The sisters embraced with wet eyes.
In the one hour Madeline had before departing John Wayne Airport, she had barely enough time to phone, in rapid succession, Jilli, Geraldine, and George: Jilli, to tell her sister what happened and to please get to the hospital ahead of her; Geraldine, to tell her that she was sorry for having doubted her; George, to tell him to open up as usual on Tuesday, and would he please feed and care for Socrates, starting today, even though this was his day off? The entire flight was filled with a tiny minutia of worries, little pin pricks of scattered anxieties. She hadn’t so much as a toothbrush, she thought with frustration, let alone an extra pair of underwear, for God’s sake.
But it had all happened so fast. Jeff, Mr. Customer Support, got her on the next flight to Phoenix, all right — she gave Southwest Airlines high marks for that — but she hadn’t realized what that would mean. On the one hour flight, she stared out the window as the fragments of worry played with her mind: She couldn’t remember exactly where Alex had put the spare key to the apartment, but George assured her he would find it. Was it in the cash register drawer? . . . Would Socrates freak out at the sight of George, his nemesis in the human world? . . . All these disjointed bits of mind chatter whirled like dervishes, spinning endlessly as she stared out over the wing of the airplane, into the misty nothingness of the wide white sky.
She took a deep breath and uttered a silent prayer for her husband—seeing him in a cloud of love, feeling her love, feeling God’s love — not feeling alone! Oh, when would they get there! She checked her watch. Twenty minutes. And then she returned, despite herself, to the mindless minutia inside her head. Now it was the Volvo. She had left the Volvo in the Visitor’s parking, when she should have moved it to Long-Term parking . . .
Stop it! she had told herself. She wondered why — why she was worrying over ridiculous things at a time like this? It was as though she were climbing a steep mountain, and all these tiny crags and crevices of worry were necessary so she would know where next to put her feet and hands — and, of course, to keep her from looking down. Down to the great chasm below.
Alex. Alex was in the hospital in Phoenix. She had no idea of his condition, except that he was alive. Alive! Her heart seemed to leap forward, ahead of the plane, so that when they finally touched down, and she caught sight of the familiar face of her younger sister, she felt herself nearly melting with relief.
“But why are you here and not at the hospital?” Madeline asked her sister, brushing away tears.
“I was at the hospital, but I couldn't bear the idea of your taking a cab.” Jilli handed Madeline a Kleenex from her Gucci bag. “Maddy, it’s going to be all right. Darcy, your young friend, is in the waiting room.”
“Waiting room? So Alex is in surgery?”
“I need to explain. Come on,” She took Madeline — or Maddy, as she called her — breezily by the arm, as if they were about to go shoe-shopping at Nordstrom’s. She nodded toward the airport Starbucks on their right. “We’ll get some tea down you first — and me, a cappuccino. Then, I’ll explain everything — everything that I know, anyway.”
“No!” said Madeline, breaking free of her sister’s arm. “I want to go to the hospital right now.”
“In a minute,” said Jilli, as if talking to a child. She again took hold of her sister’s arm and guided her into Starbucks. “You used to boss me around, and now it’s my turn. Just for minute, sit with me, Maddy. Over there, one table left. Let’s grab it.”
They sat down, but they had no tea or coffee. Over the detritus of coffee spills and abandoned plastic lids, Madeline pressed Jilli for the most important information of her life, and damn it if she was going to wait for her sister to stand in line for drinks.
“Alex had a heart attack, didn’t he?” Madeline said.
Jilli put her hand on her sister’s and nodded. “Yes. He had a heart attack,” she said gently, “and they will have to put a stent in his heart — or, I guess an artery, not the heart. I don’t know much about all this, but I do know that it’s not particularly dangerous. And not even surgery — not like a bypass. More like a procedure, a procedure called angioplasty. That’s what the doctor called it. Angioplasty.” She said the word slowly, as if pleased at herself for remembering the medical term. “I got there when they had just wheeled him in for the angioplasty and, a little later, the doctor came out and told Darcy and me that they would put in this stent thing and he would be all right.” Jilli paused, crossed her legs, and added, “At least his heart will be all right.”
“What do you mean, Jilli? What else is wrong? Tell me.”
Jilli looked down and squeezed her peach-colored lips together. “Well, according to your friend, Darcy—he’s a minister, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s like a son to us.”
Jilli nodded. “He’s pretty torn up about this. Anyway, Darcy said that Alex . . . that he”—she twisted up her mouth like she used to as a child—“well, that before they could assist him on the flight, that he . . . ”
“That he what, Jilli? Don’t sugar coat.”
“Well, it seems that he . . . expired for several minutes. But Darcy wasn’t sure exactly how long—”
Madeline’s hand flew to her heart. “Expired? You’re saying Alex died? And what? They brought him back to life?”
Madeline spoke too loudly, and the people at the next table, three young men in business suits, stared at her with coffee cups hanging in mid-air.
“Seems that way,” said Jilli in a confidential voice. “There was no pulse at all. Darcy checked. I don’t know how long Alex was . . . well, without oxygen. That’s the concern, Maddy, but that’s the only concern. There may be complications because of something called . . . what was it? Here . . .” Jilli opened her Gucci bag to pull out a card—her own boutique card —and turned it over, where she had jotted something down. She showed it to Madeline. “Cerebral hypoxia, that’s what the doctor told us. So they’ll have to do some kind of brain x-ray after the angioplasty.”
“You’re saying he might have brain damage? Is that what you’re saying Jilli?”
“No, of course not!” Jilli said, protesting too much. “Probably just routine. I’m sure it’s routine. But there was some concern, you know, about that issue of his having—”
“Expired,” said Madeline, completing her sister's sentence in a tone of gloom. “What an odd euphemism,” she said, almost to herself. “Like milk gone bad rather than a human being.”
“I didn’t mean that, Maddy!” said a flustered Jilli. She had always called her Maddy since childhood, and now she looked as though they were back in the old Anaheim home, a thirteen year old, looking up with big blue eyes at her much older sister. She still had those big blue eyes — kept wide by regular botox injections, no doubt. “I don’t know the right word. I just don’t want”— she glanced around to see the business men leaving their table — “I mean, I can’t stand to see you upset, not when the end result is that they saved him. The flight attendant saved his life with those paddle things — what do you call it?”
“Defibrillator.”
“Yes, a defibrillator saved his life. Or I should say, the flight attendant . . . April Day is her name.” Jilli suddenly sat up straight and offered her sunniest smile, as if putting on her high-end boutique face, a weapon against all things uncomfortable. She patted Madeline’s hand nervously. “Isn’t that a pretty name — April Day?”
In that abrupt turn of lightness, Madeline should have been perturbed, but she wasn’t. She could see and appreciate and love the child she remembered, even if firmly lodged in a middle-aged woman’s body. She seemed to be trying hard — maybe too hard — and it touched Madeline, who had always sought to protect and comfort Jilli, especially after their only brother died in Vietnam, followed by their parents’ divorce. Her little sister was now struggling with her new role as the giver of comfort, rather than the old familiar role of the one receiving it.
Madeline grabbed and squeezed her sister’s hovering, nervous, unsure hand. “Thank you, kiddo,” she said, using the pet name from eons ago, as if Jilli were still thirteen. “Thank you for telling me the truth. And does Mom know what’s happened?”
“Mom? Oh, no. I haven’t had time. And besides, she’s on vacation with her old cronies from the retirement home. They took the whole group up to the Grand Canyon for the week. I don’t think you’ll see her this trip.”
“Just as well. Look, I think I’m ready to go now. Let’s skip the drinks. I just want to get to the hospital — what’s the name of it again?”
“Good Samaritan.”
* * *
At the hospital entrance, Madeline paused, staring at the benign sign, “Good Samaritan Hospital.” But is wasn’t benign to her; no, it morphed into memories of another Good Samaritan Hospital, the one in Los Angeles, where Bobby Kennedy was taken the night he was shot back in 1968 — and how she, a young campaign volunteer, stood with her friend, Ben, on the grounds of the hospital with the other mourners, staring up to the ninth floor.
Suddenly the whole thing came back to her: the Ambassador Hotel, the balloons — or shots that she thought were balloons popping — and the screams and the man pounding the wall. And the dark, cold night of waiting in a state of utter shock . . .
And then, Alex. Alex had come to Good Samaritan Hospital in the wee hours, just to find her and take her home. It had been the decisive moment of a soul-bonding connection that was only later imbued with full-blown romance.
The sign on the hospital seemed fuzzy now through her standing tears. Something swelled inside her, rose up with a fury, and then broke into waves of emotion — a frothy mix of love, relief, hope, and fear. Alex had come to bring her home that night of tragedy. And now, she was coming to Alex, to bring him home. Would she, in fact, be bringing him home? Would there be complications? Would he be the same Alex?
“Are you all right?” Jilli said, flinging her arm around her sister’s shoulders for support. “Are you going to faint? Do I need to call someone?”
Madeline shook her head and gathered herself. “Just get me to Alex!”
* * *
When she saw Darcy’s face in the waiting room, his youthful freckles, his disheveled appearance, his serious look — not his professional ministerial look, but that of raw emotion — she went to him. He stood, and she embraced him like a son.
“Darcy!”
He kissed her wet cheek and then stood back, shook his head and bit his lip, his own emotions near to the surface.
“I wish I would have known sooner,” he said.
“Known what sooner?”
“That there was something wrong. I should have known when he dropped the book.”
“What book?”
“Oh, it’s a long story, and now Alex is having an angioplasty, and the doctor hasn’t been out yet. And I don’t know why I couldn’t see he was having problems. He didn’t grab his chest or cry out in pain or anything. But still, it wasn’t right, how he just dropped the book . . .” He rattled on, looking like a muddled child. Finally, as if realizing he was talking too much—a habit he was trying hard to curb—he simply stopped, dropped his shoulders, and said, “Oh, Madeline, we almost lost him.”
“But we didn’t,” she said. “We didn’t. I heard the story of how you checked his pulse and called for the flight attendant — what it her name? Something pretty. . .”
“April Day,” he said. “April Day saved his life.”
“But you were there,” she said. “You were level headed. You knew what to do.”
“But I’m sorry Madeline. So sorry. For you, I mean. Especially for you. And for me, too, for what I almost lost. He’s like a father to me, Madeline. Like a father.” Tears ran down his face, and he didn’t bother to brush them away.
“Nothing was your fault, Darcy. Nothing.”
They sat down while Jilli offered to get coffee from a machine.
“I’ll take sugar. I need sugar! Several packets,” Madeline said, turning back to Darcy. But before anyone could move, the doctor arrived.
Wearing her surgeons cap, scrubs, and dangling mask, the doctor looked tired and serious, dark circles shadowing her forty-something eyes.
“I’m Dr. Brice” she said. “And you,” she said looking at Madeline, without a smile, “must be his wife.”
“Yes. I’m Madeline Moore.”
“Everything is fine, Mrs. Moore. We did a PCI–that’s percutaneous coronary intervention. The blockages were in the . . .” Dr. Brice went on, explaining why two stents were necessary, using all the medical terminology that, for the most part, was new to Madeline. “And we’ll have to watch out for ‘stenosis’,” warned the doctor, “so he’ll need to be under your cardiologists care immediately when you get back home. But we need to keep him here for a couple of days.”
“A couple of days?”
“At least. We’re going to have to do some more tests, Mrs. Moore. As I told your sister and Rev. McDermott, a CAT scan and an EEG are protocol for these cases.”
“You mean because of cerebral hypoxia,” Madeline said, remembering Jilli’s card.
The doctor nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“When can I see him?”
“In a few minutes. He’s mildly sedated, but he’s been asking for you—”
“He has?” Her own heart flew wide and high, like a window flung open to fresh air.
“Yes. I’ll let you see him in a few minutes . . . but, I’d like to speak with you alone first. There’s something you need to know.”
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