Unbreathed Memories

chapter 16

It must have been the clattering of the breakfast carts and a gnawing hunger that awoke me. Gradually I became aware of my surroundings. First the sheets and lightweight blanket in which I was cocooned; the pillow, just one, so my head was lower than I was accustomed to; the walls, illuminated by the light slanting in from the hallway; a TV mounted high on the wall. Katie Couric was interviewing a dark-haired woman, her mouth working silently.

I looked toward the window and saw that it was still dark. They’d taken my watch, so I didn’t know what time it was, but if The Today Show was on, it must be at least seven. They’d taken my jewelry, too, but I wouldn’t let them touch my wedding rings, so they’d taped them to my finger with adhesive tape.

In a chair in the corner, a shadow stirred. “Honey?” Paul must have stayed with me all night. I turned my head on the pillow to face him.

Paul unfolded from the chair and crossed to my bed. He took my hand where it lay on top of the cover and covered it with both of his.

I started to shiver. “I’m cold.”

“It’s just something in the medication they gave you.” He leaned over and covered me with his body, his arms parallel to mine, his lips against my neck. Paul’s face was hot and his ear was cold, as if he’d just come in from outdoors.

“Morning.” The word stuck in my throat. “God, I’m thirsty!” I pointed toward a cup on the windowsill. “That coffee?”

Paul smiled. “Was. I finished it last night.”

“Damn.” I grumped.

He reached out and drew a finger across my forehead. “You couldn’t have it anyway, sweets. You’re NPO today. Nothing by mouth.”

Speaking of mouth, it was dry as a desert. I felt as if my last meal had consisted entirely of sand. “That’s cruel and unusual,” I muttered. I listened forlornly as the food cart rumbled past my door without stopping. Pancakes this morning, from the smell of it. And bacon. I nearly wept.

A nurse appeared, a relentlessly cheerful grandmotherly type I hadn’t seen before carrying a blue foam plastic tray. “Good morning, Mrs. Ives!” Paul straightened and stood by the side of the bed, but didn’t let go of my hand.

“Time for a shave!” She set the tray on my bedside table, waved Paul back into his chair, and pulled the privacy curtain around my bed, all in one smooth motion. She helped me out of my nightgown, then tucked a disposable plastic sheet under my side to protect the mattress before lathering up my chest and abdomen with a warm, soap-filled sponge, applied in vigorous circles across my skin. As she worked, she kept up a steady stream of conversation about her daughter, an amazing woman who had dedicated her life to the eradication of yellow fever. The razor slid smoothly over my chest, the excess water trickling down my side in a cooling stream. After both areas were clean as a whistle, she helped me into a hospital gown and Paul was allowed back into my chamber. “As if you hadn’t seen me naked before,” I scoffed.

“I’m sure they have their procedures, Hannah. Wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart.”

A few minutes later, a young man in white appeared to insert an IV in my arm. As skilled as he was, my stomach revolted at the procedure. I had to swallow repeatedly and think happier thoughts to keep from barfing… as if there was anything in my stomach to throw up anyway. Soon the needle was taped into position on top of my hand. I didn’t know what was in the IV, but it crept coolly up the veins in my arm. I thought about all the convicts on death row. This is how executions start.

I began to shiver, and Paul rang the nurse for another blanket. As he tucked it around me, I said, “I’m frightened, Paul. I keep thinking about them cutting me open. I imagine how I’ll look, spread out and naked. I picture them making the incision, the blood welling up, the surgeons pawing through my insides.”

Paul rubbed my arm, the one without the IV in it. “You’ve been watching too much TV, not to mention being cursed with a vivid imagination.” Paul seemed to sense the source of my fear. “Don’t worry, Hannah, you’ll be fine. Think of it this way-in a few minutes you’ll drift off to sleep and when you wake up, it will all be done.”

Something good was in the IV. I was barely able to keep my eyes open. I laid my palm flat against my chest, feeling with my fingertips the familiar ridged scar under the thin cotton gown the hospital had provided. “I hope it will be worth it.”

The nurse peeked around the curtain. “Why don’t you go get some breakfast, Mr. Ives?”

“I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself.” She grinned. “The cafeteria’s no great shakes anyway.”

An hour later, when they wheeled me and my bed to the elevator, Paul walked alongside, still holding my hand. They allowed him to stay for the short time I was parked in the corridor outside the operating room suite. Before they pushed me through the swinging doors, he laid a gentle kiss on my lips. I was barely awake, still savoring that kiss, when they transferred me, limp as a rag, to the gurney in the operating room. I remember someone strapping a blood pressure cuff to my arm, and then the sweet taste of garlic in my mouth. A clock on the wall was stuck at nine, and I drowned in waves of darkness.

I first awoke in the recovery room, but it’s hard to be sure. Conversation whirled around me like autumn leaves in the wind. It registered in snatches. A date someone had for the movies that night. The creep some soft-voiced person was married to. The bargains to be had at somebody’s close-out sale. Somewhere among the babble, I recognized my doctor’s voice and struggled to open my eyes. Something puzzling about a purse. I did need a new purse, but what had Dr. Bergstrom to do with it? “The surgery went well,” her voice told me, as reassuring as a mother, and then it, too, swirled away.

Then, I don’t know how much later, I was back in my room. I recognized the flowers Emily had sent. A dozen red roses, with one yellow one from baby Chloe. My daughter was getting sentimental in her old age. I didn’t see Paul.

When I woke again, the TV seemed stuck on the Discovery Channel. I watched a turtle lay eggs on the beach and cover them up with sand, then my eyelids slammed shut.

When I awoke, that same damn turtle was lumbering toward the water and God-knows-what was making a hideous noise like a vacuum cleaner under my bed. Something squeezed my legs, and I wondered, What the hell? but my mouth was so dry it came out Whada ha?

Paul’s face appeared in my field of vision wearing what could be interpreted as a reassuring smile. Relief shone from his eyes. “Hi, love.” He smoothed the hair from my forehead and kissed the spot he had cleared. I managed a lopsided grin. Then the vacuum cleaner cranked up again and something squeezed my legs.

I tried to raise my head, but it felt as if it weighed fifty pounds and belonged to someone else. “Whah?” I nodded toward my feet.

Paul lifted a corner of the blanket, revealing plastic sleeves resembling water wings encasing my legs. “It massages your legs,” he explained. “Keeps blood clots from forming.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. “That’s good.” The compressor cycled off and the cuffs deflated.

“The operation went well,” Paul told me. “Very well.”

I was afraid to look. With difficulty I raised my head until my chin touched my chest. A lovely mound of bandages gave shape to my hospital gown. I reached up to touch the mound on the right but was caught up short. My arm was attached by a tube to another machine with dials, buttons, and a bright digital display. “What’s this?”

Paul lightly touched the tube leading into my arm. “I don’t exactly know, honey.”

A new nurse materialized in the dark at the foot of the bed. “It’s an I-Med pump, hon. It delivers your pain medication.” She fiddled with the dial, then handed me a button on the end of a long cord. “Just press this with your thumb when you start feeling pain.”

Since my abdomen had been burning for the past ten minutes, I pumped the button. In seconds, the pain was reduced to a dull throb.

“It’s morphine,” she said.

I twisted my face into a maniacal grin that might have been mistaken for a look of pain. She patted my leg sympathetically and laid another gadget that looked like a TV controller next to my hand. “Push this if you need anything. It’ll ring for me.” I wondered what would happen if, in my confused state, I started ringing for the nurse and pumped myself full of morphine instead. I held up the morphine button. “What if I keep pumping?”

“Sorry, hon. We thought of that. It delivers a measured dose and it’s on a timer.” She tucked the covers around my hips. “Wouldn’t want anyone to overdose.”

“What a party pooper! Just when I thought there might be a silver lining in all this.”

The nurse fussed with my ice water pitcher, set it on my bedside table, then breezed out of the room.

After she left, Paul dragged his chair closer to my bed. The legs made a screeching sound on the linoleum. The dinner cart rattled by, leaving an aroma of overcooked broccoli and fried chicken in its wake. My stomach revolted. “Oh God, I’m going to throw up.” Saliva filled my mouth and I swallowed repeatedly, fighting the sensation, trying to keep everything down, although what there could be to throw up after not having eaten for a whole day I couldn’t guess.

A plastic, kidney-shaped basin appeared under my chin, but I only heaved wretchedly, spitting up a trickle of yellow bile until I fell back on my pillow, exhausted. My nose was stopped up so I could hardly breathe. Tears slid sideways down my cheeks and into my ears. “Oh, Paul, I’m so tired.”

Paul laid a damp washcloth on my forehead, momentarily making me forget the cuffs pumping up and down relentlessly on my legs.

“Here, dearie.” The nurse reappeared and pressed a small pillow into my hands. “Press this against your stomach if you have to throw up, cough, or sneeze. It’ll support the incision and help lessen the pain.”

I placed the pillow against my stomach and held it there with both hands while I retched miserably and fruitlessly into the basin. Chemo redux. I remembered proclaiming to Joy’s therapy group that I was bulimic, and decided that anybody who’d purposely stick a finger down her throat to make herself feel this way had to be crazy.

The nurse wiped my chin with a tissue. “This is another reason we don’t want you to eat anything before surgery, dear.”

I flopped back on the pillow and pushed the hand holding the basin away from my face. “I think I’d feel better if there was something down there to throw up other than major organs.”

“How about sucking on some ice?” A spoonful of crushed ice touched my lips with healing coolness. I moved the chips around in my mouth with my tongue, enjoying the clicking sound they made against my teeth. Paul bathed my brow again with a cloth soaked in cool water. I pumped the morphine button a couple of times and closed my eyes.

“She’s asleep, Mr. Ives. Why don’t you go get some dinner?”

“I heard that,” I whispered. “Cappuccino. Yes. I’d love a cup.”

Why Dr. Voorhis had wandered into my hospital room, I couldn’t imagine. Maybe I was hallucinating. I’d done it before. Once upon a time I’d been so sick with the flu that I imagined Immanuel Kant perched at the foot of my bed, a wizened mouse of a man, explaining the whole of Critique of Pure Reason to me. Even more amazing, I understood him.

Dr. Voorhis’s ghost wore brown, the color of the leaves that had formed his daughter’s final bed. Her face floated up, golden hair fanned out around it, like a pillow. Her face, then his face. The same gray-blue eyes. Dr. Voorhis’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Kant had, at least, been audible. No sense being rude, even to a specter. “Hi,” I croaked.

Dr. Voorhis’s features warped and slid, his round eyes became slits, his smiling mouth twisted into a leer, like a fun house mirror. I turned my head to see whether Paul had noticed the man, too, but his chair was empty. Oh, yeah, dinner. Paul had gone to the cafeteria to get dinner. I turned my head to the door, expecting to discover that Dr. Voorhis had vanished, but the apparition had moved to the side of my bed, next to the I-Med machine. He reached out and placed a hand on my knee. I felt the coldness of his touch even under the blanket.

“What…” What are you doing here? I wanted to say. You practice in Baltimore. But my lips were numb and my tongue seemed to fill my mouth. If Paul showed up, would Voorhis go poof?

The hand crept up my thigh. Blood pounded in my ears so loudly it drowned out the sound of the air compressor under the bed. Gasping, I patted around the top of the blanket, feeling for my call button to summon the nurse. Where the hell is it?

I touched something hard and cold. I wrapped my fingers gratefully around it and pushed the button, but only succeeded in turning up the volume on the TV. I dropped the remote and heard it clatter to the floor. Oh, God, where was that call button? I’d never needed it before. Paul had always been here for me.

My eyes locked on Dr. Voorhis and I watched, hypnotized, as he reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a narrow package, about the size of a pen. The package crackled as he opened it, like cellophane. I was feeling along the aluminum bed rail, hoping to find the call button cord wrapped around it, when I heard something go snap! like a toothpick breaking.

I located a button at the edge of the mattress and pumped with my thumb for all it was worth. But it must have been the morphine control, because Dr. Voorhis’s face shimmered before me, like a mirage on a hot summer day. His gray hair lengthened and curled softly around his ears; the black-rimmed glasses melted away; and his mustache morphed into the smiling, glossy pink lips of my nurse. “How are we doing, hon?”

I was dizzy with hyperventilation. Thank God!

The nurse picked up my wrist between her thumb and forefinger and, with her eyes on her wristwatch, took my pulse. “Goodness! Your heart’s going a hundred miles an hour!”

“Nightmare,” I mumbled.

Trussed up, tethered to tubes and wires, including a catheter and a tube snaking out of my chest, I was completely helpless. “What’s this?” I touched the smooth, round surface of a blue plastic object lying just under the edge of my blanket.

“We call it a purse. It collects the fluid draining from your chest.”

I managed a weak smile. “Not exactly Gucci, is it?”

“No. That drain will stay in for a few days, but we may be able to take the catheter out tomorrow, once you get up on your feet.”

“On my feet? So soon?” I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I’d been hit by a two-ton truck.

“The sooner you’re up on your feet, the sooner you’re out of here.”

Paul materialized at the foot my bed, holding a Styrofoam container with a straw in it. “I thought you might like a Coke.” He raised a questioning eyebrow at the nurse.

“That’s fine,” she said. “We’ll be starting her on solid food in the morning.”

Food. Yuck. My stomach roiled. The nurse cranked up the back of my bed and tucked a pillow under my shoulders, making it easier for Paul to hold the cup under my chin. I never remember a Coke tasting so good. I drifted off to sleep after that, with Paul holding my hand.

When I awoke, who knows how much later, Paul was sprawled in his chair watching the news. His deck shoes sat side by side on the windowsill, next to an arrangement of red and green carnations looking for all the world like Christmas leftovers. “Paul?”

He padded to my side in his stocking feet.

“Stay with me, Paul?”

“Don’t worry, love. I’ll be right here.”

I had been lying flat on my back. When I tried to turn my body in his direction, a searing pain shot across my abdomen. I sucked air in through my teeth. “Oooh!” I pumped on the magic button and waited the few seconds it took for the pain to be reduced to a dull throb. Wonderful machine! Whoever invented it deserves to be a millionaire. Afterward, I tried unsuccessfully to stay awake, gazing at Paul through eyelids at half-mast. “Night-night,” I said, and he faded away completely.

The next morning, well before dawn, I was awakened by a new nurse, intent on recording my temperature and blood pressure. “How did we sleep?” she asked, sticking a plastic thingamabob in my mouth.

“Fitfully,” I mumbled around the thermometer. I raised my leg a few inches off the sheet. “Hard to sleep with these things pumping up and down on your legs every few seconds, not to mention that rogue Hoover howling away under the bed.”

“She must be feeling better. She’s getting cheeky,” Paul remarked from his place by the window. He had shoved two chairs together and was using them as a bed. He pushed one away with his foot, stood up, and slipped into his shoes. “While you’re busy here, I think I’ll get some coffee.”

“Bye!” I chirped. “Bring me a cappuccino!” I turned pleading eyes to the nurse. “I can have a cappuccino, can’t I?”

She shrugged. “Don’t see why not.” She waved Paul out the door, then pulled the privacy curtain around my bed. “Which do you want me to get rid of first? The catheter or the water wings from hell?”

“The catheter, please!” She busied herself with the tube and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was removed from my nether region. A minute later I felt like a new woman when the inflatable cuffs were history as well. I bounced my legs up and down on the mattress, enjoying my freedom.

The nurse handed me a pair of paper slippers. “Here. Let’s put these on and we’ll take a short walk.”

I nodded at the IV apparatus, still attached to my arm. “I suppose that comes along with me.”

“For another day, at least.” With a hand under my back, she helped me into a sitting position. I teetered for a few minutes on the edge of the bed, fighting waves of blackness, with my feet dangling over the side. She slid the slippers onto my bare feet. She steadied my elbow and, with the other hand stabilizing the IV apparatus, helped me wriggle off the bed.

My favorite blue velour bathrobe hung on a hook by the door. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to put it on with my arm attached to enough equipment to man the space shuttle, until the nurse slipped the plastic IV bag off its hook and passed it through the sleeve of the robe, my arm following. “Clever girl,” I remarked.

The floor was cold under my feet as we shuffled out the door and walked down the hall toward the nurses’ station. I must have been a pathetic sight pushing my IV machine along in front of me with my “purse” pinned to my hospital gown and banging against my side with each deliberate step. At the nurses’ station, we turned and headed back to my room. The nurse accompanied me to the chair that had been so recently vacated by my loyal husband and helped me sit down in it. “Sit here while I change your bed.”

I watched as she stripped the sheets from my bed, snapped some clean ones open over it, and expertly began making up the bed. “I’m going for a clean blanket,” she said, indicating a light brown stain on the one I had been using.

“Sorry.” I felt myself blush. “I must have nodded off with a Coke in my hand.”

She was a long time coming back. When I got tired of waiting, I got up and slid my feet around the room, admiring the flowers my friends and family had sent. Emily’s roses were beginning to open. I buried my nose in one of the blooms and inhaled deeply, reminding myself of the rose gardens my mother had planted in every house we had ever lived in. The red and green carnations, I saw, were from Scott and Georgina. I wondered if the children had picked them out. There was even an arrangement from Whitworth & Sullivan. That touched me. My old boss, Fran, must have sprung for it. I couldn’t imagine Cooper, Whitworth & Sullivan’s office manager-cum-drill sergeant, coughing up the cash. Especially for an ex-employee he’d so recently had the pleasure of laying off. Steadying myself with a hand on the bed, I inched along it until I reached the bedside table where I’d piled the books I hoped to get to during my hospital stay. Paul’s selection, the latest mystery by Kate Charles, imported from Britain, teetered on top. As I reached for it, I knocked the whole damn pile onto the floor. Klutz! Holding on to the IV apparatus, I bent my knees and sank slowly to the floor.

Next to the books, on a floor otherwise so spotless you could eat off of it, lay a purple plastic cap, like the top of a ballpoint pen, only smaller and narrower.

I picked it up and was examining it closely when the nurse returned. “What on earth are you doing on the floor?”

“Picking up my books.” With both hands on the IV pole, I struggled to stand. “What’s this?” I held the purple thing out.

She answered at once. “The protective cap for a hypodermic syringe. Where did you find it?”

“On the floor.”

She studied me curiously, her head cocked to one side. “That’s odd. You weren’t scheduled for any additional medication.” She spread the blanket over the clean sheets on the bed and began to tuck it in, making neat, square corners. “I’ll have to speak to housekeeping. Somebody’s been careless with the sweeping again.”

I curled my fingers around the pole so tightly that my fingernails cut into my palm. Somewhere midway between the incision on my abdomen and the new breast taking root on my chest, a cold knot of fear began to grow. When Paul returned carrying a paper cup from the Seattle Coffee Company, I was already tucked up in bed, shivering, the blanket wrapped tightly around me. I wrapped my hands gratefully around the cup and felt the warmth spread up my arms, but I doubted it would melt the iceberg taking up residence in my gut.

“Paul?”

“Yes?”

“Look what I found.” I reached into the pocket of my robe and pulled out the mysterious piece of plastic.

“What is it?”

“A syringe cap. I found it on the floor this morning.”

“So? This is a hospital, Hannah.”

I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs out of my brain. “While you were gone, I thought Dr. Voorhis came into my room.”

Paul set his coffee on the bedside table and turned his full attention on me. “The pediatrician? Why would he come all the way down from Baltimore just to visit you?”

“At first I thought I was dreaming. But now I think maybe I wasn’t. He had a hypodermic with him. What if he injected me with something?” My imagination was running wild. “What if he’s given me AIDS?”

Paul was incredulous. “Your first instinct was right, Hannah. You were having a nightmare.”

“Then how do you explain this?” I held the purple cap between my thumb and forefinger and extended my arm. “I’m sure I heard a snap when Dr. Voorhis twisted this off the needle.”

“Look at me, Hannah!” His face was inches from mine. “You’re talking to a man who sat here all night while you moaned and groaned and talked a blue streak.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

What was I going to say? Paul knew about my crashing the therapy group, of course, and about my trip to Dr. Voorhis’s office with Julie, but I hadn’t told him about my interviews with Voorhis’s daughter’s former patients.

“Well…” I set my cup on the bedside tray next to the breakfast I was no longer hungry enough to eat. I considered confessing to my crimes, but decided this wasn’t the time or the place. Once too often before, I’d stuck my nose where it didn’t belong. The last time I’d nearly drowned and taken Paul’s sister along with me. “Maybe you’re right,” I said at last. “Perhaps I was dreaming.”

But the syringe cap, tucked deep into the pocket of my robe, remained a tangible reminder of what might have been. Apparitions don’t touch you, after all. And they certainly don’t smell like Old Spice.