Waiting for Daybreak (28 page)
“Yeah, I remember her. In fact, I’m just on my way home from visiting her at Mercy. She had a heart attack.” Paige trailed the word off at the end. “What about her?”
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, it seems that when the medics responded to her 9-1-1 call, they bagged up all her meds and took them to the hospital. It helps them to know what the patients are taking. Anyway, one of the bottles was Topamax.”
“Topamax? I never knew she had migraines. The only thing I’ve ever filled for her was Toprol XL.” There was a long pause at the other end of the line. “Oh, no!”
“It was filled the day you were fired, so she can’t blame it on you this time, but I think she’s still going to try.”
“Did the inspector see the prescription? Did it have Clarissa’s initials on it?”
“Yeah, he saw it and made a copy of it.”
“Dawn, you’ve got to tell him the truth. About everything.”
The truth about everything could land her in a whole heap of trouble. She knew that, but maybe Paige was right. Maybe it was time to come clean.
Dawn turned onto her street, looked down the block, and saw Renee’s green car in the driveway. The kids were out playing in the front yard; neither Jack nor Renee was anywhere to be seen.
Not again.
She pulled to the curb before the kids saw her and tried to decide what to do. There really was nowhere else for her. Even if her parents did forgive her—and that was a big if—she knew her father well enough to know that he would never let her move back home. This was all she had. There was no other choice. Unless . . .
Unless she took Clarissa’s money.
“I’ve got to go.” Dawn hung up the phone, regretting her impulsive decision to make the call.
Paige rode the elevator to the fourth floor, her heart pounding. How could she even think of coming here, knowing a mistake from her pharmacy had caused this? That she, as much as anyone, was to blame?
When she reached the waiting room for the Cardiac Care Unit, she went to the visitors’ desk. A gray-haired woman in a green volunteer jacket smiled up at her. “May I help you?”
“Can you tell me . . . Mrs. Vaerge, is she still . . . in this unit?”
The woman scanned a printout on her clipboard. “Let’s see, Vaerge.” Her finger ran the length of the paper before it stopped. “Oh, yes, there she is. Yes, she’s still here.”
Paige exhaled a sigh of relief. One more day and Ora was still living. Still holding on. But would she ever wake up again? “Do you know, has Dr. Prince been in to see her recently?”
“Not since I got here a couple of hours ago.” She looked at the round white clock on the wall. “He usually comes in around noon, so my guess is that he’ll be here soon.”
“Thank you.” Paige took the seat across from the elevator. To distract herself she picked up a
National Geographic
from the end table and skimmed through an article on volcanoes. She turned page after page but saw little of the photos inside.
How could this have happened? Why Ora of all people?
Paige thought about the woman who had met her at the door on most mornings. The coffee-making tips. The mixed-up, yet often useful verses.
The elevator doors opened and Paige was on her feet before the occupants even emerged. Dr. Prince stepped off, deep in conversation with a man in blue surgical scrubs. The two of them disappeared behind the double doors of the unit, seemingly unaware of anyone else around them.
Paige got up and began to pace. On one end of the room, she walked toward the framed print of a lighthouse, then turned and went back toward the couch. Over and over. Lighthouse to couch, couch to lighthouse.
None of the other occupants of the room seemed to pay this any attention at all. Perhaps they understood the restless feeling, or perhaps they were just too exhausted by their own concerns to care.
Finally, the doors opened and Dr. Prince reemerged. Paige rushed over to meet him. “Dr. Prince?”
“There’s not a lot of change, I’m afraid. The nurses have reported minimal response to stimuli. I will add your name to the approved visitor list, but I want strict adherence to posted visiting hours.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
Paige looked at the clock on the wall. Two o’clock. “May I go in now?”
“Yes. She’s in the last room.” He pointed down the hall to her right.
“Thank you.” Paige pushed through the doors before he could think to change his mind.
She walked to the last doorway, and when she first looked inside, she thought she was in the wrong place. This woman wasn’t Ora; she was much too old. The deep lines in her face, the pale cast to her skin—they belonged to someone else.
Paige knelt beside the bed and took Ora’s cold hand in her own. “Oh, Ora. I’m so sorry.”
Warm tears dropped onto their intermingled hands. “This is all my fault.”
She looked at the helpless woman lying so still and found herself asking questions she didn’t want an answer to. Was the pain excruciating when the heart attack began? Did she gasp for breath, wondering if she’d even be able to make the phone call to 9-1-1? And did it ever, in the midst of her great pain, occur to her that Paige’s own negligence was the very thing that had caused this?
“Ora, I love you. Please get better. This is all my fault, and I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you, if you’ll just wake up. Okay?”
The wax hand moved in her own. Or had she just imagined it?
“Ora? Ora? Can you hear me?”
The hand squeezed hers, and the left side of Ora’s mouth twitched.
Paige pushed the nurse call button, but before a response even came she was screaming for help down the hall. “She’s awake. She’s awake. Mrs. Vaerge is awake.”
Paige drove toward home, wishing so much that she would find her mother’s comforting presence when she got there. Someone who could tell her that a hand squeeze was just the first step toward a full recovery, in spite of the reserved reactions of the nurses. Ora just might wake up and be all right again someday. Right?
Paige picked up the phone as soon as she walked in the door. Maybe just by hearing her parents’ voices, she would feel their strength.
“Hello.” Her father’s voice sounded so flat—dead almost.
“Daddy, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but unfortunately your mother doesn’t seem to be. She spiked a fever, and her blood work came back suspicious for . . . let’s see . . . got it written right here. CMV.”
Paige’s hand went numb on the phone. “But they gave her antiviral medication to keep that from happening. She got the treatment like she was supposed to, this shouldn’t happen.”
“You’re the one who works in the medical field, I reckon you know better than me that things don’t always work out like they’re supposed to.” Yes, Paige understood that more than she had ever hoped to.
“What are they doing about it?”
“Oh, the usual. More IVs, more tests. I’m having to wear the banana suit and mask every time I go into her room. There’s a guy from the breathing department in there now, checking out her lungs.”
Paige knew that CMV could cause major problems posttransplant, and she also knew that pneumonia was one of the biggest concerns of CMV. “Dad, is she having trouble breathing?”
“She’s had the cough since before they treated her for that other thing, you know, the RSV. I’d say it’s maybe gotten worse in the last day or so.” He paused for a minute. “The guy from respiratory wants to talk to me. I’ll call you later if I hear anything new, one way or the other.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Paige hung up the phone and ran to the computer. CMV was something she knew a little about, but now was the time to broaden her knowledge base. She scanned the headings under Google and clicked on a link. The article filled the screen with a long list of problems CMV could cause post-transplant, starting with pneumonia. It was the very end of the list that stopped Paige’s heart from beating.
Post-transplant marrow failure.
Marrow failure?
No. Please God, no.
He wouldn’t allow them to go through all this for nothing. Would He?
The Internet wasn’t always accurate, especially when it came to medical things. Paige closed the article and returned to the Google search page, looking for something a bit more comforting. Number ten on the list of links said
Fatal CMV pneumonia
following transplant.
Paige turned the computer off.
Clarissa stared out the window of her condominium. The golf course below looked so green, manicured, perfect. In the fading light of a spring evening, a group of twenty-something men putted four little white balls into the hole and hurried over to the last tee, trying to get their game in before darkness enveloped them.
The darkness was closing in on her, too.
If only she could get through all this, open up the store in the Lancaster Building, everything would be all right. She knew that she wouldn’t hate retail so much if she worked in Nashville instead of Shoal Creek. Not having to deal with all the insurance, the crowds, and just being able to provide top-notch service to the people who wanted it would be so much better. Yes, that wouldn’t be nearly as miserable as normal retail.
Then she thought about Mrs. Vaerge.
A person had almost died because of a bad decision Clarissa had made. Even if Mrs. Vaerge recovered fully, even if her bills were being taken care of, the thought of what might have happened was staggering.
Her doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone, but it wasn’t unlike her friends to drop by.
“Hey.” Tony’s eyes drooped at the corners in a way Clarissa hadn’t seen before.
It had been several weeks since they’d last talked—not since they went out for ice cream. Surely he wasn’t still moping about Paige. “What’s wrong?”
“How do you know something’s wrong?”
“Like you don’t have the most readable face in the western hemisphere. Come on in and tell your darling niece all about it.”
He followed her inside. “You busy?”
“Never too busy for you. What’s up?” She motioned him toward a seat at her dinette.
He dropped into it. “I got a visit from Jeff Sweeney today.”
“Really? Why would he come see you?”
Tony studied her face while she spoke as if he expected some sort of clue to emerge. “I had him checking out a few things that just didn’t add up.”
“Like what?”
“All that stuff in Atlanta, something didn’t seem right to me. I asked him what he thought about it. I believe his exact words were, ‘I smell a PR rat.’ What he found confirmed that. Paige took the fall for blame that could have been spread in a lot more directions.”
Clarissa shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” He leaned his chin into his hand and continued to watch her evenly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Did you set her up?”
“Hello. That happened a long time before I’d ever even set eyes on the girl. How exactly do you think I set her up?”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about in Shoal Creek.”
“What do her mistakes in Shoal Creek have to do with the situation in Atlanta?”
He leaned farther across the table. “Did you set her up?”
“Of course not.”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “I knew you wouldn’t do something like that. I told him there was
no way
that the sweetheart of a niece I’ve known all my life would do something like that. I said, ‘She’s been the one who was getting stomped on most of her life. She would never do that to another person. Especially another person who was working and saving every penny to help pay her mother’s medical costs.”
“Medical costs?”
“Come on, Clarissa, tell me you knew that her mother has cancer.”
“All she’s ever told me about her family is that her parents are on a trip to Texas for a few months, so she’s house-sitting.”
“Her mother’s in Houston getting a stem cell transplant. According to Jeff Sweeney, her parents’ credit is maxed out, and Paige was apparently helping to support them financially. You can’t tell me you didn’t know any of that.”
“I . . . didn’t . . .” Clarissa thought of the times she’d talked about shopping, and how Paige had always said something to the effect of, “I’m trying to save my money right now.” Never once had she mentioned anything about sending money to a sick mother. Never once in all that time. “No, I didn’t know. She never talked about it.”
Tony shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I’m sure you realize that she’s having trouble finding another job because of all this. In fact, what you probably don’t realize is that her father had to sell his truck and plumbing supplies. That’ll make it kind of hard for him to return to work when he gets back into town, wouldn’t you say?”
Clarissa looked at Tony and recoiled. The look in his eyes was one she recognized well; she’d seen it often enough in her stepmother. Disgust. Just another family member disappointed in her.
His accusation awoke in her the only thing that could defend her now. Anger. “Well, she shouldn’t have made mistakes, then.”
If Tony had even blinked during this conversation, Clarissa hadn’t seen it. He nodded very slowly. “I’m glad to know your conscience is clear.”
“Sparkling.” Clarissa folded her arms and propped her feet in the chair across the table.
“Then I guess I don’t have anything else to talk to you about. Have a good evening.” He stood and walked to the door. He opened it, then turned. “Sleep well.”
Paige was driving down the busy freeway. Cars whizzing past. A beautiful young girl with huge blue eyes was waving to her from the middle seat of her mother’s SUV. No, wait, she wasn’t waving, she was screaming.
Paige sat up in the bed, gasping for breath. The dream never seemed to go away, or lessen in intensity. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse.
She got up and walked to the kitchen for a drink of water. The digital clock on the oven displayed 4:30 a.m. in brilliant neon blue. Paige sat down at the oak table and took a sip of water. She couldn’t go back to bed and face the possibility of another dream, so she went to the den and picked up the remote, but never pushed the button.