Authors: Suanne Laqueur
Erik carefully set his cheek on her head, not allowing any weight to press on her, but letting her feel his skin. He closed his eyes. He waited to weep, but no tears came. Nothing but this numb shock, and an all-encompassing, pervasive sadness with no outlet.
Talk to her,
the nurse had said, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Not when she was like this, shot down, ripped open, broken. Not even smelling like herself.
“I’m here,” he whispered, moving his cheek over her brow, letting her feel him, breathe in his presence. “I’m here, Dais. I love you.”
She made a small sound—a single, feathery hum in her throat. The fingers in his fluttered, then squeezed weakly. She moved her head in the direction of his voice, her shoulders twisting, turning into him. She put her nose against his neck. Inhaled. Again the little sound in her throat. And she was still.
Erik put his hand on her face, fingertips sliding into her hair.
He didn’t pat or caress her. It would make her crazy right now. She wouldn’t be able to think.
He rested his head on hers and held her still.
Detective Khoury emerged from Will’s room chuckling, saying Will was too zonked out on morphine for any kind of conversation. Khoury would be back in the morning. Lucky was allowed in then, and Erik could go too, if he kept it brief.
Much as Daisy had, Will turned his head and leaned into Lucky’s neck, inhaling with a palpable relief. Erik found himself smiling at the primitive impulse. As if a sedated person were robbed of all senses except smell. They hadn’t the strength to open eyes or reach out. They were merely looking for the soothing scent of a loved one.
Erik leaned and rested his face close to Will’s, letting him sense his presence. Will’s head turned. The eyes fluttered and managed to open. They rolled a little drunkenly, focused a couple seconds on Erik, then the lids dropped again.
“Whazup, asshole,” Will whispered thickly. His mouth curved up a little. He looked quite pleased with himself. Then his features melted into neutrality and he was asleep again.
It was eight o’clock then, and the ICU’s visiting hours ended, although family would be allowed a single hour later, from ten to eleven. Erik, Lucky and the Biancos left the hospital and went to the nearby Sheraton where David had been quite busy.
Erik never knew if David charmed someone’s pants off or if it was simply an act of benevolence on the part of the hotel. But management upgraded them to the presidential suite, with its three bedrooms and three baths and every amenity they could possibly need. David himself had driven back to Lancaster and gathered clean clothes for Erik and Lucky.
“You go digging through my underwear drawer, Alto?” Lucky asked.
“Oh, hell yeah,” he said. “I know you—you’ll be locking Will’s door before they get the IV out of him. I figured you’d want your nice panties.”
Lucky went to swat his arm, but the swat became a caress and she kissed his face tenderly. “You’re a prince, Dave.”
He was a prince. Erik barely recognized his gentle kindness. David, always so moody and difficult, was here for him, a beacon in the fog, beaming a purposeful, dependable light.
Erik got into the shower, turning it as hot as he could stand. More blood swirled in the water around his feet. He used the entire little bottle of shampoo and wore the soap down to a sliver.
A brisk knock on the door and David’s voice floated over the curtain.
“You want tea?”
“Yeah. Two b—”
“Two bags and milk. Jesus, Fish, I know how you take your fucking tea.” The door slammed. Erik shook his head and had to smile. When he finally emerged, pink and dripping, the tea was on the vanity and the bloody clothes taken away. Erik didn’t know where—he never saw them again. He dressed in the clothes David had brought. He retrieved his wallet and keys and other effects from the side table, then he picked up the penny. Stared at it a long time.
He did not put it in his pocket. He left it.
They sat at the table in the suite’s living room and ate room service. Nobody made much conversation. Erik had reached a strange mental tipping point where he went utterly numb, nearly on the verge of indifference. He found himself thinking about basketball. Big game tonight. With Magic Johnson retired and Doc Rivers flopping, could the Lakers beat the Clippers and will themselves into the playoffs? Erik glanced over at the television. It was turned on to the news, with the sound muted. Would it be heartless of him to switch to the game? Probably.
He felt oddly and inappropriately bored.
The phone rang.
“I can’t get up,” Francine said, sighing. “I’m so tired.”
As if her words were a signal, Erik felt leaden then. Bed beckoned enticingly. His head longed for a pile of pillows with smooth, freshly-laundered cases. His mouth actually watered at the thought of lying down.
Stooped and stiff, Joe trudged to the phone and answered.
“Eat, darling,” Francine said to Lucky. “Just a little more.”
Lucky picked up her grilled cheese and took a grudging bite.
Joe turned around, speaking in French, his voice raised in alarm. The lethargy of the room split apart with a crackle. Francine stood up.
“What?” Erik said.
David had gone pale. “I think they’re taking her back into surgery.”
Erik jumped up, bumping the table with his knee, making plates rattle and glasses slosh. “Joe, what happened?”
Joe hung up the phone and looked at Lucky. “Reperfusion,” he said, as if accusing her of a crime.
Lucky shook her head, eyes wide. “I don’t know what that is,” she said wildly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
Erik ran into the bedroom to grab his sneakers and jacket. About to dash out again, he stopped and looked at the penny. It lay on the bedside table where he had left it, orange and sinister under the lamplight. It glared at him.
It didn’t like to be left.
He put it in his pocket and followed the Biancos back to the hospital. There they learned reperfusion is when blood supply returns to tissue after a period of oxygen deprivation. Instead of restoring normal function, it brings on inflammation and cell damage. Dangerous pressure begins to build up.
“Marguerite began to shows signs of distress and complain of severe pain in her lower leg,” said Dr. Jinani. “Despite the morphine drip.”
They were in the family waiting area of the ICU, a smaller room within the unit.
“We soon lost the distal pulses and took her immediately back into surgery. I feared she was developing acute compartment syndrome.”
“Which means?” Francine said. “What is it? Could she die?”
“No, Mrs. Bianco. She is out of danger but it was a serious emergency situation. In essence, her body was not rejecting the graft itself, but the oxygen the graft was bringing. We had to immediately relieve the pressure building up in the compartment of the leg—hence the name of the condition—or else blood would stop reaching her lower leg. And the tissue would begin to die. Then she could lose the limb.”
“How did you stop it?” Joe said. “What did you do to her?”
“Sir, it was necessary to perform a dual fasciotomy. We made incisions on the medial and lateral aspects of the lower leg and removed a small amount of fascia to relieve the pressure.”
“How deep?” Erik said, feeling a little sick as he tried to picture this. “Are you cutting into her muscle? Will she be able to walk?”
“No, the incision is just deep enough to relieve the pressure.”
“And it was successful? It’s working?” Joe asked.
“Yes, sir, the distal pulses have been restored and the limb is warm. She must be closely monitored through this first night.”
“And then what,” Joe said. “You’ll close the wounds tomorrow?”
“Sir, you must understand,” Dr. Jinani said. “The incisions must be left open until the pressure is fully relieved. I am thinking for a week.”
“Oh my God,” Francine whispered, putting her face in her hands.
“And it can take up to a month for the fasciotomies to heal completely.”
“A month,” Erik whispered. “She’ll be in bed a month?”
“Not necessarily. My thought is she will remain in the ICU for a week while the wounds remain open. I will close them one at a time, roughly speaking, over a period of ten to twelve days. Then she will be able to walk, either with crutches or a walker, and we can send her to rehab.”
Nobody spoke then. The hospital hummed with quiet purpose around them. A voice over an intercom. A nurse walking by, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. A phone ringing sedately.
“Can I see her?” Francine said. Her eyes were closed but her spine was straight.
“She’s heavily sedated right now, Mrs. Bianco, and—”
Her eyes opened. “I don’t need to have a conversation with her,” Francine said, her voice velvet around steel. “I just need to see her.”
“This is our only child, doctor,” Joe said.
“I understand. Just for a few minutes,” the surgeon said. He looked at Erik. “And you?”
Every particle of Erik’s being resisted.
I can’t,
he thought.
I can’t do it. Not with her leg sliced open. I can’t look at her like that. Don’t make me.
Joe put his hand on Erik’s face. The firm, warm palm. A soft tug on his earlobe. “Come,” he said. “I need you to come, Erique. We’ll make each other strong.” The pat of his hand again. “I am afraid, too. Come with me. I ask you.”
Erik shut his eyes tight. Teeth set together, he nodded.
He got up.
* * *
Back at the hotel, Erik collapsed on one of the queen beds, heeling off his shoes.
“Bad?” David asked.
Erik ran his hands through his hair and held them there. “They were long cuts, man,” he said. “I thought they’d be little.”
“Show me.”
Erik freed a hand and drew a line a couple inches beneath his knee bone to the top of his sock. David drew in his breath with a hiss. “Just on one side, right?”
“Both.”
“Jesus.” His face twisting a little, David crossed his arms tight on his chest. “And you could like…see her muscles and shit?”
“Sort of. I mean, her leg was bandaged but…” The incisions were dressed but you could see something wasn’t quite right, see beneath the light gauze something was bulging from them. Erik shook his head, trying to flick away the image. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Don’t. You’re done. Hit the sack. You want tea or something?”
“No.”
“Don’t forget to call your mom. She called before, I talked to her a little while.”
Erik’s hands were numb and stupid as he brushed his teeth, pulled on sweats and a T-shirt. He called Christine. Again the sensation of his mouth making coherent conversation without his brain’s participation.
“You went out of the booth,” she whispered. “David told me how you… Oh, Erik…”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“No. No, honey, I… I just need to get to you.”
“I’m so tired.”
“Put your head down. Stay with David. I’ll be there tomorrow.” More comforting, murmured words flowing over the line, saying goodnight, saying she loved him. She was coming.
After hanging up, Erik toppled into bed like a felled tree. David brought him a glass of water and a blue, triangular pill.
“What’s this?”
“That, my friend, is a valium.”
“I’m human valium,” Erik said.
“Not tonight. Take it or I’ll find one in suppository form and get Daisy’s mother to help hold you down.”
Even with the dire threat, Erik hesitated. And David smiled at him. His true, genuine smile. “Nothing will keep you from waking up if she needs you,” he said.
“I know.”
“She’s asleep, Fish. You should be, too. I’ll wake you up, I promise.”
Erik swallowed the little helper and lay down. He pushed the pillows around, piling them behind him. Dave could laugh, he didn’t care. The way Erik went to sleep best was with Daisy spooned up against his back. If she couldn’t be here, he’d fake it.
David dropped into the easy chair in the corner of the room, clicking the reading lamp over his head. “The light gonna bother you?”
“No.” Then Erik sat up on an elbow. “Dave, are you reading the bible?”
“Yes,” David said, licking his finger and turning pages. “Shocked?”
“Only because you’re the least religious person I know.”
“True. But there’s this one prayer, my Aunt Helen likes it. Here, Psalm 41.” He looked up with his irreverent grin. “That would be one of the Psalms of King David, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
David read out loud:
A long moment of silence. “Read it again,” Erik said.
David did, lingering over the last line, “Sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.”
“Thanks for being here,” Erik said.
David looked back at him. “Go to sleep, Fish.”
Erik put his head down, wiggled back into the pile of pillows on his shoulder blades, willing them into Daisy’s pliant body.
“Fishy, fishy in the brook,” David said, “go to sleep while I read the Good Book.”
Smiling, curled on his side with the charms of his necklace tucked in a hand, Erik closed his eyes. He took roll call of his talismans: Saint Birgitta, the fish, the boat. And Daisy’s charm, the tiny gold scissors.
The sax.
He opened his eyes again.
“It’s all right, Fish. Go to sleep.”
Erik shut his eyes. He waited. For either sleep or panic. Neither came.