The Life You Longed For (21 page)

“He finds it suspicious that Jack recovered so quickly.” She sighed. “When you were not present.”

Wordlessly, Grace moved the few feet from where she was standing to the back of the room, squatted before her overnight bag, and began packing. Jack was watching all of this, but she didn't have the energy to distract him right now. “I want him discharged, Anju.” Her voice shook. “I don't trust this.” Her tongue felt thick. She reached onto the window ledge where she'd set some of her things: a blow-dryer, a bottle of moisturizer.

“Grace,” Anju said. “It is not even twenty-four hours that Jack has been—”

“Fine, we'll go AMA.” Against Medical Advice. She didn't care. She wasn't going to just sit here. She glanced up at the ledge to see what else she needed and grabbed Kempley's book, her copy of
The Crucible
. Lightning branched across the night, an angiogram of the sky. She hadn't realized it was raining.

“I understand that you are panicked.”

“Do you?” Grace asked, pressing her palms to her eyes. “I can't believe this,” she said. “What did you tell him?”

“Dr. Markind? That he is completely off the track. I am confident that I have diffused this, Grace.”

As if it were a bomb.

“
I
am not worried. I am telling you only because I promised I would if there were any further incidents.”

Grace nodded, still squatting on the floor, energy draining through her. She swiped at her eyes, not wanting Jack to see her cry.

“If this little man remains stable—” Anju nodded at Jack, “We'll get you both out of here first thing tomorrow. A home-care nurse can take care of the IV antibiotics.”

 

Please don't get sick. Please don't get sick
. A whispered mantra. The same tempo as a heartbeat.

 

She watched the drops of water ticking against their sixth-floor window. Halos of light formed around the streetlights below. The neon Emergency sign cast a red sheen on the rain-soaked asphalt. She'd phoned Stephen as soon as Anju left. The call left her feeling more alone than ever. He'd asked if she wanted him to stay with Jack tonight. “Oh, right,” she said. “That'll work. Look what your staying here one night did.”

“Are you blaming me?”

“No, I just—what did you say to him, Stephen? What did he say to you? There must have been something.” Jenn's words to her. It was too impossible to believe that such an accusation could happen without a reason.

“I told you, he asked how Jack was and how you and I were holding up and if Jack was in pain. He seemed like a decent guy. He wasn't here more than three minutes.”

“I shouldn't have left.” She closed her eyes. “Everything was fine, and God, if I'd just stayed—maybe they would have accused you.” She meant it as a joke, but it wasn't.

 

After Jack fell asleep, Grace retrieved Kempley's copy of
The Crucible
from her bag. She and Stephen had rented the video of the movie version a few years ago—Winona Ryder, Daniel Day-Lewis—and she remembered liking it, though it had seemed impossible to believe it had really happened, so many women accused, lives ruined for no good reason: If a woman had kept a doll, a poppet, she might be accused. If she missed church one Sunday or read books, she might be accused. If she healed someone—accused. If she couldn't heal someone—accused. If her neighbor's cow didn't give milk, if a neighbor's butter didn't churn—accused. If she had too much pride or anger or didn't believe in witches—accused.

If she'd had an affair.

 

She opened the book and read:
Is the accuser always holy now?

She stared at the yellowed pages of the text, the faint penciled notes in the margin, and forced herself to keep reading, trying to stay calm, despite the surge of panic spiraling through her. John Proctor was questioning the Reverend upon hearing that Rebecca Nurse had been accused and arrested. It made no sense.
How may such a woman murder children?
Proctor demanded. He then proceeded to organize the townspeople to sign a petition attesting to Rebecca Nurse's good character, her unwavering faith in God, her piety. But to no avail.
There is a misty plot afoot so subtle we should be criminal to cling to old respects and ancient friendships
, the Reverend warns.

Grace lowered the book and held it unopened as she rocked, not having the heart to read further. She understood for the first time that maybe the accuser
was
holy, if for no other reason than that he alone offered an answer, which was all people ever really wanted. Without the accuser, the illnesses of the children in Salem, the failure of the crops, Jack's confusing and often perplexing disease, seemed to make no sense.

Her throat tightened and she stood wearily, tucking the book back into her knapsack on the floor by her cot. Outside it was still raining. She tracked a raindrop down the window pane, watched it disappear. She wanted to believe Munchausen's was different from the witch trials, but more and more, she wasn't sure: If a mother owned too many medical textbooks, knew too much about her child's illness, called her child's nurses by first name, became too friendly with the other parents of sick children, she was suspect. If she was overprotective, “tuned into her child's indirect emotional signals,” she was suspect. But if she wasn't tuned in, had a “flat effect,” did not cry, break down, shatter like a teacup when the doctors gave her bad news, surely, this too meant she was suspect, that she was secretly enjoying the drama.

The parallels didn't help, didn't reassure her as Kempley wanted them to. They only terrified Grace more. And all
The Crucible
reminded her of was what the medical articles and books on Munchausen's with their scholarly diction and footnotes and statistics had obscured: how little any of this had to do with logic or reason. “In addition to Munchausen mothers being assertive and demanding with their children's caregivers,” one of the books had said, “they can also be very ingratiating and complimentary, even adulatory.” And “while many Munchausen mothers push for diagnostic procedures, these skilled actresses at times will be quite compliant.” So too emotional, too unemotional, too aggressive, too compliant, too friendly, not friendly enough. Like a house of mirrors. No matter which way she turned she came up against her own distorted reflection.

The rain was falling harder. Lightning razored open the dark forensic sky, but there was no accompanying thunder, a silent tearing apart. Grace looked at Jack, her baby, her Goose, and felt frantic inside. She walked to his bed and stood over him, hand on his head, simply watching him, her heart booming so loudly with love or fear or both that it seemed impossible it hadn't awakened him.

After a while she flicked on the news, the volume barely audible. Nothing seemed like news: controversy over the use of DNA testing to solve the thirty-seven-year-old mystery of the Boston Strangler. Details about Robert Hansen, the devout Catholic, father of five FBI agent who'd been trading secrets with the Russians. “To his family, his church, his colleagues at the FBI, Robert Hansen was one thing,” the reporter said. “To the Russians he was quite another.” News that Jesse Jackson's affair took place while he was counseling ex-president Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. All of it about betrayal. About nothing being what it appeared to be.

 

She slept fitfully, sitting in the rocking chair. A sentry, keeping watch. Rebecca came in at eleven. Grace feigned sleep, listening as Rebecca moved around Jack's bed, stepping carefully over the confusion of tubes and wires. Grace heard her attach the Velcro cuff on the blood pressure machine, and a minute later detach it. The rustle of blankets as she checked Jack's legs to see if he was retaining fluid in his extremities. The click of her pen, then the scratch against paper as she recorded his vital signs.

She came in again at three, moving silently through the watery darkness. The room was illuminated by the triangle of light from the partially open door, the small pen light. Jack must have opened his eyes and glanced at Grace's empty cot. He whimpered and Rebecca quieted him: “Shush, baby, Mama's right here in the rocking chair.”

“Why rocking chair?” Jack murmured, already dropping back into sleep.

Grace watched as Rebecca tucked the cotton blanket over Jack's hands the way he liked. Her blond ponytail was like a line of light down her back. She turned and caught Grace watching her. “You are up,” she whispered. “Don't you want to lie down? That chair can't be comfortable enough to sleep in.”

Grace shook her head and nodded at Jack. “You're so good with him. Thanks.”

Rebecca glanced over her shoulder at Jack. “It's easy. He's a doll.” In the corridor outside a hushed laugh from one of the other nurses or aides. Jack's pulse oximeter flashed his SATS: 97, 96, 97, 98. “He's doing great,” Rebecca whispered. “You really should sleep.” She paused. “Is something wrong, Grace?”

“No,” Grace said. “I'm just—” She faltered, close to tears, then blurted it out. “Do you think I'm hurting Jack, Rebecca?”

“What?” Rebecca pulled herself back an inch. “God, no.”

“I don't mean on purpose, but maybe some signal I'm sending to him that I'm not aware of, that I want him to be sick or—” She shook her head. “I'm not sure, but—”

“No. Absolutely not. You're a great mom, Grace. Everyone on the floor knows how much you do for Jack.”

Grace turned away, her eyes full. “If I'm such a great mom, then why—” She looked up. “Why—” The word split open, muffled sobs rising out of her.

Rebecca walked around the side of the crib, her rubber-soled clogs making a dull shuffling sound on the tile floor. She handed Grace a tissue, then wordlessly sat on the edge of Jack's bed. Her hand was on Grace's knee. “Why what?”

“Why did you talk to the social worker about me?”

“What? I've never—social worker? I'm not even—
when?
”

“Last spring? After Jack had the VAD put in.” Ventricular Assist Device.

“I remember. We had to readmit him, what was it, a day later?”

“I made some stupid joke about the hospital being our home away from home.”

“I don't remember, but okay.”

“You didn't repeat that to someone from Child Protective Services?”

“No.” Tears sprang into Rebecca's eyes. “Why would I? Why would they even care?” She shook her head. “I have no idea what's going on, Grace, but whatever it is, I am so, so sorry because you are a great mom.” Her voice trembled. “I tell Colin all the time that when we have kids,
you
are the kind of parent I want to be.”

G
race woke to the sound of voices, her neck stiff. Jack was lying back, zooming his race cars over his blankets and upraised knees.

“I'm racing you, Mama,” he told her when he saw that she was awake.

She smiled sleepily. “Oh no, does that mean you're winning again?”

“Yup.”

“What do you mean ‘yup'? Who taught you to say yup instead of yes?”

“Max did,” he laughed.

She stood unsteadily, still in the rumpled khakis, T-shirt, and jean shirt she'd worn yesterday. She heard Anju's voice in the hallway. “Has Dr. Mehta been in to see you?” she asked, leaning over the crib bars to kiss Jack's forehead. He shook his head no. She glanced at her watch—not the one she usually wore. She'd never bothered to change the time on this one after daylight savings, so it read ten after ten instead of ten after nine. She liked the sense of finding an extra hour.

“…primary physician,” Anju said angrily, followed by another voice and then “unacceptable…you have no business…” Jack started to say something. Grace held her finger to her mouth. Shush.

“Why I have to be quiet?” Jack asked loudly.

“I want to hear what Dr. Mehta is saying,” Grace whispered.

“Why you want—”

She furrowed her brows at him, and he clapped both hands dramatically over his mouth. “Like this?” he whispered through his fingers.

“Perfect.” She was smiling, and he smiled in return, her happy boy.

“Page Dr. Markind, please.” Anju's voice was almost shrill.

Grace felt her smile slide from her face. “Play with your cars, Jack,” she told him. “Mama will be right back.”

 

The hallway smelled of waffles and maple syrup. Anju flashed Grace a warning look, before directing her gaze back to the woman she'd been speaking with. The woman, whose face Grace didn't see, was wearing a long wool coat and low heels. Two nurse's aides quickly averted their eyes when they saw Grace. She felt her face go warm. In the bright hallway, she felt grungy and unkempt and lifted one hand to push her tangled hair from her face. She saw the hospital security guard then, standing a few feet away, his legs spread, hands clasped behind his back, eyes focused ahead. She felt sick to her stomach.

“Dr. Mehta?” she said.

The woman in the coat turned and extended her hand. She was younger than Grace had expected. Limp brown hair, a sharp nose, a beautiful peaches and cream complexion. “Mrs. Connolly?” The woman smiled. Dimples.

Grace nodded, pulling her jean shirt more tightly to her ribs.

“I apologize, Grace,” Anju interjected. “I have already paged Dr. Markind.”

The woman introduced herself. Kate someone. From the Department of Child Protective Services. Somehow Grace knew that this was the same woman whose curly handwriting had been on the investigative report. The woman handed Grace her department ID, but Grace only saw the glare of light on plastic. “As I explained to Dr. Mehta,” the woman said, “our decision no longer involves Dr. Markind.” She smiled again. Those dimples.

“Decision?” Grace asked Anju. The elevator opened and a group of interns, holding Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee, got out, followed by a mom pushing a little girl with balloons tied to her wheel-chair. “Hi, Dr. Mehta,” the girl said breathlessly, and Anju turned, hands on her hips, pretending shock. “Balloons in a hospital? What is the meaning of this?”

“Perhaps we could discuss this somewhere more private?” Kate interjected. “Isn't there's a conference room at the other end of the floor?”

She knew the floor then, Grace thought. She'd done this before. “No. I don't want to leave Jack.” Her voice was on the edge of shrill.

“How about the playroom?” Anju said. It was right across the hallway. Grace would be able to see Jack from the table where kids worked on puzzles and art projects.

“Is Rebecca still here—could she stay with Jack?” Grace asked.

“Absolutely.” Anju touched Grace's arm. “I will page her.”

“Could you ask her to call Stephen?”

 

The woman's words reached her as if from under water. Something about taking Jack into protective custody, an evidentiary hearing, forty-eight hours. Anju was still at the nurses' station. Grace and Kate were sitting in the children's playroom, a Mr. Potato Head on the chair next to Grace, books stacked in a pile on the table.
Uncle Elephant; Maxine, Maxine the Beach Party Queen; Journey Through Heart-song
s, the book written by the little boy with mitochondrial disease who had been on
Oprah
and
Larry King
and
The Today Show.
On the back was a small sticker: “Donated in loving memory of Carly Hopper. Born May 30, 1997; became an angel on November 5, 2000.” Grace traced her finger over the sticker. “I don't understand how a doctor who's never even met me—”

“We treat all reports seriously, Mrs. Connolly.”

“I know, and you should. But—” Grace looked at her. “You're talking about taking my child—” Her voice rose, and she stopped, fingernails dug into her palms. Don't get angry, she kept telling herself. You cannot alienate his woman. You have got to hold on until Stephen gets here.

“Unfortunately, this is the second accusation CPS has received in a year,” the woman—Kate—said gently.

“I know.” She tried to keep her tone nonconfrontational. “But the first accusation was—there wasn't enough evidence.” She looked at Kate, trying to see her as just an ordinary woman doing her job. Not an enemy, but someone who really believed that she was helping, maybe saving, a child. She swallowed hard.
Please be a good person,
she thought, praying that if she could see Kate as an ordinary fallible woman who was doing her best and had simply made a mistake, then maybe Kate could see who Grace was too: an exhausted, frightened mother whose little boy was sick.

“If you've done nothing wrong, there's really nothing to fear, Mrs. Connolly.”

Grace glanced at her incredulously. “You are taking my child,” she repeated.

“There will be an evidentiary hearing within forty-eight hours. And your son will remain right where he is under Dr. Mehta's good care.” Kate looked up from her papers. “Hopefully, this will be resolved at that point.”

“How?” Grace was trembling and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “What is going to change in forty-eight hours?” She stood, crying. “You can't just—just come in here—” Her voice rose. “I mean, should I be hoping that my son goes into heart failure while I'm away so
you
can be satisfied that
I'm
not doing this to him? How else do I prove to you—” She stopped.

Kate pursed her lips, her eyes steely. “Hoping your child goes into cardiac arrest seems a strange way to resolve the problem, Mrs. Connolly.”

She realized that it was the worst thing she could have said. “I didn't say I hoped,” she said. “I'm frustrated and I'm terrified and—” She stared at the shelf of games to her right:
Sorry, Trouble, Risk, Life
. The room seemed to enlarge around them, the air charged. “I'm sorry,” she said meekly, hating herself for being so weak. But she couldn't afford to get on Kate's bad side.

“My son, Jack…” There, she would give Kate his name, make Jack real to her. He was
not
just a case or a child-victim or—“Jack,” she said again knotting her hands in her lap to stop their shaking. “He nearly died forty-eight hours ago, as I'm sure you know, and now—” She glanced up. “You're asking me to leave him for two days.” She would plead, beg, she didn't care. Her words were like rocks in a stone wall, she thought, each one perfectly selected for its size and shape, weight and balance.

“But you left your son the night before last, didn't you? Didn't your husband stay?”

“Yes, but—” Does it matter to you that I have two other children at home? she wanted to say. That they need me too, and that the few times I've had to leave Jack alone in the hospital for a few hours because Erin had a Girl Scout function or Max was getting an award at the school sports banquet, it was always,
always
, an untenable choice, and it always hurt? Would it help if she explained to Kate that the
only
reason she had left Jack two nights ago was because of this stupid Munchausen's thing to begin with? Did anything she said matter right now? She pressed her palms to her eyes. She felt deadened. Numb.

The woman's face softened. “You may not believe this, but I truly am sorry.”

 

“Can my husband stay with him?” Grace forced herself to look at Kate. “Please?”

The woman started to shake her head. “It's only forty-eight—”

“The child has a heart condition,” Anju interrupted from the doorway. “I don't want him agitated, which he will be if one of his parents is not with him.” She glanced at Grace. “I'm sorry I took so long. I was trying to reach Dr. Markind.”

Grace nodded, then turned to look again at Kate. “My husband will abide by whatever rules you have. Please.”

“The father is to have
no
contact with the mother,” Kate said to Anju.

“Fine.”

“Not even over the phone.”

“I said ‘fine,' Ms. Helverson,” Anju said.

Grace stared at the playhouse across the room, plastic flowers in the window box, bright red shutters. A play sink and refrigerator and a lawnmower that played music when you pushed it. Little kids with pacemakers and oxygen tanks and wheelchairs pretending to be moms and dads, cooking dinner and going to work and talking on plastic yellow cell phones. As if the future were so easy to imagine.

 

She forced a smile on her face before pushing open the door to Jack's room. Her chest felt crushed. She couldn't think. Walk across the room, she told herself. Get your purse. The security guard was waiting to escort her from the hospital. Stephen was on his way. Rebecca stood awkwardly. “I'll pull some extra shifts, so I can be with him, Grace. He'll be okay.”

“Thanks,” she said in a squeaky whisper.

“Where you going, Mama?”

“Home, Goose.” She forced a smile. The sadness caught in her throat. “Daddy's going to play with you today.”

“Why Daddy play with me today?”

“Come here, silly.” She held her arms out to Jack, inhaling his stale yeasty smell. Behind him the numbers flashed on the pulse ox, the line of his heart steady.

 

“Just hold on,” she kept repeating to herself as she walked down the hallway to the elevators. The security guard stood discreetly behind her. “You in the parking garage?” he asked when they stepped into the elevator. She nodded, swallowing hard. They stared up at the lighted numbers over the doors. “Some days I really hate my job,” he said softly. She glanced at him and tried to smile. Her nose was running, and he handed her an ironed handkerchief. “It's clean. Go ahead. Take it.”

“Thanks,” she whispered hoarsely, holding the white square to her face. It smelled of cigarettes and the cheap Old Spice aftershave she used to give her dad for Christmas, and it seemed just then like the saddest smell in the world.

In the parking garage, Stephen was just getting out of his car. “Oh, God, Grace,” he said, hurrying to her as soon as he saw her walking towards him.

She stopped him, leaned against a car. “I—I'm going to be sick—I can't—” She was doubled over, dry heaving. She hadn't eaten since lunch the day before, hadn't even had time for coffee. “They—they—” But words were impossible.

Stephen stopped her, hands on her arms. “Listen to me, Grace. I called the kids' schools and told them you'd be picking up the kids early. And I want you guys to stay with your parents tonight.”

“Okay.” She straightened slowly. It hurt to breathe as if the air itself had become thinner, less substantial. She couldn't stop crying.

“And I need you to go to Bennett's. He's waiting. I've written down directions.” He handed her a torn envelope scrawled with writing. She took it, sobbing harder. He cupped her face in his palms. “Listen to me, Grace.” He forced her gaze up to his. “I am
not
going to just roll over and allow this to happen. I don't care what it takes.” His eyes filled. “Are you going to be okay to drive?”

“Just—I don't want him alone.” She began crying again. “No matter what, you have to stay with him.”

 

Only yesterday she was an ordinary woman. An ordinary woman in khakis, a white T-shirt, a loose jean shirt worn like a sweater. Only yesterday. She held onto the words. Only yesterday. Only yesterday. She tried to tell herself she was still that woman—she was even wearing the same clothes—but everything was different, and now she would never be an ordinary woman again.