Flashback Page 2

  “Is he alive? Is he alive?”

  “Yes, he’s alive, ma’am, but it’s important for you to be here, and we’ll explain the details when you arrive. Do you have children?”

  “What? No. Will you please tell me what happened? Was it a car accident?” There was a long pause during which Beth could hear her own breath come in sharp gasps.

  “You husband was brought in by a Coast Guard rescue squad. He was found on a beach on Homer’s Island. What we’d like you to do is to come in so we can talk about this further. Can you get a ride?”

  They were stonewalling her, refusing to give details. She did all she could to control herself. “Is he conscious? Can you please tell me if he’s conscious?”

  “Well, I think it’s best—”

  “Goddammit! Is he conscious?”

  “No.” Then after a dreadful pause, the doctor added, “Would you be coming from Carleton, Massachusetts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s about ninety miles away. Can somebody drive you, or would you like us to call the local police to bring you in?”

  God! Was it that bad? She did not want to spend the next two hours riding in the back of a police car with a perfect stranger. Nor did she want to bother Vince or other friends. “I can drive myself.”

  The man gave her directions that she scribbled down.

  “What happened to him?”

  Again the doctor disregarded the question. “And please bring any medications your husband’s been taking.”

  IT WAS A LITTLE BEFORE THREE A.M. when Beth pulled into the lot of the CCMC. From the scant details, she guessed that Jack had probably blacked out while swimming, which meant he had suffered a lack of oxygen. As she entered the emergency entrance, she wished she had called Vince.

  The ED lobby was a tableau in bleak fluorescence. Two people occupied the reception area—one man asleep across two chairs, and an elderly woman glaring blankly at a television monitor with the sound turned off. The woman at the reception desk had expected her, because when Beth identified herself she stabbed some numbers on the phone. “Mrs. Koryan is here.” In seconds a physician and a nurse emerged through the swinging doors. Their faces looked as if they had been chipped from stone. They introduced themselves, but Beth didn’t register their names and followed them to a small conference room off the lobby and closed the door.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Beth asked.

  “No, he’s not dead, Mrs. Koryan,” the doctor said. “Please sit down. Please.”

  Beth slid into a chair across from them. Their faces were grim. Their badges read Omar Rouhana, M.D., and Karen Chapman, R.N. “Mrs. Koryan, before we let you see him, we must first warn you that your husband experienced serious trauma. Besides nearly drowning, he suffered acute toxic burns on his body.”

  “Burns?”

  “He got caught in a school of jellyfish.”

  It sounded like a bad joke. “Jellyfish?”

  “We don’t know the details, but a coast guard officer at the scene reported a large school of them. Fortunately, he bagged a couple, and we’re in hotline contact with marine biologists at Woods Hole and Northeastern University’s marine labs at Nahant to assist with toxicology screening.”

  “Wha-what are you saying?”

  “That your husband got badly stung,” Nurse Chapman said. “And he’s not a pretty sight, I’m sorry to say.”

  Beth nodded numbly. Then the nurse got up and took her arm and led her through the Emergency Department door and down a hall toward the curtained bays, an orchestra of electronic beeps and hums rising around them. They stopped by the third bay, and the nurse pulled back the curtain. The doctor and nurse had done their best to dull the shock, but they could never have prepared Beth for what her eyes took in.

  The immediate impression was that this was not her husband but some hideous alien parody: Jack was spread-eagled on a stretcher. His eyes were patched with gauze, his genitals were draped with a white cloth, and his feet were balled in bandages. Tubes connected to monitors, machines, and drip bags from all parts of his body—mouth, head, arms, and privates. One had been surgically implanted under his collarbone and connected to drip bags. But what nearly made Beth faint was Jack’s body: It was bloated to twice its size, and his neck, chest, arms, thighs, legs, were crosshatched with oozing, angry red welts and glistening from head to foot with analgesic goo. He looked as if he had been brutally horsewhipped then pumped with fluid to the bursting point.

  Instantly the air pressed out of Beth’s lungs in short staccato gasps, as she stood there stunned in horror while trying to process what had become of Jack—that beautiful man she had married with the thick black hair and star-burst green eyes that drove his female students to distraction. Beth’s own eyes fell on the small rose tattoo on his right arm in memory of the mother Jack never knew. Then she burst into tears.

  The nurse put her arms around Beth. “I know, but the good news is that his heart rate is strong, and that his vital signs are good.”

  “Wh-why’s he so bloated?”

  “The toxin. It causes water to leak into the tissue and cavities of his body, which is why we’re hydrating him.”

  “The tests won’t be back for a few days,” the doctor said, “but so far the lab work shows no major abnormalities in his blood.”

  “What did this to him?”

  The doctor took the question. “The marine-lab people think it’s some rare kind of creature found in the tropics. Until we get a tox screen, we’re treating him with steroids and antiseizure meds to keep him stable.” The doctor checked Jack’s chart. “Already his temperature is approaching normal.”

  Jack’s eyes were wadded with dressing, and what little of his face she could see was a puffed mask of red and purple. His lips looked as if he had been beaten with fists—blue, swollen, bloody, painted with disinfectant, and an endotracheal tube jammed down his throat. Except for the tattoo, there was no reminder that this was the same man she had fought with just hours ago. Her heart twisted: Their last words had been contentious—about his going out to the island.

  “What’s that on his head?” Jack’s hair had been roughly chopped to the scalp, and something had been implanted in his skull.

  “An ICP gauge. We’re watching the intracranial pressure in his brain.” It looked like a tire pressure gauge buried in his head and had lines connecting it to an electronic monitor.

  “As with some snakebites,” the doctor said, “toxins from marine organisms cause a rapid rise in blood pressure and cerebral hemorrhaging.”

  On the wall was a light display and what looked like X-ray images of Jack’s brain. The nurse caught Beth’s eyes. “We had an MRI done to check on any edema … swelling and bleeding.”

  “The good news is that we don’t think we’ll have to operate,” the doctor said. “The ICP trend has turned negative—no increase in intercranial pressure over the last two hours.”

  “You mean there was bleeding in his brain?”

  The doctor nodded. “But to what effect we can’t determine. We really don’t know how long he was unconscious. But we’re treating him with steroids to prevent brain inflammation and antiseizure medications hopefully to prevent seizures and keep him stable.”

  Beth nodded as a hideous thought cut across her mind like the fin of a shark: Jack could be brain-damaged.

  She scanned the various monitors with blinking blips and graphs and orange and red squiggles, quietly chittering away, the IV stands with drip bags, the ventilator chuffing in his throat, the catheter drainage bag, suction jars, and oxygen tanks along the side of the bed, tubes of urine connecting to some machine on the floor.

  I’m going to lose him.

  Her eye rested on the heart monitor. It was still pumping, that big stallion engine.

  Jellyfish.

  In a voice barely audible, Beth asked, “Is he going to make it?”

  “We’re doing all we can,” the doctor said. “If he remains stabilized, we’
ll move him to Massachusetts General where there are specialty neurologists and some of the best equipment in the world. And he’ll be closer to home.”

  Nurse Chapman handed Beth a wad of tissue to absorb the tears that were now flowing freely down her face.

  “His feet …” They were wrapped in dressing.

  “Well, they were exposed to the water when he was washed up.”

  And she imagined Jack’s feet marinating for hours in jellyfish toxin. Another nurse came in with a tray of medications. “Mrs. Koryan, we have to turn him over to dress his back, so it might be best if you waited in the waiting room. If you’re hungry, there’s a coffee machine and bunch of canteens down the hall.”

  They wanted to spare her the sight of Jack’s back. Beth nodded. She wasn’t hungry, but she could use a coffee since she’d be up the rest of the night. They said to return in half an hour. As Beth started toward the door, her eyes fell on Jack’s hands. His fingers looked like purple sausages. His ring finger was bandaged. Then she noticed a small plastic Ziploc bag on the bed table. In it was a twisted piece of yellow metal. Like a Polaroid photo rapidly developing, she realized it was Jack’s wedding band. They had snipped it off his finger to prevent it from cutting off the blood flow.

  “You may take it,” Nurse Chapman said, handing it to her.

  But Beth shook her head and left.

  3

  EDDIE ZUCHOWSKY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE a bad day, but not like this.

  First, he got stuck in traffic for half an hour on Route 3, no more than two miles from Cobbsville center, causing him to arrive at the store ten minutes before opening. Then two of his girls left messages that they were sick and wouldn’t be coming in—which really meant that they had gone to the Dave Matthews concert at UNH and got home at five A.M. And because it was Friday—always a busy day—Eddie would have to man the Hour Photo counter and still perform his other duties as assistant manager.

  And now some old woman was at the Cover Girl shelf pocketing tubes of lipstick. He could see her on the security videos.

  Good God, I don’t need this, Eddie told himself.

  As he stared in disbelief at the monitor, he could swear he recognized the woman although he couldn’t quite place her. He adjusted the set, and then it came to him: Clara, one of the regular Seenies. That’s what some of the store staff had dubbed the residents from the Broadview Nursing Home up the street. Seenies, short for “Senile Citizens.”

  Of course, that was a tad cruel—and as assistant manager of the Cobbsville CVS, he forbade any of his staff to use such insensitive language about customers. In fact, he once threatened to report a stock boy to the district manager when the kid announced to other staffers, “Here come the Alzies but Goodies.” (Eddie had to admit it was a funny line, although he reminded the kid that they could be us some day: “There but for fortune …”)

  Their visit to the store was a common event, as they’d stop by on the way back from a field trip to a local baseball game or restaurant so that the nurse’s aides could pick up patient prescriptions. But instead of leaving them to sit restlessly in the vans, the aides would bring them into the store to wander around—in monitored groups, of course. As one aide dealt with the pharmacy, the other two would stay with the residents as they bumped up and down the aisles like sheep.

  They’d never make any trouble or bother other customers. At times they could be a bit noisy. Once in a while one would yell something out of the blue—nothing that made sense—or if they got confused or frightened and started crying, the aides would hush them up or take them out to the van. Some of the bolder ones might speak to the customers, say harmless nothings—like retarded kids. A couple weeks ago one man asked Allison at the cash register if his daddy could move back in with them, apparently thinking he was a kid again and she was his mother who had ditched the old man. Allison, who’s pretty sharp, said, “Sure he can,” and the old guy grinned with joy.

  Usually the nurse’s aides would let them select a little something—a picture book, a toy, a package of cookies, makeup—whatever caught their eye. If the items were inexpensive and appropriate, the aides would usually pay, then herd the patients out the door and into the van. (The patients each had small accounts back at the home, Eddie learned.) What amazed Eddie was that although Broadview was only three miles away, an excursion to the local CVS was a big deal to these folks—like a trip to Disneyland. The sad thing was some barely knew the difference.

  But they seemed to enjoy these outings, and, frankly, it was good for business, because it let the community know that its local CVS was a good neighbor. Over the months, Eddie had gotten to know a few of the individual residents—like Clara, who was actually not a little old lady but a large blocky woman with a big flat face. She didn’t say much, just shuffled around sometimes holding the aide’s hand and studying the shelves. You’d say something to her and her only comment was “Yeah”—no matter what you said.

  “Hi, Clara. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You feeling good today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have a very pretty dress on.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you like to eat a bowl of maggots?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eddie left the photo counter and headed for aisle lA. But as soon as he rounded the corner he froze.

  Clara was at the Cover Girl shelf. For a moment she appeared to be bleeding from the mouth. But as his eyes adjusted, Eddie realized that Clara had smeared her face with lipstick. She was also making awful moaning sounds, and scattered on the floor were shiny tubes and packages of bright-handled scissors—on special this week for $3.39. One big pink one sticking out of a hip pocket, the other, bulging with lipsticks.

  “Clara, wha-what the heck you doing? Don’t do that!”

  And where the hell were the damn nurses and aides? The woman’s nuts.

  And she smells. And her feet and legs are all muddy, as if she’d spent the night in the woods. And she’s making a damn mess of the place.

  But Clara was lost in smearing herself and groaning, her eyes rolling like she couldn’t get them to focus anywhere. God, this is horrible.

  At the far end of the aisle Eddie spotted a young mother and her two young kids.

  “Stop that, Clara!” Eddie shouted, thinking he’d have to page for the aides, get Allison or one of the older sales assistants to deal with her because this was out of hand, and he didn’t want to touch the woman. She was having some kind of loony fit.

  Suddenly Clara noticed Eddie. Her eyes saucered and Eddie felt something jagged shoot out from them.

  “Donny Doh, tsee-tsee go.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Donny Doh, tsee-tsee go,” she cawed again and again and again until she was screaming and her huge red face was contorted, and her bright raw mouth kept spitting at him: “Donny Doh, tsee-tsee go.”

  Shit! I don’t need this. “Clara, stop. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  The mother at the top of the aisle grabbed her kids and scurried off the other way.

  Where the hell are the aides?

  Hearing all the commotion, Audrey, one of the older customer assistants, came hustling down the aisle. “Oh, my god.”

  “Donny Doh, Donny Doh, tsee-tsee go, tsee-tsee go.”

  Clara paid no attention to Audrey coming up from behind. Her face was a huge red melon, and her eyes bulged so much Eddie was half certain they’d pop out of her skull. She looked positively possessed. “Clara, stop it!”

  But Clara did not stop and began to rub herself, smearing lipstick on her dress and filling the aisle with those awful groans.

  “Call 911,” Eddie barked to Audry. “Go!” Then to Clara: “Clara, stop it! Stop it!”

  “Tsee-tsee go!”

  Eddie reached his hand toward Clara in a desperate attempt to calm her down when he heard more shouting behind him—customers, other workers, maybe the nurse and aides, he thought.
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br />   As Eddie turned to check, he saw out of the corner of his eye a flash of pink as Clara lunged at him still screaming that refrain—that hideous screechy baby-talk phrase that he would take to his grave as she buried the pointy blade of the scissors in his neck.

  There was yelling and commotion, but for a long gurgling moment Eddie tried to process that he had been spiked in the throat with a $3.39 pair of scissors with pink handles by a seventy-something-year-old Alzheimer’s patient with her face smeared with Cover Girl Rose Blush and screaming nonsense syllables at him.

  Eddie slipped to his knees while faces swirled in his vision and shouting clogged his head. He pressed his hand to his neck and felt the scissors and sticky warm blood seeping through his fingers—and the last he remembered was being lowered to the floor and the overhead panels of cool fluorescent lights dimming into a soft furry blur as his life pulsed out of his jugular vein.

  “Donny Doh, tsee-tsee go.”

  4

  JACK SLEPT THROUGH THE NEXT TWO nights and days without change.

  Beth did not leave the Cape Cod Medical Center until they told her he had been stabilized and that he was ready to be moved to the intensive care unit of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Because she could not ride in the helicopter, Beth drove, stopping at home in Carleton to change and to update Vince Hammond. Once again he offered to accompany her, but she declined. Jack would not want anyone to see him in such a hideous state.

  While they prepped Jack, Beth waited in the lobby of the ICU. Forty hours had passed since that awful call; yet she was still in a state of disbelief. Aimlessly she thumbed through the magazines and newspapers. The headlines of the Boston Globe were about the war in Iraq, another suicide bombing in Israel, a shooting in Dorchester. The usual horrors. But at the bottom of the front page her eye caught the headline, “Nursing Home Resident Arrested for Murder.” The story went on to say that yesterday a seventy-six-year-old woman had fatally attacked the floor manager of a local CVS with a pair of scissors. Witnesses reported that the woman had acted strangely; and when the store manager went to investigate, the woman plunged a scissors blade into his carotid artery. “It doesn’t make sense,” reported Captain Steven Menard of the Manchester Police Department. “Clara Devine was a docile old lady.”