The Medusa Amulet

Part Four
Chapter 31

Gary had seen David’s last call come in, but for the first time he hadn’t picked up.

Because for the first time, he hadn’t known what he would say.

Sarah had collapsed the day before, keeling over in the laundry room, and now she was back in intensive care. Dr. Ross had been called, a whole host of new tests had been done, her condition had eventually been stabilized; but Gary had the impression that they had turned a terrible, and possibly final, corner. Until he was sure it was true, he didn’t want to burden David with that news (even though David had always insisted on being told the truth, whatever it was).

Dr. Ross came into the waiting area, with a sheaf of papers and lab reports stuffed in a folder, and hard as Gary searched his face for any glimmer of hope, he saw none.

The doctor sat beside him, and for several telltale seconds, continued to burrow into the paperwork… as if even he was trying to postpone the inevitable.

“How’s she doing?” Gary asked. “Can I go in and see her now?”

“I would wait a bit,” Dr. Ross replied. “The nurse is still with her.”

Gary nodded, watching the TV mounted from a ceiling bracket. In barely audible tones, a weatherman was announcing yet another storm on its way. Little white icicles on the map pointed down at Chicago like daggers.

“I wish I had better news for you,” the doctor finally said.

It didn’t matter that Gary had seen it coming; he still felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

“The new regimen isn’t working. In fact, it’s made the situation worse.”

“But I thought she was rallying.”

The doctor shrugged, and said, “That can happen, initially. But then the systems can’t sustain it-her blood counts have been so bad for so long, her lymph nodes are all gone or lethally compromised-and one thing after another starts crashing. It becomes a cascade, and even when we’re able to stop one organ failure, it’s usually at the expense of another. At this point, the cancer has simply spread too far, too wide, and too deeply. The disease, I’m afraid, is in control, and all we can do is try our best to ameliorate its more painful effects.”

Gary took some time to digest what the doctor had just said. In the background, he could hear someone on the TV offering advice about avoiding heart attacks while shoveling snow.

“At this point in time,” the doctor said-and Gary, his mind battening on anything but what was about to come, thought, Can time have a point? -“it would probably be best to think about moving her to our Hospice and Palliative Care Center. We could make her a lot more comfortable there, for as long as necessary.”

Gary certainly knew what this meant; it meant Sarah had reached the end of the line. But he still found it nearly impossible to make his mind go there. “I can’t just take her home?”

Lowering his head and pursing his lips, the doctor said, “I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s going to be very hard at this stage, and right now, the hospice unit has room available. It’s very tranquil, very quiet, and I can arrange to have her transferred there in a couple of hours.”

“Does Sarah know about this?”

“She does. She’s the one who first brought it up. No one ever wants to be in the ICU five minutes more than they have to, and I don’t blame them.”

Neither did Gary. It depressed the hell out of him just to visit there, and when he had brought Emme the day before, the old lady in the next cubicle had suddenly expired, and much as he had tried to disguise what was going on from his daughter, Emme knew. Gary and his mom, who had flown up from Florida the day before, had ushered her out into the waiting area, but Emme had broken down in terrified sobs. All that night, Gary had slept in the bed with his daughter cradled in his arms, and Gary’s mom was back at the house right now, just trying to hold things together.

“Why don’t you go on in now and talk it over with your wife? The nurse has given her a mild sedative, but she should still be fairly lucid. Decide what you’d like to do.”

What he’d like to do? What he’d like to do was yank Sarah out of that damn bed and run for their lives.

“I know this is hard,” Dr. Ross was saying, “the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in your life. But it’s the right thing, for you, for your wife, and for your daughter. At least Emme can see her mother there in a much less frightening, and less clinical, setting. We have found it’s a lot less traumatic this way.”

Somehow, Gary was able to ask, without even looking at the doctor’s face, how long Sarah would be staying in the hospice. It sounded, even to him, as if he was asking how many nights she’d been booked at a hotel.

“It’s always hard to predict these things, but I’d say three, four days, at the outside. The hospice time is chiefly used to treat the pain and afford the patient a chance to say good-bye to loved ones.” The doctor put a consoling hand on Gary’s shoulder as the TV segued into a blaring car commercial. “It’s been a long road,” he said, “and I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we have wound up here. But I think you’ll be surprised. This stage of the journey can really be a very peaceful and healing one.”

Gary could do without the New Age spin.

Giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze before continuing on his rounds, Dr. Ross said, “I’ve left word at the nurses’ station. Once you’ve talked to Sarah, they can take care of everything.”

Gary remained on the sofa. The TV anchors were reporting a multicar collision on the Dan Ryan Expressway. His hand mechanically fished his cell phone out of his pocket and he hit the speed dial for David. There was no excuse for delaying any longer; David would have to know what was up and get back to Chicago on the double. Standing up, Gary moved to the far corner of the room, where the TV couldn’t be heard. As he waited for the phone to connect, he stared out the window at a view of a frozen parking lot. A guy was madly scraping the ice from his windshield. His call went straight into voice mail, and for a second Gary wasn’t sure how to say what he had to say. Finally, he just told him that even though they were doing everything possible to keep Sarah pain-free, the situation looked very bad. “If you want to say good-bye, you’re going to have to come back. Fast.” Then, for good measure, he called the last hotel that David had reported in from-someplace called the Crillon in Paris-and left pretty much the same message on the automated service there.

Returning the phone to his pocket, he went back through the double doors into the ICU. This was one trip he wouldn’t miss. Everywhere you looked, through parted curtains, you saw people in terrible trouble; every sound you heard was either a suction tube, a beeping monitor, or a visitor softly murmuring hollow words of encouragement.

Sarah’s head was turned toward him as he came in, and he realized that he had forgotten to consciously compose his features, as he always tried to do, into a more upbeat expression. But what would that even look like now? he wondered. How did you put a good face on this?

As he drew the plastic chair to her bedside and closed his hand over hers-God, her skin was cold-Sarah said in barely a whisper, “You talked to Dr. Ross?” and he nodded. Her eyes, once as bright and brown as buttons, were sunken into the hollows of her face, and her eyebrows and lashes, as well as her lush brown hair, were long since gone. She reminded him, disconcertingly, of the Visible Woman model he’d had when he was a kid. She was so wasted away she was almost transparent.

“Good.” She closed her eyes, took a shallow breath, then said, “I could use a change of scene.”

Gary wondered if he would have been brave enough to be making a joke-any kind of joke-if he were the one lying in that cranked-up bed, with the IV lines running in and out of his arms.

“I hear it’s nice over there,” she said. “And I don’t want this to be the last place Emme ever sees me.”

“Then I’ll tell the nurses we’ve agreed, and we’ll get you moved.”

Her head nodded almost imperceptibly on the pillow. At least that was settled.

“How’s Emme holding up? Yesterday was awfully hard on her.”

“Mom’s keeping her busy. I think they went to a movie today. With Amanda.”

Sarah nodded again. “As soon as I’m settled into the hospice, bring her over there. I hate having her see me like this, but I also don’t want to just disappear into thin air, the way that they made my own mother disappear.”

Gary knew that the loss of her mom had haunted her all her days. How could it not? Sarah had always felt that she had been kept in the dark for too long, and that, in a well-meaning attempt to shield her from some of the trauma, the medical establishment had wound up leaving her with a more unhealable wound.

“And besides,” Sarah said, “I’m selfish.”

“You’re about the least selfish person on the planet.”

“I want every second with her that I’ve got left.” She looked as if she might cry, but her body seemed incapable of generating a tear. Every ounce of energy she had in her was being mustered in the fight for survival.

There was only one big question still hanging in the air, and Sarah finally asked, “Have you talked to David?”

Gary told her that he’d left him a couple of messages and expected to hear back any minute.

“Where is he now?”

“France.”

“France,” she said, with a wistful smile. “I’m glad one of us got there.”

“He’ll be home as fast as he can get here.”

“Good. Good. But the longer it takes, the better.”

Gary was confused.

“Because there’s no way I’m going anywhere without seeing him one more time.” She set her fragile jaw like a linebacker. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll wait.”

Gary believed her.

“I’ll wait,” she repeated, before slowly drifting off into a drug-induced sleep.