Paige rode the elevator to the fourth floor, her heart pounding. How could she even think of coming here, knowing a mistake from her pharmacy had caused this? That she, as much as anyone, was to blame?
When she reached the waiting room for the Cardiac Care Unit, she went to the visitors’ desk. A gray-haired woman in a green volunteer jacket smiled up at her. “May I help you?”
“Can you tell me . . . Mrs. Vaerge, is she still . . . in this unit?”
The woman scanned a printout on her clipboard. “Let’s see, Vaerge.” Her finger ran the length of the paper before it stopped. “Oh, yes, there she is. Yes, she’s still here.”
Paige exhaled a sigh of relief. One more day and Ora was still living. Still holding on. But would she ever wake up again? “Do you know, has Dr. Prince been in to see her recently?”
“Not since I got here a couple of hours ago.” She looked at the round white clock on the wall. “He usually comes in around noon, so my guess is that he’ll be here soon.”
“Thank you.” Paige took the seat across from the elevator. To distract herself she picked up a National Geographic from the end table and skimmed through an article on volcanoes. She turned page after page but saw little of the photos inside.
How could this have happened? Why Ora of all people?
Paige thought about the woman who had met her at the door on most mornings. The coffee-making tips. The mixed-up, yet often useful verses.
The elevator doors opened and Paige was on her feet before the occupants even emerged. Dr. Prince stepped off, deep in conversation with a man in blue surgical scrubs. The two of them disappeared behind the double doors of the unit, seemingly unaware of anyone else around them.
Paige got up and began to pace. On one end of the room, she walked toward the framed print of a lighthouse, then turned and went back toward the couch. Over and over. Lighthouse to couch, couch to lighthouse.
None of the other occupants of the room seemed to pay this any attention at all. Perhaps they understood the restless feeling, or perhaps they were just too exhausted by their own concerns to care.
Finally, the doors opened and Dr. Prince reemerged. Paige rushed over to meet him. “Dr. Prince?”
“There’s not a lot of change, I’m afraid. The nurses have reported minimal response to stimuli. I will add your name to the approved visitor list, but I want strict adherence to posted visiting hours.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
Paige looked at the clock on the wall. Two o’clock. “May I go in now?”
“Yes. She’s in the last room.” He pointed down the hall to her right.
“Thank you.” Paige pushed through the doors before he could think to change his mind.
She walked to the last doorway, and when she first looked inside, she thought she was in the wrong place. This woman wasn’t Ora; she was much too old. The deep lines in her face, the pale cast to her skin—they belonged to someone else.
Paige knelt beside the bed and took Ora’s cold hand in her own. “Oh, Ora. I’m so sorry.”
Warm tears dropped onto their intermingled hands. “This is all my fault.”
She looked at the helpless woman lying so still and found herself asking questions she didn’t want an answer to. Was the pain excruciating when the heart attack began? Did she gasp for breath, wondering if she’d even be able to make the phone call to 9-1-1? And did it ever, in the midst of her great pain, occur to her that Paige’s own negligence was the very thing that had caused this?
“Ora, I love you. Please get better. This is all my fault, and I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you, if you’ll just wake up. Okay?”
The wax hand moved in her own. Or had she just imagined it?
“Ora? Ora? Can you hear me?”
The hand squeezed hers, and the left side of Ora’s mouth twitched.
Paige pushed the nurse call button, but before a response even came she was screaming for help down the hall. “She’s awake. She’s awake. Mrs. Vaerge is awake.”
Paige drove toward home, wishing so much that she would find her mother’s comforting presence when she got there. Someone who could tell her that a hand squeeze was just the first step toward a full recovery, in spite of the reserved reactions of the nurses. Ora just might wake up and be all right again someday. Right?
Paige picked up the phone as soon as she walked in the door. Maybe just by hearing her parents’ voices, she would feel their strength.
“Hello.” Her father’s voice sounded so flat—dead almost.
“Daddy, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but unfortunately your mother doesn’t seem to be. She spiked a fever, and her blood work came back suspicious for . . . let’s see . . . got it written right here. CMV.”
Paige’s hand went numb on the phone. “But they gave her antiviral medication to keep that from happening. She got the treatment like she was supposed to, this shouldn’t happen.”
“You’re the one who works in the medical field, I reckon you know better than me that things don’t always work out like they’re supposed to.” Yes, Paige understood that more than she had ever hoped to.
“What are they doing about it?”
“Oh, the usual. More IVs, more tests. I’m having to wear the banana suit and mask every time I go into her room. There’s a guy from the breathing department in there now, checking out her lungs.”
Paige knew that CMV could cause major problems posttransplant, and she also knew that pneumonia was one of the biggest concerns of CMV. “Dad, is she having trouble breathing?”
“She’s had the cough since before they treated her for that other thing, you know, the RSV. I’d say it’s maybe gotten worse in the last day or so.” He paused for a minute. “The guy from respiratory wants to talk to me. I’ll call you later if I hear anything new, one way or the other.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Paige hung up the phone and ran to the computer. CMV was something she knew a little about, but now was the time to broaden her knowledge base. She scanned the headings under Google and clicked on a link. The article filled the screen with a long list of problems CMV could cause post-transplant, starting with pneumonia. It was the very end of the list that stopped Paige’s heart from beating.
Post-transplant marrow failure.
Marrow failure? No. Please God, no. He wouldn’t allow them to go through all this for nothing. Would He?
The Internet wasn’t always accurate, especially when it came to medical things. Paige closed the article and returned to the Google search page, looking for something a bit more comforting. Number ten on the list of links said Fatal CMV pneumonia following transplant.
Paige turned the computer off.