and said, “I’ll see what I can do,” and headed out and down the hall.
When I came back a few minutes later, I had two cups of coffee and four doughnuts. I paused in the hallway, I don’t know why, and looked in. Chutsky was leaning forward, eyes closed, with Deborah’s hand pressed to his forehead. His lips were moving, although I could hear no sound over the clatter of the life-support machinery. Was he praying? It seemed like the oddest thing yet. I suppose I really didn’t know him very well, but what I did know about him did not fit with the image of a man who prayed. And in any case, it was embarrassing, something you didn’t really want to see, like watching somebody clean their nostrils with a fingertip. I cleared my throat as I came in to my chair, but he didn’t look up.
Aside from saying something loud and cheerful, and possibly interrupting his fit of religious fervor, there was nothing really constructive for me to do. So I sat down and started on the doughnuts. I had almost finished the first one when Chutsky finally looked up.
“Hey,” he said. “What’d you get?”
I passed him a coffee and two of the doughnuts. He grabbed the coffee with his right hand and passed his hook through the holes in the doughnuts. “Thanks,” he said. He held the coffee between his knees and flipped the lid off with a finger, dangling the doughnuts from his hook and taking a bite out of one of them. “Mmp,” he said. “Didn’t get any lunch. I was waiting to hear from Deborah, and I was going to maybe come eat with you guys. But…” he said, and trailed off, taking another bite of the doughnut.
He ate his doughnuts in silence, except for the occasional slurp of coffee, and I took advantage of the time to finish mine. When we were both done we simply sat and stared at Deborah as if she was our favorite TV show. Now and again one of the machines would make some sort of odd noise and we would both glance up at it. But nothing actually changed. Deborah continued to lie with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and raggedly and with the Darth Vader sound of the respirator as an accompaniment.
I sat for at least an hour, and my thoughts didn’t suddenly turn bright and sunny. As far as I could tell, neither did Chutsky’s. He did not burst into tears, but he looked tired and a little gray, worse than I had ever seen him except for when I rescued him from the man who cut off his hand and foot. And I suppose I did not look a great deal better, although it was not the thing I worried about the most, now or at any other time. In truth, I did not spend a great deal of my time worrying about anything—planning, yes, making sure that things went just right on my Special Nights Out. But worrying truly seemed to be an emotional activity rather than a rational one, and until now it had never furrowed my forehead.
But now? Dexter worried. It was a surprisingly easy pastime to pick up. I got the hang of it right away, and it was all I could do to keep from chewing my fingernails.
Of course she would be all right. Wouldn’t she? “Too soon to tell” began to seem more ominous. Could I even trust that statement? Wasn’t there a protocol, a standard medical procedure for informing next of kin that their loved ones were either dying or about to become vegetables? Start out by warning them that all may not be right—“too soon to tell”—and then gradually break it to them that all is forever unwell?
But wasn’t there some law somewhere that required doctors to tell the truth about these things? Or was that just auto mechanics? Was there such a thing as truth, medically speaking? I had no idea—this was a new world for me, and I didn’t like it, but whatever else might be true, it really was too soon to tell, and I would just have to wait, and shockingly, I was not nearly as good at that as I would have thought I’d be.
When my stomach began to growl again, I decided it must be evening, but a glance at my watch told me that it was still only a few minutes short of four o’clock.
Twenty minutes later Chutsky’s Guy from Bethesda arrived. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but it was nothing like what I got. The Guy was about five-six, bald and potbellied, with thick gold-framed glasses, and he came in with two of the doctors who had worked on Deborah. They followed him like high school freshmen trailing the prom queen, eager to point out things that would make him happy. Chutsky leaped to his feet when the Guy came in.
“Dr. Teidel!” he said.
Teidel nodded at Chutsky and said, “Out,” with a head motion that included me.
Chustky nodded and grabbed my arm, and as he pulled me out of the room Teidel and his two satellites were already pulling back the sheet to examine Deborah.
“The guy is the best,” Chutsky said, and although he still didn’t say the best what, I was now assuming it was something medical.
“What is he going to do?” I asked, and Chutsky shrugged.
“Whatever it takes,” he said. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. We don’t want to see this.”
That did not sound terribly reassuring, but Chutsky obviously felt better about things with Teidel in charge, so I followed along to a small and crowded café on the ground floor of the parking garage. We wedged ourselves in at a small table in the corner and ate indifferent sandwiches and, although I didn’t think to ask him, Chutsky told me a little about the doctor from Bethesda.
“Guy’s amazing,” he said. “Ten years ago? He put me back together. I was in a lot worse shape than Deborah, believe me, and he got all the pieces back in the right place and in working order.”
“Which is almost as important,” I said, and Chutsky nodded as if he was listening to me.
“Honest to God,” he said, “Teidel is the best there is. You saw how those other doctors were treating him?”
“Like they wanted to wash his feet and peel him grapes,” I said.
Chutsky gave one syllable of polite laugh, “Huh,” and an equally brief smile. “She’s gonna be okay now,” he said. “Just fine.”
But whether he was trying to convince me or himself, I couldn’t say.
THIRTEEN
DR. TEIDEL WAS IN THE STAFF BREAK ROOM WHEN WE got back from eating. He sat at a table sipping a cup of coffee, which somehow seemed strange and improper, like a dog sitting at a table and holding a pawful of playing cards. If Teidel was going to be a miraculous savior, how could he do ordinary human things, too? And when he looked up as we came in, his eyes were human, tired, not at all brimming with the spark of divine inspiration, and his first words did not fill me with awe, either.
“It’s too soon to be certain,” he said to Chutsky, and I was grateful for the slight variation in the standard medical mantra. “We’re not at the real crisis point yet, and that could change everything.” He slurped from his coffee cup. “She’s young, strong. The doctors here are very good. You’re in good hands. But a lot can still go wrong.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Chutsky asked, sounding very uncertain and humble, like he was asking God for a new bicycle.
“You mean a magic operation or a fantastic new procedure?” Teidel said. He sipped coffee. “No. Not a thing. You just have to wait.” He glanced at his watch and stood up. “I have a plane to catch.”