The Promise of Stardust (5 page)

“It was a long time ago. I don't remember that specifically, but I'll dig it out and take a look.”

Blythe Clarke returned to the room, stopping short when she saw the stern expression on my mother's face. “Hello, Linney. Matt, I have more information when you're ready.”

I stood and stepped around my mother's chair. “Go ahead, Blythe. I told Mom Elle's pregnant.”

Blythe pulled a PDA device from her lab-coat pocket. “The pregnancy looks viable so far. The outcome will depend on how stable they can keep Elle.”

“But she's only eight weeks now?” Mom asked.

“Yes,” Blythe said.

Mom squeezed her eyes shut. “I can't let you do this to Elle. Not for months and months.” Mom reached for her purse. “I'll be back in a couple of hours,” she said. As she exited the room, she moved so fast I felt like I was in the ebb of a semi traveling down the highway.

Blythe stared at me. “What does she mean?”

“Tell me what you learned first.”

She hesitated a moment before she replied. “I found about a dozen anecdotal cases. I can't make any promises. It's August. If we can keep her alive until Christmas, the baby will be twenty-six weeks.”

“That's awfully premature.”

“Yes. I'd like to see her make it to February, but by Christmas, the baby would be small, but most likely it would live; it would have a chance anyway.”

I pictured the NICU and the preemies there, not mini, chubby-cheeked versions of the full-term variety, but sick little things, thin-skinned and struggling. “My mother said Elle had a living will or an advanced health care directive. I never heard about this until now.”

“Hmm …” Blythe furrowed her brow as if she were puzzled. “I'm on call tonight, so I'll be around. You can page me anytime. Otherwise I'll stop by in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said as she walked away.

Lost in my thoughts, I must not have noticed my brother Mike walking up the hall. He said, “How is she? I raced over here as soon as I heard.”

“Come in if you want,” I said.

He glanced down at his grease-stained mechanic overalls. “How bad is it?”

Unable to find words, I shuddered.

Mike grabbed me and pulled me into a hug as if I were a little kid. And he started to cry.

“Come on,” I said, taking his elbow. I led him out of the room. Even if Elle couldn't hear us, I couldn't say “brain-dead” in front of her. While we walked down the long hospital corridor, I told him Elle was pregnant.

He blew out air like the wind had been knocked out of him. “But months? Are you sure you'd want to do this for months?”

“There's a chance. So yes, I guess I am. Yes. I'm certain we should try,” I said, not at all certain about anything except that I felt devastated.

   4   

In the morning when Phil entered the hospital room, I straightened and rubbed the kink in my neck as my partner performed a neuro exam on Elle. Periodically, I'd checked her pupils and reflexes during the night. She hadn't improved, and as a doctor, I did not expect a miracle. As a husband, I wanted her back, so I kept looking for a glimmer of hope.

“Melanie's outside,” he said. “She'd like to sneak in and see Elle.”

I nodded. Although the Longfellow Memorial's ICU usually enforced the family-only visitation policy, something told me the nurses wouldn't balk when the neurosurgeon's wife broke the rules. “Tell her to come in.”

Phil went to the door and beckoned. When Mel entered, she looked as if she might cry, but instead she swallowed hard and opened her arms wide to me. “I'm so sorry,” she said. She held on for longer and tighter than would normally feel comforting, and still I wished she wouldn't let go. She offered what little comfort was within her power. Was I hungry? Did I need anything from home? What about clean clothes?

Mel sat next to Elle and took Phil's hand as if she needed his strength. “Phil says you can't hear me, but … Oh God …” Her lower lip quivered and she looked up at Phil. “Isn't there something you can do?”

Phil seemed to deflate and shook his head.

Melanie pressed the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment. “Okay, listen, Elle, we love you. Don't want you to worry about Matt—or any of us. We'll watch out for him. I promise.” Mel stood abruptly and folded herself into Phil's arms.

An hour later Christopher came into the hospital room. Shaken, he had declined to see Elle the previous day.

“Hey,” he said as if we were tossing a baseball back and forth, then his jaw tightened. “They shaved her head.”

“For the surgery,” I said.

His eyes shifted to the floor. “This isn't fair.”

Fair?
The statement was so typical of Christopher, but this wasn't a playground with referees.

“It never occurred to me that she might faint,” he said.

“You want me to absolve you and say, ‘Christopher, these things happen'? Okay. Accidents do happen. But this one wouldn't have if you'd gone up on your own goddamned ladder.”

He grabbed the bed's footboard. “Heights never bothered her. She's never afraid of anything.”

I shook my head and led him out of the room. Elle couldn't hear me. She couldn't hear her brother, or any of us, but at any second I might blast Christopher for being such a pansy that he had to ask his big sister to act as his handyman. And I didn't want her to see me beat the shit out of her precious Christopher.

Elle.

I stopped in the hallway and looked back through the glass wall at her stilled body, her eyes closed, swollen from the surgery and the fall. Even if she could open them, she couldn't see me.

No wonder my patients' families struggled with denial. I understood the physiology of Elle's injuries. And none of this made sense to me. I couldn't grasp the shift in my world.

“Matt? Did you hear me?”

I turned toward Christopher and shook my head. “What?”

“Why did you drag me out here?”

For a second grief overpowered my anger and then, like a demon, my rage resurfaced. “It's not true that Elle was never afraid. She just hid her fears better than most people.”

“What was she afraid of besides ending up like my mom?”

I stared at him for a moment. Elle was afraid of a slow death. How the hell could I even consider keeping her on life support? Because, I told myself, she was willing to risk her life to have a baby. “Not realizing her dreams.”

“It's not the same.” His mouth tightened, and he avoided my gaze. “She was only afraid of dying like my mom. What time are they going to turn off the machines? I—I should be here.”

“They aren't. I changed my mind.”

“Why? Did Phil think of something that could save her?” Christopher's eyes widened, and hope fell across his face like sun breaking out of a storm cloud.

Oh God, I wished I could reach out and grab a fistful of his blissful ignorance. I shook my head. “There isn't anything anyone can do.”

His mouth tightened, and he seemed to search the corridor, my face, and then the palms of his hands, which he then pressed against his eyes. “My dad wasn't making any sense yesterday. He never did when he was drinking.”

I shuffled my restless feet, remembering the days when Hank was falling apart, when Chris was barely eight, their mother was dying, and Elle thought she had to carry the lot on her young shoulders. “I'm kind of surprised you even remember your father's drinking days,” I said. Hank had been sober for a long time—at least until yesterday.

“I was old enough. You'd be surprised what I remember. You can't make Elle go through what my mom did.”

I peered through the glass at Elle again, horrified by my decision to keep her on life support. “It's not the same. She isn't in pain. And she's—pregnant. If we can keep her stable long enough, we can save the baby.”

His jaw dropped. “What? Not again. How many times now? Four? Five pregnancies?” He clenched his hands as if he wanted to strangle someone, me, most likely. “Damn it. I told you last time you'd better not get her pregnant again. She almost died last time.” He turned toward the room. Chris started shaking with anger or grief.

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing because this time she'd suffered brain death. Because of me.

It was rare for Christopher to act protectively of Elle. She was seven years older. But after her last pregnancy he pulled me aside. At the time I'd agreed with Chris. Trying to have a baby again would be too risky.

“She didn't tell me she was pregnant,” Chris said.

“We didn't even know. It's early.”

“Are you saying we'd have to keep her on life support for nine months? I don't think so. Elle didn't want that. I don't want that. I already watched my mom die that way.”

He took off down the hall, blasting through the ICU double doors with me in pursuit. He was halfway to the elevator when I grabbed his arm. “This isn't about what you want, Chris. It's about Elle. It's about the family she wanted.”

“Wait, you're making me feel guilty because Elle fell off the ladder, but you got her pregnant again? Asshole!”

The elevator doors opened and my own mother strode off, looking a bit frazzled. Tendrils of her gray hair fell around her face. “Christopher, honey.” She kissed his cheek, then quickly turned her attention to me. “I found it, Matt. It took me half the night, but here it is.” She passed me a form, a fill-in-the-blank living will, named as such, not titled “An Advanced Directive.”

I scanned it quickly. It actually had boxes to check.

Do you want to have a respirator to help you breathe if you are unable to do so?

Yes

No