The Debt 5 (2 page)

Raven’s mother was wringing her
hands.
 
“He’s having trouble
breathing!” she yelled.
 
“Look at
him.
 
Help him, please.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,”
Danny replied.
 
“Dad, take slow deep
breaths,
okay
?”

Her father nodded and he really did seem
to be trying, but his chest was rising and falling rapidly, and his skin was
waxy and clammy.
 
Something was
wrong.

“Do you have a pulse oximeter?” Jake
asked, taking her father’s wrist and applying pressure with two fingers.

“Yeah, yeah, we do,” Danny said, spinning
and then bending down and grabbing a small bag slung over the side of the
wheelchair.
 
He dug through it
quickly, grabbed a small white piece of plastic and affixed it to Raven’s
father’s finger.

Jake looked into her father’s eyes.
 
“He’s struggling to breathe, like an
asthma attack.
 
Does he have an
inhaler?”

“Yes, but—“

“Get that.
 
Something’s wrong.
 
Misses Hartley, call 911,” Jake said.

“Okay,” Raven’s mother replied, and ran
into the other room to get the cordless phone.

“What’s happening?” Raven asked Jake.

Jake glanced at her.
 
“He can’t breathe and I’m not sure
exactly what’s preventing him from getting enough oxygen.
 
Could be his airway is narrowed, or
could be something to do with the airflow from the oxygen tank.”

Her father’s hands were jumping off the
chair, as if he was having some kind of fit.
 

“Come on Dad,” Danny said.
 
“You have to breathe.”

“His oxygen saturation is at seventy nine
percent and falling,” Jake announced.

“What’s it supposed to be at?” Raven
said, her heart pounding.

“Over ninety percent, at least,” Jake
replied.
 
He tried to push the
oxygen tube deeper into her father’s nose.
 
“Get the inhaler, Danny, quickly!”

Danny had dug the inhaler out as well,
but he fumbled it in his nervousness and dropped it on the floor, where it
bounced, the cap skittering away.
 
Raven bent down, picked up the inhaler and put it to her father’s lips.

“Dad, you have to try and breathe in on
the count of three, okay?” Raven asked him.

He nodded, but barely.
 
His eyes were rolling in his head.

“Jake, please help him,” Raven said.
 
She couldn’t believe this.
 
Her father was dying in front of her
eyes.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jake said,
checking the air hose for leaks all the way down to the oxygen tank affixed to
the rear of the chair.
 
“Everything
looks normal,” he said.
 
“But there
must be something wrong.
 
He’s not
getting the delivery of the oxygen.”

Raven counted to three out loud and then pumped
the inhaler into her father’s mouth, but he didn’t seem capable of really
taking it in, he was struggling too much trying to even breathe at all.

“Shit,” Danny said, checking the oximeter.
 
“His oxygen’s at seventy two percent,
Jake!”

Jake was kneeling behind the wheelchair,
his eyes fixed on where the tube met the tank.
 
He started to turn something—some
kind of valve—Raven knew nothing about the tank or how it worked.

Jake’s face was completely transfixed,
completely focused as he tried to work on the oxygen tank.
 

Raven’s father’s eyes rolled up into the
back of his head.

“I called the ambulance, they’re on their
way!” Raven’s mother said, running back into the room, her eyes wide with
terror.
 
“Is he going to be all
right?”

“His oxygen saturation just dropped
again,” Danny said.
 
Raven had never
seen her brother look so afraid.

She saw that her father’s skin was
turning almost blue.
 
She touched
his hand and it was cold.

He’s
going to die.

Dad’s
dying, right here in front of me.

She looked up and met Danny’s eyes and
saw that he knew it too.
 
He looked
like a little kid again.

“Got it,” Jake said, and then there was a
new sound, a hissing noise.
 
That
sound had been missing, Raven realized, because the tank was malfunctioning.

She stood up and pushed the hose closer
into her father’s nostrils, hoping it wasn’t too late.
 
“Come on, Dad.
 
Breathe.
 
Please,
breathe
,”
she said.

There was a long moment when it seemed
that nothing had changed, but then suddenly her father’s chest rose and his
nostrils flared.
 
And then his mouth
opened, he exhaled and took another large gulp of air.

And then another and another.
 
The color began returning to his face.

“Oxygen’s at eighty percent and rising,”
Danny said, smiling, with tears in his eyes.

Her father was breathing again.
 
He looked up at Raven and nodded his
head weakly.
 
“I’m all right,” he
said.
 
Then he looked at her
mother.
 
“I love you,” he told her.

Raven’s mother began to sob, and then she
ran over and began hugging and kissing him, telling him how worried he’d made
her.

Danny extended his hand to Jake.
 
“You just saved my dad’s life,” he said.

Jake shook.
 
“Just returning your favor from last
night,” he said, cracking a smile.

Raven looked at him with tears in her
eyes.
 
“How did you fix it?”

“The regulator,” Jake said.
 
“It wasn’t seated properly and so a lot
of the oxygen wasn’t reaching him the way it should have.
 
Not sure how it happened, but I suppose
it might even have been this way for a while, only your father had a flare-up
and needed every bit of oxygen he could get.”

“It’s okay now, though?” Raven asked
Jake.
 
“He won’t have this problem
again?”

“The tank’s fixed now, so he should be
okay.”
 
Jake’s brown eyes met hers
and then he looked away.
 
She
couldn’t tell if he was angry, sad, relieved.

In that moment, she was just thankful
Jake had been present to save her father from what quite likely had been a
life-threatening situation.

Raven’s mother was done kissing and
hugging Raven’s dad.
 
But she wasn’t
altogether finished, as she then threw her arms around Jake and squeezed him
tightly.
 
“Thank you so much for
being here, Jake.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Hartley.
 
Really, it’s okay.”

Not long after, the ambulance showed up.
 
The EMTs came inside and checked Raven’s
father’s vitals and declared him sufficiently okay to remain in the house.
 
They also checked over his oxygen tank
setup to make sure it wasn’t going to malfunction again.

When one of the EMTs asked how Jake had
known what to do to fix the tank, he’d gotten a strange look on his face.

“My fiancé needed oxygen her last month
or two before she passed,” he said.
 
“I got used to handling the tank and just happened to know a few
tricks.”

“You probably saved his life,” the EMT
said.
 
“He was lucky you were
visiting.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jake muttered, his
gaze flickering over to Raven and then away again.

Nobody had spoken about the news
story.
 
It was as if it had never
even happened.

But once her father was better and the
EMTs had gone, Jake announced that it was time to leave.

“You’re going so soon?” Raven’s father
said in a weak and tired voice.

Jake was finishing another cup of
coffee.
 
“Afraid so, sir.
 
Besides, haven’t you had enough
excitement around here since I showed up?”

Nobody quite knew what to say to that.

Raven wasn’t sure what Jake meant,
either.
 
As he left the kitchen to
go upstairs, she followed him.
 
“What about me?” she said.

He turned on the stairwell.
 
“What about you?”

“Do you want me to come back with you?”

“It’s your call, Raven.”
 
He could hardly look at her.

“You didn’t tell me you planned to leave so
soon.
 
I’m trying to figure out how
mad you are right now.”

“I’m not mad,” he said.
 
“Come if you want.
 
Or don’t.
 
Suit yourself.”
 
And then he walked the rest of the way
upstairs and she heard the door opening and closing as he went into the
bedroom.

A moment later, Raven’s phone buzzed with
a text.

She took out her cell and checked it.
 
The text was from an unknown number, and
it was just one short sentence.

Payback’s
a bitch.

***

The limousine was waiting for them,
parked alongside the curb.
 
Jake
carried the luggage over to where the driver was standing.

Meanwhile, Raven gave her mother a long
hug.
 
“Sorry we had to leave so
soon,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll come back again?” her
mother asked.

Raven looked at her.
 
“I hate that you have to even ask.”

“But I do.
 
I do have to ask.”
 
Her mother’s hands were clasped together,
her fingers seeming to grasp onto each other as if for support, as she
spoke.
 
“I don’t want it to be
another four years before I see you or hear your voice again.”

“It won’t be, I promise,” Raven said.

“We don’t care about what happened in the
past, or what they say about you,” her mother continued.
 
“We love you.”

“Thanks, Mom.
 
I love you too.”
 
And she meant it.
 
Maybe her mother had changed, after
all.
 
Perhaps people didn’t just let
you down over and over again forever.

Raven remembered what she’d discovered
about Jake’s fiancé and her stomach tightened.

Then
again
,
maybe some people do just keep letting you
down
.

Raven’s father had already said his
goodbyes.
 
He was exhausted after
the medical crisis, and now he was sleeping.
 

Danny came outside last.
 
“Come here,” he said, moving away from
the house and the limo, taking her over by the chain link fence that separated
their yard from the neighbor’s yard.
 

“What’s up?” Raven asked.
 
She glanced at Jake, who was getting
into the limo now, not even waiting for her.
 

She shook her head slightly.

“You need to stop seeing him,” Danny
said.

“Who?
 
Jake?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, laughing as if he
couldn’t believe her stupidity.

“Danny, he just saved Dad’s life and you
still hate him.”

“No, I think he’s a really cool guy.
 
I’m grateful that he saved Dad’s life,
but that doesn’t mean he’s good for you.”
 
Danny stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at her.

“I don’t know what’s going to
happen.
 
There’s a lot going on
right now.”

“I see that,” Danny said.
 
“And I also saw the way they dragged
your skeletons out of the closet on national TV.
 
That’s just the beginning,” he told
her.
 
“They won’t stop until they’ve
torn your whole life apart.”

“They’re going to do it either way, I
can’t stop them.”

“That’s not true,” he said.
 
“They’ll stop the minute you two break
up.
 
They’re only after you because
of Jake.”

“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,
Danny—“

“Stop saying that,” Danny said, his voice
raising.
 
“You said that last time
when all of this happened and we were all dying inside, trying to figure out
how to help.
 
You kept apologizing
for everything, but then you started to resent us.
 
You kept saying we weren’t willing to
fight to protect you.
 
But all the
lawsuits in the world won’t change public opinion, Raven.
 
People believe what they want to
believe.
 
You need to be strong
enough not to care.”