Debbie and Gladys waited more than an hour for Con to be brought back from the x-ray department. Instead, a nurse entered carrying a slip of paper. “You are Connor Flynn’s family?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
“That’s right,” Debbie said. “I’m his wife, and this is his mother.”
“X-ray called. They took him straight to the O.R..”
“Did something happen in x-ray?” Gladys asked, wide-eyed.
“I didn’t get the details, but it sounded like the scan showed leakage from the anastomosis.”
“The what?”
“Oh sorry, that’s where they stitched the aorta back together. So they’d have to go back in and revise the suture line.”
“So what are his chances now?”
“I can’t really say. But Doctor Bird — Kravitz’s assistant — said Mr. Flynn’s condition was critical. He also said there was no point in your hanging around all afternoon. Mr. Flynn’s in the recovery room, and he hasn’t come out of anesthesia yet. Just leave a number where you can be reached. Someone’ll call you when he wakes up and you can come over. Do you live around here?”
“No,” Gladys answered. “I’m from New York, but Debbie’s from Edison, not too far. I don’t have my car here. My husband drove it back to New York this morning. He had to get back to work.”
“I’ll drive you home with me,” Debbie said. “You can stay overnight and we can come back to the hospital together. Oh God, I’m so scared!”
“And things looked so good last night!” Gladys said mournfully. “You try to look at the bright side, and this is what happens.”
They left the hospital and headed for the parking lot.
“Do you think we should call Mike?” Debbie asked her mother-in-law.
“If I were home in Brooklyn, I’d want to be called. Work or no work, I’d come straight down. I’d want to be here when Con wakes up. But Mike might see it as having to make a choice: the shop, where he can be doing something useful, or sitting here unable to do anything but wait. He can be here in a couple of hours if anything happens.”
By five that afternoon Con still had not emerged from anesthesia, so Gladys called Mike in the showroom, knowing that he was unlikely to leave before six.
“Isn’t that unusual, to take that long to come out?”
“I think so, but I’ll call you the moment he’s awake.”
Mike did not offer to come. The two women went to a nearby diner and ate in silence. There was little to say. Neither could help the other. They agreed not to go back to the hospital right away, hoping that fresh air would provide them a modicum of comfort. When they did go to the desk at eight o’clock, they were greeted by a terse, somber announcement: “He’s still not awake.”
“Should we stay?” Gladys asked, uncertain as to who was best equipped to answer. Nurse De Luca had some experience with such questions. “We have the motel’s telephone number, and I promise I’ll call as soon as there’s something to report. You might as well wait there.”
Debbie felt comforted by the nurse’s evident competence and took Gladys’s arm to leave. They took another thirty-minute walk. Gladys was tiring and they returned to the motel. There they found a message awaiting them at the desk. “Please come to the hospital as soon as you get this message.”
Debbie clapped her hands and her face broke into a smile. “Let’s go. He’s awake!”
They were at the hospital in less than fifteen minutes and rushed up the stairs, ignoring the elevator.
Out of breath with anticipation, they burst out of the stairwell and all but ran to the nurses’ station. Nurse De Luca was still there, but the cheerful greeting they expected was not. Seeing her expression, Gladys and Debbie stopped in their tracks. Nurse De Luca came out to meet them.
“There’s no good way to break this to you.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “They called me from Recovery. His heart had stopped. They tried to restart it, but without success.”
“How about his breathing?” Gladys asked, as if that made any difference.
“He’d been on the ventilator ever since the operation,” Nurse De Luca said, “and his arterial oxygen level had been good. That isn’t what caused the arrest.”
“Then what did?” Debbie had trouble controlling her voice.
“I don’t know. But Doctor Kravitz is on his way down. He can probably tell you.”
A minute later Doctor Kravitz stepped out of the elevator. Seeing the teary-eyed, confused women, he stretched out both arms and took first Debbie’s, then Gladys’s hands in his. “Come with me,” he said and led them into a vacant consultation room, closing the door behind them.
“Dear ladies, last night I was so upbeat with the result of the surgery. Now I’m devastated almost to the point of shame.”
His gentle, sincere tone comforted them as much as the truth of the situation allowed. They were willing to believe he had done all any surgeon could to save Con.
“First let me say how sorry I am at your loss,” Doctor Kravitz said.
“It was a loss for you too, wasn’t it?” Shocked as she was, Gladys could not help empathizing with the surgeon.
“You’re very kind, Mrs. Flynn,” he answered. “And I’ll be totally honest with you. We’re not sure why Con didn’t wake up. Anesthetic deaths as such are very rare, especially if a skilled anesthesiologist is in charge. And Doctor Cunningham is eminently qualified. He’s board-certified in anesthesiology as well as internal medicine and has more than fifteen years’ experience with not a single anesthetic mishap that I’m aware of. Most often when a patient fails to wake up it’s due to a surgical complication and whatever made surgery necessary in the first place. Occasionally there’s an underlying condition that screws up metabolism of the anesthetic agent. The admission note refers to alcohol, but I wouldn’t be too ready to blame that. We did get a peek at his liver in surgery and on the surface it looked normal, no sign of cirrhosis. So we just don’t know. We mustn’t forget what his body had been through. We just didn’t have time to evaluate him properly. It’s amazing that he even survived the first operation as well as he did.”
The two women were no longer listening. Doctor Kravitz had needed to get the confession off his chest; Gladys and Debbie needed to come to terms with the prospect of life without Con. And they needed to inform Mike.
“Do you think I should call him tonight,” Gladys asked, “or let him get a night’s sleep? There’s no need for him to come down tonight, really. What could he do here?”
“It’s up to you,” Debbie answered. “If you’re asking my opinion, I’d say call now. Let him decide when to come down.”
Doctor Kravitz nodded agreement. “He may want to speak with me. If he does, give him my home number, and I’ll make myself available.” He fumbled with his scrub suit and took his wallet out of his pocket, withdrew a card, and gave it to Gladys.
Gladys walked back to the nurses’ desk and asked whether she could call her husband in New York. The request was granted without hesitation.
Mike might be home or in the showroom. She decided to try home first and Mike picked up after the first ring. Obviously he’d been waiting for her call.
“How is he?” Mike asked before Gladys could even identify herself. She wished she had rehearsed her opening line, but words failed her. “It’s not good, is it?” Mike said, understanding the mute message, though not in its entirety.
“He still isn’t awake,” Gladys said. Her words were technically true, though far from the whole truth. “Please come down tonight. I need you here.” There was a tone of urgency and unsteadiness in her voice that disturbed Mike, and he felt a chill in his back. When was the last time she had said to him that she needed him?
For once he wished he had not tossed back a couple of beers the moment he got home, and he knew only too well that he could not risk a traffic stop. “Give me a couple of hours,” he said. “Something I need to take care of.” She did not question him. She knew what he needed those extra hours for. Shaking her head, she reasoned that arriving late and unhurt was preferable to following his son’s example.
Mike drank a cup of hastily brewed instant coffee and willed himself to recapture his sobriety. But metabolism trumped wishful thinking and, conceding defeat, he decided to take a brief nap. The time was eight o’clock.
Gladys waited “a couple of hours,” and a third hour besides, before starting to worry. Could Mike have been so upset that he would not wait to get behind the wheel, and then end up either in an accident or in a state trooper’s scrutiny? For want of a better idea, she called home. He should, of course, have left hours ago, but he answered on the fourth ring.