Betrayed (Rosato & DiNunzio, #2)(62)
Stung, Judy pivoted on her heel and charged toward the front desk, where the receptionist was hanging up the phone. “Excuse me, I was wondering—”
“Yes, I just got word that your aunt is out of surgery. She is being taken to the recovery room now and you’ll be able to see her when she wakes up.”
“Great.” Judy felt tears of relief, or maybe frustration, come to her eyes, but she blinked them away. “When will that be?”
“It’s usually an hour or more.”
“Do you know why it took longer?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Is that typical or atypical?” Judy asked, without knowing exactly why. Maybe she wanted to know what to expect when she saw her aunt. Maybe she didn’t trust the hospital to be forthcoming about anything that had gone wrong. Or maybe her mother was right, that if there wasn’t a fight, she’d pick one.
“I don’t know. I’m just a receptionist, not a nurse.” The receptionist’s dark eyes shifted toward Judy’s mother and back again, and Judy felt embarrassed that the receptionist had overheard her mother’s comment.
“Sorry about that.”
“No apologies are necessary.” The receptionist looked away. “Unfortunately, the doctor was called in on another operation and so he won’t be able to speak with you yet. The schedule is running behind, and he’ll meet you in the recovery room just as soon as he can. He’ll be able to answer your questions at that time. I can have a nurse come out and give you an update momentarily.”
“I would like that, thank you very much. Thank you.” Judy walked stiffly back to the row of chairs against the wall and sat down next to her mother, who turned away, fake-reading an old copy of People. “She’s fine and the nurse will see us—”
“I heard,” her mother said, without looking up from the magazine, and Judy turned in the opposite direction and reached for her laptop to get started on a response to the Rule 37 motion. Mother and daughter sat stiffly side-by-side for the next fifteen minutes, until a cheery nurse in a blue scrub cap and patterned scrubs emerged from the door behind the reception desk and made a beeline for them.
“Ms. Carrier?” asked the nurse, and as she approached, a blue lanyard bearing her hospital ID bounced on her ample bosom.
“Yes?” her mother answered, looking up.
“That’s us.” Judy took her laptop off her lap and stood up to meet the nurse, who touched her arm with a friendly, reassuring smile.
“I have good news, ladies.”
“Thank God.” Judy eased back down in her chair, awash in a warm wave of gratitude as the nurse explained that Aunt Barb’s surgery had been successful, but they were still waiting on further pathology tests of her tissue. The nurse said that she didn’t know why it took longer, but that wasn’t atypical, and she promised that the doctor would fill them in in the recovery room once Aunt Barb woke up. Judy’s mother asked about the pain medication, which was Vicodin, and the drains, which seemed to preoccupy her, but Judy felt increasingly too emotional to bother with the medical details. She barely listened to her mother and the nurse, talking about the emptying and stripping of drains. She was just happy Aunt Barb had come through her surgery.
“Well, that’s a relief,” her mother said after the nurse had left, then returned to her magazine.
“I know.” Judy felt the urge to hug her mother, who was evidently memorizing the magazine. “I’m sorry if I was short with you, Mom. I was just upset—”
“We both were,” her mother answered without looking up, then lapsed into silence.
Judy didn’t know whether her mother officially wasn’t speaking to her and let it go. She picked up her laptop, turned her attention to the Rule 37 motion, and tried to draft coherent sentences, writing that she hadn’t been abusive during Govinda’s deposition, hadn’t forced the witness or his lawyer to leave, and hadn’t intentionally hung up on Kelin, but that the conversation had been accidentally terminated by an incoming call, which she explained only as a family emergency. She’d be damned if she’d trade Aunt Barb’s privacy to win the motion, or for any other reason.
One hour stretched into two as Judy worked, keeping an eye on her laptop clock and wondering why Aunt Barb was taking so long to wake up. She finalized the motion, filed it electronically with the Court, then checked her email, which was piling up, and her phone messages, which would have to wait. Frank had texted How’s Aunt Barb? And she texted back, still waiting to hear the details, but it went okay, thx xoxo. She thought briefly of John and felt reassured that the money was safe, even if its ownership caused problems they’d have to resolve down the line.
Finally, the nurse reappeared and escorted Judy and her mother to the recovery room, where Aunt Barb lay sleeping in a hospital bed, her head to the side, still in her plastic cap. Layers of cotton blankets covered her to her shoulders, and oddly, an IV port was stuck in the side of her neck as well as the top of her hand. Her skin had a gravely ashy hue, and her eyelids barely fluttered open when Judy and her mother took their places on opposite sides of her bed.
“Is she okay?” Judy asked the nurse, alarmed, as she set her stuff down on a chair. “She looks so pale.”
“She’s fine.” The nurse closed the patterned curtain around them, giving them some privacy. “She’s had something to drink, but she’s sleepy. We gave her something for nausea, and you can expect her to have a dry throat from the intubation. She’ll be in and out of sleep for the next hour or two, until she’s up for good.”