―Ask her where she is,‖ Dad hissed.
―Shut up, Elliot,‖ Meryl said.
―Is that your father?‖ asked Mom, and then she went on before I could answer: ―Of course, it is. Lis . . . lishun, honey, lis . . . lishun.‖
―I‘m listening,‖ I said, but my heart sank. Her esses always went mushy when she drank. I could only hope she wasn‘t in her car. ―Mom, are you driving?‖
―No, no ... I ... lis-lishun....‖
―Where are you, Mom?‖
―Jenna, Jenna . . . No matter what, I want you to know I only did what I thought was besh . . . right. I wash trying to protect you, but I didn‘t, I didn‘t know.... ‖
―Mom? Mom, what are you talking about?‖
―Oh, Matt,‖ she said, and then she was crying. ―I don‘t know what I would‘ve done without Matt. I couldn‘t have stst-st ... lived with my-my ... myself if he ...‖ Her words came out in a howl: ―Oh, I mish my baby; I mish my boy . . .‖
―Mom.‖ My eyes were burning. ―Mom, tell me where you are. I‘ll come to you.‖
―What‘s she saying?‖ Dad asked.
I smeared tears from my cheeks. ―Mom, please; Meryl and I, we can come together.
Mom? Mom?‖
But there was only dead air. I called back twice, but Mom never did pick up.
b
There wasn‘t much to be done after that. We sprawled in the family room, me tucked in a comforter and my head on Meryl‘s lap, and Dad, rigid in his chair, staring at his cell and our land-line, willing either to ring. The Wizard of Oz was on, a film I normally love, but honestly, listening to Judy Garland made me think of Mitch. I was desperate to talk to him, if for nothing else than for him to tell me that everything would be all right, that he was thinking of me.
The next thing I knew, Meryl was shaking me awake and Dad was shouting into the phone: ―What what what where... ?‖
Fear slammed into my chest and I scrambled up, wide awake. ―Meryl?‖
―I‘m sorry, honey.‖ Meryl‘s face was whiter than salt. ―But there‘s been an accident.‖
44: a
Black Friday.
Meryl drove as fast as she dared, but we still didn‘t make it down to Milwaukee until after two that morning. Dad was on the phone almost the whole way, talking with the doctors, and the only reassuring thing about that was it meant Mom wasn‘t dead. Yet. I sat in the backseat, clutching my knapsack. Dad didn‘t hang up until we‘d blasted off the interstate onto the exit ramp for the hospital.
―What did they say?‖ Meryl demanded.
Dad stared straight ahead. ―It sounds a lot more complicated than we know.‖
―What does that mean?‖ I asked, but Dad just shook his head again.
There were three other people in the ER waiting room: a drunk sleeping in a far chair with his head propped up on his elbow; another guy with a blood-stained towel bunched in one fist; and one man, in a rumpled gray suit, who looked like he really didn‘t belong because he wasn‘t drunk, bleeding, or in obvious pain. When we told the ER nurse who we were, the man‘s head came up and I felt his eyes on our backs. Then I forgot about him because the ER nurse made us wait a few minutes despite Dad‘s bluster. She was on the phone for what seemed a year before confirming that my mother was indeed a patient.
She said we could go up, but wouldn‘t let Meryl through because she wasn‘t immediate family.
―It‘s okay, sweetie, I‘ll wait right here.‖ Meryl wrapped me in a big bear hug that I never wanted to end. ―Give your mom a hug and a kiss for me, okay?‖
Even at night, the Burn Unit is never quiet but filled with monitor beeps and alarms going off and nurses and doctors in squeaky shoes shuffling in and out of various rooms.
The nurse led us to Mom‘s room, which was right across from the nurses‘ station, and I knew what that meant, too, because I‘d been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. They always put the sickest people where the nurses can get to them in a hurry.
We gowned up because the infection risk for burn victims is so high. The smell in Mom‘s room made my stomach churn because it was so familiar: disinfectant and cooked blood and the sweet stink of roast pork.
(My mother, shrieking, fighting with the EMTs: Don’t you save that son of a... ) She looked so small, swathed in a nest of bandages. Her arms and legs were up on pillows, and what little skin was exposed—the places that weren‘t completely cooked but only second-degree burns—was shiny with antibiotic ointment. There were monitors and tubes coiling everywhere, IVs and catheters and a breathing tube down Mom‘s throat. Mom was out, sedated because she kept fighting the tube and the doctors wanted to control the pain.
Dad‘s skin above his mask was chalky. His eyebrows looked like smears of shoe polish on white marble. For once he only listened as the burn doctor talked in numbers and percentages: third-degree burns over sixty-five percent of her body, second-degree over twenty percent.
―Then there‘s the complicating fact of her drinking,‖ the doctor said, his tone neutral. ―Her respiratory status is also severely compromised. There‘s been extensive epithelial injury and she‘s developed significant pulmonary edema. We‘ve got her on CPAP, of course, but—‖
―Bottom line,‖ my dad cut in. ―What are her chances?‖
―Given her age, fifty-fifty, maybe a little worse. If we can get her through the next twenty-four, forty-eight hours, then it will be a question of controlling infection and . . .‖
The doctor went on like that for a while. Then he said, ―Our next biggest concern will be finding enough viable skin for grafting. There‘s just not a lot left to harvest.‖
―Take mine.‖ I looked up at the doctor. ―Take whatever you need.‖
―Jenna,‖ my dad said.
―It doesn‘t work that way,‖ the doctor said, kindly. ―The only skin that will take is her own. We can cover her burn sites with cadaver skin or pigskin, but those are temporary measures. The skin over those sites will eventually die and need to be replaced. We can grow new skin for her in the lab, using her cells, but that will take time.‖
―But you can harvest mine, right? If you can use a dead person‘s skin, why not mine?‖ I asked.
―Because your skin will die, too.‖ The doctor‘s eyes were sympathetic, but his voice was firm. ―I‘m sorry, but that‘s just not an option.‖ Then he and Dad moved out of the room to talk medical strategy.
I stood by my mother. Her face was almost completely hidden by rust-splotched bandages and very swollen, just her eyes and part of her mouth showing. The machine breathing for her pushed air in and then sucked it out with a long sigh. I wanted to take her hand and tell her it would be okay, but I was afraid. I had images of her fingers breaking off in my hand. I felt so helpless and small. This must be what she‘d felt like, too, after the fire at Grandpa MacAllister‘s that killed me twice over: once in the ambulance and then two days later, in a place very similar to this.