Losing Gabriel (34 page)

The fever hit with amazing speed. After the concert, Gabe took a nap, and when he awoke and his vitals were checked, he was spiking a temperature of over a hundred one. When Dawson arrived after work, Gabe had been sedated and intubated again. Dr. Nelson met with Dawson in the hall to say, “Bacterial pneumonia. We've got him on IV antibiotics.”

“How long?”

“It's a wait-and-see for right now.”

Dawson's heart contracted. The look on the doctor's face, solemn and somber, told him more than any words. Gabe was gravely ill.

He called his father, catching Franklin in his office and between teaching sessions, told him what was happening, heard a long silence. “Talk to me, Dad. Tell me what's going on. Gabe's getting the strongest antibiotics available, but they're not working.”

“Germs are more and more antibiotic resistant. Super-germs. Maybe you've heard of MRSA…a staph infection that can live almost anyplace, even in hospitals with excellent protocols. Medical science keeps looking for new drugs to fight them, but they're resilient, morphing into new strains in order to survive.”

“But we were always so careful with him.”

“Don't blame yourself, son. This infection was most likely caused by the original intubation. Ironic, but sometimes the case.”

Dawson felt nauseated. “So his previous treatment is what's caused his pneumonia? But…but there was no other way!”

“I'm so damn sorry.” The heaviness in Franklin's voice left Dawson unable to respond. His dad asked, “Do you want me to come? Because I'll drop everything and catch the next plane. If you want me to.”

Somehow having Franklin come right now was like giving up hope. Dawson couldn't do that. Gabe had to recover. He
had
to! “Not yet. What…what should I do?”

“Pray the antibiotics work. Tell Gabe Pops loves him. And, son, I love you too.”

They disconnected and Dawson stood like a statue listening to the hum of the floor, the opening of elevator doors, the ding of electronic devices, the quiet chatter of families coming to visit their children, the brush of nurses passing by him, the passing of ordinary lives. His was
Life Interrupted.
Dawson sent two text messages and returned to his son's bedside.

L
ani was brushing Oro's thick winter coat after a long ride when a message hit her phone. Assuming it was Melody asking when she'd be home for dinner, Lani ignored opening it until her horse was brushed, fed and watered, and tucked into his stall. She wasn't going to rush grooming her horse, especially when so much of her time lately had been absorbed by school, mandatory hospital work, and visiting Gabe every chance she got.

“He's looking good,” Ciana said, coming into the stable from the November cold. Her cinnamon-colored hair was pulled back in a ponytail and tucked through the back strap of a ball cap stamped
BELLMEADE RIDING & STABLES
.

“He's always going to have the marks on his nose. The scar.” Lani rubbed Oro's muzzle over the door of the stall where the fangs had penetrated.

“War wounds. He's a true veteran.”

Lani smiled at Ciana. “Medal of Honor?”

“Extra oats.”

“Thanks for all you did to take care of him.”

“No problem. Jon marched the field with the dog off and on for two days, but the snake had crawled away on his reptile belly.” She made a face. “The coward.”

“Smart snake. Didn't want to face the wrath of Mercer.”

Lani said good night and walked the lighted footpath from the back stables to her car, where it was parked on a newly poured bed of concrete beside the old barn. On the far side of the property, the huge new house, a stylized Victorian, glowed from up-lighting in dormant flowerbeds. Lani hustled inside her car, started the engine, and reached for her phone to tell Mel she was on her way. Except that when she pulled up the text, she saw it had come from Dawson. Her heart did a stutter step when she read it. She threw the car into reverse, spun the tires on the tree-lined gravel driveway, and wheeled onto the frontage road, speeding toward the hospital.

Sloan had read the text several times the night before, incredulous over the news. How could Gabe have become so sick so quickly? He'd been squirmy and talkative and giggly after the playroom concert and begging to go home. Now he was back in ICU. Sloan had arrived home very late, but she set her alarm early enough to run into Dawson upstairs.

He was brewing coffee when she came into the kitchen, and one look at him, red-eyed and unshaven, told her he hadn't slept much the night before. “Nothing new to report.” He rolled his shoulders, shook out his arms, looking as tight as a compressed spring.

“You spent the night?”

“I couldn't leave him. Just came home to shower and change into fresh clothes.”

“I want to see him.”

“He looks the same as before he woke up…tubes and IVs.”

Was this Dawson's way of warning her away? “I don't care.”

She sounded defensive, and Dawson knew he wasn't being fair. Sloan had every right to be with Gabe. “I wasn't telling you not to go, just telling you how it is.”

“Are you going straight back to the hospital?”

He shook his head. “I'm going in to work because I need to do something physical or go crazy. If something changes, the hospital will let me know and I can get there pretty quick.”

“So can I. Don't have to go in to work until four.”

“Lani says she'll be in and out of the unit all day too.”

When Sloan arrived at the pediatric ICU, Lani was already in the waiting area and didn't look as if she'd slept much either. They acknowledged each other, then ventured into the unit together to stand over Gabe, looking as if he was merely asleep, as if his eyes would blink open and peer up at them. Sloan stared at the ever-present monitor, the squiggle lines and large blue numbers. Déjà vu. “What do the numbers mean?”

Dully Lani followed Sloan's gaze. “Erratic heartbeat, lower than normal blood pressure.” She didn't elaborate, couldn't. She'd studied books, listened to lectures, taken written tests and scored high marks on tests, been a hands-on volunteer and an attentive student nurse, but none of it had prepared her for what was happening to Gabe. For what was happening to her watching Gabe struggle to survive.

The terse comment settled in Sloan's stomach like a heavy stone. She didn't ask another question.

Gabe did not improve, instead spiraling downward, and forty-eight hours later he was moved into a private room and all restrictions on visitations were removed. His family could come at will, stay as long as they wanted. Nurses routinely checked Gabe, but the atmosphere had changed, gone softer, less frenetic…the monitor and respirator kept vigilance, the people were merely attendants. Sloan stayed during the day, and Dawson kept watch by night, folding his tall frame into a sleeping chair, waiting for his son to pass the crisis. Lani stole in and out of the room several times a day like a ghost, never speaking, simply sweeping the room with sad eyes, knowing what no one would yet say—Gabe was dying. Outside the hospital walls, rain came and went, temperatures fell, the sun vanished, but inside Gabe's room, time was in suspended animation.

Sloan told her bosses she had a “family emergency” and didn't know when she'd return to work. One boss told her he couldn't hold her job, that she needed to come in for her shift or quit, and she told him where he could stick the job.

On the morning of the third day of no change and after more testing, Dr. Nelson took Dawson and Sloan aside. Looking directly into Dawson's dark eyes, hollowed out by fear and exhaustion, he said, “You asked me to tell you when you should call your father. I believe it's time.”

The words were like nails driven into Dawson's heart. “Not yet—”

“Gabe's put up a hell of a fight, but his kidneys are failing. His heart will too. Nothing left we can do.”

Dawson made the call.

Sloan longed to run away from all that was happening in Gabe's hospital room, as if the very walls, the machines, the personnel, the ticking clock were responsible for leaching his life out of him. She blamed them all. This was a hospital. There were doctors here. They were supposed to fix people, not give up on them! She wanted to walk out the door, save herself from the pain of what was coming. She compared the excruciating wait to an accident she'd once seen on the interstate. Traffic at a standstill, backed up for miles, the slow crawl forward, telling herself to not look, but when her turn came to drive past the wreckage, she had looked, saw the carnage, two cars, their carriages crunched and crumpled like a wad of paper. From one car, with its door ripped away, hung a deflated air bag and a body half in, half out, only partially covered with a bright yellow blanket. She'd recoiled, shaken and angry at herself for looking, knowing that the images were going to be stuck in her brain. For all time. And so would these images of Gabe, his life slipping away like a vapor.