“That’s a decision only Maureen can make,” Mom answered sharply, but then she softened. “I don’t think he would help the situation. They haven’t spoken in two years, and Maureen doesn’t even know where he is.” Mom slumped down into a chair and sat with her eyes closed. Her face was puffy, and sunburn streaked the front of her legs. “I just can’t believe this,” she said with a sob she couldn’t choke back. Without a word, the man in the chair next to her got up to make way for my father. Dad wrapped his arms around her while she cried. Nobody stared or pointed or shifted uncomfortably. A woman nearby offered me her seat too. I shook my head. There was a hierarchy of emergency seating, too, something else I was learning.
When Mom stopped crying, she disappeared again behind the NO ADMITTANCE doors. She was gone only a few minutes. This time when she came back, even puffier-faced, she stopped outside the door and waved Dad over, out of earshot. After a brief conversation, and a few head shakes, my dad went through the NO ADMITTANCE doors and my mom walked toward me.
“Aunt Mo . . .” My mother stopped and took a big breath. “Mo thinks it would be a good idea for you to see Riley.”
“She’s better?” I asked. What I was really thinking was, Who, me? Now?
“She’s . . . the same,” Mom answered. “But we’re all going to stay here tonight. Just to be close. Dad is going to see her now and then you and I will go . . . together.” The last time my mother stayed in a hospital overnight, my grandmother had died. Nobody had said anything about Riley dying! There were only two things I knew to worry about—stroke and heart condition. They were serious things. But dying? Had I missed the third thing—she could die?
Dad came back through the swinging double doors now, his eyes swollen. He hadn’t been gone that long. Why were they rushing? What was the hurry to get me in there? Yet another person stood up, offering a seat. He knew. The stranger knew. He knew the third thing! Dad didn’t take the seat. He caught Mom’s eye and nodded toward the doors. Mom grasped my hand. Our turn. I forced my legs to move.
* * *
The emergency room was actually one huge room divided into small sections by sheets hanging from movable tracks, like shower curtains. Mom parked me outside one of the curtained areas and told me to stay put. In the split second that the curtain was drawn back, I saw all I needed to see. It was worse than Riley lying on the concrete. Worse than Riley on a stretcher and being rolled away into an ambulance. I caught my breath.
It was awful.
Riley was riddled with needles, wires, tape, and tubes. Her skin was grayish-blue, and even her lips were pale. Clear liquid dripped from bags hanging off poles by her bed. Nothing about her said “okay.” Nothing about her even said “alive.”
What had I done? For the second time that day, I backed away from her. I stared down at the floor, my red sneakers blurry through tears. WARNING: THE CYCLONE ROLLER COASTER IS A HIGH-IMPACT RIDE. ANY PERSON WITH BACK, NECK, OR HEART PROBLEMS SHOULD NOT RIDE THIS RIDE.
“Honey.”
I looked up. “Nora—oh, honey . . .” My mom. Hugging me. Hard. Rocking me back and forth. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she said, squeezing so tight as I began to cry. I didn’t hear Aunt Maureen; I felt her arms wrapping around the both of us. Riley’s curtain was wide open now. I closed my eyes so hard I saw stars.
* * *
12 Critical condition is terrible. The only worse condition is, well, dead. It is the worst of the “conditions” you can be in. The others are good, fair, and serious, and I think they are self-explanatory.
DAY 2
Archie . . .”
I wiped sleep out of my eyes when I heard the dog’s name. When I sat up, the pieces around me fell into place. The waiting room, the double doors, Riley. I put my head back down in my dad’s lap. How many hours had gone by? My mother was sitting by my feet, talking about the dog. Why were they talking about the dog?
“He’ll be scared and hungry,” she continued. “And here’s a list of what Maureen needs from the house. She won’t be home for a few days, at least.” My mother was back in control mode. “Throw some things in a bag for me, too.”
“You’re not coming home?” I was fully awake now. “Am I staying too? Is Riley okay?” At some point last night my mother had pulled back her hair and washed her face. Yesterday’s smudged mascara was gone.
“You’re going to go with Dad.”
“I’ll go get the car.” My dad was counting bills from his wallet. “I’m sure I can get a cab in front of the hospital.” I stood up to go with him. “You stay here, kitten. It may take me a while to find it. . . .” He kissed the two of us good-bye.
My mother took a deep breath before she finally answered my question about Riley. “Riley is in intensive care now. She had a rough night and developed some swelling in her brain.”13 She reached out and took my hand before I could react. “The doctors say this isn’t unusual after a stroke, and they know how to treat it.”
“Does it hurt?” My tears came without sound when I imagined Riley’s brain building up pressure.
“I don’t think so, sweetheart.” Mom pulled me toward her. “Riley is getting all kinds of medicine to make sure that she’s comfortable.” Comfortable. Making someone comfortable did not sound the same as making someone better. It had been less than twenty-four hours and things were getting even worse.
“Are you sure it’s okay to leave?” Was that right? Were you supposed to leave people behind at the hospital? Riley’s brain is swelling, so Mom and Aunt Maureen have to stay? Riley’s brain is swelling, but Dad and I have to go home to walk the dog? Riley had a rough night, but Aunt Mo needs clean clothes? Riley is not better, but Riley is comfortable?
“Come on, I want you to eat something before you head back.” Mom pulled a bagel and a chocolate milk out of a bag I hadn’t even noticed. I didn’t take them from her. “It’s okay to go home for a bit, honey. And it’s okay to eat. Maybe even take a quick shower when you’re there. You’ll feel better.” She offered the bagel again, but I didn’t want it. I had no right to be comfortable.
* * *
“You feeling okay, kitten?” It had taken Dad about an hour to find the car and drive back to get me. Mom closed the rear door of the car and sent us off with the breakfast I still hadn’t eaten and a promise to text if anything changed.
“Yeah.” I stared at the hospital from the backseat and wondered which floor Riley was on.
“You feel like talking?”
“Not really.” I let my head fall against the window, making myself as uncomfortable as I could.
“Maybe sleep a little more, if you can.” I looked down toward the beach as Dad made a left turn onto the parkway at the same corner where Mom had taken off running less than twenty-four hours ago. Looked like any other intersection. You’d never know there was a stroke and brain swelling on the other side.
As much as I didn’t want to think about Riley, the only thing I wanted to think about less was her dog. For Riley’s sake, I pretend to love Archie because, well, because she loved him and it was important to her. Truth is, he was an overly anxious dog the size of a small pony, with a deep, relentless bark that made the walls shake. It’s not that the barking (or the dog, for that matter) scares me, it doesn’t, but it bothers me because it sounds so urgent—like a crucial point he’s making over and over again that I just can’t understand.
When Grandma was alive—which she was up until a few years ago—she lived in the house too. Well, it was actually her house, and Riley and her mom moved there after the divorce. She was not a big fan of the dog either, but he came with Mo and Riley, so she put up with it, with a smile on her face too. Grandma called it “tomato soupin’ ”14 because even if you didn’t like it, if it came with somebody you loved, you had to eat it.
I was tomato soupin’ Riley’s dog.
Well, Archie, who admittedly hadn’t been out since yesterday morning, must have heard the car pull into the driveway, because he was barking his head off befor
e Dad even had the key in the lock. He was too big and too excited to hold back and charged right past us out the door. My father lunged and managed to grab ahold of his collar. Archie barked his bone-rattling bark, furious. Dad wrestled him back inside and grabbed his leash off the banister. “Sorry, boy, long night,” he offered, clipping the leash on as Archie dragged him back out the door. I headed straight upstairs toward Riley’s room, barely sidestepping a giant pile of dog business in the hallway.
Riley’s “room” was the space at the top of the stairs that Grandma had originally used as a “sitting area.” It was really just an alcove between the two bedrooms and right smack in the middle of everything, which was exactly where Riley wanted to be. If you came upstairs, you had to see her. But she really was one of those people who it is always good to see. When Grandma died, Riley had a chance to take her room—a real room!—but she turned it down because she loved her open space at the top of the stairs. “But there’s no door!” I said. “You have no privacy.”
“What do I need privacy for?” asked Riley. Who doesn’t want privacy? Riley was the only teenage girl in the world who didn’t want privacy. Although she sure had secrets. Well, one, I now thought, a flash of anger coming over me. Her phone was still in my pocket. I pulled it out—it was dead. But if I plugged it in, I knew exactly what would pop up:
GEORGINA
I tossed the phone into her desk drawer and slammed it shut.
I looked around her room—I’d actually never spent any real time in it without Riley. It was a total mess. I had an inexplicable urge to put everything away, make the bed. Which was weird, because my room is no neater. But at the same time, I didn’t want to touch anything. How could the Riley in this room and the Riley in critical condition in the hospital have only one day between them? How was that possible??? The outfits she had tried on and rejected yesterday morning lay on the floor below the mirror, the towel she’d used to dry her hair in a damp lump on top of them. I left everything there and lay down on the unmade bed. I could smell Riley’s coconut shampoo on the pillow. I breathed it in, and then, overwhelmed by the smell, I threw the pillow on the floor with everything else from yesterday morning.
“We’re back!” my dad announced from the front door, as if he needed to, with Archie barking his head off and his giant body bounding up the stairs to Riley’s room. He sat a few feet from the bed and stared at me, like I was hiding Riley somewhere and playing a game with him. Dissatisfied that I couldn’t produce her, he started to bark. Over and over. Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?
It was the first time that I had ever understood him.
* * *
13 The medical term for swelling is “edema,” no matter where it happens. You can have edema in the brain or in your ankle.
14 I would have called it “pea soupin’ ” because I like tomato soup just fine. Grandma clearly had issues with it.
DAY 2 1/2
Forty-eight hours. That’s how long Dr. Mejia had said it was going to take before we would know if things were going to be kind of okay, or not okay at all (or the “third thing,” which nobody said out loud). And twenty-four of them were gone. Riley was going to be in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for a while.15 Intensive care is exactly what it sounds like: it’s where they keep you when you need somebody looking at you all the time (intensively) to make sure you don’t die. When you get to a regular room, it’s no guarantee that you won’t die—you might still die, but they aren’t afraid you are going to do it if they take their eyes off you for more than a minute. Maybe they weren’t afraid of Riley suddenly dying anymore, but they hadn’t ruled it out, either. Each “room” on this hall was more of a glass cube—each with its own sliding glass door into the hallway. The rooms made it very easy to be watched closely, and plenty of people were watching.
Riley had been brought to the hospital quickly enough to get a powerful drug that can help within a few hours after a stroke—and that was good. The swelling in her brain had not gotten any worse—and that was good. But she still had an abnormal heart rate, and that needed to be addressed with different medicines and, Dr. Mejia had warned us, possibly surgery.
The PICU, as serious as it was, was made to look and feel like someplace that wasn’t . . . terrible. The walls were bright, and a ribbon of blue river was painted on the floor. The plain green scrubs16 the doctors and nurses in the emergency room wore were replaced by purple and pink ones. One nurse wore scrubs covered in bright green smiling frogs. The Crayola colors and happy animal faces made you feel like things were a little better here. Some of the harshness—and frankly, terror—of the ER17 were gone.
“I’ll meet you back here in a little while.” Mom deposited Dad and me in the PICU “family room”—another sunshine-bright place with a kitchen, a flat-screen television, and children’s drawings covering the walls. Even the chairs were cheerful: big and round and comfy, pink and green and blue, with puffy ottomans. Riley would definitely appreciate the colors in this room. There’d been only one thing Riley had changed about Grandma’s sitting room when she’d taken it over: the color. The dark wood of Grandma’s built-in bookcases? Now a very Riley shade of bright purple.
“Help yourself, please.” An older woman was looking up from her magazine and pointing at an open box of doughnuts on the counter next to the refrigerator. I guess she could tell we were new. Dad grabbed a jelly doughnut while I wandered over to the fish tank on the other side of the room. The tank was huge, with an underwater garden of green plastic plants and fake pink coral, a scattering of “logs” along the graveled bottom—too huge for the two fish that swam in it. I wasn’t sure what kind of fish they were—my fish identification skills were pretty much limited to goldfish—but one was blue, with an enormous fan-shaped tail, and the other was a simple but sturdy-looking yellow one about two inches long. It looked like a beginner fish.
Fish don’t live that long, so I now wondered whose job it was to make sure that the PICU families didn’t start their day with the sight of a dead fish floating in the tank. Did they replace them with new ones? So no one would notice?
“Mr. Reeves? Nora?” A woman I had never seen before came in and called us by name. My heart skipped a beat. Was there news?
“I’m Monica. I’m a child life specialist here at the hospital.” Dad had clearly been expecting her, as he pulled out a chair for her and waved me over to the table. “How are you doing today?” Monica asked, looking first at Dad, then me. But she waited on me to respond.
“Okay,” I muttered. Was she here for me?
“I know it’s been a difficult twenty-four hours.” She did? What did she know? “And I hear that you are going to visit Riley today for the first time in intensive care.” Monica was making what I can only describe as prolonged eye contact—like she was trying to read me somehow. I kept her gaze as long as I could, but then had to look away. “I just wanted to drop by and talk a little so you know what to expect and to help you understand how important you all are to Riley’s recovery. All of you—and all of us here at the hospital—are going to work together as a team.”
“Okay.” Dad nodded along.
“First off, some easy stuff: visiting hours. We only allow two people at a time in PICU, but parents don’t count as visitors, so your aunt Maureen can be with Riley all the time. She even has her own chair that opens up into a bed. I promise, we’ll take good care of her, too.” So maybe Monica wasn’t just here for me.
“That’s great,” Dad said, nodding and maintaining prolonged eye contact, as required.
“And here, in the family room, we want you to be as comfortable and as rested as you can be, as well. This room is always open, and lots of families bring in snacks or cookies to share. Please help yourself, but we ask that you don’t bring those types of things into the patients’ rooms. It’s hard for patients to watch people eat things that they can’t eat . . . just yet.”
“Riley can’t eat?” Dr. Mejia hadn’t said anything about no
t eating.
Monica nodded like I’d asked a very clever question. “Stroke patients can often have a hard time swallowing—and that’s unsafe. Right now, Riley is getting all the nutrients she needs through a tube. When she’s ready, she may be able to try some soft foods. That’ll be a part of her recovery.” She paused. “Do you have any questions so far?” I had a million of them, but nothing I could articulate. “There’s also a food court downstairs that you may have found already. That’s open from six a.m. to midnight every day. At the nurses’ station, you’ll find a folder with take-out and delivery menus, as well.”
“That’s a lot of options,” joked my dad.
“We like to keep our families well fed,” Monica said, smiling, “because you are all so important to Riley’s recovery—you are all a part of her team.” She went on to explain a few more things about Riley’s team: her pediatric neurologist18 (Dr. Mejia, of course) her pediatric cardiologist,19 and an incredible staff of ICU nurses who I would see all the time. Now she turned directly toward me.
“So, now let’s talk about Riley for a few minutes, and what you can expect when you see her this morning.” How bad was this going to be? It dawned on me that Monica was managing my expectations. That’s what my running coach would call it, as in the newbie runners shouldn’t expect to be the first ones across the finish line. Strive for it, yes. Beat yourself up because you don’t accomplish it, no. Vomit when you cross the finish line? Maybe. All this talk about visiting before the visiting was actually making me queasy—and I had an urge to run.
Monica gave me a look as though she could tell I felt a little queasy! I tried to erase any Little Queasy look from my face. Must have worked, because she continued with “Riley is in her own room. You probably saw when you came off the elevator.” Riley would actually love a glass cube for a room. It would be perfect for her. “The very first thing you need to do when you go into the room is to wash your hands. Riley’s body doesn’t have any extra energy to fight off germs and bacteria now . . . so that’s the number one rule. Clean hands. There are wires and tubes and machines in the room. It’s okay to touch Riley if your hands are clean, but it’s important not to touch the tubes and wires and machines. Okay?”