“Do you expect Juliette will have to stay in the hospital?”
“I have no clue,” Brian answered. He was trying not to think about the immediate future. “But given how serious it looked, I imagine so.”
“It’s probably best. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
Brian watched Camila as she walked back to the exit, wondering if he should have encouraged her to stay, given how unhinged he felt. As she waited for the sliding glass door to open, she turned and waved to him. Camila’s question of whether Juliette would need to stay in the hospital was unsettling, to say the least. Since Juliette had never had a seizure and since Emma’s EEE started with a seizure, the implications were now suddenly obvious to him. He had thought it was just a flu, but Juliette could have contracted the same horrible illness at the same fateful barbecue two weeks earlier.
With shaking fingers, he used his phone to pull up the Wikipedia article he’d found about eastern equine encephalitis back when Emma had been diagnosed. Scrolling to find out about the length of the incubation period, he felt his stomach sink when he learned that it could take between four and ten days for symptoms to appear, which is a rather large variation. From his EMT training, he knew that such an interval was based on statistics, meaning for some cases it could take less and in others more.
Still holding his phone but now staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes, Brian suddenly reluctantly acknowledged there was a very good chance that Juliette had been suffering from EEE the whole time, especially when he thought back to her multiple flu-like complaints over the previous ten days or so. Emma’s illness had had a faster trajectory, but started out like the flu.
“God damn it,” he murmured through clenched teeth. This sudden very real possibility not only terrified him, but it also made him wonder why it hadn’t been considered by the doctors who had seen Juliette, especially since they knew Emma had died of EEE right here in their hospital.
Going back to his phone, Brian quickly searched to find out whether there was a blood test for EEE. Finding out there was only fanned the growing antipathy he had for MMH Inwood. Not only had the powers that be made him and Juliette wait more than three hours on each of their two visits, but they had refused to do any testing even though it could have been key to properly diagnosing and treating her.
Forcing himself to go back to the EEE Wikipedia article, Brian reluctantly reread with growing horror that a large portion of those patients suffering encephalitis as evidenced by a seizure or other serious neurological symptoms ended up with severe intellectual impairment, personality disorders, significant paralysis, and cranial nerve disfunction.
Suddenly he stood up with the urge to run back to the treatment room where Juliette was to shout out that she could very well have EEE. But he held up, realizing that making the diagnosis at that moment was secondary to getting her seizure under control. Not only could the interruption do more harm than good, it might get him thrown out of the ED, and he needed to be there for Juliette when things settled down. As difficult as it was, Brian held himself in check. He also faulted himself for not thinking about EEE when Juliette first complained she wasn’t feeling well and for not specifically demanding the test. Had he insisted, it would have been more difficult for the two doctors to fall back on assuming all of Juliette’s complaints were psychosomatic.
Instead of running back to the treatment room, he nervously paced back and forth. Sitting still and waiting was driving him crazy. A few people eyed him warily, but he didn’t care.
The siren of an approaching ambulance caught his attention as it got louder and louder before trailing off upon arrival outside. A few minutes later there was evidence of a flurry of activity back in the ED’s treatment area, but it soon passed.
Twenty minutes later and unable to stand the wait any longer, Brian hurried back to the information desk. Forced by security to wait his turn, he demanded to know how his daughter was doing and if the seizure had been controlled.
“What’s the name?” a bleary-eyed clerk who was nearing the end of his shift asked in a tired voice.
“Juliette Murphy,” Brian practically shouted angrily.
The clerk rolled his eyes at his tone before spending what seemed like an excessive amount of time on his monitor. Just before Brian was about to boil over, the clerk said, “There doesn’t seem to be any information yet, but I’m sure the doctors will be out to talk with you soon. Next!” He tilted his head to the side to get the attention of the person behind Brian.
Hardly satisfied, Brian returned to his seat, beside himself with anxiety. Out of desperation, he took out his phone. He needed to talk to someone and for a few moments debated whom to call. It wasn’t an easy decision, since it was now five in the morning. He thought first of Camila since she’d been already disturbed by the situation, but he hesitated, thinking she might have gone back to sleep and that she’d already helped enormously. He thought about his mother but was afraid she might make things worse by being more anxious than he. He thought about some of his ESU buddies, particularly those who worked the graveyard shift, but he nixed the idea, as he’d not spoken to them in months and they might be in the middle of a call. He then thought about Jeanne, whom he knew would probably be the best choice considering her background with children, yet he wavered.
Despite all his reservations about taking advantage of her and as a sign of his desperation, he impulsively called, especially because she was the only one who could truly sympathize with his problems from her own experience. While the connection went through, he winced at disturbing her sleep, and he struggled to think of what to say. After the fourth ring, he seriously considered disconnecting, but then she answered.
“Uh-oh,” she said sleepily, the moment she answered. “This can’t be good news.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you—” Brian began.
“Don’t be silly,” Jeanne interrupted, already sounding more awake. “What’s up? Did Juliette’s fever spike again?”
“Worse than that,” he admitted. “She’s had a seizure in her sleep, a bad one. I don’t even know how long she’d been seizing when the noise woke me up, but it might have been for a while.”
“Mon Dieu! Where are you?”
“I’m afraid I’m back at the MMH Inwood ED,” Brian said. “My least favorite place.”
“How is she?”
“I haven’t heard,” Brian said, running a hand nervously through his hair. “We’ve been here about an hour. They haven’t told me anything. They haven’t even told me they’ve stopped the seizure. Nothing!”
“You poor man,” Jeanne said with true empathy in her voice. “Would you like me to come and join you to keep you company?”
“Thank you for offering,” he said. “That’s a lot to ask, and besides, I imagine I’ll be hearing shortly that she’ll be admitted. I just needed to talk to someone. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jeanne chided. “I’m glad you called. And I’m going to come join you whether you want me to or not. Case closed.”
“Are you sure?” Brian asked. He wasn’t the kind of person who normally asked for favors, and he considered self-sufficiency a virtue, but even he recognized he was particularly vulnerable at the moment. Besides, he didn’t have the mental strength to talk her out of it.
“I’ll be there in fifteen to twenty minutes,” Jeanne said definitively.
With a bit of surprise, Brian found that she had hung up on him. Slowly he pocketed his phone, then bent over and cradled his head in his hands. He’d never felt quite so weak in his life, and as a consequence found himself praying, not in the way he’d learned as a child, but more as an attempt to bargain with a God he wasn’t sure he believed in. He promised that he could learn to accept losing his wife and soul mate, but only if his daughter made it out of this unscathed.