The Repeat Year (28 page)

Sherry moved her arm to her stomach and looked up at her. “Someone once told me that I should keep fighting. That I should keep calling my son and that I should visit him if he wouldn’t answer. That I should make him understand how sorry I am and how much I love him.”

Olive sighed. “But it’s not that easy.”

“I know.”

She sat back down. “Have you heard from Heath?”

“Yes, actually. I got a letter. He said he was on some kind of pilgrimage in Spain this summer. El Camino de Santiago. No cell phone reception. He didn’t even bring it.”

“And?”

Sherry tried to prop herself up. “He was thinking about me on his pilgrimage. Even before he knew about the cancer. But he still doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t think the cancer changes anything. He wrote, ‘I don’t believe in pity forgiveness. Forgiveness needs to be earned.’”

“I thought forgiveness was something granted, not earned.”

“I guess not.” Sherry bundled the afghan around her shoulders.

Olive rubbed her fingers against the worn arms of the chair. “I had a dream about Heath this morning.”

Sherry cocked her head. “Really? What was it about?”

“I’d rather not say. It was a bad dream, but I’m sure it didn’t mean anything. I’ve never even met him. I don’t even know what he looks like. I think I’m just anxious about everything and everyone right now. I feel like I’m falling apart.”

“At least not literally.” Sherry slowly returned to her supine position.

“You’re right. I’m not dying. That’s the one thing I have going for me.”

Sherry let out a bark of laughter. “That’s a damn good thing to have going for you.”

Olive resisted at first. She was tired of this contrast, tired of feeling her troubles were insignificant compared to Sherry’s. Yes, thankfully, she wasn’t at the end of her life. But sometimes she wished she were traveling through this year with the young Sherry who’d had a failing marriage with a lawyer husband. Or the Sherry who’d gone through a second divorce and tried to create a new life for herself in Madison as a single mother. Perhaps Sherry would’ve empathized with the loss of the love of her life more. Now Sherry was jaded. She didn’t believe in happily-ever-afters, so Olive’s loss was no surprise to her.

But Sherry’s laughter was hysterical and contagious, and soon Olive found herself joining in, simply because Sherry’s loud guffaws and teary eyes were so funny. She sat on the floor next to Sherry and laughed until she had a hard time catching her breath. She dried her tears with the purple afghan.

“Stop it, stop it. I’m going to throw up,” Sherry warned in between laughs. “Oh, my stomach hurts.”

Olive left her with two slices of dry toast and a cup of tea. As she walked to her SUV, she felt better, even though no progress had really been made. But on her drive back to the empty condo, despair twisted its icy fingers into her heart. Though it would’ve been the typical time of day for Phil to arrive home from work, the driveway was empty, and all the windows were dark. He wasn’t coming home. She knew she needed to be practical, to walk the dog, make a quick dinner and get ready for work, but tonight she didn’t feel up to playing the part of solid, dependable Olive. The nurse who never called in sick. The nurse who (almost) never let her personal life interfere with her work. She didn’t feel like smiling and speaking in soft tones and dealing with everyone else’s shit. For once, she needed to face her own problems first.

Toya didn’t seem to believe that she had flu-like symptoms, but she didn’t push the issue. When Olive set her phone down, a mixed sensation of escape and surrender filled her. Escape from a night of having to pretend nothing was wrong, and surrender to a night of wallowing with no distractions. If she was being honest with herself, one of her major reasons for calling in sick was the chance that she would see Phil and they would have a nice long talk.

After taking Cashew for a brisk walk around the neighborhood, she set a pot of water to boil for spaghetti, poured a glass of red wine, and clicked on the news. She avoided watching it most days because it gave her such a helpless feeling. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own life last year, perhaps she could’ve remembered the dates and places of some of these tragic events and prevented them. She turned away from the photo of a three-year-old girl who had perished in an apartment fire.

The water was burbling in the kitchen. She hurried to add the noodles and start warming the sauce. When she returned to the living room, wooden spoon in hand, a traffic report was on. Helicopter footage showed an overturned car lying diagonally across two lanes of traffic. “A one-car rollover accident caused traffic delays of up to an hour on the westbound Beltline between Mineral Point and Old Sauk Road late this afternoon. Our sources tell us that only one person was inside the vehicle, a young man. He suffered critical injuries and was airlifted to Dane County General. His status is still listed as critical.”

The anchors cut to a new segment, but Olive was blind to it. The image of the flattened car was burned into her corneas. A rollover accident on the Beltline. A male airlifted to the hospital. This was the patient with the morphine allergy, she was sure of it. Had he been transferred from the ER to the ICU already? It was nearly seven o’clock now. The anchor had said “late afternoon.” The young man would be in surgery for at least three hours before they had him stabilized. Another five minutes to transfer him to the ICU. At least twenty minutes before they assessed his vitals and started him on a course of morphine for the pain. She dashed to the kitchen to turn off the burners.

Only moments ago she had been feeling powerless to change the outcomes of the events on the news, and now here was one outcome she had had the potential to change, but she had called in sick. There was a year’s worth of deeds that she could not accomplish. She could not erase her betrayal of Phil, and she could not make him forgive her. She could not cure Sherry’s cancer and reunite her with her son,
but she could save this man’s life
. She needed to get there before the fatal drug was administered.

Chapter 20

T
he drive to the hospital, which took only fifteen minutes, stretched out before her like a five-hour journey. At every red light, she braced herself against the steering wheel and saw the young man’s swollen face—his bottom lip the size of a nightcrawler, his thick tongue trying to escape his lips as he struggled to breathe.

She tried to imagine what she would say if—no, there was no
if
about it, she
would
get there in time, she had to—
when
she arrived. What would she say to convince them of his morphine allergy without sounding like a lunatic?

As she ran up the stairs to the second floor—no time to wait for the elevator—she remembered the look of horror on Tina’s face when she realized that she had been the one to inject the lethal drug. It didn’t matter to her that a doctor had prescribed it, that no known drug allergies had been indicated on her patient’s chart—in her mind, she had still been the one responsible for his death. Olive knew she would have felt the same way.

The ICU was in total upheaval when she burst through the doors. No one was manning the nurses’ station, so Olive hurried past. The bulk of the chaos was concentrated in one fishbowl room. Alex, Tina, and Kevin were all crowded around the patient’s bed.

When Olive saw the young man, she thought she was too late. There was no way someone who looked so bad could still be alive. Both his left arm and leg were immobilized in braces; burgundy abrasions and lacerations mottled his skin. A bloody bandage covered the right side of his head. Tubes and wires coiled out of his body as though he were an insect held in place by a spider’s web. But his lips were not swollen nor his face severely flushed; he had not yet gone into anaphylactic shock. There was still time.

Kevin noticed her first. “What are you doing here? I thought you called in sick.” His tone was accusatory; it was clear he was the one filling in for her tonight.

Olive drew in a deep breath. Now that she was here, it was hard to keep from simply shouting at them about morphine. But she had to do this in the smartest, most efficient way. It took all her strength to keep her voice calm yet commanding. “Tina, can I please talk to you outside? It’s urgent.”

Tina’s eyes widened. She dropped the man’s chest tube, and it swung against the bed rail. “Are my kids okay?”

“Yes, they’re fine. It’s not about them. Can we please step outside? It will only take a minute.”

Olive guided Tina a few paces away from the fishbowl room. She didn’t want to be seen or overheard. There were painful crescent moons indented in her palms; she hadn’t realized she’d been squeezing her fists. Tina studied her warily. Despite Olive’s reassurance, she still didn’t seem convinced that her daughter and son were safe and healthy.

“This is about your patient,” Olive started.

Tina’s shoulders relaxed. She tilted her head toward the room. “Ryan Avery?”

“Ryan Avery.” Saying his name made the situation feel even more critical. “It’s not in his chart, but he’s allergic to morphine.”

Tina didn’t look as bowled over as Olive had expected her to look; instead she looked skeptical. “Do you know him?”

“It’s important that you record that in his chart. Give him anything else for the pain—fentanyl, Toradol—but not morphine.”

Tina pursed her lips, the look of an experienced nurse who was not about to be outsmarted. “A true morphine allergy is extremely rare. A lot of people think they’re allergic—they have a small reaction, some itchiness—but it’s a common side effect. Nothing a little Benadryl can’t fix.”

“I know it’s rare, but Ryan Avery has a
true
morphine allergy. If you give him morphine, he will go into anaphylactic shock and die.”

“How do you know that?” Tina’s skepticism had been replaced with stunned astonishment.

“There’s not enough time to explain. Please just trust me, Tina. His life depends on it.”

“But, what if—” Tina wasn’t a by-the-book nurse, but she was a good nurse, and Olive could see a flicker of hesitation in her eyes. Writing something unsubstantiated in a patient’s chart, administering a different drug than the one the doctor initially prescribed—this was serious stuff.

“Trust me. You won’t regret it.” She remembered how Tina had gone home early last year and then taken a week off. The young man’s death, accidentally on her hands, had really shaken her.

Tina studied her for a long moment and then threw up her hands. “Okay. I don’t know why I’m saying this, but okay. I’ll get Alex to prescribe something else.” She hurried back into the fishbowl room.

Olive crumpled onto a stool at the computer station. She doubled over, touched her forehead to her knees, and took several deep breaths. She had made it in time. She had prevented something terrible, and now Ryan Avery had a chance at recovering from his injuries. She thought of his parents, his siblings and friends, his girlfriend maybe, all the people to whom she had restored him. There would be no funeral, no grieving, no lawsuit against the hospital. Instead there would be long months of rehabilitation and then years returned that had been stolen away. Maybe there would be a wedding. Maybe there would be children who wouldn’t have existed if she hadn’t gotten here in time today. She saw a whole life spool out before her eyes for the young man she didn’t know.

Some time later, everyone but Tina left the room. Ryan’s parents had arrived. They were dressed elegantly, as if their plans for tonight had included an opera, not an emergency trip to the hospital. Seeing them dressed like that reminded Olive of the way Ryan’s mother had thrown herself weeping over his body, her black evening gown leaving sparkles all over his ruined skin. It was time for Olive to go. She had accomplished what she had come here to do, and she knew what came next would still be hard to witness. Even though he had survived this time, his parents would still be devastated by his condition. She wanted to leave, but something kept her transfixed in her seat. Perhaps she was waiting to see that moment of pure relief when his parents learned that he was still alive.

But it didn’t come. Alex led them into the room, and Ryan’s mother sobbed and held her son’s hand, while his father stared intently at Alex’s face, as though by the sheer power of listening he could overcome his son’s circumstances. Olive felt like a voyeur, and yet she couldn’t turn away. It was like looking through a window into last year.
He’s alive,
she wanted to call out to them. But of course, sorrow and pain were all relative, and thankfully, they did not realize how close to losing their son they had been.

She needed to leave now; viewing this was not helping her state of mind, and maybe Phil would still be at the condo if she hurried. But as she stood up from her perch, Alex walked out of the room and laid his hand on her shoulder. A shadow of stubble covered his face, and his white coat was rumpled.

“Can’t get enough, huh?”

Olive backed up a step. “Excuse me?”

“Tonight’s your night off, right? I’ve been on for almost twenty-four hours now, and of those twenty-four hours, I’ve gotten maybe an hour’s sleep. I’m so tired that I’m seeing floaters in my peripheral vision, and then all of a sudden, here you appear, like the angel of the ICU, watching over all of us shortsighted mortals. Sorry. It’s the sleep deprivation talking.”

She pretended not to have heard that last part. “What’s his prognosis?”

Alex rubbed his eyes furiously. “Fucked.”

Olive gasped. “He’s not going to make it?”

“No, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. He’ll live; his life will just never be the same. He suffered a transection of his spinal cord at T10 in the crash. He’ll never walk again, have sex again, have control of his bladder or bowels . . .”

She didn’t know what to say. Her earlier sense of triumph was eroding. “And you told his parents?”

He scratched at his chin stubble. “Yeah. One of my least favorite conversations. It’s right up there with telling someone they have cancer.” Despite his sarcastic tone, his eyes were tearing up. He rubbed at them again. “His dad seems to think it would’ve been better if he had died.”

“No, he doesn’t mean that,” she whispered, but she wasn’t entirely sure. “He’s just heartbroken for his son right now. All his hopes, his dreams for the future—that will all have to change now. But I know for a fact that losing him would not have been any easier for them. He’ll still be the same person inside, the same Ryan that they love. There will just need to be some accommodations. And maybe after some rehabilitation, his prognosis will improve.” She squeezed Alex’s hand. Even to her own ears, the words sounded hollow.

How could she have been so naïve? She was furious with herself. Only moments earlier, she’d been patting herself on the back and imagining a fairy-tale ending for Ryan Avery. But no one just walked away from a rollover car crash. She’d stopped the morphine, but so what? It hadn’t been enough. In this year, nothing she did was ever enough. She would’ve needed to stop the car, and as Sherry had pointed out to her from the very beginning, they weren’t superheroes. When it came right down to it, they didn’t have the power to change much of anything. Instead of changing events for the better, Olive just kept fouling things up more and more. And it was one thing to mess up her own life, but to toy with someone else’s? Would Ryan Avery have wanted this for his life? She didn’t know the guy, and yet she had taken it upon herself to tamper with his fate.

Alex grabbed her hand and held on, stroking her palm with his thumb. “Thanks, Olive. I really needed to hear that right now. You’re amazing in that way.” He looked down at her through his eyelashes, straight and thick as the bristles of a broom. “Sometimes I feel like there’s this connection between us.”

She watched those eyelashes as they flicked up and down, and she wondered how he could not recognize the pile of bullshit she had just fed him. And if he did recognize it, why not call her out on it? Why ingratiate himself to her? Why the constant barrage of flattery, especially when her defenses were so weak? His eyelashes were the type that could flirt with you of their own accord, and she hated him for sleeping with her last year and for continuing to unknowingly be an obstacle between her and Phil and for being a symbol of everything that was wrong with her year, standing there telling her that Ryan Avery would be a paraplegic and trying to hold her hand at the same time. Beneath those gorgeous eyelashes, his irises were the same intense blue of Lake Mendota, and it was clear he wanted her, wanted her as if she were a cool drink on a hot day. He wanted her without asking for anything more than her body. No promises. No expectations. Only sweet, superficial intimacy.

She should have pulled her hand away, but it was such an innocent gesture. Consoling a coworker. Grieving for a patient’s prognosis. Never mind that the slow circles he was drawing on her palm reminded her of the slow circles he had drawn on other parts of her body once upon a time. Never mind that the Avery family was only a few feet away, weeping over their son’s broken body, or the fact that this was the kind of behavior that had gotten her into trouble in the first place. She was so sick of everything: trying, fighting, resisting. What did it ever amount to? It would be so much easier to give in. Her heart was heavy with everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours, and Alex was willing to help her forget that burden.

“Alex, I—” His fingertips were brushing back and forth across her own. She looked up at his face, which was kind and intelligent. But it wasn’t a face she loved. “Alex, I need to go now.”

Footsteps were approaching behind them. He released her hand, and she turned guiltily, expecting to see Dr. Su or one of the nurses.

But it was Phil. It took her eyes a few seconds to confirm that this was the real Phil, not some hallucination sprung from her desire to see him or her guilt over this exchange with Alex. Unfortunately, it was the real Phil, made of flesh that was quaking and blood that was boiling with anger. In a blur of action, he raised his fist as though he were going to punch Alex in the face, suddenly dropped both hands to his sides, and then turned and stalked away.

She ran after him. “Phil!” she cried. He was walking so fast that even though she was almost sprinting to keep up, she couldn’t catch him. She hardly noticed Kevin or Brenda, the night nurse manager, and their scandalized expressions as they watched them fly by the nurses’ station. Phil exited the ICU and rushed past the waiting room, where a handful of family members were watching what sounded like
American Idol
. Olive was at his heels. The elevator wasn’t there, so he jerked open the door to the stairwell and disappeared inside. She yanked the door back open. “Phil! It’s not what it looked like. Please stop. We were talking about a patient. He was in a car accident and now he’s paralyzed!”

Phil spared her a fleeting glance as he spiraled downward, but he didn’t stop. She barreled down the stairs, afraid of losing her footing in her hurry. She was breathing heavily, and her heart seemed to have given up on her. Its pumps were steady and indifferent, unaware of the trauma that had been inflicted.