“Take a deep breath.”
Grace inhaled and clutched the arms of the recliner as Judi passed the needle through her skin and into her upper chest. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as she had anticipated.
“Now we’re going to draw some blood through this tube to see what your cell counts are. Today is really a formality and a baseline because we’re pretty sure your red and white blood cells and platelets are all present in healthy numbers. But as you go through your chemo, your counts will drop considerably. We can’t start a treatment if the counts are too low. In fact, sometimes you may need medication to bring them up. Otherwise there’s a danger of bleeding or infection or severe anemia.”
Great.
Once the tests were done Judi returned with the drugs-some form of steroid, and one to make her drowsy. Next was a large syringe filled with what looked like cherry Kool-Aid but was, in fact, the cellular poison Adriamycin. In spite of herself, Grace watched the liquid pass into her chest. From within her bloodstream, Grace could smell and taste the powerful medication-a sharp, almost musty odor, reminiscent of some sort of cheese. . a taste like. . like what?
“Just close your eyes and relax,” Judi said.
. . to accept the things I cannot change. .
With the help of the sedative and the Serenity Prayer, she began dozing off, cloaked in the conviction that soon this theater-of-the-absurd production would end and she would find herself back in her life.
. . Courage to change the things I can. . Relax. . And the wisdom to know the difference. . Relax. . Relax. .
The dream she drifted into was at first pleasant. . the lake. . two young girls playing together at the water’s edge. . she and her sister, Charlotte. . their mother, arms folded, back to them, standing on top of the water, gazing off at nothing in particular. . their father, shoulder against a tree, eyes narrowed, watching, watching. . Did he know already what he was going to do to his girls?. . Had he already started?. . The dream became a strange, drug-aided montage of images in which Grace was both a participant and an observer, totally aware she was dreaming, yet completely immersed in the scenes.
When the itching first began, it was as if it were happening to the Grace in the dream. She wondered if somehow, seeing her father like this, watching her, watching Charlotte, knowing what he had done to them, was causing the uncomfortable sensation. The itching increased and now was joined by a burning sensation. . her arms, her belly, her face. Along with the girl in her dream, Grace began to scratch.
Over just minutes, the itching grew more intense and the burning more disturbing. The dream blurred, then faded altogether. Grace opened her eyes and raised her arm. Her fingers were swollen and stiff. Crimson welts with irregular, pale margins interlocked with one another like a jigsaw puzzle, until they virtually covered all the skin on the arm. Her belly, too, was covered, and her other arm. Hives, she thought, remembering something similar from when she was a teen. Similar, but not nearly as bad. Hives. The burning, especially on her face, was becoming quite frightening. Something else was becoming frightening, too-she was beginning to have trouble breathing, a tight sensation in her chest that made it hard to draw air in.
“Hello! Help me, please,” she called out. Her voice was harsh and cracked, and not nearly as forceful as she expected it to be. “Help me. .”
Her lips felt badly swollen-swollen and on fire. The breathing problem was rapidly getting worse. She needed to sit up to get air in. Needed to sit up. . needed to sit up. .
Now there were footsteps. . then voices.
“Oh my God! Grace, can you hear me?” Judi’s voice. “Nod if you can hear me. Get a stretcher out here and get her to the examining room!”
“There’s not much room in there.”
“Just get the stretcher! Run that saline wide open. Grace, you’ve got to lie back. Get oxygen on her, a mask. Five liters or more. Tell Carla to call nine-one-one. Get an ambulance here! Also tell her to call Dr. D’Antonio. Tell him she’s having an anaphylactic reaction. . We need the crash cart stat! Epinephrine, zero-point-five. Draw it up. I’ll give it. Also Benadryl twenty-five IV. Make it fifty!”
“She’s hardly moving any air!”
“Get a blood-pressure cuff on her! Quick. Here, help me lift her onto the stretcher. Jesus. Carla, did you make those calls?”
“She’s not moving any air. I can’t get a BP.”
“Epi is in. Get her into the corridor by the examining room. We need the crash cart. Jesus, this has never happened here. . absolutely never! Grace, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
“No BP.”
“Carla, are they coming?”
Grace’s panic had exploded. It was as if someone had pulled a broad piece of tape tightly across her nose and mouth. No matter how hard she sucked, air just wasn’t getting in. She struggled against the hands that held her, struggled to sit up. She clawed at the oxygen mask. She pounded her fists on the bed. Finally, exhausted, she sank back, still trying with all her strength to get in even a tiny bit of air.
“I’m going to try and intubate her.”
“Have you done it before?”
“In Advanced Life Support class. Never in an emergency like this. What else can I do?”
Grace felt her head being tilted back. A metallic rod was being jammed into the back of her throat.
“Everything’s swollen back there. I can’t make out any landmark. Dammit, where’s the rescue squad?”
Help me, please!. . God, grant me. . grant me. .
Grace knew she hadn’t said the words-knew she couldn’t. She felt herself stop struggling. She felt herself stop trying to suck in air. Overhead, the lights dimmed. Her panic lessened. The words of the nurses became garbled and distant.
A veil of darkness settled over her, accompanied by a growling, low-pitched drone.
The droning sound grew softer.
Softer.
Finally, there was silence.
CHAPTER 18
Spurred by an unseasonably cold, rainy spring, near record numbers of meals were being served at the Open Hearth Kitchen almost every night. For Will, the place had always been an island in his often furiously paced life. Tonight, he knew, asking for any kind of significant diversion from the place was probably asking too much. Last night, as he sat in his apartment with Patty Moriarity, someone had walked into a motel room on the South Shore and fired three lethal shots into one of the leading neurosurgeons in the country-a man who just happened to be one of the partners in an expanding, highly successful HMO. Victim number four. Four out of. . out of how many? Even worse, the killer had made the point of calling Will essentially to announce that he was going to do it.
“Hey, you. You gonna just stand there staring into the flames, or are you gonna stir that pasta?”
Benois Beane, his gentle face crinkled in a trademark grin, stood, hands on hips, just a few feet away.
“Hey, Beano. Sorry. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a little distracted. Here, look, all stirred.”
“You do that very well. We’ll have to see about bringing in more surgeons on pasta night. It’s hard going for you, huh?”
“Yeah, you might say that. Beano, what’s been happening to my life is absolutely insane. I want to fight, but there’s nothing to push against. I want to lash out, but there’s nothing even to hit. I don’t know who framed me, I don’t know why, I don’t know what to do about it. And as if that craziness wasn’t enough, this frigging killer thinks I’m his spiritual brother, joined at the ideological hip by our mutual hatred for HMOs.”
“I heard about that brain surgeon.”
“What you may not have heard was that the murderer called me ahead of time to proclaim his intention to kill another one of our enemies. ‘The piper’s on the loose and he must be paid,’ he said.”