Lost Boy (13 page)

Doyle huffed. “Nothing. It'll be fine, I'm . . . it's a setback, that's all.”

“You're having trouble with raising the money?” Ryder tilted his head, his stomach twisting.

“I'm just still working on it is all.” Doyle kept his eyes on the street.

“Working on it?” Derek rolled his eyes.

“That's right, I am, Derek. Enough.” Doyle glared at his partner.

“I just happen to like having a job, Doyle,” Derek muttered.

“Stop being Negative Nancy,” Doyle said. “One thing at a time. We gotta get my guy home.”

Derek shook his head. “We were coming to
visit
him? Remember?”

Derek looked at Ryder and smiled sadly. He turned away,
sighed, and shook his head, and then they drove in silence.

As they crossed over the Harlem River, Ryder asked, “Doyle, can you take me to see my mom?”

Ryder saw Derek give Doyle a sharp look, but Doyle laughed another time. “Sure, I can. Let's go there right now.”

Derek huffed. “Would you mind dropping me off at the firehouse?”

“Can I use your truck?”

“Of course you can, but don't double-park it.”

When they reached the firehouse Derek mussed Ryder's hair before hopping down and wishing them luck. Doyle circled around and got in behind the wheel.

“He's nice.” Ryder watched Derek wave in the side mirror.

“The best.” Doyle looked around and did a U-turn.

“He's not too happy about all this, though,” Ryder said.

“Derek's just cautious. That's why he and I are a good team.”

“I hope you won't get into trouble.” Ryder meant that.

“Trouble's my middle name.” Doyle sped up to make a light. “So, you gonna tell me what the heck you were doing at Yankee Stadium with a bunch of thugs?”

Ryder's stomach clenched. He'd almost forgotten about how he and Mr. Starr had kept all that from Doyle.

He hung his head. “Mr. Starr found my dad.”

“Oh, right.” Doyle laughed, but not in a funny way. “Kid, don't even dream about your dad being a Yankee. That Starr is pulling your leg. He's a mean cuss if he told you that. It's a pipe dream and he shouldn't have led you on. There's no Jimmy Trent on the Yankees.”

“He's not a Yankee.” Ryder shook his head.

“Oh.” Doyle looked over. “Good. What, then? Ticket-taker?”

“He's a Brave. An Atlanta Brave. They played the Yankees in an interleague game.”

“Ryder, the Braves' pitcher is
Thomas Trent
, not Jimmy Trent. I'm sure that cranky old fart just googled the name ‘Trent' and ‘MLB' and came up with him. And then he sent you to that
stadium
?” Doyle ground his teeth. “I don't care if he is in a wheelchair. I'm gonna give that Starr a shake-up.”

Ryder shook his head and pulled the baseball from his coat pocket. “No, he
is
my dad, Doyle. He met my mom in Auburn, where she was from. He played for the Doubledays, it's a minor league team. That's where he signed this ball for her. Everyone called him Jimmy, but his name is Thomas James Trent. I
saw
him at the stadium. I looked right at him across the parking lot . . . and he smiled.”

Doyle bit his lip. “Well . . . it's possible, but you can't be
certain
.”

Ryder frowned and turned away.

“Hey, don't shut me out like that. I'm not the enemy. I just don't want you to be crushed if this doesn't work out. We're making a lot of assumptions here.”

Doyle parked the truck in a garage and they crossed the street to the hospital.

Every step closer they got to his mom's room seemed to add a weight to Ryder's heart. When Doyle asked at the desk if they could go into her room, the nurse gave him a serious look and said she'd have to see.

When she disappeared, Doyle nodded his head toward
the hallway, silently motioning for Ryder to follow. “You wait around for these medical people and they give you a bunch of rules. Come on. You can see your mom.”

The room had a big glass window looking out into the hall, but the glare from the lights didn't allow them to see her well, only the shape of a person in a raised bed. When Doyle put his hand on the door and swung it open, Ryder's knees nearly buckled.

He had no idea what they'd find.

The sight of the tubes that snaked up into his mother's nose brought tears to Ryder's eyes. He just knew that couldn't be good. The machines beside her bed played their beeping and whirring tunes, blinking red and green in time to the noise. The crease in the sheet folded down below her shoulders rested perfectly, suggesting no movement at all. Her tan skin had a hint of green.

He choked. “Mom?”

She didn't move.

He crept close as Doyle circled the bed, frowning. He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. The tubes hissed like deadly snakes.

“Mom?” He looked at Doyle, his face rumpling.

Doyle pointed at a small black screen lit by green squiggles of light that followed the path of a bright dot, skittering like
a water bug up and down and across the screen. “That's her heartbeat.”

“Is it good?” Ryder's voice shook.

“It's there.” Doyle's mouth was a flat line.

Ryder brushed some hair from her forehead. “Mom?”

Her eyes fluttered, then opened. She looked at him, her eyes dialing into focus. Then she smiled, and her lips moved. “Ryder.”

Sunshine poured into Ryder's heart. “Mom, we're going to get you better. You need an operation, but Doyle's helping me and Mr. Starr. Doyle's raising money. The fire department's helping and . . . and . . . I think I found him, Mom.”

“Found who, honey?” He could barely hear her groggy whisper, and didn't know if the wince of pain was from speaking or the subject he was speaking of.

Ryder glanced at Doyle, who also winced.

Ryder held his breath, then exhaled the name. “Jimmy Trent.”

His mom closed her eyes, and her face went slack. Ryder's attention jumped to the machines. Everything stayed the same, a steady beep and the steady wave of green lines going up and down.

“Mom?” He put his hand on her forehead.

The door opened behind them. A nurse came in and went right to the machines.

“Is she all right?” Doyle rounded the bed and put a hand on Ryder's neck.

“Well, she's on a lot of morphine, so she fades in and out,” the nurse said, glancing over her shoulder. “You'll have to talk
to the doctor about everything else.”

The doctor had already entered without a sound. “Ah, are you the family?”

“We are.” Doyle nodded. “I mean, he is. Her son. I'm a close friend.”

The doctor frowned and glanced at Ryder. “So, we need to talk.”

They followed the doctor down the hallway, past other ICU patients tilted up in front of their own windows. They entered a lounge where a small family huddled around a table in the corner. An older lady sniffled and choked back tears as the others patted her back and offered soft words.

“Coffee?” The doctor raised his eyebrows at Doyle and slipped a dollar bill into a vending machine that rattled out a cup then spurted a stream of coffee.

Doyle held up a hand to say no. The doctor got his coffee and sat down across from them at a small table. He sighed before he looked at them. “I presume you've got other family on their way?”

Doyle shook his head. “Ryder here is pretty much it. He's staying with a neighbor.”

The doctor had a young face, but his eyebrows were thick,
and dark like the shadow on his jaw, and he knit them together. “I'll have our admin make a call to social serv—”

Doyle cut him off with a hand. “I got that covered. I'm with the FDNY. We brought her in and I know the drill. He's okay for now. We're hoping that you guys can get her well and out of here soon. Meantime, the neighbor is fine.”

“Well, that's the problem.” The doctor rubbed the scruff of his unshaven face so that it rasped loudly. His eyes skipped over Ryder to Doyle. “I don't know how much the ER doctor told you.”

“That she needs a valve replacement. Actually, two valves.” Doyle spoke in a low voice. “And insurance won't cover it? Is that true? I mean, she looks tired, but good.”

“Yes.” The doctor nodded. “She does look good for someone who got hit by a truck, on the outside. The problem is on the inside. When she got hit, it severely bruised her heart and damaged the valves. She won't get better.”

“What?” Ryder whispered. The horror of it made Ryder's ears ring. He gripped the edges of his chair to stay upright.

“I just don't understand this insurance thing.” Doyle softly pounded his fist on the table.

The doctor shook his head. “Well, here's the problem. Ruby was actually in here about ten years ago.”

“She was?” Ryder had no idea.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, she's in our system. Had her tonsils out, actually, and while she was here she filled out a DNR.”

“DNR?” Ryder looked at Doyle, whose face had suddenly fallen.

“Do not resuscitate.” Doyle spoke softly.

“Right now, for Ruby to have a valve replacement would technically be elective surgery. She won't
need
the valves until her heart fails. . . .”

“But,” Doyle said, staring intently at the doctor, “when her heart fails, she's got a DNR that won't let you bring her back. But she can change that, right?”

“If she were coherent, yes,” the doctor said. “It's all about timing. If we take her off the morphine, the pain alone would stress her heart tremendously. She might not come out of it. She's like a . . .”

“A time bomb.” Doyle immediately looked sorry he'd said the words.

The doctor nodded. “I know it's disturbing, but that's right. I'm sorry.”

“So, some people get to
buy
their life if they've got two hundred thousand dollars lying around, but the rest of us die?” Doyle growled.

The doctor shook his head. “No. That's not true, but in this instance, with these facts and the DNR, there's no one who will pay for the transplant until her heart actually stops.

“Honestly? Having two valve replacements isn't a walk in the park. So, even if she hadn't signed the DNR, she'd still be in a bad spot.”

“But with the DNR, she's . . . it's . . . ,” Doyle said. “But, if we had the money . . .”

“Hey, there was a woman last year who made it like this for six months.” The doctor was trying too hard. “And miracles happen every day, so . . .”

“But, what's real?” Doyle asked. “How long can she go
without the new valves? A month?”

The doctor sucked in his lower lip and shook his head as he lowered his voice. “No, not with the way this is going. Honestly, I'd say two weeks. Maybe three.”

They left in a daze.

Ryder rested his head against the truck window, listening to Doyle argue frantically on the phone about using the FDNY name to raise money. He was talking with his union rep, urging him to fight the department on his behalf. It sounded like he was getting nowhere.