Park Avenue Player by Vi Keeland
Chapter 42
Hollis
“How are you holding up, son?” Richard walked into the small waiting room outside the ICU while I was waiting for my coffee from the vending machine to finish brewing.
“I’ve been better. You?”
He smiled sadly. “Same.”
I slipped the cardboard cup out of the machine and sipped. My face scrunched up, and Richard chuckled.
“Looks like coffee,” he said. “Smells like coffee, too. Tastes like shit. Though you look like shit. So it’s a match.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled.
“Were you here all night?”
“I left to drive Elodie home and run an errand, then came back.”
He took a dollar from his pocket, and the vending machine sucked it in. “This has gotta be hard on you both.”
“It’s definitely not something I saw coming.”
Richard frowned. “I’m sorry about that.” He took a deep breath and pushed the button to add cream and sugar to his coffee. “I spoke to the pulmonologist on the phone a little while ago. He’s going to come in about two o’clock and talk to us. Said he’s bringing the neurologist at the same time, and wants to discuss prognosis. He didn’t sound too optimistic.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Okay. I’ll head out before then so you can have some privacy.”
“I wasn’t telling you so you would leave. I was telling you so you could be there. Bree would want us all to be together at a time like this.”
“Not sure Anna—Bree—envisioned I’d be around again. But I appreciate that.”
Richard sipped his coffee. “You might not have been together anymore, but you were always in my daughter’s heart, Hollis.”
She had a funny way of showing it.But this wasn’t the time or place for bitterness.
Instead, I nodded. “I’ll be there when the doctor comes. Thank you.”
“Can you let Elodie know about the time, too?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll get in touch with her.”
She’d disappeared after she saw me sitting with Anna early this morning. I was sure she’d put two and two together and figured out I couldn’t have gone to the city and back. She probably thought I’d lied to her when I dropped her off—saying I needed to go home. But I really hadn’t planned on coming back. Then I saw a billboard for the pediatric oncology unit of the hospital and suddenly my car was crossing three lanes of traffic to turn off at the next exit for a Walmart.
It was difficult to plan anything when things could change from one minute to the next. Thankfully, Addison had taken Hailey and control of the business, so someone with a brain had the reins, at least.
After we finished our coffees, Richard went to sit with Mariah. I wanted to give him some alone time, so I decided to go for a walk outside and get some fresh air. I figured I’d call Elodie and tell her about the doctors coming at two o’clock.
But when I walked out the front doors of the hospital, I was surprised to find Elodie sitting on a bench.
“Hey. What are you doing out here?”
She forced a sad smile. “I don’t know. I wasn’t ready to come back upstairs yet, but I also didn’t want to leave.”
I nodded. “Can I sit?”
“Of course.” She inched over on the small bench. “I checked in with Hailey a little while ago. She sounded good. Apparently she asked Addison to take her to Home Goods, and she’s spending the day redecorating your office since she’s at your work today.”
“Great.” I chuckled. “Can’t wait to see what that looks like.”
We fell quiet. There was so much to say, yet nothing felt right. The silence stretched into awkwardness until I finally remembered I did have something to tell her—about the doctors. Only when I went to speak, she also started to talk.
We smiled and both said, “You go first”—again, at the exact same moment.
I held out my hand indicating the floor was hers, so it wouldn’t happen a third time.
“I was just going to say I’ll pick up Hailey tonight from Addison’s and stay with her, if you want to spend the night at the hospital again.”
I frowned. “Elodie, I didn’t intend to come back last night when I dropped you off. I really did plan to go home.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”
“No, I need to explain. I don’t want you to think I lied to you.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“But don’t worry about Hailey. Addison said she would keep her a few days. She’ll be fine. She loves Addison.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. And besides, if one of us had to leave to go get her, it would be me, not you. You belong here.”
“So do you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know where I belong these days.”
Elodie’s face told me she’d taken that to mean something more than I’d intended.
“I didn’t mean—”
She stopped me. “It’s fine. What were you going to tell me?”
“I spoke to Richard, and he said the doctors want to talk to him at two o’clock. He wanted us both to be there.”
“Oh, wow. Okay.” She looked at her watch. “That’s an hour. I should probably go grab something to eat. I don’t remember the last time I ate, and all the coffee I drank is making me jittery.”
She didn’t ask me to join her, and that made me sad, though I understood the need to be alone. “Alright.”
Elodie stood. “There’s a bagel shop about a mile up the road. Would you like me to bring you back anything?”
“No, thank you.”
She looked at me awkwardly and raised her hand in a wave. “Okay. See you up there, then.”
I watched her walk away like a damn idiot. In my heart, I knew I should’ve grabbed her and held her in my arms before letting her go. Yet I couldn’t. And I hated myself for that.
***
“So, Dr. Rashami and I have spoken at length,” the pulmonologist, Dr. Marks, said. “And we’ve also consulted with Dr. Cowan, the staff ICU doctor who has been monitoring Brianna’s care since she arrived.”
All of us were lined up on one side of the bed—me, Richard, Elodie, Tobias, and Mariah. The two men in white coats stood on the opposite side of the bed.
I looked down at Anna. This morning I’d asked a nurse if she could hear me when I spoke, and she’d said sometimes people remember things they heard when they were in a coma, and other times they didn’t. I got the feeling that whatever was going to be said now might be scary to Anna if she were listening, and I didn’t want her to suffer any more than she had to.
So I spoke up, even though it wasn’t really my place. “Do you think we could have this conversation somewhere else? The waiting room, maybe?”
Dr. Marks nodded and pointed to a door a few beds away. “Of course. Let’s do that. Why don’t we go into the isolation room? It’s empty today.”
We moved into a small, private room, and the doctor closed the door behind him.
“So, like I was saying, the two of us have conferred and spoken to the other members of Brianna’s care team. As you know, we did a high-definition CAT scan, some x-rays, and ran blood work. Basically, we’ve learned that Brianna’s LAM, her lymphangioleiomyomatosis, has progressed, causing blockages of the small airways and damage to her lung tissue. She also has a blockage in her lymphatic channel that has caused a good amount of fluid to collect in her chest and abdomen—fluid that shouldn’t be there.”
“So what do we do?” Tobias asked.
“Well, the fluid in her chest and abdomen can be drained. But that requires a surgical procedure. And even if we were to do that, there’s a good chance they would fill back up again. However, we know because of Brianna’s advance directive, that she did not want any lifesaving actions taken if she was to enter a state where she was unable to make her own health decisions.”
“So what will happen if we do nothing?” Richard’s voice shook as he spoke.
“Her lungs will continue to fill up and… Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but it needs to be said so you can make the right choices. She’ll basically drown in her own body.”
Mariah broke into a loud sob. Her husband put his arm around her and pulled her to his chest.
The doctors looked at each other. “We believe the right thing to do would be to turn off the ventilator before we reach that point.”
“Can she breathe on her own?” I asked.
The pulmonologist looked down and then back up. He cleared his throat. “No, that’s not likely.”
***
Everyone in this room knew the right answer. Anna had made her wishes crystal clear, so there was nothing to discuss. Yet two hours passed, and we were no closer to coming to a solid conclusion on the next step. The problem wasn’t figuring out what Anna would have wanted; the problem was that no one was ready to let her go.
I’d never use the term “pull the plug” in jest again as long as I lived.
Despite what we all knew in our hearts, the burden of officially making the decision and giving the go-ahead to her doctors lay in the hands of her father.
After a long period of silent rumination, Richard finally shook his head and said what we were all thinking.
“There’s no way around it. We need to respect her wishes. We have to let her go.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes to squelch the tears that came with that confirmation.
We all seemed to nod silently at once. It wasn’t necessary to confirm it aloud even one more time. The thought of having to take her off life support was killing me. And I hadn’t seen Anna in years. I couldn’t imagine what this felt like for her father or Elodie. I could feel tears building in my eyes, but I refused to release them. Out of all of these people, I didn’t have the right to be crying right now, didn’t have the right to upstage their sadness.
At one point, Richard went to speak to her doctor, and when he returned to the room, he looked absolutely devastated. I knew he’d given the go-ahead to turn off the ventilator.
Later that night, the hospital staff came in and did just that. It was quick, but the wait that ensued was excruciating.
A nurse escorted Anna’s grandmother in. I wasn’t sure how Nana Beverly had gotten to the hospital, because no one in this room had left to get her. She had to have been in her nineties now.
As the family held vigil around Anna, the stress of waiting for her granddaughter to die became too much for Bev. This couldn’t have been good for her own health. But I could understand her needing to say goodbye despite that.
Elodie wrapped her arms around Beverly and escorted her out of the room. I followed to make sure everything was okay.
“Someone needs to take her back to the nursing home,” Elodie said. “They sent a driver to bring her here, but I don’t think she should go back alone in this state.”
I was the best candidate to leave the premises, considering I wasn’t sure Anna would’ve wanted me here in the first place. I offered to drive Beverly back, not knowing whether Anna would be alive when I returned.
Nana Beverly definitely didn’t remember me, and I was fine with that. So distraught, the poor woman cried the entire drive. But somehow, focusing on Beverly helped keep my own feelings from spiraling out of control.
After I walked her inside the facility and saw to it that she was safely in her room, I rushed to my car to get back to the hospital.
I’d just fastened my seat belt when my phone lit up.
Elodie.
I picked up. “Hey. I was just heading back. What’s going on?”
There was a long pause.
My heart dropped.
Finally came the words I dreaded.
“She’s gone, Hollis.”
