Down & Dirty (Lightning 1)

I wish it was, though. I wish there was someone to blame, someone to fight, someone to make pay for what’s happening to my sister. To her children. To what’s left of my family. But there’s nothing and no one to fight, not anymore. Just this vile, vile disease that is slowly, inexorably, taking everything from Heather.

“I want to talk to Dr. Janewicz.”

“Of course,” Lisa soothes, and her hand is shaking a little as she puts it on my arm. Immediately, I feel like shit. This isn’t easy on Lisa, either. She’s been with Heather for over a year now, and no matter how objective she’s tried to be, I know she loves my sister, too.

We’re outside Heather’s room now, and even though I’ve been anxious to get to see her, now that I’m here I’m finding it awfully hard to walk in that room. Awfully hard to face my sister when I don’t know what I’m going to find. Who I’m going to find. If Heather’s still in there, or if she’s just a shell of who she used to be.

But standing out here like some kind of pussy isn’t an option, either. So I take a deep breath, wipe my suddenly sweaty palms on the sides of my jeans. And force myself to take the first steps inside.

She’s pale. It’s the first thing I notice as I look at her in that bed, hooked up to all those machines. She’s always been golden, always kind of glowed with some kind of light deep inside of her. But right now she’s nearly as white as the sheets she’s lying on.

She’s not intubated, so I guess Lisa’s right. She is breathing on her own, if you can call the fast, shallow rise and fall of her chest breathing. I can’t imagine how she isn’t hyperventilating like this…unless, of course, her system isn’t doing a very good job of getting the oxygen to her brain, or anywhere else.

The thought terrifies me, has me crossing to her side and picking up one of her pale, limp hands in my own. Every other time she’s managed to squeeze my hand, even just a little bit. But tonight her fingers don’t so much as twitch. The terror deep inside of me grows darker, colder.

Not yet, I tell myself. The universe. God. Please, not yet. Over and over I repeat it, until it becomes some kind of mantra. Until it feels like it’s the only thing keeping me sane in this world gone topsy-turvy on me.

I don’t know how long I sit there, holding her hand, waiting for the doctor to come.

Long enough for them to come and ask me to step outside as they do the echocardiogram.

Long enough for the nurse to check in with us three times, and administer medicine into her IV twice.

More than long enough for me to start losing hope, no matter what mantra I’m repeating in my head.

Eventually my phone vibrates in my pocket—probably a text from Emerson, checking in. I should answer it—she’s probably confused and worried and over her head with the kids. But I can’t bring myself to pull my phone out, can’t bring myself to text her or call her. Partly because I don’t know what to say to the kids and partly because I’m not ready to tell Emerson what’s going on. Not when there’s something inside of me, something big and loud and real, that says once I tell Emerson then this whole thing is real. That once I tell Emerson then this whole thing is irrevocable.

I’m not ready to accept that yet.

Lisa sits with me, silently knitting and jumping every time someone walks by the partially closed door. I tell her she can go home—her shift ended forty-five minutes ago—but she just glares at me. And continues to knit.

Fifteen minutes after the last test is run, Dr. Janewicz steps into the room. And I’ve gotten to know her well enough over the last year to recognize the look on her face. To know that it isn’t good.

“So, her heart is fine,” is how she starts. “The echocardiogram came back clear.”

“But?” I don’t have time for what it isn’t. I want to know what it is—and how we’re going to fix it.

Dr. Janewicz sighs. “But she’s had a stroke, Hunter. A f

airly large one.” As she speaks, a nurse comes in with a tray of syringes. I watch as she walks over to where Heather’s IV is. “We’re going to administer tPA, and it should help reverse the worst of the damage.”

“But?” I’ve gotten to know Dr. Janewicz well over the eight months that Heather’s been fighting this damn disease, and I know she’s got more to say. Just like I know none of it is good.

“But,” she says again, deliberately echoing me, “it isn’t going to stop her from having more strokes. We’re going to put her on a blood thinner but that’s probably not going to stop them, either.”

“So, what will stop them?” I demand. “Do you need my blood? My bone marrow again? What can we do?”

I sound as desperate as I feel—I don’t need to see the look on the doctor’s face to know that. Just like I don’t need her to tell me that there’s nothing to do. That my six months with Heather has suddenly been cut short and there’s no amount of money or research or trials that is going to be able to change that.

This time my knees do buckle, and it’s only the arm I shoot out and brace against the wall that keeps me upright as my sister’s doctor continues to break the last piece of my heart wide open.

Chapter 25

I’m still in a daze, still unsteady, still broken, ten hours later when I make the drive back across town to Emerson’s to pick up Brent and Lucy. I texted her an hour ago, let her know I was on my way. I need to get the kids, need to bring them to the hospital to see their mother, even though she has yet to wake up. But she had another stroke in the middle of the night—smaller than the first, but big enough to have the entire ICU hopping—and Dr. Janewicz’s partner told me to prepare for the fact that she might not wake up.

Like there’s any way I can prepare for that.

I’m going to have to find a way, I tell myself as I pull into Emerson’s shabby parking lot. Because in about five minutes I’m going to be facing my niece and nephew and the last thing they need right now is for me to lose it.