rise because that would just leave her farther to fall if the news was
bad after all.
Torrents of hard-driven rain clattered against the windows and streamed
down the glass. Through the distorting lens of water, the city outside
appeared to be utterly without straight lines and sharp edges, a
surreal metropolis of molten forms.
Strangers arrived, some red-eyed from crying, all quietly tense,
waiting for news about other patients, their friends and relatives.
Some of them were damp from the storm, and they brought with them the
odors of wet wool and cotton.
She paced. She looked out the window. She drank bitter coffee from a
vending machine. She sat with a month-old copy of Newsweek, trying to
read a story about the hottest new actress in Hollywood, but every time
she reached the end of a paragraph, she couldn’t recall a word of it.
By 12:15, when Jack had been under the knife for two and a half hours,
everyone in the support group continued to pretend no news was good
news and that Jack’s prognosis improved with every minute the doctors
spent on him. Some, including Louie, found it more difficult to meet
Heather’s eyes, however, and they were speaking softly, as if in a
funeral parlor instead of a hospital. The grayness of the storm
outside had seeped into their faces and voices.
Staring at Newsweek without seeing it, she began to wonder what she’d
do if Jack didn’t make it. Such thoughts seemed traitorous, and at
first she suppressed them, as if the very act of imagining life without
Jack would contribute to his death.
He couldn’t die. She needed him, and Toby needed him.
The thought of conveying the news of Jack’s death to Toby made her
nauseous. A thin cold sweat broke out along the nape of her neck. She
felt as if she might throw up, ridding herself of the bad coffee.
At last a man in surgical greens entered the lounge. “Mrs.
McGarvey?”
As heads turned toward her, Heather put the magazine on the end table
beside her chair and got to her feet.
“I’m Dr. Procnow,” he said as he approached her. The surgeon who had
been working on Jack. He was in his forties, slender, with curly black
hair and dark yet limpid eyes that were–or that she imagined
were-compassionate and wise. “Your husband’s in the post-op recovery
room.
We’ll be moving him into I.C.U shortly.”
Jack was alive.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“He’s got a good chance,” Procnow said.
The support group reacted with enthusiasm, but Heather was more
cautious, not quick to embrace optimism. Nevertheless, relief made her
legs weak. She thought she might crumple to the floor.
As if reading her mind, Procnow guided her to a chair. He pulled
another chair up at a right angle to hers and sat facing her.
“Two of the wounds were especially serious,” he said. “One in the leg
and one in the abdomen, lower right side. He lost a lot of blood and
was in deep shock by the time paramedics got to him.”
“But he’ll be all right?” she asked again, sensing that Procnow had
news he was reluctant to deliver.
“Like I said, he’s got a good chance. I really mean that. But he’s
not out of the woods yet.”
Emil Procnow’s deep concern was visible in his kind face and eyes, and
Heather couldn’t tolerate being the object of such profound sympathy
because it meant that surviving surgery might have been the least of
the challenges facing Jack. She lowered her eyes, unable to meet the
surgeon’s gaze.
“I had to remove his right kidney,” Procnow said, “but otherwise there
was remarkably little internal damage. Some minor blood-vessel
problems, a nicked colon. But we’ve cleaned that up, done repairs, put
in temporary abdominal drains, and we’ll keep him on antibiotics to
prevent infection. No trouble there.”
“A person can live … can live on one kidney, right?”
“Yes, certainly. He won’t notice any difference in his quality of life
from that.”
What will make a difference in the quality of his life, what other
wound, what damage? she wanted to ask, but she didn’t have the