Chapter Twenty-six
KELLY HAD JUST tossed her empty plastic coffee cup into the trash when she saw them.
At first she thought she was hallucinating. That couldn’t be Rose DiFalco and Maddy Bainbridge standing near the admin desk at the entrance to the emergency room. She blinked her eyes. It couldn’t possibly be. She’d just seen them a few hours ago.
Her glance drifted toward a tiny figure on a stretcher who was being hustled quickly through the double doors and into the great unknowable bowels of the ER.
Hannah.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, then crossed herself. Hannah was only four years old.
She lingered in the hallway between the cafeteria and the entrance to the ER, watching Maddy and Rose fill out the endless reams of paperwork. She wanted to walk over to them and say something comforting, but she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound trite and insincere. She’d only met Hannah last night, after all, and how much of a connection could you forge with a four-year-old over supper and a teapot?
Still, there had been a connection between them, a very real one. Click. Like the sound of a door being unlocked. Once, when Hannah was pouring water from Rose’s bedside pitcher into the samovar to serve pretend tea, Kelly had experienced the sensation that Hannah was somehow taking her in hand, teaching her things she needed to know.
None of which made the slightest bit of sense, no matter how you looked at it.
But then, who would have imagined that the little girl with the sad blue eyes would be rushed by ambulance to Good Sam less than twenty-four hours later?
She forced herself into the corridor and toward the waiting area. Rose disappeared into the ladies’ room while Maddy leaned against the doorway to the office with her eyes closed.
Her eyes fluttered open at the sound of Kelly’s footsteps.
“Kelly.” Her eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s my grandmother,” she said, determined not to get weepy. “They think she’s—” She couldn’t say the word, so she shrugged instead, a big up-and-down motion of her shoulders.
“Oh, honey.” There was nothing but compassion in Maddy’s eyes as she reached out to touch her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
Click. Another connection she didn’t understand.
“I saw you and Mrs. DiFalco and—” She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Is Hannah very sick?” Stupid question. How could you ask such a stupid question?
Maddy’s eyes welled with tears, but there was still nothing but kindness in her expression. “I don’t know, Kelly. She’s restless, yet we can’t seem to rouse her from sleep. She keeps pulling at her pajamas, the sheet, the blanket—Rose heard her mumbling something, but we couldn’t understand her.”
Dread washed over Kelly and she struggled to keep the fear from her eyes. Maddy’s description of Hannah’s condition sounded exactly like the way Grandma Irene had been acting all day.
No.
She refused to let her mind move in that direction. She tried to will the thought into extinction. Suddenly she longed to see Seth, to see her father, to hold Grandma Irene’s hand. Terrible things happened every moment of every day. You could be walking down the street one morning, young and healthy and happy, and a car could jump the curb and your life, your future, your hopes—everything, gone in an instant.
“Ms. Bainbridge?” A nurse popped out of the admissions office. “Your daughter’s in Room 2. I’ll bring the rest of the paperwork back there for you to sign.”
Maddy thanked the woman, then turned again to Kelly.
“I’d better get back before my dad wonders where I’ve disappeared to,” she said.
“Thanks,” Maddy said, kissing her swiftly on the cheek. “I’ll say a prayer for your grandma.”
ROSE LEANED AGAINST the narrow sink in the closet-sized rest room and took a deep breath. The air barely made it into her lungs. She closed her eyes and tried again. Breathe, they all say. Just breathe deeply and your anxieties will melt away like snow in spring.
Of all the hospitals in South Jersey, why did it have to be Good Samaritan? If she wasn’t feeling so fragile right now, she would appreciate the irony. She had been diagnosed here at Good Sam, had surgery at Good Sam, endured chemo and radiation at Good Sam. And all because it was the one hospital her family and friends rarely used.
Secrets required planning, and Rose had always been good with details. Of course it was inconvenient—Good Sam was a longer drive—but blessed anonymity was well worth it.
And now there she was, selfishly wrestling with her own ridiculous fears while her beloved granddaughter lay sick in the ER and her prickly and equally beloved daughter struggled to hold it all together.
You should be out there helping her, Rosie, not cowering in the bathroom.
“Tell her,” she said to the terrified old woman in the mirror. “Tell her while it’s still your choice.”
Before someone else took matters into their own hands and told Maddy for her.
“IRINA! YOU’RE NOT to tease your sister like that. You are late for your studies, and Monsieur LeGrand says your grammar is most appalling. Come along! Come along!” It is most important that the girls learn to speak perfect French as befits their position in Russian society.
Natalya, the governess, stands in the doorway to the nursery-turned-schoolroom and looks most sternly at her young charges. Irina can’t stop giggling. She tries to hide her mirth behind her hand, but Natalya isn’t easily fooled.
“She pulled my hair!” her little sister cries out. Maria is six years old but still a baby. “She must be punished!”
But Irina knows Natalya will not punish her. The big house is filled with love, each floor, every room, and she knows it will always be that way. . . .
IRENE CONTINUED TO hover in some sort of half-world. A feeling of sorrow permeated the room, almost visible like fog rolling across the snowy beach. Aidan had finally gotten it through his head that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending this time. Irene was dying. Each shaky inhalation of breath moved her closer to that moment when respiration would slow, her heart would stop, her life would end.
Nurses came and went. They checked Irene’s bedclothes, wiped her brow with a damp cloth, swabbed her mouth with what looked like a cotton lollipop, tried to offer her sips of water, which she refused to take. Each step toward the end choreographed with the tight precision of a ballet.
“IRINA! IRINA! STAND still or I shall not be able to fasten this last button.”
Irina laughs and playfully bats away Mila’s faltering hands. “Oh, do stop, Mila!” she says as she dances out of her maid’s reach. “You are just teasing me. Let me see myself in the glass or I shall go mad.”
Mila pretends great annoyance, but Irina sees the way her tired old eyes dance with delight as Irina pirouettes before the mirror.
“I look like Mamma, don’t I?” she asks as she admires her reflection. “I have waited all my life, and finally I look like Mamma.”
“You are lovely,” Mila says, but her words dance right past Irina’s reflection.
She is thinking of Nikolai, her beloved Kolya, and the look in his beautiful blue eyes when he sees her in this lovely dress. . . .
THEY HAD STOPPED suggesting that he might like to go home for a while, that there was little point to being there. She didn’t know. She didn’t see. She didn’t care. “It could be hours, it could be days,” the doctor said.
“You might as well go home for a while and come back later.”
He told them he was staying put. Irene wasn’t going to die alone.
It was toughest on Kelly. She couldn’t stay in the room more than ten minutes at a time. Irene would make a sound or start plucking at the bedclothes, and his daughter’s face would turn white, and next thing he knew she was off to make another phone call or buy another cup of coffee.
He glanced at his watch and saw it was almost seven o’clock. She’d been gone quite awhile. He wondered if this time she’d bailed for good. No matter how many times you’d been in its company, no matter how old you were, death was never easy.
“Daddy.” Kelly stood in the doorway. She looked stricken.
“What’s wrong?”
She stepped closer and he could see she had been crying. “They brought Rose DiFalco’s granddaughter into the emergency room.”
“Jesus.” He felt like he’d been sucker punched. “How bad?”
“I don’t know,” Kelly said. “Maddy looks pretty scared.”
He was on his feet. “You mind being alone here for a while?”
Kelly shook her head. “I’ll be okay.”
He saw the fear in her eyes and the resolve. This young woman who had seen too much of death already.
“If anything happens—”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll find you.”
He had the sense of being trapped in a bad and familiar dream, the one where everything that matters is slipping through his fingers and washing out to sea. Last night he had almost believed the bad times were coming to an end, that maybe there was a chance to turn the O’Malleys’ long run of lousy luck around and start over again. Figure out happy. Get a lock on optimistic. Maybe even snag one of those fairy-tale endings he had stopped believing in a long time ago.
SHE HEARS HIM leave the room. She tries to call out to him, but her words are a tumble of that long-ago language, of sounds that seem to begin somewhere beyond this shell of a body that lies dying on the white bed. She senses the girl, that lovely child whose name is so hard for her to remember, crying softly from somewhere close by. Is that love? She wonders. It has been a very long time. . . .
Her beloved parents stand near the foot of the bed . . . how beautiful Mamma looks and how strong and tall Pappa stands in his elegant uniform . . . her sisters . . . and oh, how her heart leaps when Kolya steps forward, smiling, always smiling, and reaches for her hand. . . .
But it is only the girl with the soft hands and sweet voice who touches her, whispering in Irina’s ear. . . .
“I KNOW YOU can hear me,” Kelly said to Grandma Irene. “You may not be able to answer me, but I know you’re listening to every word.”
She squeezed Irene’s hand gently, and for a moment thought she felt the slightest pressure in response. The doctors would say it was only a reflex action, some involuntary motion that hopeful relatives invariably misinterpreted the way they misinterpret a newborn’s grimace for a smile.
“I’ll bet Grandpa Michael’s waiting for you,” she said. “And Billy, too. You were the first one to explain heaven to me . . . do you remember? I was just a little girl, and you took the time to explain it all in a way I could understand. . . .”
She talked softly, drifting from subject to subject, trying to ignore the odd sounds Irene made from time to time. They sounded like words, but certainly not English words. Gaelic maybe? They almost sounded Russian, but that was ridiculous. Where would Irene learn Russian?
Click.
Another connection made.
The samovar was resting on the chair in the corner of the room. She imagined she could see it shimmering and bright inside the shopping bag. A second later it was on her lap, almost on the edge of Irene’s bed.
“I wish you could see this samovar, Grandma,” she said. “It’s almost an exact duplicate of the one you and Grandpa Michael displayed at O’Malley’s.”
She gently lifted Irene’s hand and placed it on the curve of the handle.
“See? I was told it was in terrible shape, but Rose DiFalco polished it up. It’s for her granddaughter . . . Hannah’s four years old and she thinks it looks like Aladdin’s lamp from the Disney movie. Hannah’s in the hospital, too, right down the hall. They don’t—”
Was she imagining it, or did a smile swiftly move across her grandmother’s face as she touched the base of the samovar?
“I wish I’d known Grandpa Michael. He loved you so much. Everybody says so. I hope that Seth and I can be as happy as you and Grandpa were.”
She held her breath. Irene’s long, beautiful fingers were tracing the leaves and vines entwined on the handle.
“They had dozens of samovars at the Russian Tea Room,” she babbled on. “You would have loved them. Our debating coach treated us to lunch there the day we won the Tristate Gold Medal.”
On and on she went, talking about everything that popped into her head while her grandmother’s fingers inspected every inch of the samovar. It was a little unsettling. Irene’s eyes remained closed, and the rest of her body remained perfectly still. Only those beautiful hands were in motion.
“Why a Russian samovar, Grandma? Why did Grandpa Michael buy you a samovar?” In a restaurant that had been filled with shamrocks and shillelaghs, it was definitely a strange choice.
Did he buy it because it was beautiful? Because it filled an empty space in the front lobby? Because it was the only type of teapot she didn’t have?
Or maybe he bought it because it meant something that only the two of them understood.
Click.
Irene began to whimper, and then the whimpers became loud sobs that brought a floor nurse running.
“What’s wrong?” the nurse asked as she checked the IV line. “Did she try to get up?”
“She was running her hand along this teapot,” Kelly said, “and the next second she was crying.”
“Poor thing.” The nurse adjusted the drip, then stepped over to the computer terminal to key in the information. “I promise we’ll find the right balance. We want to keep her as comfortable as possible.” She inclined her head in the direction of the samovar. “You might want to stow that. No use upsetting her any more.”
HOW NERVOUS MICHAEL is! Like a bridegroom, the way he fusses around Irene that night, so attentive and loving.
How lucky she is to have a husband like that. Thirty-three years together and his face still lights up when she enters a room.
It is much more than she deserves.
He takes her out that night to celebrate their anniversary. Three days before Christmas, they all exclaim. What on earth made you two pick such a ridiculous day to be married?
And Michael and Irene just laugh, they always laugh, and let the questions fall away.
He takes her to their favorite steak place on the water, overlooking the bright dazzle of Manhattan across the river, and he orders champagne and shrimp cocktail and their finest filets of beef, and then, when she thinks all the good things have been accounted for, he gestures to the waiter, who carries over an enormous box tied with shiny white paper and silvery blue ribbons.
He watches, his blue eyes wide with pleasure and pride and more than a touch of anxiety, as she carefully unwraps the gift. (When she was little, in that long-ago land, she tore into packages with greedy glee. There were always more presents, there was always more of everything right around the corner.)
He holds the box while she plunges her hands into the soft nest of snowy tissue paper, then she gasps at what she finds.
“Michael!” Her eyes meet his and she cannot disguise the wonder in her voice. “Where did you get this?”
A samovar! A magnificent Russian samovar that sends her spinning back through time to those golden years that are more golden in memory because they will never come again.
He tells her the story of the restaurant in Brooklyn, and she feels her walls and fences, so long in place and so very high, begin to crumble. Is this love? Is that what she feels for him? When did it happen . . . why didn’t she know . . .
She wants to tell him, but she hasn’t the vocabulary for love, and he is gone before she ever finds the words to tell him all he means—and all he would ever mean—to her.
AIDAN MADE HIS way quickly down the corridor to the elevator bank, pushed the Down button, waited five seconds, then opted instead for the staircase. He startled a pair of X-ray techs who were taking a break on the landing. Their bodies were pressed close. Yin and yang. Part of the same eternal puzzle. They turned their heads toward the wall. He pretended he didn’t see them.
Sometimes you had to grab happiness wherever you found it.
He was learning—oh, yeah, he was learning all right. He hoped it wasn’t too late for him. Last night he’d had a glimpse of something wonderful, someone wonderful, but his track record didn’t inspire hope. There was still a chance for Kelly, a chance for her to break free of old sorrows and guilt and build something wonderful for herself. He had screwed up too many times, let himself stand clear of love for way too long to make him believe he could ever do the same.
He pushed open the door marked First Floor and quickly got his bearings. Down the hall, two lefts, a sharp right, the huge swinging doors that led to the ER. He had long ago learned that the secret to access was all in the attitude. Act like you belonged there and you did. It was as simple as that. Nobody questioned his presence as he scanned the huge open room for Maddy. Central hub that served as the nurses’ station. Doctors in lab coats milling about. A tech wheeling a portable cardio machine. A porter mopping a spill near the door to the lavatory. An old man with terrified eyes in Cube 1. A little boy holding his arm and crying in Cube 8. Curtains strung across other openings for privacy.
He walked past each cubicle, listening. Finally he heard a familiar voice, and the sound hit him like a jolt of pure adrenaline. Maddy’s voice. He absorbed the sound, the feel of it, into his bloodstream.
He stopped in front of the closed curtain. “Maddy,” he said. “It’s Aidan.”
The curtain drew back and he saw it all in an instant. Rose standing near the head of the bed. Hannah, pale and disoriented, her tiny body in constant motion. Fingers pulling at the covers. Talking, talking. Strange words he had never heard before. Nonsense words with an oddly familiar rhythm. The fear in Maddy’s beautiful eyes. The brief surge of joy on her face when their hands touched. The sound of a heart—his own—coming back to painful, hopeful life.
A chance . . . even if it’s one in a million . . . there has to be a chance for us.
“How is she?” he asked as they stepped into the corridor.
“They don’t know,” she said. “Her symptoms suggest any number of things.”
“Any one in particular?”
She was trembling. He hadn’t noticed that before. “Meningitis.”
He reacted on instinct and so did she. He opened his arms to her and she moved into his embrace. Through clothes and muscle and bone he felt her heart beating in time with his.
He asked the name of the doctor, the residents, what tests they were running. He kept her talking, kept her focused on detail, not emotion, and after a bit the trembling slowed.
“No fever is a good sign,” he said, aware of Rose’s curious, but not unfriendly, gaze.
“I know,” she said, resting her forehead against his shoulder for a second longer. “That’s the one thing that’s keeping them from ordering a spinal tap.”
“Kids are resilient,” he said. “They bounce back from things that would knock us flat.”
“I know,” she said again.
“They’ll figure it out any minute, and once they get those meds flowing, she’ll be her old self.”
Maddy tried to smile, failed, then tried again. “I want to believe that.”
“I believe it,” he said. “She’s going to be fine.”
She met his eyes. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother.”
“So am I,” he said.
A doctor, flanked by a pair of eager med students, descended upon Hannah’s cubicle. He could feel Maddy’s focus shift to her daughter. As it should be.
She asked what room Irene was in and was about to say something when Rose joined them.
“They have some questions, honey,” Rose said to her daughter, “and I don’t seem to know the answers.”
Maddy was away in a flash.
“I’m sorry to hear Irene is declining,” Rose said. “She has always been a role model for me, one of the few successful working women around when I was growing up.”
“There wasn’t much Irene couldn’t do when she set her mind to it.”
“Did you know that she’s one of the people I spoke to when I was thinking of cashing in my 401(k) and opening the Candlelight?”
“You went to Irene?”
“Before I went to my banker.” She smiled at the memory. “She probably gave me better advice. You were still fighting fires, so you wouldn’t know how instrumental she was in the formation of the Small Business Owners Association.”
“You’re right. I didn’t know any of this.” No surprise that Claire hadn’t told him.
“We should talk sometime,” Rose said. “Your family and mine go way back. I owe Irene a great deal. The last few years have been so busy—I wish I’d found time to thank her.”
“She’s in 312.”
Rose seemed to hesitate. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was afraid. “You wouldn’t mind?”
He shook his head. “I’d appreciate it.”
She cast a longing glance toward the curtain pulled across Hannah’s cubicle, then straightened her shoulders. “Let’s go,” she said.
ROSE WAS GONE.
Maddy stood in the middle of the chaos of the emergency room with her arms wrapped across her chest and tried not to cry.
The doctors were still in there with Hannah. Poking. Prodding. Shining lights in her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her ears, tossing questions at Maddy faster than she could answer them.
Where have you been recently. . . . Have you traveled abroad. . . . Is she in school. . . . Do you have a phone contact. . . . Can you provide a list . . .
When she asked why they wanted to know, what were they thinking, where did they think this was headed, their answers provided little comfort.
We don’t know. . . . It could be . . . We’re worried about . . . Symptoms consistent with . . . Move swiftly but with great caution . . .
They were moving Hannah up to the third floor to free up space in the ER. The plan was to run a spinal tap—they called it a lumbar puncture, as if that made it sound more friendly—if no other explanation for her symptoms revealed itself within the next few hours. At the moment there wasn’t an OR available, but the second one opened up, Hannah would be top priority.
Maddy stepped out of the crowded cubicle, looking for Rose. She had been out there minutes ago. Maddy had heard her talking to Aidan. The sound of their voices had given her comfort. Her mother hadn’t been there for Hannah’s birth. She hadn’t been there for her granddaughter’s baptism. Maddy had believed she would never forgive her mother for cheating them all of something meant to be shared. But the relief she felt knowing Rose was on the other side of the curtain had almost been enough to wipe away the past. She needed Rose’s strength, her determination, her belief in bending fate to meet her own needs.
She needed her mother, and, once again, her mother was nowhere to be found.
A fine anger began to burn deep in her gut.
“Good news,” said one of the nurses. “They found a room on three. We’ll move her up as soon as they send somebody for her.”
Maddy nodded her thanks. The hot coal of anger had grown so big it was choking her. She had cried herself sick the afternoon she gave birth to Hannah, praying that she would look up and see Rose standing in the doorway to the labor room, but of course that had never happened. Through the entire nine months of her pregnancy she had yearned for her mother. Longed for her presence. Sometimes she dreamed about her. But Rose had kept her censorious distance, ashamed perhaps of Maddy’s single state or, more likely, disappointed that her unambitious daughter had chosen the most traditional path of all.
A huge orderly with a clipboard tucked under his arm smiled at Maddy.
“Hannah Bainbridge-Lawlor?” he asked.
Maddy nodded and gestured toward the cubicle. “She’s ready.”
You should be here, Rose, Maddy raged as she walked behind the rolling bed that bore her baby girl. Not for her. It was too late for that. She should be there for Hannah.
Disappointment, strong as bile, burned through her as the elevator climbed to the third floor. Hannah deserved better. Wasn’t that why Maddy had moved clear across the country, so her little girl could be surrounded by family and old friends?
Well, where were they? Where was her family? Where were her aunts who usually couldn’t wait to stick their noses in her business? Where were her happy-go-lucky cousins? Where were the nieces and nephews? Where were her old friends, the ones who claimed they would always be there for each other, through good times and bad?
But most of all, where was her mother?
Anger followed her down the corridor, past the nurses’ station, and it finally exploded into fury when she saw her mother leaning over Irene O’Malley’s bed as if it were the only place on earth she needed to be.