The Waiting Read online

  “What’s wrong?” he shouted.

  Alice sat on the bed holding Cassandra’s hand. “I don’t know.” The infusion pump whined and screeched. “She was awake and coherent, and then the alarms came on. I didn’t know what to do. I called Louisa, too.”

  Brian looked at the machine, saw that it had stopped. Something must be wrong with the line. He clicked the latch and removed the cover, unwound the tubing. There were air bubbles everywhere.

  “Hold this,” he said, handing a section of the IV tube to Alice.

  He pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the box by the bed and put them on. Then he lifted Cassandra’s shirt until he could see where it connected to the port by her chest. He placed his fingers on the metal ring just below the surface of her skin and pulled the needle free from the short tube with his other hand.

  Then he filled a small syringe with heparin, swabbed everything down with alcohol and flushed out the port. People connected to hyperal were at high risk of infection and he could leave nothing to chance.

  When he was done, his legs gave out and he collapsed into the chair he kept by the bed.

  Cassandra had been unconscious during the whole ordeal.

  “If it wasn’t for the warning systems in that machine, she’d be gone,” he said, his voice an octave above a whisper. He brought Cass’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. Alice stood at the foot of the bed, silent, stunned.

  Louisa came five minutes later and double checked the machine, IV line and bag. When she was sure everything was fine, she reconnected it and cleaned the drains from Cassandra’s stomach.

  “She’ll be okay,” Louisa said. “Sometimes this happens. You did the right thing, Brian.” She placed a reassuring hand on his upper arm. Her jet black hair was pulled in a ponytail and her almond eyes glimmered with pride.

  Brian smiled, but inside, he wanted to scream.

  Chapter Eleven

  There hadn’t been a repeat of Cassandra’s lucid moment in over a week. In fact, she had gotten worse. She was running a temperature, and a second IV bag, this one loaded with antibiotics, had to be hooked up each day to hold off whatever infection was raging in her body.

  Louisa had told Brian that the ports inevitably had to be removed because of infection every six months or more. It might be time to take this one out and move it to the other side of her chest. The scars would be far from minimal, but he knew Cass would look at them as a good thing when she pulled out of this.

  If she pulled out.

  Brian was supposed to take a physical for work but he’d been putting it off because he knew his blood pressure would be off the charts. He felt like an overfilled water balloon most of the time. The strain was reaching new heights, but he had to keep his shit together.

  Cassandra came first, and he had to be there for her. But there was so much other crap to do. He hadn’t even looked for the carpets yet and he was in hot water with the principal for leaving the school without telling anyone. And then there were the bills, insurance forms, calls from doctors.

  Tony had suggested he join one of those boxing gyms to help relieve the tension. Somehow, he knew punching a speed bag wouldn’t quite cut it. This stress had to be cut down from within, and he wasn’t sure how to do that until his wife got better.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table when Alice jarred him from his private misery party.

  “I’m going to the book store. I need to restock. You need anything while I’m out?” She buttoned her fall coat and pulled her hair out from under the collar with her fingers.

  “If they have one of those miracle cures, you can pick one up for me.” He tried to sound casual, but the crinkling of her eyes told him he failed. They locked in a brief stare-down. He wasn’t about to have his bluff called. Building walls had become his latest expertise. At this rate, he’d be a master in a month.

  Alice broke first. “Trust me, if that existed, I would have bought it long ago. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  He made a meatloaf and mashed potatoes so he’d have leftovers for the next few days. Money was getting tighter than a violin string and he couldn’t afford to buy lunch every day. The act of cooking, then cleaning, helped to take his mind off things. It was all very zen, losing yourself in the mundane motions of everyday tasks.

  While scrubbing the meatloaf pan with a wire brush, he decided he’d move the TV into the bedroom tonight and put on Cass’s favorite movie, Blithe Spirit. She loved old movies. Maybe that would help the healing process.

  As he was putting the last of the pans in the cupboard, he heard a sharp crack in the hallway.

  It sounded as if something heavy had leaned on the old wood flooring.

  He thought, That’s not the house settling. That was way too loud.

  Brian froze, still bent at the waist, his hand in the cupboard, afraid to drop the pot in its place and mask any follow-up sounds.

  Crick.

  That was much softer, like the ticking of the roof when the chill of night set into the old house.

  Tiny beads of sweat broke out along his hairline.

  What the hell am I afraid of?

  “This is ridiculous,” he said, dropping the pot on the shelf with a loud clang. He pulled the dishtowel off his shoulder and tossed it over the back of a chair.

  Anything to delay the joy of untangling the wires behind the TV, he kidded himself.

  Two steps out of the kitchen, he looked down the hallway and stopped.

  Who is that?

  A small boy stood in the center of the hall.

  He looked to be about eight or nine, with crew-cut brown hair and small, green eyes. The boy wore a heavy, blue sweater and tan corduroy pants. He stared at Brian, and Brian back at him.

  Neither spoke.

  Neither moved.

  The boy’s face was expressionless. It was as if he were wearing a mask, and a damn good one at that.

  Brian looked back at the front door to see if it was open. Maybe the kid had wandered in. He didn’t want to scare him.

  “Hey,” Brian said. “I didn’t hear you come in. You startled me. Do you live around here?”

  The boy stared back, silent. Brian realized the kid hadn’t even blinked. Was he in some kind of shock?

  “My name’s Brian. What’s yours?”

  The shadows in the hallway grew darker, the light from the kitchen and the bedroom dimming ever-so-slightly.

  Still the boy didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  Brian took a small step toward him and the floorboard popped.

  The boy spun around and ran into the bedroom.

  “Wait, don’t go in there!” Brian shouted. He pictured the scared boy slamming into the life support and pulling everything out of Cassandra in the process.

  As he followed the boy, a frightening thought flittered across his brain.

  How is that kid running and not making a sound?

  Every step in the house brought groans of protest from the aging wood. Yet somehow, this strange boy could dart across the floor as if he were two inches off the ground.

  Brian made it to the bedroom and gasped.

  The boy wasn’t there. Cassandra lay propped up in bed, her cheeks rosy with fever.

  He checked under the bed, then the closet.

  There was no sign of the boy, and no exit other than the window, which was closed with the latch still in place.

  Brian’s head spun.

  What the fuck just happened? Where did that kid go?

  He looked in every corner of the house and came up empty. He returned to the hallway, standing in the exact spot where the boy had been.

  Brian bent over, clasping his knees and breathing heavy.

  “I’m losing my mind.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Louisa was happy to accept the offer of coffee after checking on Cassandra. She had tried to get Alice to work the tubing into the pump, but her fingers were too unsteady, too uncertain. Some people could never get comfortable with the proce
ss. Louisa didn’t blame them. You held the life of someone you loved dearly in your hands, and one wrong move could be fatal. She marveled at people like Brian who mastered it in no time.

  “How do you like your coffee?” Alice called from the kitchen.

  “Milk, two sugars,” she replied.

  She packed her things into her messenger bag after putting the spent needles into the red hazardous materials bin. The only thing missing was her pen, a gold Cross pen her father had bought her when she graduated nursing school. She looked at the night table, then within Cassandra’s rumpled sheets.

  The long, cream window curtain caught her eye. It billowed out as if there had been a sudden gust of wind. She could see through the diaphanous material that the window was closed.

  A chill raced through her. She shook it off, looked down and found her pen sitting on the floor between her feet.

  Odd. That had been the first place she’d looked.

  Louisa looked around the room, searching for what, she couldn’t say.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. She glanced down at Cassandra but her beautiful patient’s eyes were closed in quiet repose.

  Collecting her things, Louisa pulled the blanket up to Cassandra’s neck and walked to the kitchen.

  Alice had laid out a platter of cookies, crackers and scones. A package of sweet Irish butter was nestled in the center of the plate.

  “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I threw a little bit of everything on there,” Alice said.

  “I see,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll leave here hungry.”

  She had coffee and talked with Alice for half an hour, assuring her that it wasn’t a failure that she wasn’t comfortable with the life support machine yet.

  All the while, a tremor of concern built deep in her gut. She couldn’t keep herself from stealing glances down the hallway, into Cassandra’s room.

  Brian’s stomach woke him up in the middle of the night. He’d barely eaten dinner, hadn’t been eating much at all lately, but he was tied up in knots like he had spent the night downing White Castle belly bombers. Clutching his stomach, he pulled himself up from the air mattress by gripping the end of Cassandra’s bed. He gave the infusion pump a quick check before walking with halting steps into the bathroom.

  The house was still, in direct contrast to Brian’s mind. The incident with the boy, now several days in the rearview mirror, had him questioning his sanity. Better to let it go, chalk it up to stress, he’d been telling himself.

  There was a sharp click, followed by amber light that crept within the gap between the bottom of the door and the frame.

  Brian was just finishing up. Guess I made more noise than I thought.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. Alice had been doing so much, caring for both him and Cass, that she had to be just as stressed as he was. She needed her sleep, not him bumbling around.

  There was no reply.

  Alice had her own bathroom upstairs, so she was most likely in the kitchen grabbing a drink or a small bite to eat. The thought of eating made Brian nauseous. But he could use a glass of water.

  He opened the door and flinched.

  The boy was back in the hallway, staring at the bedroom.

  An icy, numbing sensation spread from Brian’s core to his extremities.

  No. He can’t be there!

  Brian blinked hard and gripped the doorknob. If he reached out, he could touch the boy’s shoulder. That’s all he needed to do to confirm that he wasn’t losing his mind; that the boy was physically in the house.

  All it required was a simple moment of brief contact.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. A terror as rich and real as his boyhood fear of prowlers breaking into the house at night kept him rooted to the spot. He wanted to speak, to say anything to get the boy’s attention. His vocal chords were frozen, locked into shocked silence.

  The boy never once looked his way, never wavered from his concentration on the bedroom seven feet away. Brian could hear the soft whirr of the life support machine, could even hear Cassandra’s light exhalations.

  Do something!

  It was the boy who moved first. Without a sound, he proceeded down the hall and into the bedroom. Brian watched him stop at Cassandra’s bedside. He tilted his head to be closer to her face.

  The boy’s lips moved but even in the silence, Brian couldn’t hear a single vowel, much less a word.

  What is he saying to her?

  The boy straightened, his eyes never leaving Cassandra.

  A soft, small voice began to sing, but the boy’s lips never moved.

  Oh hush thee my baby,

  Thy sire was a knight.

  Thy mother a lady,

  Both lovely and bright.

  The woods and the glens from

  The towers which we see,

  They are all belonging,

  Dear baby to thee.

  The melodious, disembodied voice made Brian’s heart palpitate. If flowed from somewhere in his bedroom. The boy swayed like tall grass in a soft breeze as the lullaby was sung.

  The voice grew softer and softer until it hushed out of existence.

  His paralysis broke. Brian’s feet touched the cold wood of the hallway floor and he walked toward the bedroom, weaving like a sailor on leave. His vision spun, then pulled into long, wavy lines like taffy. He watched the boy whisper to his wife.

  One step from the bedroom, the boy’s head snapped to face him. It only lasted a moment, and Brian saw nothing in his eyes but an emptiness as vast and unknowable as the depths of Europa’s mysterious seas.

  Brian cringed when the boy straightened and ran past him. Brian pulled back, colliding with the wall, his fear of coming in contact with this…this…phantom overriding any natural impulses to grab this pint-sized interloper by the collar and demand to know why he was in his house.

  When he turned to see where the boy was running to, he was gone.

  Brian felt his legs give way, and he slowly inched downward until he was sitting on the bedroom threshold.

  What’s happening to me? He bit the soft flesh of his palm to keep from screaming.

  Who the hell is that boy? Why do I keep seeing him?

  He stayed there the rest of the night, in the space between the hall and the bedroom, watching, waiting, worrying.

  Real or imagined, he vowed to keep the two incidents to himself. No one could know.

  No one.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alice waited in her room until she heard Brian close the door and his car pull out of the driveway. His mood had taken an even darker, more secretive tone over the past few days. Her attempts at bringing him into a conversation were met with grunts or monosyllabic replies. Since moving the TV into the bedroom, he was rarely in any other part of the house, other than the kitchen to eat and the bathroom.

  That he was playing all of Cassie’s favorite films each night helped relieve some of her worry. He doesn’t need to talk to me, or even be polite. He has to be with Cassie and help get her through this.

  Despite their efforts and the attention of Louisa and the doctors, Cassandra was getting worse. Her waking moments were happening less and less. Alice’s dreams were plagued by thoughts of the morning when they had connected as Cassie’s way of saying goodbye.

  Alice worried constantly about her daughter, but it wasn’t until recently that she considered there might come a day when she would lose her. When she had first arrived at the house, she could feel the hope that crackled in the air. Like all energy, it had come and gone, morphing into something new, in someplace new.

  Now the house felt cold and expectant. Her negative thoughts weren’t helping the situation. All of Cassie’s pain and their worry were building a cocoon of despair. Somehow, they had to find a way to break free of it.

  Well, today she would try her best to dispel the negativity.

  Cassie was going to come out of it. Things always get
worse before they get better.

  She knew Brian never left the house without making sure all of Cassie’s machines were pumping and draining away. That meant there was time for a shower before heading downstairs. Better to start clean and new.

  When she was done, she wrapped a towel around her hair, put on a nice shirt and jeans and walked down the noisy stairs.

  “Good boy,” she said when she saw the half-full coffee pot on the warmer. He made it a little weak for her taste, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  Alice had bought a handful of gossip magazines at the bookstore. She wanted to make today a silly girl day, even if Cassandra couldn’t laugh or groan along with her. Then maybe she’d take a cue from Brian and pop in a movie and watch it with her.

  As she walked out of the kitchen, she said, “Cassie, honey, you’re never going to believe who Brad Pitt is fooling around with.”

  The mug slipped from her hand, bathing the floor and her feet with piping hot coffee. If there was pain, her mind was too stunned to register it.

  A small boy sat at the end of Cassandra’s bed. One knee was bent and most of that leg was on the comforter. The other was locked straight, his foot flat on the floor. He looked at Cassie with beautiful, shining eyes and a round face with skin as flawless and smooth as fresh cream.

  He didn’t look away, despite the crashing of the coffee mug and her sharp gasp of surprise.

  The sun filtered through the window. It bathed him in a diffusion of soft, yellow light.

  Alice’s heart raced and her hands began to tremble. She found it hard to keep her grip on the tabloids.

  The boy moved with surprising grace, shifting off the bed and seeming to glide to the head of Cassandra’s bed. He bent forward, and Alice lost sight of him for a moment. When he straightened, he smiled, then reached out to the control panel of the infusion pump.

  Part of her wanted to yell at him not to touch it. If she thought a real, living boy was in the room with her daughter, she would have.