Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

“Put it in. Put it in,” Maeve cried through her laughing fit.

I maneuvered the earring into the latent hole of my left ear. Miraculously, after nearly two decades, it slipped right in.

“How do I look? Totally tubular?”

“Like a well-dressed pirate,” my wife said, wiping a rare happy tear from her eye.

“Arrrrrrr, matey,” I said, burying my face in her neck.

I backed away when I felt her stiffen. Then I shuddered at the distant look in her eyes. Her breathing became irregular, as if she was hyperventilating without any hesitation. I blasted the nurse’s button half a dozen times.

“I’ve spilled the water from the spring, Mother,” I heard my wife say in the Irish accent she’d fought so hard to erase. “The lambs are all in the ditch, every last one.”

What was happening? Oh God no, Maeve! Not today, not now—not ever!

Sally Hitchens, the head of the Nursing Department, came rushing in. She shined a light into Maeve’s eye and reached under her robe for her pain pack.

“Doctor upped her meds this morning,” Sally said. Maeve closed her eyes when the nurse put her hand on her forehead. “We have to watch her closely until she adjusts. Can I speak to you a second, Mike?”

Chapter 79

I KISSED the top of my wife’s head and followed Sally out into the hall. The nurse looked directly into my eyes. Bad sign. I quickly thought of the unsettling difference in my wife’s room. The nice new sheets. The fresh flowers. Some kind of preparations were being made.

No. Not acceptable.

“We’re getting very close to the end now, Mike,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“How long?” I said, looking at the hall carpet first, then back up at Sally.

“A week,” the nurse said gently. “Probably less.”

“A week?” I said. Even I knew I sounded like a spoiled child. It wasn’t the nurse’s fault. The lady was an angel of mercy.

“Impossible as it is, you have to prepare yourself,” Sally said. “Didn’t you read the book I gave you?”

She’d given me Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous book On Death and Dying. It described the stages in the death process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

“I guess I’m stuck in the anger part,” I said.

“You’re going to have to unstick yourself, Mike,” the nurse said, annoyed. “Let me tell you something. I’ve seen some cases in this place that, I’m ashamed to say, haven’t affected me all that much. Your wife is not one of those cases. Maeve needs you to be strong now. It’s time to deal. Oh, and Mike, love your earring.”

I closed my eyes and felt my face flush red with anger and embarrassment as I heard the nurse walk off. There was something unending about the pain I felt pass through me then. It seemed incredibly powerful, as if it would burst out of my chest like a bomb blast, stop the world, stop all life everywhere.

It passed after a moment when I heard someone in one of the other rooms click on a TV.

Apparently not, I thought as I opened my burning eyes and headed for the elevators.

Chapter 80

I CALLED HOME on my cell phone as I left the hospital and hurried toward my car. Julia picked up.

“How’s Mom?” she said.

In homicide interrogations, sometimes it takes lying very convincingly in order to extract a confession. At that moment, I was glad I’d had some practice.

“She looks great, Julia,” I said. “She sends her love. To you, especially. She’s so proud of the way you’ve been taking care of your sisters. So am I, by the way.”

“How are you, Dad?” Julia said. Was that static or extremely mature concern in my baby’s voice? I remembered that she’d be heading to high school next year. How the heck had my little girl grown up without me noticing?