A Woman's Place: A Novel (40 page)

"What about the medicine?" I whispered.

He shook his head. "I couldn't find it. I swear." A sound from Kikit, a small cry behind the mask, brought my attention back to her, but her eyes remained closed. "I'm here, baby. It's okay. Mommy and Daddy are here. The doctors will make it better. Just be cool, be cool, like a brave, brave little girl."

We continued to talk to her, taking turns, using the same encouraging tone. One IV bag came down and another went up. The doctors gave her another dose of antihistamine and, after a period of time had elapsed, another of epinephrine.

Usually the worst was over in an hour or two, and by the third, we were on our way home. This time was different. The wheezing went on. Dennis left to check on Johnny. I glanced at the door when it opened a minute later to readmit one of the nurses. On the other side, Dennis had his arms around Johnny. Seconds after that, he returned. I actually felt better with him back, less alone.

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The doctors conferred with each other at the far end of the cubicle. Their voices were muted, their faces grave. I knew what worried them. If Kikit didn't start responding to the medication soon, she would be in trouble. Much more swelling in her air passages and she would suffocate. Dennis and I exchanged frightened looks.

The doctors returned. One held the oxygen mask more firmly in place. The other monitored Kikit's lungs with his stethoscope. The one holding the oxygen mask adjusted the speed of the drip. The one monitoring her lungs checked her blood pressure. With pale faces and anxious eyes, they listened and watched and waited, while we looked on in horror. Do something, I wanted to cry, only I knew there wasn't anything more they could do. A tube in her trachea couldn't convey air if her lung capacity was too diminished to hold it. Nor could they risk an overdose of the medication and the potentially fatal complications that would cause.

Her eyes were closed. Her face had a bluish tinge. The doctors had begun to talk to her, too, but while we pleaded, they commanded. I think I died ten deaths, standing there looking helplessly on while her breathing grew more and more shallow, more and more clipped. Tears streamed down my face. I felt Dennis's arm around me, heard his frantic,

"Come on, Kikit, come on," then the doctors' more demanding urgings. I prayed silently, desperately, and put a hand to my mouth to stifle an anguished cry when the cutting sound of her breathing suddenly eased. It was a minute before I heard the doctor's relieved, "There you go, sweetheart. That's better," and realized that she wasn't dead at all but over the hump. The downward spiral had stopped. I held my breath over the next few minutes until her color began to improve. Then I smiled through my tears and cried out sigh after thankful sigh. It was only then that I saw Dennis. He was against the back wall of the cubicle, bent from the waist with his hands on his knees, making the same kind of relieved sounds I had, only deeper. I touched his shoulder. He hung his head lower, seemed to gather himself, then wiped his face with his palms. His eyes were red when he stood, but he was marginally composed. Still, I didn't object when he put his arms around me. We held each other for a minute of silent, shared relief before returning to Kikit.

The improvement was slow but sure. When I felt certain that Kikit was out of the woods, I went looking for Johnny. He was still with Brody, just outside Kikit's cubicle. Brody was sitting against the wall, Johnny sandwiched between his legs. Neither of them knew how bad things had been, yet when I appeared, two backs went ruler straight, two faces asked the same frightened question.

I knelt down, put a hand to Brody's knee for balance, and managed a tired smile. "She's holding her own."

"What does that mean?" Brody asked.

"It means she's starting to respond. We'll stay here for a while, though. They'll probably want to admit her."

Johnny's eyes were large and dark. "Why?"

"Because there's still some wheezing."

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"She's had that before and they let her go home."

"This time, her blood pressure's low. They're giving her medication to raise it, but it's best given intravenously."

"Is she gonna be all right?"

"She's gonna be fine," I said, feeling weak with the knowledge. "She's gonna be fine," I repeated in a whisper, though I knew that I wouldn't breathe entirely freely myself until Kikit was up and running around. I was thinking that I ought to return to her, when Johnny said in a rush,

"Dad looked for all the nuts, he looked real hard. You should've seen him, he was shoving lettuce and tomatoes all over the place looking for them. He had a whole pile on the napkin."

I slid back to sit against the wall close beside Brody, and let the warmth of him renew me before I reached for Johnny. It was a minute until I had him transferred to the circle of my arms. Holding him tightly, I said against his hair, "I don't blame Daddy. Things happen sometimes, even in spite of the care we take so that they won't."

"You should've seen him on Halloween goin' through all the stuff. He was reading labels on everything. He even makes us eat oatmeal bread from the health food market."

I detected a note of distaste inadvertently tossed in with the praise. I gave him a squeeze. "He's been a super dad about all those things, and he's being a super dad now. He hasn't left Kikit's side for anything other than to make sure you're okay. He's going to stay here with me to make sure she gets better. You, though, need sleep."

"I don't. I'm not tired."

"You have school tomorrow."

"I'm not going if Kikit's still here."

"Sure you are. Who else can tell her teacher, so that the kids will make cards? Who else can bring the cards home?"

"Why'll they have to make cards?" he asked quickly. "They never did before. She comes home too fast and goes back to school too fast. Why'll they have to do anything this time? Is she sicker?" I glanced at Brody. He slipped an arm around me and drew me closer. "She was sicker," I told Johnny, "but she isn't now. She's getting better by the minute. But she may be out of school for a day or two."

"Us, too," he argued. "We won't have school if it keeps snowing. I want to be here with you guys."

"Know what would help most? Our knowing you're safe and sound at home. We'll be worrying about you if you're just sitting out here. Let Brody take you home now, before the snow gets much worse." There was a pause. "To the house?"

That was what I had pictured. If a sense of normalcy was what I wanted for him, it seemed the best place.

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wasn't what Johnny needed most just then. "Where would you like?" Johnny thought for a minute and shrugged. "I dunno." He looked at Brody.

"Where are you going?"

"I kind of thought I'd go to the lighthouse," Brody said. "There's good food there. And Valentino. Poor guy is alone. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like being alone. Not tonight. Not in the snow. Not after this scare."

There was another pause, then, to me, a nervous, "Will Dad be mad?" I smiled. "Dad will be fine."

We spent another hour in the emergency room before Kikit was admitted. While immeasurably improved from that darkest point, her breathing was still labored, and enough of the swelling remained for the doctors to want to keep her medicated and watched through the night. They settled her in the pediatric ward, in a double room whose second bed was empty. The doctors and nurses left promising to be back. As soon as the door closed on them, I climbed onto the bed and carefully resettled Kikit in my arms. After a few minutes of close crooning, she fell into a fitful sleep, in effect leaving Dennis and I alone for the first time since the night's ordeal had begun.

After several exchanged glances, he said, "So Where's the gloating?" I drew a blank.

"She got sick under my care," he prompted. "After all I said about you, you have a right to say a few things back. You were angry enough at me without this. Where's the anger now?"

I had felt it earlier. If I delved into my psyche, I could probably conjure it back up, but the effort didn't seem worth it. I had been through the wringer and was feeling drained. It seemed best to concentrate what energy I had left on helping Kikit. By way of answer, I laid my head down on hers and closed my eyes. We took turns holding her, standing, sitting, walking around. Doctors and nurses came and went, seeming content with the improvement they saw. I couldn't see the improvement as easily, being with Kikit constantly, not to mention being so emotionally involved. But I watched them closely when they examined her and took comfort in the gestures of satisfaction they made.

Somewhere around midnight, I began to feel lightheaded and realized that I hadn't had dinner. When I mentioned it to Dennis, he offered to go out and get me something, but the worry in his expression when he looked from Kikit to me and back said he was reluctant to leave. I was impressed enough by his attentiveness not to make him. I found cookies and juice in a machine at the end of the hall, and called Brody along the way to learn that he and Johnny had made it through six inches of snow and were safely ensconced at the lighthouse eating reheated ri sotto I returned to Kikit revived. That revival was a mixed blessing. While it gave me new strength to watch her, it also cleared my head. Strange, though, I didn't think of the twist my life had taken that day or what Dennis would say when he learned of it. Nor did I think of those awful, awful moments in the Page 215

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emergency room when we thought we might lose Kikit. Rather, I thought of another bedside vigil held less than a month before. Memory rushed back, hours of standing at my mother's bedside, listening to her breathe, watching the worry lines fade and her skin take on that terrible, peaceful sheen.

"Are you all right?" Dennis asked.

My eyes flew to his. "Yes."

"You're shaking."

I wrapped my arms around myself. "I've seen enough of hospitals lately to last a lifetime."

He was quiet for a time. Then he said, "I'm sorry about Connie. Was it difficult, waiting there?"

"Yes. No. Odd. Rona and I had a good talk. She's on the road for Wicker Wise as we speak."

"Rona?"

I smiled at his disbelief. I had started out that way, too. "Aside from one near-disaster when she threatened to fire an employee at one of our boutiques, she's doing a pretty good job. I should have thought of it sooner." I shifted my attention when Kikit opened her eyes. "Hi, baby."

"I'm itchy, Mommy." Her voice was a hollow rasp behind the oxygen mask. Grateful for something to do, I got moisturizer from the nurse and began to rub it on. It would have been a perfect time for Dennis to take a break, but he stood right there, holding the bottle while I smoothed the cream on, handing me a towel when I was done. Kikit had fallen back to sleep by then. Midnight had come and gone.

"Why don't you go home," I suggested. "We don't both have to be here." He shook his head. "You can. I don't want to take a chance of getting stuck in the snow. I'll stay here."

I wasn't leaving, of course, and it had nothing to do with the lack of a car. My child was sick. I wouldn't be anywhere else. Neither, it seemed, would Dennis. As the hours passed, as I came to grips with remembering Connie's last days and separated those from the relative optimism here, I began to think more about Dennis. Whether he was sitting in a chair or on the edge of the second bed, or leaning over the rail, his eyes rarely left Kikit's face. Was it guilt? Love? What?

He looked different. Tired, yes. But older, too.

I remembered Rona saying that with Connie gone, she had finally become an adult. Dennis's situation was different. Kikit wasn't dying, for one thing. For another, he wasn't her child, but her parent. For the first time, though, he looked it. For the first time, he looked like he was shouldering his share of the responsibility.

"Where are Elizabeth and Howard?" I asked. He seemed startled by the question. "In New Hampshire." Page 216

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"Do they know about this?"

"No. Should they?"

I shrugged. I knew that the children saw them once a week or so, which was no different from the way it had been before the separation. I also knew, from what the kids had said, that Dennis did most of the daily driving himself. I had often wondered, though, whether Elizabeth stole in during the week to do the laundry or fill the refrigerator with food.

"Have they helped out much since we split?" I asked.

"No. That wasn't the point."

"What was?"

He didn't answer right away. His eyes remained on Kikit. Finally he said, "It started out one thing and became another." I thought about that, giving my own interpretation to the words while I waited for him to go on. We were on opposite sides of the bed, with Kikit's soft wheeze droning on between us.

Ten minutes must have passed before he said, "It started out as a challenge to you and ended up as a challenge to me. I'm not the world's worst father."

"I never said you were."

"You said it in court."

"My lawyer argued that I was in a better position to care for the kids."

"She said I wasn't fit to be a father."

"No, Dennis."

"Well, it felt that way."

"Not a good feeling, was it?" I remarked. The look he shot me held a flicker of the old annoyance. Then he sighed, and it was gone.

Snow continued to fall. From the window in Kikit's room, we watched it blanket the parking lot, trees, nearby houses. Plows cleared the lot and the access roads, then, two hours later, did it again. Shortly before dawn, the snow finally stopped.

Soon after that, Dennis went home to shower and change. He returned in less than an hour, carrying Kikit's small flight bag stuffed with Travis, Michael, and Joy, her favorite teddy bear, a pair of pajamas, and her Barney slippers.

I was touched that he had thought to bring them, and that he had done it with a minimum of fanfare. Whether he did it because of lingering guilt or legitimate thoughtfulness didn't matter. We understood that the doctors wouldn't be releasing her yet, and that having her wake up with friends would help ease her disappointment.