kind of a
jerk. He owns two or three car dealerships around the islands. Mercedes, Lexus,
that sort of thing. Anyway, he gets up in Stu’s face. I didn’t hear what it was
about. Next thing I know, there’s some shoving going on. Stu got his leg caught
on one of the metal rungs of a bar stool and it tore his pants. I didn’t know
he’d gotten hurt until later. Anyway, I told
Torstrick
to take a hike. We don’t allow that kind of stuff in the club.”