Saving Meghan(6)

Becky retreated to a corner, away from the masses, wanting to separate her suffering from theirs. She had just taken out her phone to text Carl when she heard someone call her name. Glancing up, Becky focused on a reassuring matronly woman standing in front of the automatic doors to the ER. She was dressed in blue scrubs and had a stethoscope draped around her neck. Becky raced over to her.

“Mrs. Gerard, my name is Alexandra. I’m Meghan’s nurse.”

“Is she all right?” Becky’s voice carried the weight of her worry.

“She’s doing just fine,” Alexandra assured her. Her strong accent exposed her Boston origin. “She’s resting in bay twelve. It’s been a long day, and she’ll be very glad to see you. Your husband has been here, of course, but he’s not her mother, if you know what I mean.”

Becky knew exactly what Alexandra meant, and gave her an extra mark for perception. Carl was certainly a good provider, no question about that, but it was Becky who’d been commander of Meghan’s health issues as well as comforter-in-chief for years now.

How many unproductive sojourns to the doctor or the hospital had they endured? How many times had they found themselves frustrated to the point of tears at being dismissed without any answers, without a diagnosis? How many bottles of failed prescriptions remained in the medicine cabinet? How many nights had she gone to Meghan’s room, summoned for consolation?

Becky threw open the curtain to ER bay 12 to find a stretcher bearing her fifteen-year-old daughter, who was attached to a monitor recording vitals, oxygen saturation, and heart rhythm. A pitcher of water and a big container of Gatorade were on a tray beside the bed. Carl sat in a chair in the corner of the bay, eyes glued to his phone instead of engaging with his daughter.

He rose from his seat as Becky came to Meghan’s bedside.

“Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when it happened,” Becky said. “I should never have been on that damn plane.”

Even though my mother is dying, thought Becky. Even though I will probably never get to say the three words my therapist told me to say in her presence: “I forgive you.”

Becky reached for her daughter’s hand while leaning into Carl, who had come to stand beside her, his strong arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. He placed a gentle kiss on her cheek.

She fought back tears as she went through the familiar rundown of questions, all delivered with the reflex of a preflight checklist: “Are you feeling all right? Do you need anything? What can I do to help? Tell me what happened.”

Meghan answered each question dutifully, but without much embellishment: “I’m fine. No, I’m okay. I’m just tired.”

Poor child has to be utterly exhausted, thought Becky.

Carl provided background that Becky already knew, but now, face-to-face, instead of over text and phone, his narration took on new vividness.

“Holly left when I explained you’d gone to the airport, but the twins stayed behind because they wanted Meghan to play soccer with them.”

“You shouldn’t have let them,” Becky said, more sharply than intended.

“It was my fault, Mom,” Meghan said, coming to her father’s defense. “I didn’t even run that hard.”

“I heard someone cry out that Meghan fainted, and I came running,” Carl continued. “Got there in seconds. Danielle said she went pale before collapsing, and Addy said something about her stiffening up. She was breathing but unresponsive, so I called 911. By the time they got to the house, she was coming around, but she didn’t make any sense until she was in the ambulance, and even then she still seemed a bit confused.”

“Has Dr. Walker seen her yet?”

Becky knew the name of the head cardiologist at Saint Joe’s, same as she did the neurologist and every other doctor who worked there.

“No,” Carl said. “Dr. Clemmons said it was dehydration and nothing more.”

“Dr. Clemmons is an ER doctor, not a heart specialist. She needs an expert evaluation, Carl. Dammit,” Becky muttered. “I should never have left you in charge.”

“Becky, come on, don’t be like that,” Carl protested.

“Just wait a minute,” Becky said in a huff. “I’m getting someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“The doctor said she’s fine,” Carl said to Becky’s back as she was leaving.

There was a subtle bite to the way Carl delivered the word “fine.” He had infused it with layers of meaning. At some level, Becky understood Carl’s reluctance to accept that Meghan was indeed direly ill with something strange. Test after test and doctor after doctor had failed to yield any meaningful result. But she knew better. There was a time bomb waiting to go off inside her precious daughter’s body, spreading disease and sickness in all directions like shrapnel. The fainting episode had to have been scary for Carl, but clearly not terrifying enough to dispel his many doubts. For the first time in his life, Carl had encountered a problem for which money could not buy a solution.

Meghan had stared at her mother from the confines of her stretcher bed, offering nothing more than a weak smile. Pity and sadness consumed Becky. Her daughter was so obviously ill. Her arms too thin, face too gaunt. The ER’s harsh lighting had given Meghan’s already-pale skin a ghostly pallor. Her blond hair, normally full of body, lay flat against her head, as if no single part of her was allowed to be healthy.