Home Again

Feeling better, she crawled back onto the couch and drew the quilt around her, settling in. Her head hit the pillow and she closed her eyes.

  She was awakened by the electricity coming back on. Noise blared from the television. Light stabbed her bleary eyes. She blinked heavily and sat up, staring blankly at the TV. A televangelist was asking for donations in a booming, authoritative voice. God wants you to dig deep….

  She reached for the remote control and meant to hit the Mute button. Instead she depressed Volume and the televangelist’s voice screamed at her to give, give to the Lord. Wincing, she pressed another button and dropped the remote onto the couch. Then she glanced down at her watch.

  Two forty-five.

  “Francis,” she whispered, lurching to her feet.

  She raced to the front door and flung it open. The storm had given way to a gentle falling rain. Several cedar boughs lay tangled across her lawn. Falling leaves blew along her fence line. The driveway was empty.

  “Mom?”

  She spun around, her heart pumping so loudly, she could hear it in her ears, and saw Lina standing in the living room, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Hi, honey,” she said in a shaking voice, reluctantly closing the door. “Did the TV wake you? I’m sorry.”

  Lina shook her head.

  For the first time Madelaine noticed how pale Lina was. She crossed the room toward her. “Baby, are you okay?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Lina tightened the blanket around her body. “I had a nightmare—…. I-Is Francis here yet?”

  Madelaine hid her fear behind a quick, darting smile. “No, not yet, but you know Francis….”

  The phone rang.

  As one, Madelaine and Lina looked at the phone, then at each other. They shared a single desperate thought: Oh, God, not a phone call in the middle of the night

  Lina took a step backward, shaking her head. “Don’t answer it, Mom.”

  Madelaine stood there, unable to move, her stomach tightening. The phone jangled again, and she jumped toward it, yanking up the handset in shaking hands, lifting it to her ear. “H-Hello?”

  “May I speak to Madelaine Hillyard?”

  She recognized the voice instantly—it was cold, impersonal authority. “This is she.”

  “Ma’am, this is Officer Jim Braxton with the Oregon Highway Patrol.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes.” Her voice was a thin, trembling whisper.

  “Do you know a Francis Xavier DeMarco?”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “Yes.”

  “He had your name and phone number in his wallet. You’re listed as the person to call in case of an emergency.”

  A memory of last Christmas flashed through her mind—when Francis had opened the wallet she’d given him and written her name on that cheesy little piece of paper that came tucked in the credit card slot. “Yes,” was all she said. Her heart was beating so loudly, she could hardly hear.

  “I’m sorry to inform you that there’s been an accident.”

  She swayed and sank slowly to the couch. “Is he alive?”

  “Oh, my God,” Lina said.

  “He’s been taken to Claremont Hospital in Portland. I can give you that number.”

  She felt a quiver of hope. “They took him to the hospital? That means he’s alive.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “He was alive when the ambulance arrived at the scene, ma’am. That’s all I know.”

  She couldn’t even say thank you. He gave her the number for the hospital, and she wrote it down in a fog. Then she punched in the number and asked for the emergency room.

  Yes, they had a Francis DeMarco. Yes, he was still alive, listed in critical condition. There’d been an accident…. Was she a relative? No? Then there was no more information available. Mr. DeMarco was in surgery right now and could the doctor call her when he was finished?

  Madelaine mumbled something about being right there and slammed the phone down on the receiver.

  She turned to Lina, who was still standing in the same place, her face paler now, her eyes filled with tears. “He’s dead,” she said dully.

  “No. He’s alive. He’s in surgery.”

  Lina started to cry. “Oh, Mom …”

  Madelaine got to her feet and stood there, shaking. She took a deep, steadying breath. There was no time for this panic, this fear. Later she could fall apart, but now Francis needed her. Lina needed her.

  She handled it the only way she knew how with cold practicality. She donned the invisible white coat and became Dr. Hillyard, who dealt with these crises every day.

  She went to Lina and pulled her daughter into her arms, holding her close. She felt Lina’s arms curl around her at last, felt the shuddering of Lina’s body against hers, felt the moisture of Lina’s tears against her neck. “Shh,” she whispered, stroking Lina’s damp cheek.

  “We’ve got to be strong for Francis now. There isn’t time for what we’re feeling. You go get dressed and pack us a bag. I’ll call the airline.”

  Lina shook her head. “I can’t.”

  Madelaine gripped her daughter by the shoulders. “You can. You have to.” She softened a little bit, as much as she could allow herself. “He’s in surgery, Lina. That means he’s still alive. He needs us.”

  Lina looked up, her mouth trembling. “We need him, too, Mom.”

  The few small words hurt so badly that Madelaine felt her own tears rising, cresting. “Yes.” She said the word in a whisper of her normal voice, but it boomed into the silence like a scream.

  The drive to the airport and the flight to Portland seemed to take forever.

  Madelaine stared out the airplane’s small, oval window, seeing her own ashen features reflected in the fake glass. Her eyes looked like black holes burned into flesh-tone plastic; her mouth was a colorless crease.

  Finally the plane started its ear-popping descent. Madelaine turned to Lina, saw the pallor of her daughter’s cheek, the involuntary tremble of her lower lip.

  She ached to say that Francis would be okay, but she couldn’t make that kind of promise. The physician in her was too ingrained to trump the mother who wanted to offer unconditional hope.

  “Don’t stare at me, Mom.” Lina didn’t blink or turn, just gazed steadily at the burgundy-upholstered seat in front of her. A tear squeezed past her eyelashes and rolled down one colorless cheek, splashing on the nylon seat-belt strap.

  Tentatively Madelaine reached out, covered Lina’s cold hand with her own.

  Quietly Lina said, “I think he’s dead.”

  “No,” Madelaine answered quickly. “He’s in surgery. If he were dead …” She couldn’t go on, couldn’t think about it. Her throat closed up. “If he were dead, I’d feel it.”

  Lina turned to her then, her eyes wide with hope. “What do you mean?”

  Madelaine slipped her fingers through Lina’s and held her hand until the flesh warmed again. Twisting slightly in her seat, she rested her head against it. “I was sixteen when I met Francis.” She closed her eyes, remembering a dozen moments all at once. She saw him on that day when he’d come to the doctor’s office to rescue her—the cavalry in the form of a bookish, starry-eyed eighteen-year-old with a heart as big as the whole outdoors. She’d been huddled alongside the public telephone, nervously jumping every time the door opened, certain Alex was going to come thundering through at any second. But it had only been Francis coming for her, reaching for her, taking her hand. Maddy-girl, you’re on the wrong side of town.

  Help me, she’d whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. And his one-word answer, so easy, so fast. Forever.

  Madelaine tried to find the words. “I’d know if he were dead. I’d feel…”

  “What?” Lina pleaded.

  “Nothing.” She covered her heart with her hand, feeling the thudding pulse of her own life. “In here, I’d be empty.” Her voice cracked as the images returned—Francis smiling, laughing, holding her hand, drying her tears, calling her his Ma
ddy-girl. “I don’t think I could breathe without him … and I’m breathing.”

  Madelaine fell silent, lost in the world of her memories. It took her a moment to notice that Lina was sitting too still, the tears rolling one after another down her cheeks.

  Madelaine touched her daughter’s chin. “Oh, baby …”

  Lina swallowed hard, stared out the window behind Madelaine. “I yelled at him,” she said in a quiet, anguished voice. “The last time I saw him …”

  “Don’t do that,” Madelaine said in a rush.

  Lina squeezed her eyes shut. “I hurt him.”

  “He told me he’d let you down. He wanted to come to Juvenile Hall to pick you up….” Grief tightened around her chest until she could barely breathe. “He … he was afraid you wouldn’t forgive him.’”

  “I did,” Lina whispered. “I did.”

  Madelaine pushed away the weight of her guilt and tried desperately to give her daughter a smile. “You tell him that when you see him.”

  Madelaine had been in hospital waiting rooms a thousand times in her career, and she’d never truly noticed what they were like. How the neutral walls closed in on you, how the Naugahyde chairs made your back ache. How magazines were useless. Insulting, even. What was she supposed to do now, read about some celebrity’s valiant battle with cocaine?

  She paced back and forth in front of the small window that overlooked the parking lot.

  Lina sat stiffly in a chair by the pay phone. Neither one of them had spoken in the thirty minutes since they’d arrived. They’d been told that Francis was in surgery and that a Dr. Nusbaum would speak to them when the operation was over.

  Madelaine had wanted to push her way into the OR, but she knew she wouldn’t be of any use. The best help she could offer was to hold his hand when it was over.

  She turned, glanced again at the big black schoolroom clock on the wall. Another sixty seconds of eternity clicked past.

  Finally a tall, white-haired man in green surgical scrubs pushed into the tiny room, his mask hung loosely around his neck. Blood splattered his clothing in red-black splotches. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think of Francis’s blood.

  The man shoved a hand through his thinning hair and sighed heavily, glancing from Madelaine to Lina and back to Madelaine. “You’re Mrs. DeMarco?”

  It was strange how the question hurt. She shook her head, wringing her hands together and moving toward him, her gaze riveted on his face, searching for answers, pleading silently for hope. “No, I’m Dr. Madelaine Hillyard—cardiologist, St. Joe’s,” she added uselessly, wondering why she’d said it. “This is my daughter, Lina. We are Francis’s … family.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Hillyard….”

  She didn’t hear anything else. Blood roared in her ears, and she couldn’t breathe. For a horrifying second she thought she was going to vomit, right there on the waiting room floor.

  “The injury was too extensive….”

  She took a long, shaking breath and balled her hands into fists. She felt her nails digging into her flesh, tearing her skin as she fought for composure. She welcomed the pain—it gave her something to think about, however briefly. Finally, what emerged from the rubble of her mind were questions, objective, informed, practical questions that were like slipping on her protective white coat. “I need to see his charts. What happened?”

  “Brain stem injury,” he said gently, as if a softened voice could make a difference when the words were so cold and ugly. “He went through the windshield of his car and hit a tree with his head. Massive intracranial hemorrhage. We’ve got him on life support right now, but—”

  “What?” Lina shouted. “You mean he’s alive?” She looked at Madelaine in obvious confusion, then at the surgeon. “You said you were sorry—”

  Nusbaum took a moment to choose his words. “Physically, he’s functioning—with maximum intervention.”

  “Maximum intervention?” Lina said, her voice shrill. “What the hell is that?”

  Nusbaum looked pointedly at Madelaine. “I’ve run three EEGs. They’re completely flat….” He let the sentence trail off, but Madelaine knew the procedure. Three flat EEGs and a patient was declared legally brain-dead.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  She stared at him blankly, thinking of all the times she’d said the same useless sentence to people—I’m sorry, Mr. So-and-So—best efforts… injuries were too extensive. She’d never realized how stark and un-forgiving the words were, how they twisted through your insides and pulled your guts out until you had no strength.

  A terrifyingly familiar picture shot through her mind. She saw Francis, her Francis, lying in a bed somewhere in this cavernous building, his body hooked up to a dozen machines, his eyes—his warm, loving eyes—staring blankly at the ceiling. She felt a scream start deep inside her, building, gathering force until it choked her.

  “What is he saying, Mom?” Lina asked.

  Madelaine looked at her daughter and saw a six-year-old girl standing there, pigtails askew, tears staining her bright pink cheeks. For a split second her own grief faded, and all she could think about was her baby girl, and what this news was doing to her, what it would do every moment for the rest of her life. She wanted to handle this just right, to explain the difference between a coma and brain death. To make Lina truly understand that the machines were keeping Francis’s body alive, but his soul was gone, and soon the body would shut itself down with or without the machines. The body knew when its brain was gone….

  But she couldn’t find the perfect words, or any words at all.

  The sense of failure threaded through her pain and weighed her down. Slowly she crossed the room and slipped an arm around Lina’s thin shoulders. “He’s saying that Francis is gone, baby.”

  Lina jerked away from her and spun around, staring blankly out the window. Then, slowly, she sank onto the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands.

  Tears scalded Madelaine’s eyes. She wanted to give in to them as Lina had, allow herself the relief of crying, but she couldn’t. She looked up at Dr. Nusbaum. “Can we see him?”

  “Of course,” he said softly. “Follow me.”

  The hospital hallway was eerily quiet. Nurses walked by on crepe-soled shoes, barely rippling the air with their presence. Room after room was dark, the curtains drawn. Empty chairs lined the white walls, magazines lay slumped on Formica tables.

  Lina had grown up in hospitals. As a child, she’d played in corridors like this, waddling after smiling nurses, reading Dr. Seuss books on waiting-room chairs. She’d always thought of hospitals as her mother’s workplace, no different from a lawyer’s office or a beauty salon.

  But now she saw them for what they were—shadowy warehouses where the dead and dying were housed in quiet, curtained rooms, where machines sucked and wheezed and held on to life through thick electrical cords.

  She felt her mother beside her, heard her penny loafers click on the linoleum floor. She wanted to slip her hand through her mom’s hand and squeeze, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Her arms felt limp and heavy at her sides, her legs felt as rubbery as fresh Jell-O. Tears were a stinging, burning veil that turned everything into a smear of white.

  Finally Dr. Nusbaum stopped at a room. The door was closed. Beside it, a large observation window revealed the room. A yellow curtain was drawn around the bed, shielding Francis from their eyes.

  The doctor turned to them. “He looks …” He shot a quick glance at Lina, then spoke quietly to Madelaine. “The injury to the left side was extensive. He’s bandaged, but…”

  Lina thought instantly of Francis’s smile, the big one that seemed to take over his face, crinkling his eyes, creating a dozen little folds across his cheeks.

  She drew in a sharp breath.

  “Thank you, Dr. Nusbaum,” her mother said in a stiff, wooden voice. “I’ll speak to you after I’ve seen him.”

  Lina stared at her mother in shock, wondering how she could
be so matter-of-fact right now.

  Dr. Nusbaum nodded and left them alone.

  “I don’t understand, Mom,” she whispered, trying her best not to cry. “Maybe he’s in a coma…. People come out of comas, don’t they? Maybe if we talked to him—”

  Mom swallowed hard. “It’s not a coma, baby. Francis’s brain is dead. The machines are keeping his body functioning, but everything that he is—he was—is gone.”

  “That man in Tennessee … he woke up—”

  Mom shook her head gently. “This is different, baby.”

  Lina wished she didn’t understand, but she did. She was a doctor’s kid, and she knew what brain death meant. In a coma, the brain functioned, and so there was hope. When the brain died, there was no hope. Francis, her Francis, was gone and he wasn’t coming back.

  For a long time—Lina could hear the quiet ticking of the clock above their heads—they stood there, staring past each other, saying nothing.

  “I need to see him,” her mother said finally.

  Lina turned to the window, moving closer. She put her hands out, touched the pane, thinking—crazily—that it would be like touching Francis one last time. But all it felt was cold and flat.

  Beyond the thin veil of the absurd yellow curtain, she could see the shadowy outline of a body in a bed, the rise and fall of a black cylinder beside it. She tried to see through it, to imagine just for a second what it would feel like to walk into that room, to see her Francis lying in a hospital bed, his cheeks white, his face slack, his eyes—oh, God, his blue, blue eyes …

  “I can’t do it, Mom,” she whispered, shaking her head. The words stuck in her throat, felt so disloyal. But she couldn’t do it, couldn’t look at him and then sleep at night. Not if his eyes were blank, not if he couldn’t smile at her and reach out his hand. “I can’t look at him that way….”

  Her mother moved closer, swept a cold, reassuring hand along her cheek. Lina waited for her mom to look at her, but she never did, just kept staring at that curtained window.

  “I saw my mother after she died,” she said at last in a voice so twisted, Lina barely recognized it. “My father took me into her dark bedroom and told me to look at her, to touch her cheek…. It was so cold.” She shivered slightly and drew her hand back, crossing her arms. “For years and years after that, when I thought of my mother, I thought of … the wrong picture, the wrong memory.”