The Second Heart (9 page)

“Finally,” Meredith said loudly as she stood
up. One of the other waiting patients looked up at her curiously.
“I’m here for a boob job, how ‘bout you?” She laughed at her own
joke again and threaded her way through the rows of chairs to where
the nurse was standing. Amelia and Rob exchanged an embarrassed
look and followed close behind, smiling apologetically at the other
patient as they walked past.

The nurse asked Meredith a bunch of questions
about her medical history, weighed her, and took her blood
pressure. Then Meredith was led to a curtained area with a bed and
a chair, surrounded by numerous machines. There was a hospital gown
folded up on the foot of the bed, along with a thin white
blanket.

The nurse handed her a clear plastic bag that
had the words “Personal Belongings” printed on the side. “Go ahead
and get undressed and put all your stuff in here. The doctor will
be in to see you shortly.”

Amelia and Rob waited outside the curtained
area while Meredith changed. After she was settled on the bed with
the blanket draped over her lower half for modesty, Meredith called
them in. Amelia sat in the chair while Rob leaned against the foot
of the bed.

The nurse who had given Meredith the
morphine, Eleanor, pulled aside the curtain and stepped into the
makeshift room. “Did the morphine help? You feeling better?”

Meredith smiled broadly. “I’m feeling
great.”

“I can see that,” Eleanor said without a
smile. “Why don’t you tell me some more about why you’re here this
morning?”

“Well, I had a stomach ache all day
yesterday, and then this morning it started cramping really bad,”
Meredith described. It seemed that the morphine had also robbed her
of her advanced vocabulary skills, which she found amusing. She
chuckled softly to herself.

“Okay, so on a scale of one to ten, how would
you rate the pain you felt?”

“Well that’s a toughie. Assuming ten is ‘my
face is on fire’, and one is ‘I have to burp’, I’m going to say an
eight. Maybe a seven? No, an eight. Definitely an eight. Am I being
graded on this?”

Eleanor didn’t respond, simply writing the
number down on Meredith’s chart. Still looking at the clipboard,
she asked, “How would you rate your pain now?”

Meredith rested a hand on her chin and looked
toward the ceiling. “Um, I would say a three, which is
way
better than an eight. So, thank you for the drugs. Seriously. Not
that I’m a drug-seeker, ‘cause I’m not. But I feel better, so
thanks.”

Amelia and Rob looked aghast at their
seemingly drunk daughter. Taking in their concerned expressions,
Eleanor said, “This is a normal reaction to morphine, so just enjoy
it and take lots of video.” She smiled for the first time, and the
expression seemed unnatural on her broad face.

Meredith’s parents chuckled and relaxed
visibly.

Turning back to Meredith, Eleanor asked, “Can
you show me where you feel the most pain?”

Meredith gestured toward her midsection,
saying, “But it’s not my appendix. I had that taken out a couple of
years ago ‘cause it looked at me funny.”

Ignoring the joke, Eleanor continued, “Okay,
well there are a lot of different reasons why you could be hurting
right now. I’m going to give you some contrast dye to drink, and
then the doc wants us to take some pictures to see what’s going on
in there. Sound like a plan?”

Meredith nodded and Eleanor left, returning
after a moment with a Styrofoam cup full of blue liquid. A straw
bobbed up and down in the cup. Meredith looked at the concoction
dubiously.

“It’s Gatorade with the contrast dye in it,
so it’ll taste a little metallic,” Eleanor explained. “Drink it all
up, and we’ll be back soon to take you back for your scan.”

Meredith took a sip of the drink, making a
sour face. “Ugh, it tastes awful,” she whined. She took a deep
breath and then drank the rest of the cup down in several large
gulps, getting it over with.

“Good girl,” Eleanor said. “Now don’t eat or
drink anything else.” She took the empty cup from Meredith and left
them alone.

A little while later, a hospital worker came
in and showed them how to use the TV that pulled out on an arm from
the wall. He told them it could be an hour wait for the scan, and
to make themselves comfortable. Rob decided to go home and get
changes of clothes for himself and Amelia, and Meredith asked him
to get her cell phone as well.

After he left, Amelia fished around in her
purse and pulled out a small spiral bound notebook and a pen. She
thought for a moment and then drew something on a blank page,
holding it up for Meredith to see.

Meredith smiled. Her mother had drawn out a
game of Hangman, which was a game they used to play in various
waiting rooms when Meredith was younger. The puzzle Amelia had
drawn had two words, four and five letters long. Meredith guessed a
few letters, earning some filled spaces along with a head and
shoulders dangling from the stick gallows. After a few more tries,
she guessed the puzzle. “This sucks!” She said triumphantly,
laughing.

Amelia grinned and handed Meredith the
notebook. “Your turn.”

They went back and forth, playing several
more rounds of the familiar game while they waited. After a while,
an orderly came in with a wheelchair to take Meredith for her scan.
The morphine had started to wear off, so Meredith began to feel
increasingly uncomfortable again as she was wheeled away.

For the test, Meredith lay down on a slab
that moved her inside a long tube. The technician told her to lie
perfectly still for the scan, which Meredith found very difficult
to do as her stomach cramped intensely. Fortunately, she was only
in the machine for a few minutes, and then she was taken back to
the curtained area where Amelia waited.

Back in the bed, Meredith wished they would
come back with more morphine for her. She closed her eyes and lay
silently, hoping she might fall asleep or have some other escape
from the pain.

As if she had read Meredith’s mind, Eleanor
came back into the room to check on her. “How are you doing,
pain-wise?”

Meredith gave her a weak
I’m-trying-to-be-a-trooper smile. “Not so great.”

“Well we don’t want that. Let me check with
the doc to see if I can make you more comfortable. Have they come
to get you for your scan yet?”

Meredith nodded, closing her eyes and
clamping down her jaw in response to another wave of pain.

“Good. The doc should be able to have a look
at the pictures shortly, and then she will come in to talk to you.”
Eleanor turned to leave, but changed her mind after taking another
glance at Meredith’s drawn face. She added, “It’s good you came in.
We’ll take good care of you.”

After Eleanor left, Amelia commented, “I
wonder if that’s the warmest thing she’s ever said.”

Meredith snickered through the ache in her
stomach, and then said, “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts!”

“Well, I’ll take competent over friendly any
day,” Amelia concluded.

Eleanor came back and placed an IV in
Meredith’s wrist so they could keep her hydrated and administer
more pain medications as needed, and shortly after that, Rob
returned with Vi in tow. This was the third day in a row that
Meredith had seen her friend without her typical pin-up girl
make-up, and seeing Vi clean and fresh-faced reminded her again of
their younger days.

Vi came to the side of the bed and tousled
Meredith’s hair. “Your hair looks like a rat’s nest,” she
teased.

“I know that hurting me is how you show your
love,” Meredith responded, with an overly affectionate, sickeningly
sweet smile. The pain medication was working, and Meredith was once
again feeling loopy.

Vi settled into the chair next to the bed
while Rob and Amelia left in search of the hospital cafeteria, as
they had been up for hours without a drop of coffee.

“So that was weird waking up alone in your
parents’ house,” Vi remarked conversationally, tossing Meredith’s
cell phone onto the bed. She pulled a zip lock baggie of dry
Cheerios out of her purse and popped one into her mouth with a
little
crunch
.

“Yeah, sorry about that. We kind of forgot
about you in the throes of me
dying
and all.”

“You don’t look dead to me.”
Crunch.

Meredith rolled her eyes. “Try not to sound
too disappointed.”

Vi gave her a brilliant smile and tossed
another Cheerio into her mouth.

Meredith checked her cell phone and saw that
she hadn’t missed any calls. She resolved not to call Miguel again,
considering that she had already tried twice. Now the ball was in
his court.

They sat conversing for a while until they
were interrupted by yet another hospital worker coming into their
curtained area. He was a tall, heavyset man in his mid-forties,
with sandy brown hair and eyes the exact same color. “Hello, I’m
here to take you back for another scan.” He smiled broadly at
Meredith before continuing. “This one’s going to take just a little
bit longer,” he then said, turning to Vi. “Now would be a good time
for a trip to the cafeteria or something, if you want.”

Meredith swung her legs off the bed, doing
her best to keep herself covered as she did so. Matters were
complicated by the fact that her hand was connected by a long tube
to an IV stand. With the hospital worker’s help, she managed to get
herself settled in the wheelchair without getting tangled up in the
IV tube. Meredith tugged at the bottom of the too-short hospital
gown, and once again draped the blanket over her bare legs, ready
to go.

The man pushed Meredith down a long hallway
and past a nurses’ station, where two doctors and a nurse were
standing together intently discussing a patient chart. They all
looked up and fell silent as Meredith was wheeled by, and she could
feel three sets of eyes following her down the hall.
That was
weird
, she thought to herself.

The second scan was much like the first; she
lay down on a long table that inserted her into a tube. The machine
was extremely loud, and the technician gave her some headphones so
that she could listen to the radio while she was being scanned. For
the next twenty minutes, she listened to watered down pop music and
overly peppy DJ’s, which she supposed was still better than nothing
at all.

Back in the curtained area, Vi had pulled out
the TV and turned it on to the news. She stared at the little
six-inch screen with her mouth slightly open, and she barely looked
up when Meredith returned.

“What is it?” Meredith asked as soon as they
were alone. While she settled into the bed, Vi turned the TV screen
so they could both see it.

Vi muted the TV and caught Meredith up on
what she had missed. “Something weird is going on. All the crazies
are out in droves shouting that the Day of Judgment is upon us.
Although at this point, I almost agree with them.”

“What? Why?”

“In the last half hour there have been
earthquakes in California, the Indian Ocean, Chile, and a bunch of
other places. They weren’t huge or anything, but there have never
been so many that have happened at the same time before.” Vi’s face
was pale as she shared the news.

Meredith sank back into the pillows on the
hospital bed, her eyes glued to the pretty brunette newscaster’s
silent face. Vi unmuted the program as the newscaster said, “So far
the worst of the worldwide earthquakes appears to be in the United
States. The California Earthquake Information Center estimates that
the earthquake centered approximately 15 miles northeast of San
Diego’s bustling downtown, shaking commuters as they headed to work
at about 9:30 this morning. The Center’s assessments give this
quake a magnitude of 3.4, though this is a preliminary estimate.
Currently, there are no reports of immediate damage. We are now
going to our correspondent, Wei Pham, who is in Pasadena with
Professor Geoffrey Simonson of the Caltech Seismological
Laboratory.”

Professor Simonson’s face filled the screen.
He had a leathery look to him that spoke of countless hours in the
sun, and his dress was casual. It was apparent that he hadn’t
planned to be featured on national television that morning.
Meredith and Vi listened as Professor Simonson discussed the
unprecedented nature of the worldwide earthquakes, without
providing a lot of concrete explanations.

“He’s just as stumped as the rest of us are,”
Meredith said when he was finished.

Vi nodded absently. She seemed lost in
thought. Suddenly she sat up straight and gripped the arms of her
chair. “Oh shit! Mere, don’t you see?”

Startled, Meredith looked at her blankly.

“It started with fire--” Vi began. She was
cut off, however, by the curtain being yanked back to reveal a
lively looking doctor with startling green eyes.

The doctor had short blonde hair cut into a
pixie cut, and she wore brightly patterned scrubs under her white
lab coat. She was one of the doctors that Meredith had seen at the
nurse’s station.

“Hello, hello!” The doctor chirped
energetically. “I’m Dr. Sparling.”

Vi turned off the TV and pushed it back
against the wall, giving the doctor her full attention.

Dr. Sparling looked back and forth between
the two women, Meredith in the bed and Vi sitting next to her.
“Which one of you is Meredith?” She laughed at her own joke and
then said, “Just kidding. I’m assuming Meredith is the one with the
glassy look in her eyes?” Her eyes twinkled at Meredith as she
reached down and gave Meredith’s foot a playful jostle through the
blanket.

“Yep, that’s me,” Meredith said with a
friendly tone. She liked the young doctor immediately.

“Well, m’dear, I’ve had a chance to look at
your scans, and I think the best thing we can do for you is admit
you into the hospital so we can learn a bit more about what’s
happening with you.” Though Dr. Sparling kept her tone light and
conversational, Meredith could tell that it was a veneer.