Against Lisa's hair, Bess whispered simply, “Thank you, darling, for forcing two stubborn people back together.”
Lisa kissed her mother's mouth, her father's mouth. “You've made me so happy.”
“We've made us so happy.” Michael chuckled, drawing a like response from the others as they drew back, all of them a little glisteny-eyed and flushed. They all laughed self-consciously. Lisa sniffed, and Bess ran the edge of a hand under her eye.
“When?”
“Right away.”
“As soon as we can get it arranged.”
“Oh, you guys, I'm so happy!” This hug was one of hallelujah, a near banging together of cheeks before Lisa held Natalie straight out and rejoiced, “We did it, kiddo, we did it!”
Stella spoke from the doorway. “May I get in on this celebration?”
“Grandma! Come in, quick! Mom and Dad have some great news! Tell her, Mom!”
Stella approached the bed. “Don't tell me. You're going to get married again.” Bess nodded, smiling widely. Stella made a victor's fist. “I knew it! I knew it!” She kissed Bess first, because she was closer, then went at Michael with her arms up. “Come here, you handsome, wonderful hunk of a son-in-law, you!” She met him at the foot of the bed as he came around to scoop her up. “I thought that daughter of mine was crazy to divorce you in the first place.” Released, she fanned her face and turned toward the bed. “Whoo! How much excitement can a woman stand in one day? All this and a great-grandchild, too! Let me see the new arrival—and Lisa, you little matchmaking mother, don't you look happy enough to float?”
It was an afternoon of celebration. Mark arrived, followed by the rest of the Padgetts as well as two women Lisa worked with, and one of her high-school friends. Bess and Michael's news was received with as much excitement as was their new granddaughter.
At one point Lisa asked, “Where are you going to live?”
They gaped at each other and shrugged.
Bess replied, “We don't know. We haven't talked about it yet.”
Leaving the hospital at 4:15 P.M., Bess said, “Where are we going to live?”
“I don't know.”
“I suppose we should talk about it. Want to come over to the house?”
Michael affected a salacious grin and said, “Of course I want to come over to the house.”
They were driving separate cars but arrived at the house simultaneously. Bess parked in the garage and Michael pulled up behind her, went into the garage and waited beside her car while she switched off the radio and collected her purse and turned up the visor. As he opened her door and stood waiting, he found himself happier than he could recall being in years, for simply being with her, feeling certain that the last half of his life was going to be less tumultuous than the first. Everything seemed near perfect—the new baby, the marriage plans, the children all grown up, happiness, wealth and health; he found himself tempted toward smugness as he stood beside Bess's car.
From behind the wheel she looked up at him and said, “You know what?”
She could have announced that she'd taken a job as a palm reader and was going to travel the country with a carnival, and he wouldn't have objected at that moment, as long as he could tag along. Her face looked young and glad, her eyes content. “I couldn't guess.”
She got out of the car. He slammed the door but they remained beside it, in the concrete coolness of the garage with its peculiar mixture of scents—mower gas and rubber hoses and garden chemicals. “I've discovered something about myself that surprises me,” Bess told him.
“What?”
“That I really don't care about this house as much as I used to. As a matter of fact, I absolutely love your condo.”
He couldn't have been more surprised. “Are you saying you want to live there?”
“Where do you want to live?”
“In my condo, but I thought for sure you'd have a fit if I said so.”
She burst out laughing, draped her arms around his neck and dropped back against the side of her car, taking him with her. With his body fit to hers she smiled up into his eyes. “Oh, Michael, isn't it wonderful, getting older? Learning to sort out what's really important from what's petty and superficial?” She kissed him briefly and told him, “I'd love to live in your condo. But if you'd said you wanted to move back into the house, that would have been all right, too, because it's not so important where we live as that we live there together from now on.”
He rested his hands on the sides of her breasts and said, “I've been thinking about that same thing, too. Are you sure you aren't saying you like the condo better just because you think it's what I want?”
“I'm sure. In more ways than one we sort of outgrew this house. It was grand while the kids were little but now it's—I don't know—a new phase of life, time to move on. There are a lot of sad memories here, as well as happy ones. The condo is a fresh start . . . and after all, we did decorate it together, to both of our tastes. Why, it makes perfect sense to live there! It's newer, it's got as wonderful a view as this does, nobody has to take care of the yard, it's still close enough for me to get to my store in fifteen minutes and for you to get to downtown St. Paul fast, and there's the beach and the parks, and—”
“Listen, Bess, you don't have to convince me. I'll be overjoyed to stay there. There's only one question.”
“Which is?”
“What about Randy?”
She put her hands on his collarbone and absently smoothed his shirt. She let her hands fall still on his chest, lifted her gaze and said calmly, “It's time to cut Randy loose, don't you think?”
Michael made no reply. He had told her essentially the same thing that first night Lisa had tricked them into facing each other at her apartment.
“He has a job now,” she went on. “Friends. It's time he got out on his own.”
“You're sure?”
“I'm sure.”
“Because it strikes me that even though parents think they ought to treat all their kids equally, it's not always possible. Some of them need us more than others, and I think Randy will always need more of our help than Lisa ever did.”
“That may be true but it's still time for him to live in his own place.”
They let a kiss seal their decision, sharing it leaning against the car with the late afternoon sunlight flooding in, and the sound of condensation dripping off the auto air conditioner, and the smell of gasoline coming from the nearby lawn mower.
When Michael lifted his head he looked serene. “This time I'm staying with you till he gets home, and we'll tell him together.”
“Agreed.” She smiled and threaded one arm around his waist, turning him toward the kitchen door.
They entered the house to find the phone ringing. Bess answered, unprepared in her radiant state for the voice at the other end of the line.
“Mrs. Curran?”
“Yes.”
“This is Danny Scarfelli. I'm one of the guys in Randy's band. Listen, I don't mean to scare you but something's happened to him and he's not . . . well, I think it's pretty serious, and they're taking him by ambulance to the hospital.”
“What? A car accident, you mean?” Bess's terrified eyes locked on Michael's.
“No. We were just playing, you know, and all of a sudden he's laying on the floor. He says it's something with his heart is all I know. He asked me to call you.”
“Which hospital?”
“Stillwater. They've already left.”
“Thank you.” She hung up. “It's Randy. Something's wrong with his heart and they're taking him to the hospital in an ambulance.”
“Let's go.”
He grabbed her hand and they ran out the way they'd entered, to his car. “I'll drive.”
All the way to Lakeview Hospital, they sat stiff-spined, fearful, thinking, Why now? Why now? It's taken us all this time to get our lives back on track, and we deserve some unconfounded happiness. Michael ignored stop signs and broke speed limits. G
ripping the steering wheel with both hands, he thought, There must be something I should be saying to Bess. I should touch her shoulder, squeeze her hand. But he drove in his own insular parcel of dread, as silent as she, inexplicably reft from her by this threat to their child.
His heart? What could be wrong with the heart of a nineteen-year-old boy?
They reached the emergency room of Lakeview at the same time as the ambulance, catching a mere glimpse of Randy as they ran behind the gurney bearing him along a short hall to a curtained section of the area. An alarming number of medical staff materialized at once, speaking in brusque spurts, in their own indigenous lexicon, focused on the patient with unquestionable life-and-death intensity, ignoring Michael and Bess, who hovered on the sidelines, gripping each other's hands now as they had not in the car.
“Got a sinus tach here.”
“What's his blood pressure?”
“One eighty over one hundred.”
“Respiration?”
“Poor.”
“How bad are the arrhythmias?”
“Bad. Heart is moving like a bag of worms in there. Very irregular and rapid. We put him on D5W.”
Three patches were already pasted on Randy's chest, and a blood pressure cuff ringed his arm. Someone snapped leads to them, connected to monitors on the wall. Intermittent beeps sounded. Randy's eyes were wide open as a doctor in white leaned over him. “Randy, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Randy? Did you take anything?”
The doc pulled back Randy's eyelids one at a time and studied the periphery of his eyes. A woman in blue scrubs said, “His parents are here.”
The doctor caught sight of Bess and Michael, standing to one side, supporting each other. “You're his parents?”
“Yes,” Michael answered.
“Are there any congenital heart problems?”
“No.”
“Diabetes?”
“No.”
“Seizure disorders?”
“No.”
“Is he on any medication?”
“None that we know of.”
“Does he use cocaine?”
“I don't think so. Marijuana sometimes.”
A nurse said, “Blood pressure's dropping.”
An alarm sounded on one of the machines, like the hang-up tone on a dangling telephone.
The doctor shouted, “This guy's coding! Page code blue!” He made a fist and delivered a tremendous blow to Randy's sternum.
Bess winced and placed one hand over her mouth. She stared, caught in a horror beyond anything she'd imagined, while her son lay on the gurney dying and a medical team fought a scene such as she'd witnessed only on television.
More staff came running, two more nurses, one who started a flowchart, a lab technician to help monitor the vital signs, a radiology technician who watched the monitors, an anesthetist who inserted a pair of nasal prongs into Randy's nose, another doctor who began administering CPR. “Grease the paddles!” he ordered. “We have to defibrillate!” With stacked hands, he thrust at Randy's chest.
Bess and Michael's interlocked knuckles turned white.
A nurse turned on a machine that set up a high electrical whine. She grabbed two paddles on curled cords and smeared them with gel. The doctor ordered, “Stand back!” Everyone backed away from the metal gurney as the nurse flattened the paddles to the left side of Randy's chest.
“Hit him!”
The nurse pushed two buttons at once.
Randy grunted. His body arched. His arms and legs stiffened, then fell limp.
Bess uttered a soft cry and turned her face against Michael's shoulder.
Someone said, “Good, he responded.”
Through her tears and her terror, Bess looked back at the table, little understanding why these methods were used. Electrical current, zapping through her son's body, making it jerk and flop, that precious body she'd once carried within her own. Please don't! Don't do that to him again!
The room fell silent. All eyes riveted on a green screen and its flat, flat line.
Dear God, they've killed him! He's dead! There is no heartbeat!
“Come on, come on . . .” someone whispered urgently—the doctor, who'd made a tight fist and pushed it into the gurney mattress as he stared at the monitor. “Beat, damn it . . .”
The line stayed flat.
Bess and Michael stared with the others, linked by wills and hands, in near shock themselves from this quick plunge into disaster.
Tears leaked down Bess's face. “What is it? What's happening?” Bess whispered but no one responded.
The green line squiggled.
It squiggled again, lifting to form a tiny hillock on that deadly, unbroken horizon. And suddenly it picked up, became regular. Everyone in the room sighed and let their shoulders sag.
“All right, way to go, Randy,” one of the medical team said.
Randy was still unconscious.
The lab technician, in a businesslike tone, with his eyes locked on the screen, reported, “We're back to an organized rhythm . . . eighty beats per minute now.” The nurse with the clipboard checked the clock and made a note.
Bess looked up at Michael and her face sagged, as if made of wet newsprint. His eyes were dry and burning. He put both arms around her shoulders and hauled her close, cleaving to keep his knees from buckling while Randy began to regain consciousness.
“Randy, can you hear me?” Again a doctor was leaning over him.
He made a wordless sound, still groggy.
“Do you know where you are, Randy?”
He opened his eyes fully, looked around at the ring of faces and abruptly grew belligerent. He tried to sit up. “What the hell, let me outa—”
“Whoa, there.” Hands pressed him down. “Not much oxygen getting to that brain yet. He's still light-headed. Randy, did you take anything? Did you take any cocaine?”
A nurse informed the doctor, “The cardiologist is on his way over from the clinic.”
The doctor repeated to Randy, “Did you take any cocaine?”
Randy wagged his head and tried to lift one arm. The doctor held it down, encumbered as it was by the blood pressure cuff and the lead-in for an IV.
“Randy, we're not the police. Nobody is going to get in trouble if you tell us but we have to know so we can help you and keep your heart beating regularly. Was it cocaine, Randy?”
Randy fixed his eyes on the doctor's clothing and mumbled, “It was my first time, Doc, honest.”
“How did you take it?”
No answer.
“Did you shoot up?”
No answer.
“Snort it?”
Randy nodded.
The doc touched his shoulder. “Okay, no need to get scared. Just relax.” He lifted Randy's eyelids again, peered down, held up an index finger and said, “Follow my finger with your eyes.” To the recording nurse he said, “No vertical nystagmus. No dilation.” To Randy, “Are any of your muscles twitching?”
“No.”
“Good. I'm going to tell you what happened. The cocaine increased your heartbeat to the point where there wasn't enough time during each beat for it to properly fill with oxygenated blood. Consequently not enough oxygen was getting to your brain so at first you probably felt a little light-headed, and finally you fell off your stool. After you got here to the hospital your heart stopped beating completely but we started it again. There's a cardiologist on his way over from the clinic right now. He'll probably give you some medication to keep your heartbeat regular, okay?”
At that moment the cardiologist swept in, moving directly to the gurney in brisk steps. The physician speaking said, “Randy, this is Dr. Mortenson.”
While the specialist took over, the other doctor approached Bess and Michael. “I'm Dr. Fenton,” he said, extending his hand to each of them in turn. He had grand gray eyebrows and a caring manner. “I imagine you both feel like you're going to be next on that table. Let's step out into the hall, where we can talk privately
.”
In the hall, Dr. Fenton took a second glance at Bess and said, “Are you feeling faint, Mrs. Curran?”
“No . . . no, I'm all right.”
“There's no need to be heroic. You've just been through a stressful ordeal. Let's sit down over here.” He indicated a line of hard chairs across from the emergency-room desk. Michael put his arm around Bess and helped her to one, where she sank down gratefully. When they were all seated, Fenton said, “I know you have a lot of questions, so let me fill you in. I think you heard what I was saying to Randy in there—he snorted some cocaine, which can do a lot of nasty things to the human body. This time it caused an abnormally high heart rate—ventricular tachycardia, we call it. When the paramedics answered the call, Randy had been playing the drums and had fallen off his stool. That's because there wasn't enough oxygen getting to his brain. When you saw him arrest, there was so much electrostimulus going through his heart it wasn't actually beating anymore, it was only quivering. When a heart does that we have to bring it to a complete standstill so its normal rhythmicity can return. That's why I struck his chest, and that's what we did when we defibrillated him. Once you do that the normal electrical pathway can take over again, which is what's happened now.
“You saw how Randy got a little belligerent when he was coming awake. That often happens when the oxygen is returning to the brain but he should rest easier now.
“I have to warn you, though, that this can happen again during the next several hours, either from the drugs or from the heart itself, which is very irritable after all it's been through. My guess is Dr. Mortenson will prescribe some medication to prevent fibrillation from recurring. The problem with cocaine is that we can't go in there and get it out like we could poison, for example. We can only offer supportive care and wait for the effects of the drug to wear off. It stays in the system long after the high is gone.”
Michael said, “So what you're saying is, there's still a chance that he could die?”
“I'm afraid so. The next six hours will be critical. But his youth is a plus. And if he does go into a fast rate, chances are we can control it with the drugs.”