Chapter Fourteen
I ARRIVED AT the airport at a quarter after four in the crab car and discovered the airport was on some kind of alert. It took me a half hour to get through the nimrod security designed to stop terrorists without two brain cells to rub together. Like barricades and checkpoints were really going to help. All a terrorist needed was a fake ID and the ability to turn a corner and he would be allowed to park. It was inconvenient at best and rip-roaring annoying at worst. The Feds couldn’t decide what to do, so they settled for looking like they were doing something. Since I couldn’t go to the gate, I settled at a bar, ordered an iced tea and waited for my parents to walk by.
A half hour later, a glut of passengers passed, but my parents weren’t among them. I waited and the passageway cleared. I went and checked the arrivals monitor and sure enough their flight was in.
Ridiculous thoughts popped unbidden into my head. Things I usually was able to keep under wraps, like some ex-con murdered Gavin and poisoned Dad for revenge and my parents were lying in a ditch somewhere. That’s what Mom used to say when I was late for curfew. “You could’ve been dead in a ditch somewhere, young lady.” I thought that was stupid when she said it to me and before I knew it, I was thinking it about her. It must be something about being an adult that makes you go to the worst-case scenario instead of the best, like they missed their connection.
An announcement came over the intercom, “Carolina Watts, please come to Concourse A security. Carolina Watts, please come to Concourse A Security.”
My stomach twisted into a bow tie. I dropped a five on the table and jogged down the passage. Like my mother, I should never run in public. There’s not a bra manufactured that can stop my breasts from bouncing like a couple of kids on a trampoline and the little lace number I had on was barely enough to keep them from knocking me out. A businessman dropped his briefcase and I saw a wife smack her husband on the back of the head as I passed.
I rounded the turn and saw Mom and Dad standing on my side of Security. Mom seemed okay, but Dad looked like he’d been pulled from my imaginary ditch half alive. Some guards stood near my parents, looking at me with their mouths hanging open. The guards were all men except for one large black lady with Lynette on her name tag. She was also looking at me, but without the whoa expression on her face. She smiled as I ran up out of breath and said, “Girl, you should be against the law. Look at these fools. As if your mother wasn’t bad enough.”
“Sorry,” I said, panting.
“Don’t be sorry, girl. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Just don’t run. The world can’t take it.”
I turned to Mom. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Mom fluffed her hair and looked at Dad out of the corner of her eye. “We’re fine. We could use some help with the carry-on luggage though.”
“Fine? Are you nuts? Dad looks like he should be in the ICU,” I said.
“I can hear you. I’m standing right here. How about a kiss for your dear old dad?” Dad leaned on Mom and held out his hand. His skin had the translucent look of greased paper and his veins showed the effects of several needle sticks. Large purple bruises spread across the back of his hands and up his wrists, ending in large Band-Aids. I was glad I wasn’t the one who had to find a reasonable vein for an IV.
Dad wasn’t a guy who had a lot of color to begin with, but his freckles stood out like stars in the night sky. There were deep purple grooves under his eyes and his eyeballs looked too small for their sockets. The lower lids hung away from the eyes, showing the blood-red rims. His red hair wasn’t brushed back sleek as a seal, but stuck up in every direction in odd clumps. There was a spot of crusty yellow on the front of his polo shirt and his jeans were about to fall off him.
“I think I’ll pass. Can we get a wheelchair over here?” I asked Lynette.
“You could, but he won’t sit in it. I already tried.” Her mouth turned down into a disapproving frown, and her arms crossed over her own substantial chest.
“I don’t need a wheelchair,” said Dad. “How old do you think I am?”
“Dad, it’s not your age. It’s your condition. You look like you’re ready for a toe tag. Can we have that wheelchair, please?” I looked at Lynette. She shrugged and went into a storage room.
“No wheelchair,” said Dad as Lynette wheeled a chair up behind Dad and opened it up.
“Dad, if you don’t sit in that chair, I’m taking you straight to the ER instead of home. What do you think of that?”
“It sucks,” he said.
“Damn straight. Sit down.”
Dad looked at me with his basset hound eyes. “To think I could’ve had a vasectomy.”
“Tommy, for heaven sake.” Mom looked at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, honeybabe. It’s been rough.”
Dad looked at the two of us. “I’m not sorry. She’s a pain in my ass. Always has been. Who do you think you are? I don’t take orders. I give them.”
“Dad, please.”
“Don’t you talk to me.” He looked at the guards. “Do you know what her name is? We call her Mercy, not Carolina, Mercy. Why do we call her that? Because she screamed for twelve hours straight the day we brought her home. All I could say was, ‘Have mercy.” And that’s what we call her. My wife wanted to have another one. Another one? Are you crazy, woman?” Dad looked at Mom and passed out cold. Luckily, he dropped straight back into the wheelchair. I checked his pulse and respiration. They were fast, but not dangerous.
“Should we wait until he wakes up, so he can order me to push him to the car?” I asked Mom.
“Be amusing on your own time. Push the chair.”
We got Dad out of the airport and into the back of the car before he woke up. I covered him with the emergency blanket he kept in the trunk.
Mom glanced at Dad’s closed eyes and whispered, “Tell me you took care of that problem.”
“Well…”
“Don’t well me. You fix this. Now,” said Mom.
He opened his bleary eyes and started struggling with the blanket. The only word he uttered that I could understand was barf. Mom and I pulled his head and chest back out of the car. He vomited a thin, yellowish liquid onto the pavement. It’s the kind of stuff that comes out of a stomach that’s been ill and empty for too long. He continued to dry heave for ten minutes, then I dried his mouth with a tissue and checked his pulse again. Dad was getting into the scary range and I had to make a judgment call. We put him back into the car and I asked Mom, “Didn’t they put him on anything?”
“Of course they did, but he keeps throwing it up.”
“What about a suppository for the nausea?”
“No, they said he was better.”
“This is better?”
“Your father was putting on a bit of a brave face. We had to get on that plane.”
“It’s not going to make any difference where he is in this condition. You should’ve stayed there.” I felt Dad’s forehead and tucked the blanket in around him.
“There’s no reasoning with him. We’ve been married for twenty-six years and I’ve never seen him this belligerent. Well, maybe when Cora died, but mostly he was just crazy,” said Mom.
I ran my thumb over the lines in Dad’s forehead. I hadn’t thought about Cora in years. She was one of Dad’s partners and the only female. Cora got shot in the head when she walked into a robbery in progress in her own house. Dad loved Cora. He thought she was the best he ever worked with. I was ten at the time and her death changed him in ways I didn’t understand.
If he was as bad as when Cora died, it was serious. “I think we need to take him in,” I said as I fired up the car.
Mom got in and wrinkled her nose. “Do you smell something? What is that?”
“Aaron.”
“Poor guy.”
“Aaron is not the victim here. He’s quite happy as a matter of fact.”
Mom found an old air freshener in the glove compartment and swung it around. “I can feel sorry for him if I want
to. He can’t help it if he stinks.”
“Yes, he can. That’s what soap and not eating crab is for.”
“Fine. Now are you sure we have to take your father in? He won’t be happy.”
“Nothing would make him happy right now, and I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“The ship’s doctor said it was some kind of flu-like virus. He has to ride it out.”
“How many people got it?”
“Quite a few, I gathered.”
“How many is that? Ten, twenty?”
“More like a couple hundred. It was on the news,” said Mom.
“Haven’t been watching a whole lot of CNN lately.”
“I’m sorry. Has it been very bad here? How’s Sharon?”
“I really don’t know,” I said, feeling my throat constrict at the thought of Gavin and Dixie.
“She’s out of her head, honey. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“You talked to her?”
“Once. Two days ago. She says she yelled at you. What happened?” Mom twisted in her seat and looked at me. I was merging onto the I-70 with the Escort right behind and took the opportunity to concentrate on that while forming a reply. Mom wouldn’t be happy with how Dixie found out about Gavin’s murder, but I’d feel worse if I lied to her about it. Mom would find out in the end, so I gave it up.
“She overheard me talking to Pete about what happened to Gavin.”
“That’s how she found out he was murdered?”
“I didn’t mean for her to hear. It just happened.”
“You should’ve been more careful.” Mom turned back towards the front and crossed her arms. She looked up at the ceiling. “What else can happen?”
“Don’t say that. We could have an accident on the way to the hospital.”
“Heaven forbid. Are you still seeing that Pete what’s-his-name?”
“Yes. I’m still seeing what’s-his-name.”
“He’s a doctor, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Why?” I asked.
“Could he come by?”
“You want to meet my boyfriend now?” I couldn’t believe it. My parents, mostly Dad, had a long-standing rule about meeting boyfriends. He couldn’t hate them if they didn’t exist.
“No, I mean yes, I want to meet him, but I was hoping he would take a look at your father.”
“You don’t trust my medical opinion? I’m your own daughter.”
“Pete’s a doctor. I’d like him to take a look.”
“Instead of taking Dad to the ER, you mean,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Is he that crazy?”
“You have no idea. If we take him to the hospital, we may as well book him into the psych ward straight away.”
“My phone’s in my purse.”
Mom got out my cell phone and texted Pete a 911. He called back immediately and agreed to come to the house. Pete wasn’t thrilled about meeting my dad, period, but he still agreed to come. I must’ve sounded desperate.
After I hung up with Pete, Dad started making gagging noises.
“Pull over. Pull over,” Mom yelled.
I couldn’t. We were on the highway into the city and there was nowhere to go. Mom panicked. She opened her purse and dumped it out on the floor. It was her favorite Prada bag, but Dad could not barf all over the car. If that happened, there would be repercussions, to say the least. Mom started to crawl into the back seat.
“Wait. I have a salad in the glove compartment. Toss it and use the container.”
Dad’s long arms waved around as the gagging got worse.
“Why do you have a salad in the glove compartment?”
“Who cares? Hurry!”
“What do I do with the salad?” Mom looked around with the Styrofoam box in her hands.
“Throw it out the window.”
“It’ll get on the paint.”
“Christ, Mom. It has six thousand coats of wax on it. Just toss it.”
Mom flipped my salad out the window and it flew straight back. A Buick swerved and dodged it and my salad splatted onto the Escort’s windshield. Much honking and, I imagine, cursing ensued as the Escort ended up on an off ramp and we sped away.
“Mercy, look what you made me do. You could’ve caused an accident,” Mom yelled.
I could’ve caused an accident. She flew Plague Man halfway around the world, and I could’ve caused an accident. I was sure all the people from the plane who would be barfing their brains out in a day or two would think I was the bad one. Recycled air was the curse of all travelers.
Dad made a chest-deep honk like a water buffalo. I’d never heard a water buffalo, but I was sure that’s what they sounded like, low and phlegmy.
“Mom!” I yelled as Mom crawled into the back and murmured soothing sounds into Dad’s ear while he spewed into my salad box. When he was done, she came back to the front seat with the box.
“I suppose you want me to throw this out the window too,” she said.
“I do not,” I said.
Actually, I did, but I could live with the smell for another ten minutes in order to take the high road.
I pulled into the alley in record time and saw Pete leaning on his ancient Saab parked next to our trash bins. He looked wonderfully cool and confident. The sight of him made me want to cry with relief.
“Is that him?” Mom asked.
“That’s him,” I said with more than a little apprehension.
“Nice, and he drives a Saab. Your father will be pleased.”
“I’m sure that’s what Pete was going for.”
“Don’t be snide. I’m saying it’s a good thing.”
“I know.”
I parked in the garage, got out, and kissed Pete. Then I turned to Mom and introduced the two of them. Mom shook his hand, apologizing for both calling him and her appearance. She was stunning, as she well knew, and Pete said so. That brought a smile to her face and we were off on the right foot.
Pete listened to Dad’s heart and lungs, took his blood pressure and pulse in the car in case we had to take him in. He pronounced him safe to keep at home for the time being and asked me to get a bag out of his back seat. Pete and Mom slid Dad out of the car and Pete carried him into the house. There was a lot of strength in that skinny body. I never would’ve guessed it.
There was no sign of Dixie or anyone else as we walked up the stairs to the second floor. Mom decided to settle in the largest guest room since Dixie was entrenched in their room. Dad lay on the bed semiconscious while Pete unpacked his bag. It was filled to the brim with hospital supplies, IVs, several bags of saline, some lancets, tubes for collecting blood samples, several prescription bottles, syringes, and liquid vials from the pharmacy.
Mom took off Dad’s stained shirt and we got a view of his sunken chest. Mom and I pulled on a fresh pajama top. I’d never seen him wear one before. Dad had pajamas although he never wore them. He usually slept in boxer shorts and he wasn’t shy. He was known to answer the door first thing in the morning without adding to his wardrobe. And by God if he wanted to get the paper like that, he did. As a teenager, I complained that my friends didn’t want to see him in his skivvies. Dad couldn’t see why they’d care. He couldn’t care less what they wore. Half the time, I would’ve sworn that he didn’t see them at all, unless they said something that interested him, which was rare.
Since I was the nurse, I had to do the IV. Dad’s arms looked like he’d been bludgeoned. I hated the idea of poking a needle into those traumatized arms. I might’ve asked Pete to do it, but I’d look like a wuss. So I pictured Dad as an intravenous drug user -- he had the body -- and got started. I blew three veins and got lucky on the fourth stick. Dad was so out of it, he barely complained. I hooked the bag on a coat hanger and hung it on the headboard. Pete measured out a dose of Zofran and injected it into the IV line.
“That should take care of the nausea and vomiting,” Pete said. Then he looked at me. “You can give him another
two cc’s in a couple of hours, if you think he needs it. We’ll see how he’s doing then and reevaluate.”
“So you don’t think he’ll need to go to the hospital?” Mom asked.
“I don’t think so, but he’s right on the edge. It depends on how he responds to the Zofran and if we can get him hydrated in a reasonable amount of time.”
“What’s a reasonable amount of time?” said Mom.
“I’d like to see him hold something down within two hours. Apple juice or a cracker will do.”
“I’m certain he’ll be able to do that now that he’s medicated. Why don’t you two go downstairs while I put his pajama bottoms on?”
Pete and I went down to the kitchen. I found a can of Jolt for Pete and made hot chocolate for myself. I needed it, even if it was ninety degrees outside.
“I can’t believe an airline would let him fly in that condition,” Pete said.
“Dad can be very persuasive.”
“I still don’t see how he talked them into it.”
“Let’s just say he knows people,” I said with a smile.
“People in high places?”
“And low places. All layers of the stratosphere really, and they all owe him or want him to owe them.”
“Airlines have regulations about illness and injury. It doesn’t matter who you are or know. Someone wasn’t doing their job.” Pete frowned at me. I didn’t respond immediately and his gaze hardened. People shouldn’t break the rules and certainly not because they admired or feared someone. Debts should never be considered. Rules were rules and for the world to run correctly, they must be obeyed. Pete didn’t live in Dad’s world. I didn’t either, but I visited on a regular basis.
“Well, you know how overworked all those airline people are. They’re more concerned with keeping weapons off planes than viruses, I imagine.” I looked into Pete’s blue eyes and tried to look as innocent as possible. I loved his big eyes with their heavy fringe of lashes, almost feminine in their thickness. His expression changed from suspicious to affectionate and he relaxed. He pushed back and balanced his chair on its hind legs. He looked elegant and easy. I could smell his scent despite the distance between us. I filled my lungs with it. Pete smelled like the color forest green looks.
“Light day?” I asked.
“Yes, we’re nearly empty. Why do you ask?”
“You smell good,” I said and Pete laughed quietly. Mom walked into the kitchen. She had a funny look on her face like she was intruding, which she wasn’t.
“I just thought I’d get some juice and crackers for Dad,” she said as she walked past us into the butler’s pantry. We listened to her search until she came back into the kitchen empty-handed. “I think we’re out of saltines.”
Pete stood up. “I’ll get some.”
“Good. Could you pick up some smoky cheddar, too? Tommy likes it when he’s sick.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Dad hasn’t been sick in twenty years.”
“Well, he liked it twenty years ago. Stop arguing. You’re as bad as he is and drop those casseroles on your way.” Mom pointed to the dishes that The Girls had brought their famous casseroles over in. Pete picked them up and I told Mom we’d head to The Girls’ house first.