Another Dawn (21 page)

My dad walked into the waiting room, his jaw clenched tight. He’d been in with Jana and Hannah the past hour and looked exhausted. He dropped into the chair beside me, rubbed his hands across his face, and stared at the wall.

“Anything new?” I whispered the words, not wanting Dylan to hear us.

“Hannah’s breathing rate has decreased. They say it’s because she’s just too tired to keep struggling so hard, so it’s time to put a breathing tube in. They’re sedating her now, although to tell you the truth, I can’t see there’s much need for it. She barely moves at this point.”

“How’s Jana taking it?”

“Not too good, which I’m sure you can imagine. They’ve asked her to wait outside the room while they do it. Rob had to practically carry her out the door.”

“Is she coming out here?”

He shook his head. “Nah. She’s standing right by the door waiting for the okay to go back in.”

“Bless her heart.” I looked toward the closed doors of the unit. “Oh, Dad, what are we going to do?”

“Not much we can do at this point, except pray that she gets better and the doctors know what they’re doing.” My father looked as tired as I’d ever seen him.

“Is Hannah Rose okay?” Dylan climbed out from under the row of seats he’d been playing beneath. I’d long since given up keeping him still and in a chair. At least he was contained this way.

“They’re having to put a tube in her to help her breathe better. It’ll give her body a chance to quit trying so hard.” I tried to make it sound like a good thing, an upbeat, positive development.

“Oh. So she can sleep better?”

I thought of the fog of sedation that they would put her under in order to keep her still. “Yes, I definitely think she’ll sleep better now.”

“That’s good, then.” He climbed back under the chairs and started back to work on his Lego village.

My father looked at me. “You want to go back and see if it’s over?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I think I will.”

When I was let into the unit, I did not see Jana or Rob outside Hannah’s door, so I gowned up and went inside. I pushed open the door and found my sister and brother-in-law standing over a limp baby Hannah. She had clear tape all over her face and mouth, holding the tube in place; a large blue and a large clear tube came from the device over her upper lip, as well as another smaller clear tube running out from it. Her breathing was more rhythmic now, her chest moving with the swish of the ventilator. It would have been peaceful except for the fact that she lay so still. Almost as if . . .

“Did you come in here to see what you’ve done? Well, take a good look.” My sister’s voice had lost every bit of its southern sweetness. Now it was almost a hiss.

“Jana, I . . .” I looked at her haggard face; I looked at my unmoving niece. “I came here because I want to help.”

“Maybe you could help more back home in California. I think we’ve had enough of your kind of help here.”

“I’ll . . . be in the waiting room if you need me.”

She didn’t answer. And this time Rob didn’t follow me out. I walked through the doors and nodded toward my father. “I guess she’d prefer it if you were back there.”

“Okay.” He stood up and hobbled back toward the door, leaning on a cane for support. Jana had always been Dad’s favorite; it looked like from here on out, he was also hers. The last person who had really been “mine” now hated me. The worst of it was, I didn’t blame her.

After a sparse lunch of soup and fresh fruit in the cafeteria, Dylan and I returned to the waiting room yet again.

Fox News was playing on the television overhead. Hour after hour I stared at it mindlessly, looking over every now and then to make some sort of appropriate comment about Dylan’s drawing or latest Lego structure to at least affect interest, before settling back into my chair and disappearing into numb disbelief. I sat out here wishing for something to distract me. There was nothing that could take away from the reality.

At eight thirty, Rob and my father came walking out to us. “Visiting hours will be over at nine, and only parents will be allowed then. Do you want to go back there one more time?” Dad asked.

I looked at Rob and didn’t see anything like encouragement on his face. I shook my head. “Not this time. I think it’s probably easier for everyone if I’m not around.”

Rob looked at me, his eyes almost flat but not quite. “You know she loves you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Mama, he said measles.”

We all turned to look at Dylan. “Who said?”

“That man on the news. He said something about measles; I didn’t hear what.”

We all looked toward the television, which had now gone to commercials. The three adults remained rooted to our spots, each of us thinking a solitary thought, no doubt.
Please let it be good news.

The announcer came back on. “Folks, we have tragic news to report from that measles outbreak in Oregon. We’ll go live right now to Kiersty Foster.”

The reporter nodded her acknowledgment of the pass-off. She stood outside what was obviously a hospital, the wind blowing her long curls in a wild dancing pattern. “Yes, Shep. Here in Ashland tonight, officials are reporting the first death due to measles-related causes. This is the first measles-related death in this country in over a decade. The victim was an infant, six months old, who came into contact with the disease at her older brother’s day care, where over a dozen schoolmates were infected.

“I am told the baby’s brother did not get sick, because he had, in fact, been vaccinated. The infant was in the room during the time that an infectious child was present, and it went from there. The family has asked that the media respect their privacy while they grieve their loss.”

“Kiersty, can you tell us what exactly caused this infant’s death?”

“They’re telling us there will be a press conference within the hour to discuss specific details, but we know there are currently at least five measles-infected children in this hospital. According to sources, most if not all of them have pneumonia. This has yet to be confirmed as the cause of death, however.”

“Thank you, Kiersty. We’ll come back live when the press conference starts.”

We all stood there, staring. Mouths open.
Please, God, no. Please, God, no
. Rob reached up behind the flat screen and pushed the power button. The screen faded to black. “I think that’s more than enough of that.” His face had gone stark white. He turned and walked out of the waiting room without another word.

God, I’d really appreciate it if you’d send something like those hailstones and help us win this battle. Keep her breathing, keep her little heart pumping, keep her tiny little brain safe from the high fevers. God, please don’t take her away from Jana and Rob. And me.

“Mama, did they say that baby died from measles?”
And Dylan. Please don’t take her away from any of us; we all really need her. Please, God.

“Get your stuff together, Dylan. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Is Hannah Rose going to die, too? Is that why she’s in the hospital, ’cause she’s dying?”

“Of course not. Now, get your things together.” I picked up random crayons and began shoving them down into the box.

“How do you know, Mama?”

“I just do.” Even as I said it, I knew the typical mommy answer wasn’t going to cut it this time. Not for any of us.

Dylan was crying by the time we made it out of the hospital, through the parking structure, and into our car. “I don’t want Hannah Rose to die.”

“Honey, she’s not going to die. She’s sick right now, but the doctors here are taking really good care of her. She’ll be all better soon.”

“Did the doctors not take good care of that baby who died? Is that it?”

“I’m sure they tried, honey.”

“Are they trying harder with Hannah Rose?” He was sobbing now. “They got to try harder.”

“Don’t you worry, Dylan,” my father said. “Hannah’s doctors are the smartest ones around. They’ll keep a close eye on her and she’ll be just fine. You wait and see.” The false enthusiasm in his voice was as bright as I’d ever heard him sound.

I chanced a glance in his direction and I could see that his jaw was clenched tight. He, too, was fighting to hold it all together.

I turned on the CD player, which already held one of Dylan’s sing-a-long favorites. I was hoping it would distract him enough to calm him down, but it did not. For the first time I could ever remember, I regretted my decision to abstain from all the electronic goodies most parents use at a time like this—Nintendos, portable DVDs, and whatever today’s new gadget might be. Dylan was working himself up more and more, his cries shredding through what was left of my soul. It had been a long day and I knew he was exhausted.

We drove past a billboard for Nashville Shores Water Park. It showed kids about Dylan’s age, sprawled across inner tubes riding the Lazy River, smiling and laughing. A few hours ago, I could have pointed out this sign with even a hint that we might someday make an appearance there, and he would have been beside himself. Now, I knew there was no point. Nothing mattered anymore. Even my son knew that. It took almost half an hour of all-out crying before he fell asleep in the backseat.

As we neared our driveway, my father leaned forward in his seat. “What the . . .”

I looked to see what he was talking about. His front yard. It was buried in a sea of what I knew were dozens of copies of
The Shoal Creek Advocate.
“I guess I got what I asked for.”

“No! No! Nooooooo!” Dylan’s screams cut through the house at just after midnight. “No! Noooo!”

I raced into his room, my heart pounding with fear. “What’s wrong, Dylan? What’s wrong?” I placed my hand on his forehead, dreading that he might be getting sick again. He was sweaty, yet cool. “What hurts, honey? What’s wrong?”

“I did it! I’m the one who did it!” His shrieks were loud and hysterical.

“What did you do?”

“I made Hannah sick. It’s all my fault. She might die and it’s because of me.” He began to kick and thrash in the bed. “I hate myself, I hate myself. It’s all my fault.”

I finally gathered him in the same lock hold I’d seen Jasmine use on Collin when he was in a complete meltdown. I could feel him thrashing against me, but I held him firm enough that he wasn’t moving much. “Shh, baby, shh. It’s all right. It’s just a germ; it’s not your fault. You can’t help that.”

He struggled for a few minutes, then stopped. “It’s because I’m a fraidycat, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Cory and Tyler and Drew all talk about how much their shots hurt when they go to the doctor. I always pray and pray that you won’t make me get one and you never do. If I hadn’t prayed like that, I wouldn’t have caught measles and neither would Hannah Rose. It’s all my fault, Mommy.”

“No, honey, it’s not your fault at all. Mommy made up her mind before you were born not to let the doctors give you shots. So, see? It wasn’t because you prayed; it was because of a decision Mommy made.”

“But why?” He began to still in my arms, gulping deep breaths as he slowly began to calm.

“Well, there are a lot of people who believe that vaccines might actually make children unhealthy. I didn’t want to take that chance.”

“You mean, like the vaccines might give you the measles?”

“No. A different kind of unhealthy. You know how Collin doesn’t really talk much? And he gets really upset a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that all seemed to start after he got some of his vaccines. I didn’t want to risk that with you, so I chose not to take the chance.”

His crying had turned into soft hiccuping by now. “But . . . I made Hannah Rose sick.”

“The
virus
you had made Hannah Rose sick.”

“But I wouldn’t have had that virus if I’d gotten a shot.”

“That’s probably true.”

“Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Would you hate it too much if I was like Collin? I think I’d rather do that than hurt Hannah Rose.”

I rocked him against my shoulder, saying nothing. There was nothing to say.

“The boy’s sleeping in late today.” My father nodded toward Dylan’s closed door. “I guess all that screaming he did last night wore him out.”

“I guess.” I stared out the back window.

“Well, I’m going out on the porch for a bit. I’ll see you in a while.”

Despite my best intentions, I felt the usual flair of annoyance. He’d learned absolutely nothing. All these years after his choices had killed Mom, he was continuing to make the same . . . “Dad, I’m going to walk down the street. Keep an ear out for Dylan if he wakes up. Okay?”

“Sure.”

I walked down the sidewalk toward Patti’s house. She would likely be gone to work already, but we’d made it home too late to come over last night. I rang the doorbell, not expecting an answer.

The door swung open and she was standing there in a sleeveless blue sweater and white denim skirt. “Hi, Grace. How are you?” Her concern sounded genuine.

“I’m hanging in there.” I suddenly lost my thought process to continue.

“I heard your lawn got a few new additions yesterday. Sorry about that.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry for you. And grateful. And that’s why I came down here this morning. I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the fact that you’ve chosen to tell both sides of this story. I know that there are plenty of other newspapers who would have milked the anger of the town for everything it was worth.”

“Oh, you are more than right about that one. I can speak to that one firsthand.” She paused for a minute, then gestured inside. “You want to come in for a minute?”

“No, I don’t want to hold you up. I know you’re trying to get ready for work.”

She smiled. “Well, I am the boss, so no one’s going to fire me if I come in a little late. And there are a couple of things I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Okay.”

I followed her inside. I glanced toward the right at the living room. Dark brown shag carpet, worn furniture—the kind of thing you generally see in a college apartment. It wasn’t much different than my own, but given the fact that Patti was single, had just bought a newspaper, and I had always heard that she came from a family of some standing back in Nashville, her modest living surprised me. She led me into the kitchen where she poured coffee into a blue mug that said
The Shoal Creek Advocate
across it in white letters. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Just a splash of milk.”

She reached into the canary yellow refrigerator, which looked to be almost as old as this house. “There are a couple of things I want to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“First, there is going to be an article in
The Advocate
today about Dr. Wakefield—the doctor who wrote the original article alleging a possible link between MMR and autism.”

“What about him?”

“A few years ago he filed a lawsuit against a reporter. His name was Brian Deer, and he was an investigative reporter who uncovered several things, including the fact that Wakefield’s control blood samples—the ones from healthy kids he used as a comparison—for the paper he wrote were drawn from children at his own son’s birthday party. They were paid about five dollars each. Then there was the fact that Wakefield had already been paid $750,000 by attorneys filing a class-action lawsuit against the MMR vaccine. And the fact that he’d applied for a patent for a measles-only vaccine months before this paper was filed. A vaccine that could have made him a rich man if health departments—or frightened parents—demanded it instead of the combined MMR.”

“Did Dr. Wakefield win the lawsuit?”

“No. In fact, by the time it was over, the suit was shown to have so little merit that Dr. Wakefield was required to pay the legal fees for Brian Deer.”

“Oh.” I took a sip of the coffee, but it burned all the way down to my stomach. I shook my head. “At the time I chose not to vaccinate I didn’t know any of this. I didn’t know about the study in Finland, or Denmark. All I knew is that I worked with a woman whose son went from bright and outgoing, to a shell of a child, all within days of receiving his vaccines. She has a support group of several other mothers; they call their children vaccine-injured. All of them have a similar story.”

Patti nodded and stirred her coffee, although I was certain that the sugar had long since dissolved. “I know what you mean. It’s easy to look at cold, clinical medical studies and get little from them, but one real-life instance of a problem speaks volumes.” She traced her finger over the handle of her cup. “Do you know Daphene Steepleton?”

“No.”

“She was at the walk-in clinic the day you took Dylan in.”

“Oh, wait . . .” A memory flashed through my mind of the waiting room at the walk-in clinic. “Well, there
was
a Mrs. Steepleton in the waiting room with us that day. I remember them calling her name. She let us go in front of her.”

Patti nodded. “That’s the one. She was diagnosed with measles this morning.”

“You’re kidding me. It never occurred to me that adults might be affected.”

“Apparently she was in the generation that got a measles vaccine but no booster. They say it still has about a ninety to ninety-five percent success rate, but the problem is, she has rheumatoid arthritis and takes fairly strong immune suppressants to combat that. Her body isn’t able to fight off a disease like a healthy person could. She’s one of those who depend on herd immunity, because her own body is not strong enough to fight off highly contagious diseases.”

“Oh.” I rested my forehead in my hand. “She was so nice. Let us go ahead of her because Dylan was feeling so bad. I feel just awful about this.”

“The anti-vaccine contingent never talk about people like Mrs. Steepleton, or your niece, Hannah, do they?”

“No. No they don’t.” I lifted my head to look at her. “Judging from what you’ve just told me, I gather that you do not agree with parents who don’t vaccinate.”

“Not particularly. I think a lot of well-intentioned parents have listened to the wrong people for too long.”

“Then why have you made such a point of telling my side of the story if you don’t agree with it?”

“Do you remember anything about me when I came here?”

I shrugged. “It’s a small town, you were the new girl, of course I remember.” I could still clearly visualize the beautiful, sophisticated blond girl walking onto campus at the end of our junior year. Her clothes were trendy, she was so poised, so self-confident. The boys had fallen all over themselves trying to get close to her—including my at-the-time boyfriend, Jared. Turned out, he was the one she chose.

“I’m sorry about Jared. I knew the two of you were dating, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I’d just come through such a storm in my life I felt that it was okay for me to do the wrong thing to make me feel better. I guess I was trying to make up for what had been done to me.” She took another sip of coffee. “I used that excuse for a lot of the things I did back then. Especially to you. I want to tell you how truly sorry I am for that.”

As I wasn’t ready to offer blanket forgiveness, I tactfully redirected the conversation. “What wrong had been done to you?”

“We lived in Nashville, in a beautiful home, and lived a beautiful life by most people’s standards. I attended the top private school, we took nice vacations, we had it all. Until one particular Friday when I came home from school and found my father asleep on the couch.” She closed her eyes tight. “I can still see his right hand resting across his forehead, his left hand hanging down to the floor.

“I knew then he must be sick, because my father was never home in the middle of the day and I’d never, ever seen him take a nap. There was an empty glass on the table and a couple of prescription bottles, so I figured he must have been to the doctor’s and gotten some medicine. Just as I started to tiptoe past him and into the kitchen, I noticed a piece of stationery on the floor beside him. I reached down and picked it up. It started with the words,
To my dear family, I am so sorry.
That’s when I noticed he didn’t seem to be breathing.”

She wiped at her eyes and shook her head. “I called 9-1-1 and they came and told me what I already knew. It took me an hour to track down my mother—she’d been called unexpectedly to a charity board meeting that afternoon—so I just sat there beside my father in that big house, full of assorted paramedics, firemen, and policemen, and wondered what I was supposed to do next.”

Patti’s father had committed suicide? I never bothered to talk to her long enough to find out that part of the story. “I had no idea. I am so sorry.” I thought about my own life at that time and understood fully the grief of the loss of a parent. “I lost my mother our senior year.”

She nodded. “I know. I remember how much I envied you.”

“Envied me?”

“I can still remember the line of cars parked down this street and all the nearby streets, after her funeral. I didn’t go to the service or anything after it, but I’d be willing to bet there were a lot of people standing around talking about what a wonderful person she had been.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I envied.”

“Your father . . . ?”

“Turned out that my father had been running a Ponzi scheme. Long before Bernie Madoff made this a household term, my father had been doing basically the same thing.”

I remembered a bit about the Madoff case. A New York investor who had pocketed millions, or maybe billions, of his investors’ money while sending fraudulent updates to his investors about their earnings. By the time someone figured it out, many people, institutions, and even charities had lost everything.

“In the note my father left behind, he said that the walls were closing in and he knew it wouldn’t be much longer until it all collapsed. He thought it would make things easier for our family if we didn’t have to watch the trial, to have to live with the stigma of a father in prison.” She shook her head and stared out the window. “Of course, we still lived with the stigma. Just a different kind. Most of the people who had been our friends had invested money with my father. Several of them lost almost their entire life savings.”

She pulled out the spoon and carried it to the sink. “Needless to say, there weren’t a ton of people standing around my father’s funeral talking about what a lovely person he had been. I would guess that the few people who came were thinking, ‘I can’t believe what a liar and fraud that guy was.’ ” She returned to the table and dropped into her chair. “We lost our home and most everything else. That’s why Mom decided to move here. The cost of living was less; no one really knew us. We could start over.”

“Makes sense.”

“I suppose it does.” She shook her head at some distant memory.

“I had no idea about any of that. All I saw was the pretty girl who swooped into town and took over the school.”

“And I saw you as my biggest rival. Not just with Jared, either. I had always been the teachers’ darling, especially when it came to literature and journalism. It was pretty evident that Mr. Baumgartner favored you. So . . . more than once I turned in recycled papers—ones that I had written for my class in Nashville, that had been graded and returned. I incorporated all my previous teachers’ suggestions, so it made it appear that I was a better writer than I was.”

She stared out into her backyard, which needed a good mowing. “I put on plenty of airs, I know that, hoping the kids here wouldn’t catch on. They’d caught on plenty fast in Nashville.” Patti shook her head. “That was one of the darkest moments of my life. And there was no one who cared to tell my side of the story, or my mother’s.

“Yes, I’d been raised in privilege; yes, my father’s trickery had earned that privilege, but I hadn’t been a part of it. I’d grown up doing volunteer work just like my mother—who is as wonderful a person as I’ve ever known. No one cared that we were just as innocent as the other people he deceived. And that’s . . . well, that’s why I promised myself when I became a newspaper editor that I would see to it that those without a voice would have one. Someone like you right now.”

“Even someone you’ve never particularly liked?” I gave her a look that dared her to contradict me.

“Someone I never took the time to get to know well enough to determine if I liked her or not.” She smiled wryly. “Yes, I agree with the other side of the vaccination argument than yours, but to me this story was like coming full circle. I had a chance for a do-over, not in my own life, per se, but the opportunity to offer someone else what I never had.”

I looked at her. “Full circle? A do-over? That’s right. Mrs. Fellows told me you’d asked about the standing stones.”

She laughed. “Guilty. I found her little stone configuration intriguing, and being a newspaper gal, I couldn’t help myself but ask about it.”

I stood up and extended my hand. “Thank you. For being willing to tell both sides.”

She took my hand and shook it. “I’m glad I got the chance.”