Gateways. Part 5

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw a heavyset young woman in a white coat enter with a clipboard in her hand. She had a squat body, cafe au lait skin, short dark hair; a stethoscope was draped around her neck.

"Are you a relative?" she said.

"I'm his son. Are you his nurse?"

She smiled briefly-very briefly. "No, I'm his doctor." She put out her hand. "Dr. Huerta. I was the neurologist on call when your father was brought to the ED last night."

Jack shook her hand. "Jack. Just call me Jack." He pointed to his father. "He just spoke!"

"Really? What did he say?"

"Sounded like 'brashee.'"

"Does that mean anything to you?"

"No."

And then he thought, Maybe he heard my voice and was trying to say, Black sheep. Black sheep.

"He's been vocalizing gibberish. It's not unusual in his state."

He studied Dr. Huerta for a few seconds. She didn't look old enough to be in med school, let alone a specialist.

"What is is his state? How's he doing?" his state? How's he doing?"

"Not as well as we'd like. His coma score is seven."

"Out of ten?"

She shook her head. "We use the Glasgow Coma Score here. The lowest, or worst score, is three. That's deep coma. The best is fifteen. We go by eyes, verbalization, and movement. Your father scores a one on his eyes-they remain closed at all times-and a two on vocalization, which means he makes meaningless sounds like you just heard now and then."

"That's a total of three," Jack said.

This wasn't sounding too good.

"But his motor response is a four, meaning he withdraws from painful stimuli."

"What kind of painful stimuli? I won't be finding cigarette burns on his soles, will I?"

Dr. Huerta's eyes widened. "Good heavens, no! What on earth do you think-?"

"Sorry, sorry." Jeez, lady. Chill. "Just kidding."

"I should hope so," she said with an annoyed look. "We use a special pin to test motor responses. Your father's score of four brings his total to seven. Not great, but it could be worse." She checked her clip board. "His reflexes, however, are intact, his vitals are good, so are his labs. His brain MRI showed no stroke or subdural hemorrhage, and his LP was negative for blood."

"LP?"

"Lumbar puncture. Spinal tap."

"No blood. That's good, right?"

She nodded. "No signs of intracranial bleeding. His heart's been acting up, though."

"Whoa," Jack said, jolted by the remark. "His heart? He's always had a good heart."

"Well, he went into atrial fibrillation last night-that's a chaotically irregular heartbeat-and again this morning. I called for a cardiology consult and Dr. Reston saw him. Both times your father converted back to normal rhythm spontaneously, but it does indicate some level of heart disease."

"How bad is this atrial fibrillation?"

"The main worry is a clot forming in the left atrium and shooting up to the brain and causing a stroke."

"Swell," Jack said. "As if a coma isn't bad enough."

"Dr. Reston started him on a blood thinner to prevent that. But tell me about his medical history. I've been working in the dark, knowing nothing about him beyond the address and date of birth we got off his license. Has he been treated for any illnesses or heart problems in the past? Does he take any medications?"

"I think he once mentioned taking an aspirin a day, but beyond that..."

"Do you know if he's been seeing a doctor down here, for checkups and the like?"

Jack was embarra.s.sed. He knew no more about what his father had been doing down here than what he'd been doing in Jersey before the move. He knew his father's new address but had never seen the place. Truth was, he knew nothing about his father's life down here or anywhere else, and even less about his health.

But he was getting a crash course this afternoon.

How to put this...

"He wasn't much for talking to me about his health."

Dr. Huerta smiled. "That's a switch. Most people his age talk about nothing but."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"I wish I could say. If his cardiac rhythm stabilizes, I believe he'll come out of this with little permanent damage. He won't remember a thing about the accident, but-"

"What about the accident?" Jack said. "What happened?"

She shrugged. "I have no idea. All I know is that he was brought in unconscious from head trauma. You'll have to ask the police."

The police...swell. The last people Jack wanted to talk to.

She fished in her pocket. "I'll be looking in on him again in the morning. If you learn anything about his medical history, give me a call." She handed him a card.

Jack slipped it into his pocket.

11.

After the doctor bustled out of the room, Jack turned back to his father. As he stepped toward the bed- "So, you're one of Thomas's sons."

Jack jumped at the sound of the voice, raspy, like someone who'd been gargling with kerosene. Startled because he hadn't heard anyone come in, he looked around and found the room empty.

"Who-?"

"Over here, honey."

The voice came from behind the curtain. Jack reached out and pulled it back. A thin, flat-chested old woman sat in a chair in a shadowed corner. Her black hair was pulled back in a tight bun and her skin was dark, made even darker by the sleeveless canary yellow blouse and bright pink Bermuda shorts she wore, but in the shadows he couldn't tell her race. A large straw shopping bag sat on the floor beside her.

"When did you come in?"

"I've been here the whole time." She p.r.o.nounced it "Oy've been here the whole toym." The accent was from somewhere on Long Island-Lynn Samuels to the Nth degree. But that cinderblock-dragging-behind-a-truck voice...how many packs of cigarettes had it taken to achieve that tone?

"Since before I came in?"

She nodded.

That bothered Jack. He wasn't usually so careless. He'd have sworn the room was empty.

"You know my father?"

"Thomas and I are next-door neighbors. We moved in the same time and became friends. He's never mentioned me?"

"We, um, don't talk a lot."

"He's mentioned you, many times."

"You must be thinking of Tom."

She shook her head and spoke at jackhammer speed. "You don't look old enough to be Tom, Jr. You must be Jack. And he did talk about you. h.e.l.l, sometimes I couldn't get him to shut up about you." She rose and stepped forward, extending a gnarled hand. "I'm Anya."

Jack took her hand. He saw now that she was white-or maybe Caucasian was a better term, because she was anything but white. Her skin was deeply tanned and had that leathery quality that only decades of dedicated sunbathing can give. Her skinny arms and legs had the shape and texture of Slim Jims. Her hair was mostly jet black except for a mist of gray roots hugging her scalp.

Jack heard a faint yip from behind her. He looked and saw a tiny dog head with huge dark eyes poking over the edge of the straw shopping bag.

"That's Oyving," she said. "Say h.e.l.lo, Oyv."

The Chihuahua yipped again.

"Oyving? How do you spell that?" Jack said.

She looked at him. "I-R-V-I-N-G. How else would you spell it?"

He released her hand. "Oyving it is. I didn't know they allowed dogs in hospitals."

"They don't. But Oyv's a good dog. He knows how to behave. What they don't know won't hurt them. And if they find out, f.u.c.k 'em."

Jack laughed at the unexpected expletive. This didn't seem like the kind of woman his father would hang out with-she couldn't be more unlike his mother-but he liked her.

He told her so.

Her bright dark eyes fixed on him as she smiled, revealing too-bright teeth that were obviously caps.

"Yeah, well, I'll probably like you too if you hang around long enough for me to get to know you." She turned back to the bed. "I do like your father. I've been sitting with him for most of the day."

Jack was touched. "That's very kind of you."

"That's what friends are for, hon. The benison of a neighbor like your father you don't take for granted."

Benison? He'd have to look that up.

He cleared his throat. "So...he's mentioned me?"

Jack was curious how his father had depicted him but didn't want to ask.

He didn't have to.

"He speaks of all his children. He loves you all. I remember how he cried when he heard about your sister. A terrible thing, to outlive a child. But he speaks of you the most."

"Really?" That surprised Jack.

She smiled. "Perhaps because you so vex him."

Vex...another word you don't hear every day.

"Yeah, I guess I do that." In spades.

"I don't think he understands you. He wants to know you but he can't get near enough to find out who you are."

"Yeah, well..."

Jack didn't know what to say. This conversation was sidling into uncomfortable territory.

"But he loves you anyway and worries about you." Her eyes bored into his. "Sad, isn't it: The father doesn't know his son, and the son doesn't know his father."

"Oh, I know my father."

"You may think you do, hon," she said with a slow shake of her head, "but you don't."

Jack opened his mouth to correct her-no way this woman who'd met Dad less than a year ago could know more about the man he'd grown up with-but she held up a hand to cut him off.

"Trust me, kiddo, there's more to your father than you ever dreamed. While you're here, maybe you should try to get to know him better. Don't miss this opportunity."

Jack glanced at the still form pressed between the hospital sheets. "Maybe I already have."