Forgive Me(14)

“Daddy, where’s Mom? What’s happened?” The tremor in Angie’s voice made it hard to get the words out.

“She’s gone, sweetheart,” Gabriel said. “Your mother had a massive stroke this afternoon. She’s gone.”





CHAPTER 6



Kathleen DeRose wasn’t gone, not exactly. Angie was completely shocked at the sight of her mother motionless on her hospital bed, even though she knew that the brain damage from the stroke had been extensive and catastrophic. They had shaved the front of her head and made a hole to alleviate the pressure. A thin plastic tube drained blood from the brain while machines clinked and hummed and breathed for her. Kathleen did not have enough brain function left to breathe without mechanical help.

Her mother’s eyes were perhaps the most disturbing sight of all. They were milky gray, gazing at nothing, vacant. The eyelids fluttered in a reflexive way, as if dust had gotten stuck underneath.

The doctor on call explained the situation as best he could. Other doctors who’d treated Kathleen when she was first admitted would have to fill in details later. Still, a picture formed in Angie’s mind that was devastatingly easy to understand.

Kathleen had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, the least common but most often fatal of the two types of strokes. An aneurysm had burst, causing blood to spill into places blood didn’t belong. The result was tremendous swelling and pressure that damaged most of the cells and tissue in the brain. The aneurysm could have been related to the lupus, but chances were they would never know.

Angie’s mother was alive, but dead. She had a heartbeat and lung respirations, but it was all because of the machines. The staff at Virginia Hospital Center had been incredibly solicitous, and answered every question Gabriel and Angie could think to ask.

Hours went by. Nothing major happened, because the major thing had already occurred. Angie had nothing to do but wait at her mother’s bedside.

Night turned to day and the doctor who first treated Kathleen finally interrupted the all-night vigil. Gabe and Angie were alone at Kathleen’s bedside. Because of a long-standing feud and an unconventional upbringing, Angie’s family was her father and her mother—no siblings, cousins, aunts, or uncles were in the picture. They’d never been a part of Angie’s life; instead, Walter and Louise Odette had served as honorary aunt and uncle.

The doctor, a thin, kind-eyed man with graying hair, led them to a room where the reality came into sharper, grimmer focus. Kathleen’s heart was failing. They would need to put in a PICC line to give her medicine that would prevent a fatal heart attack.

“But she’s brain dead already,” Angie said.

“Yes, she is—ninety percent, we believe, but technically she’s alive as long as her heart continues to beat.”

“Ninety percent?” Gabriel said, hope coming to his voice.

“Well, it could be closer to a hundred percent,” the doctor said, “but to test we’d have to put in the PICC line. However, I’ve read her advance directive, and this is an invasive procedure.”

Angie flashed back to the lunch that had foreshadowed this tragedy. Hadn’t her mother used this exact scenario?

Her father was crying again. “She doesn’t want any extraordinary measures,” he said, choking back tears. “Ninety percent or one hundred, what’s the difference? We have to let her go.”

The doctor’s empathic look made it clear he concurred.

They had to wait for the respiratory team to arrive before any of the machines keeping Kathleen alive could be disconnected. In those tense, tear-filled hours, Angie and her dad passed the time singing some of Kathleen’s favorite songs to her. Paul Simon, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, The Band. Neither Angie nor her father were decent singers, but the music came from the heart and the performance quality didn’t much matter.

Angie went into “handle it” mode. She started to make calls, arrangements, dealing with logistics of dying. She always operated at a higher level during a crisis. This fit that category. She was not frozen by grief, but propelled by purpose. She wrote an obituary while her mother’s heart continued to beat without that PICC line in place. The funeral home offered sympathy, but ended the call by asking her to phone back when her mother “officially expired.”

“Officially expired?” she repeated for her father’s benefit. “What do they think, Mom’s a carton of milk?”

In between, Angie spent a lot of time talking to her mom, telling her all the things she loved about her, the memories she’d always cherish. She sat on an uncomfortable chair, drinking coffee, holding her mother’s hand, talking like a daughter who never had enough time to properly catch up on all she had to say.

She spent some time going over Nadine’s case. When Angie left Carolyn’s house, she’d called another private investigator, Michael Webb, to come in and continue the hunt with Bao. Webb ran a bouncy house business and did PI work on the side as part of Angie’s & Associates contingent.

She was in the middle of explaining her strategy for locating the missing girl when the respiratory team arrived.

Angie went to the waiting room to get her father, who had fallen asleep on a thin-cushioned couch that was too small for his tall frame. “It’s time to let Mom go.” She had nothing more to handle, she realized, and the tears came.