Saving Phoebe Murrow: A Novel (37 page)

Isabel startled at the sound of a voice. Her eyes blinked open. The
Harry Potter
book still lay open in her lap, a couple of feet away Phoebe was still unconscious, and Ron stood at the foot of the bed observing her, his face appearing to mask all emotion. In a split second though, the lurid events of the previous day came hurtling back into Isabel's mind.

What she wanted most in that moment was to yell at him, demand to know what had happened between him and Sandy, and call him a slew of names, but she resisted the urge. At a momentary loss for words, she glanced around the ICU. “We can't talk here,” she said, a resigned look transforming her visage. “Say hi to Feebs,” she ordered, “then we'll grab some coffee…in the cafeteria.”

She could see that Ron had little desire to talk to her, about as much, she imagined, as he longed to meet up with her father to explain himself. No one got away with lies or half-truths with Mr. John Winthrop.

He nodded, then spoke briefly to Phoebe and bent over to kiss her cheek.

In the hospital cafeteria they encountered a hive of activity where graveyard nurses and docs bumped into the morning shift. They got in line for their coffees and some scrambled eggs for Isabel. After a wordless few minutes they sat down across from one another at a small out-of-the-way table.

Ron stared off, looking weary and uncomfortable. Isabel suddenly felt ravenous, having eaten little in the previous twenty-four hours, and inhaled a piece of wheat toast. After several bites of egg, she speared a piece of sausage and held it aloft as her gaze fixed on Ron. “I wonder what it must feel like to know you messed around with the woman responsible for your daughter being in a coma. I really can't imagine it.” She watched him carefully.

The next sentence she had to coax out of her mouth because in reality she had little desire to learn the details of Ron's secret encounter. “Now, tell me exactly what happened.”

Ron's breath caught. His eyes retreated from Isabel as he reached for his coffee. He took a sip, because he couldn't speak, not without stuttering and stumbling. It struck him odd, though, that Isabel's voice contained none of the rage he'd imagined. At least if she'd been furious, he could have refused to talk until she “calmed down.”

Though he'd had all night to imagine what Sandy might have told Isabel, and how he should react, he was coming up empty. Sandy couldn't possibly have revealed their little sexual encounters, could she? Clinton's famous declaration – “I did not have sex with that woman” – jumped into his head. He'd actually been at that press conference and still felt a grudging admiration for the man who'd virtually been caught in the act and yet remained married
and
President. But then Monica Lewinsky hadn't tried to kill Chelsea.

Ron was still having trouble believing that Sandy had created Shane. That she was Shane. That the woman had purred in his ear and sucked him off after doing something so despicable. How had he let someone so corrupt, so rotten into his life? It simply didn't compute. His entire world had shifted on its axis. He only knew that he'd landed in some form of hell from which he was unlikely to extricate himself. Short of a miracle.

Unable to stave off the inevitable, he began one version of an excuse. “I knew you'd be mad if I told you she wanted to bring us a meal,” he said haltingly, “but I thought it was a nice gesture, there was already enough water under the bridge.” He was careful to incorporate as much of the truth as possible. “So I offered to meet her at the Georgetown Mall and get it from her. I had a drink at the sushi place, you know the one—” he looked to Isabel for confirmation, but she simply stared at him, so he continued, “— anyway, after she arrived we each had a sake, and that was it.”

“A sake? With her? At a restaurant?” Isabel said. “At a time like this? On your daughter's birthday? Which you forgot!”

Ron's head fell into his hands. “Oh, God, I'm sorry.” For a moment he closed his eyes.

Isabel refused to be softened. “Now, I want you to listen to me. Whatever else happened, and I suspect something did, I don't want to know. You know why?”

She paused, her eyes skewering him once more. “Because if that's the kind of man you are, you'll have to live with it.”

He was about to defend himself, then thought better of it. What was the point of more lying?

“And the other reason I don't care is that last night I promised myself something. To stay positive and focused on Phoebe getting well. Everything else pales in comparison. Including you and Sandy.” Though she spoke with determination and conviction, she felt tragic and sad and deeply wounded. “I can't let my mind and heart get all poisoned by crazy thoughts of that horrid woman with my husband. It just doesn't matter. It really doesn't.”

Ron reached across the table to take her hand, but she pulled it away. Instead, she lifted a glass of water to her lips and slowly drank its contents. “And here's what else I want to tell you,” she said. “Sandy denied having been behind Shane, but it was obvious that she did it. She screamed at me, told me to get out of her house. Which I did. But then I did something else.” She took a few more bites of the eggs, this time half-heartedly. A sip of her coffee.

She dropped her voice to a half-whisper. “I tried to –”

She stopped. Why should she tell Ron about the Littleton's steps? It was far too complicated and she was too tired. In any case, she doubted the police would investigate. If they did, it was unlikely they'd suspect her. And should it come to that, it was best for Ron to remain ignorant.

She gave him one last look, said, “Never mind,” and then abruptly rose from the table.

When Isabel finally came home after another crushing day at the hospital, she could tell that Ron was making himself scarce, which suited her fine. Though she was enormously angry and hurt, she had in fact compartmentalized the entire tawdry episode she assumed he'd had with Sandy, because she was bound and determined to remain optimistic. She'd deal with her tattered marriage later. And really, it was the only way she could survive.

She headed for the kitchen, called out to Jackson, and said she was going to throw a pizza in the oven. “Is that okay?”

“Sure,” he said, though his look suggested otherwise. Poor guy, she thought, and went to give him a hug. Though at first he resisted, finally he embraced her. “This has been tough on you, too, buddy, and I'm sorry.”

Earlier, while ministering to Phoebe and walking the hospital corridors, Isabel's fight had come back. She renewed her vow to expose Sandy, but she'd do it openly and legally. She'd drag her through any court that would hear her case, and she wouldn't give up until Sandy paid for what she'd done. The scales of Justice, with a capital J, had to be righted.

One thing she regretted though was her attitude toward Jessie. She was, Isabel realized, an innocent in all this. Not only that, but she'd had the courage to unveil the truth about her mother's treachery. If she could do anything to save that child, she would, though at the moment she couldn't think what that might be. Get her away from her mother? Give her room to breathe.

She felt grateful too that the fire hadn't harmed the girl. Or Bill.
Thank God!

The loud jangling of the kitchen phone startled her. She reached for it. “Hello?” she said. Ron must have picked it up simultaneously, wherever he was, because instead of hearing the caller's voice, she heard her husband say, “Ron Murrow here.”

Then a nurse from the hospital announced herself. It was Nurse Laura, one of Phoebe's caretakers she'd grown fond of. She was efficient, courteous, upbeat, and attractive. Everything one could possibly want in a nurse, or really in most any human being.

“I think you should come to the hospital,” Laura said. “It's urgent.”

Isabel gasped. “Why? What is it?”

She only heard a few more sentences before she hung up the phone and was running through the hallway grabbing her purse and coat.

Sandy wandered around the house aimlessly, trying to figure out what to take with her. She'd decided to leave, knowing no one was coming home or visiting her. Not in the near future anyway, maybe never. In fact, she hadn't seen Bill or Jessie since shortly after a certain someone had tried to incinerate their house. Even her handful of friends were avoiding her. Since Wednesday nothing but a great big fat silence.

It was doubtful, too, that she would hear from her mother or sister, interaction with “home” was rare, especially since Les had died, Les who would check on her from time to time, until he was killed in a car crash a couple of years ago. Still, she thought Margaret or Ashley might trip over some of the awful stuff floating around on the Internet and call to gloat, or for once actually show a little sympathy and defend her.

It scared her, not knowing what lay ahead. She'd had a couple of beers, chased down with a shot or two of whiskey, and now she felt wobbly. She had to get it together. She planned to leave under the cover of night. Escape was the word that rolled around in her head.

Without switching on the light, she searched Jessie's room. She wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for, some memento of her daughter, even though she knew that somewhere down the road, this single memory would make her sad. Very sad. She had little control over her crying and once again grew weepy; she pulled out a wadded up Kleenex from her pink sweatshirt pocket and blew her nose. Then she wiped her tears.

Moonlight streamed in, casting a milky glow over the room. On her daughter's dresser she spied a framed photo of the three of them. Jessie, with curly hair and a dimpled smile, had been four. Sandy picked it up and thought of their trip to Disney World, recalling how she'd been more excited than Jess.

As a child, Sandy had never been to Disney World. In fact, she'd hardly been anywhere, with circumstances as they'd been, her mother too preoccupied to travel, until Bill began taking her wherever she wanted because his business was making money hand over fist. And yet it was Disney World that had seemed nothing less than the fulfillment of her dreams. Back then. Until she'd become aware of how much more there was to see and do and—

A loud roar caused her head to jerk up. What the hell was that? It sounded like an airplane had just landed in her yard. She thought of the President's helicopter and ran to the window. Just then an explosion rattled the entire house. It seemed to have come from the living room. In the ensuing chaos, she dropped the framed photo, hardly realizing that she had. When she stepped to one side of the window for a better view, her foot landed on a shard of glass.

“Ouch,” she screamed.

Though the pain registered somewhere in her brain, her mind was having trouble comprehending why a pick-up truck lurched back and forth in her front yard. Several times it drove a few feet across the lawn, then skidded to a halt, backed up and roared forward again, though in a new direction. At the same time, she saw several guys in dark clothes and hoodies run silently from the front of the house, avoid the truck, then speed across the street. They hopped into an idling SUV, which took off seconds after the last door slammed shut. The small truck jumped the curb and followed a moment later.

While all this went on, across the street she'd noticed a few neighbors' lights switch on and faces appear at several windows, probably trying to see what all the racket was about, but as soon as the SUV and pick-up were gone their faces disappeared and the lights went off.

Sandy was barely breathing. Afraid to go downstairs, yet knowing she'd have to sooner or later, she turned to leave Jessie's room. The moment she took her first step, she yelped at the pain that shot through her foot and up her leg. The piece of glass had embedded itself in her heel. She collapsed on the pale rug where she saw a pear-shaped stain of blood that had come from her wound. It made her woozy.

Oh, God, why is all this happening? And why the fuck isn't Bill here to protect me? What if those people come back? Should she call him? No, he probably wouldn't answer. In his one and only call the previous day, he'd said he and Jess had moved into a hotel, without revealing their location. He also said he'd told Jessie about the real Shane, that he was her biological father, after which he claimed she'd cried and asked if he still loved her because she loved him, and that he'd reassured her. Even if she wasn't his flesh and blood he truly cared for her.

Happy for your love fest, she now thought. But the fact that they'd so readily discarded her, well, it hurt more than she cared to admit.

Cradling her leg she searched her foot for the glass, which was hard to see in the dim room. But she didn't need the light to feel it. Once she got a hold of the offending fragment, she yanked it out, then got up and limped into Jess's bathroom. She cursed a few times while she sat on the edge of the tub rinsing her foot and applying Neosporin.

An image of Jessie as a young child in the bathtub lifted itself into her mind and though she wished it away, the memory refused to budge. The cute little toddler, then the gorgeous little girl, curly brown locks framing an inquisitive, happy-go-lucky face. Once again, tears welled up.

When she finally hobbled downstairs, her foot bandaged, she flipped on the lights as she went. In the kitchen she poured herself another big tumbler of Canadian Club to fortify herself before going into the living room to find out what those horrible people, whoever they were, had done. She got as far as the edge of the pale yellow Persian rug, where she stopped.

The huge picture window, with its view of the mammoth oak tree at the foot of their lawn, had been smashed, and an explosion of glass littered the room. She stepped back. Surveying the mess, she was again tempted to call Bill. But, knowing he didn't want to hear from her, in the next instant it pleased her to think that a few days from now he'd return home and discover the vandalism, the ruined yard and house. She tried to imagine the look on his face.

She rose back up the stairs, taking one step at a time, and began to pack. She had just returned to Jessie's room for a keepsake, a photo and one of her many stuffed bears, when the doorbell rang. Her first thought was reflexive, one she couldn't control: Bill's back, he's forgiven me. Thank heaven. Her second: Why's he ringing the bell?

Isabel drove through the dark streets along the all-too familiar path to the hospital, her hand fingering her hair, her emotions flip-flopping. One moment she was filled with excitement and hope and the next with fear and despair. The nurse's words were etched into her brain: “We can't say for certain, but it looks like Phoebe might be coming out of her coma.”

“It could be a false alarm,” Isabel said, turning the radio on, trying to find a channel that matched her vacillating moods. But even worse she couldn't quell her anxiety, the fear of what might greet her. What if Phoebe had lost her ability to speak or hear, or what if she'd gone blind?

She'd heard of brain-damaged people growing angry and violent, their personalities irrevocably altered. Who knew how long her brain had been oxygen-deprived from lack of blood? The longer the worse the outcome. Her stomach squirmed.
God, please let her be all right. Please
.

When Isabel arrived at the hospital, her legs felt leaden. Each step seemed like a huge effort, as if she were dragging her feet through sludge. She was afraid to enter the ICU and discover that the nurse had been mistaken. That it was nothing after all. What she saw from across the room when she stepped inside were Noah and Emma, each holding one of Phoebe's hands, and talking to her, though even from that distance, she could tell it was a one-way conversation.

Noah must have felt her eyes on him, because he dropped Phoebe's hand, then turned toward Isabel as she approached. But what drew her attention was a huge card on Phoebe's bedside table – with tiny images and the signatures of many of her classmates, and “Happy Birthday, Phoebe” in colorful letters. She felt so grateful that Emma and Noah had remembered, she hugged each of them in turn and thanked them for keeping Phoebe company.

“These past few days it's been rare that we could have dinner together at home,” she explained, though of course that was only partly true. She hadn't actually had dinner with Ron, nor had she wanted to. Isabel had been telling herself she'd stop all pretenses; it was one of the bargains she'd made with God in exchange for Phoebe's recovery, but old habits die slowly. And the words had popped out of her mouth before she even realized what she was saying.

She gazed into Noah's dark eyes, such sweet pools of innocence, and almost explained her dissembling, but knew it would only confuse and burden him and Emma. It was enough that she'd caught herself. This flurry of thought occurred in a fraction of a second.

“How is she?” Isabel said, looking at Phoebe, who lay there quietly, as she had the previous ten days. Her stomach sank. “The nurse told us she moved?” she said.

Emma nodded. “She did. Twice. Once when we gave her a news flash.”

“News flash?”

“Yes, we told her that Dylan and Skyla were an item now!” She smiled at Isabel, as if expecting her to understand.

Though Isabel returned the smile, she didn't pick up on the joke. “Maybe it was involuntary?” She glanced around. “Do you know where the nurse is, the one named Laura?”

Noah searched for her too. “She was over there a minute ago.” He pointed to another patient's bed across the room.

“Excuse me, I'm going to see if I can find her,” Isabel said, then threaded her way to the nurse's station in the center of the ICU.