Losing Gabriel (35 page)

She couldn't leave Gabe, despite the realization that no one needed her to stay. Dawson was an island unto himself. Lani appeared, never made eye contact and never lingered. So Sloan hung on, steeling herself for the oncoming wreckage. And when Dawson told her Franklin was in the lobby of the building and that he was going down to meet him, Sloan knew it was time for her to say goodbye. Beside Gabe's bed, she stroked his arm, touched his soft dark hair, and smoothed his forehead. Leaning closer, she placed her cheek to his, pressed her mouth to his ear. “Something I want you to know, Gabe, something I want to say…before you go.” Emotion clogged her throat. She fought to swallow and keep her composure. Dawson and Franklin would walk through the doorway any second. “A secret…just between us. I'm your mama, Gabe. Me. The lady who sings. And I love you with all my heart.”

She straightened, hoping that Lani was right about a patient's sense of hearing, because now Gabe knew the truth, and he could take it with him when he left them all behind.

When Lani heard Dr. Berke had arrived, she walked off her shift. Dr. Franklin Berke. Her mentor. A man who had believed in her, who had handpicked her to watch over his only grandchild. Her negligence had started the dominos falling, and she couldn't bear to face him. But she couldn't leave the hospital either. It was like watching a horror movie with a character opening a squeaky door and stepping into a dark room. She knew something scary and frightening waited in the room and wanted to yell,
“Stay away! Don't go inside!”
but like in the movie, the compulsion to sit and wait for the boogeyman to leap out was too strong. She felt immobilized, frozen in place.

Lani chose to remain in the staff locker room, sitting on a bench below her locker, longing for a miracle to save the child upstairs, knowing against long odds how unlikely a miracle would come. She waited, unmoving, through a shift change of personnel coming and going, laughing and sharing stories of their day. The room had no windows but she gauged the time to be after midnight simply by the foot traffic in and out of the room.

A voice from the internal PA system startled her with a Code Blue alert, summoning a crash cart and its team to the fourth floor. Her blood went cold, and she began to shake uncontrollably. She didn't have to be inside that room to know how the action was unfolding, because she'd watched it on a training video. Patient bagged…medication into an IV line…paddles placed on chest to jolt the heart…chest compressions between shocks from the paddles. The team would give the patient probably three rounds of shocks between compressions, a total of maybe twenty minutes, and if there was no response, the attending doctor would call time of death.

What was happening upstairs was no drill. Lani waited on the bench until she heard a few nurses come in, heard them talking about how sad it was to lose a child. Lani stood, turned, opened her locker, and swept its contents into a plastic sack. She removed her credentials from the lanyard around her neck, found a piece of paper, and scrawled a note. She rode an elevator up to the admin offices, now quiet and dimly lit, stopped in front of Mrs. Trammell's office, and stuck the note and credentials into the message box hanging on the wall beside the head nurse's door. She retreated briskly down the hall to the stairwell, pushed open the metal door, pounded downward to the echoes of escape, and ran coatless into the cold night and parking lot dusted by snow flurries, an inner voice chasing her like a banshee:
My fault, my fault…my fault.

G
abe was buried in the Windemere cemetery under a cold gray sky, the ground blanketed by brown grass and dotted with leafless barren trees. Dawson, hammered by grief, asked Franklin to handle the arrangements, for he'd been a kid when he attended his mother's funeral and the ritual of choosing a child-sized casket, flowers, the order of service wasn't anything Dawson could face. And yet, on that raw November day of the funeral, he realized that not much had changed through the years in this ritual of goodbye. As before, he stood with his father beside a casket and a hole in the ground covered by artificial grass and looked out on a sea of mourners he hardly knew, heard graveside words that he'd never remember.

This time, however, Sloan stood with him, clinging to his hand, sunglasses hiding red-rimmed eyes. He didn't know how to comfort her. How could he, when a chunk of his own heart would be buried with his dark-haired son? During the service, Dawson's gaze swept the mourners. He thought he saw Lani and her sister standing like stragglers on the far back fringes of the group, but when the service was over and he searched for them, they had vanished. He wondered if he'd really seen her at all.

For Sloan, if funerals meant closure, as she'd heard, this funeral failed to bring her such a thing. She didn't know how to let go of a child she'd come to love so late. She should never have returned to the hospital when she'd heard that Gabe had been struck with fever and put back on a ventilator. Yet she did return, and ultimately ended up standing in the room holding her breath, watching chest compressions, until a doctor said, “Calling time of death.” So she felt no closure, and clinging to Dawson's hand was all that held her together throughout the service.

Franklin stayed four days after the funeral. On his final night at the house, they sat in the den, a warm fire glowing in the hearth, the woodsy aroma of a pillar candle lingering on the air. Dawson was thinking how normal his dad looked in the old club chair and then how freakishly different things really were. Time never stood still. Except for the dead.

“How you doing, Dad? Your heart.” Dawson hadn't asked about Franklin's health for a long time, but after losing Gabe, he couldn't stand it if something happened to his father.

“Heart's good. No worries.” After a few beats, Franklin said, “Please come to Chicago for Christmas like we planned.”

“Christmas is for kids.”

“You're my kid…always.”

The words unraveled Dawson, and it took all his willpower not to break down.

Franklin cleared his throat. “And it's time you met Connie. She wanted to come with me, but I told her not for a funeral. No place to meet my son for the first time.”

Dawson pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, considering his dad's request. “Sloan's still living here. I don't think it's right to ask her to leave just now.” He didn't know what to do about Sloan. She had returned to her job at the sports bar lounge the day after the funeral, which he understood completely—keeping head and hands busy helped a person make it through the dark places of the soul. “And I need to work too.”

Franklin nodded. “I get that. I worked day and night after Kathy died, but sooner or later, the frenzy stops. When you can think about the future, come to Chicago.” He glanced at Dawson, cleared his throat again. “I thought I saw Lani, but she scooted away before I could speak to her.”

Dawson heard harshness in his dad's voice. “She took Gabe's death hard too. Maybe she wasn't up to talking to us.”

“She should take it hard. I trained her to know better than to take an asthmatic child into a barn, for God's sake.”

“Dad, she—”

“Don't defend her to me. I'm glad I didn't have to face her at the funeral…wouldn't have been able to control my temper. Sorry I ever got you involved with her.”

Dawson didn't know how to fend off Franklin's anger, was afraid to say how much Lani had meant to himself and Gabe. He missed her.

Once Franklin flew home, Dawson was adrift, unbearably sad. He slept in spurts, often waking with a start, listening for Gabe on the monitor still in place on Dawson's bedside table. And then he'd remember. He had yet to enter Gabe's room, unable to face the sight of his son's things or the scent of his little boy lost. He awoke one night to the sound of Sloan's guitar coming through the duct work from the basement, just mournful strumming. He listened until the notes stopped, but minutes later, he heard a rustling, sensed a presence by his bed. He turned, saw Sloan outlined by the night-light from the hallway. She was bundled in a thick robe, her arms hugging her body, and she was crying.

Without a word, Dawson lifted the corner of the down comforter, and she crawled in next to him, curling against him. He slid his arms around her, cocooning her, feeling the soft velour of her robe on his bare skin, cradling her while she wept quietly into the pillow. “I loved him, Dawson…swear to God. I didn't want to, didn't mean to, but I couldn't help it.” Her voice floated on tears.

When they'd met, she had been a broken rebellious girl, him an angry frustrated boy. Now here they were mourning for a love neither had expected to share—for their child. He stroked her hair, whispered, “Gabe was the best parts of both of us. Remember that, Sloan.” He held her until her sobs lessened, until he heard the quiet occasional catch of her breath that said she slept. In his arms, beneath the downy warmth of the comforter, they held off the dark together.

Lani attended Gabe's funeral with her sister to prop her up. She wanted to say goodbye to the child she loved, tell Dr. Berke how sorry she was. Standing at the far back of the mourners, many she knew well from her time at the hospital, feeling the cold wind hit her, and seeing the tableau of Dawson, his father, and Sloan beside Gabe's small blue casket, she changed her mind. She simply couldn't talk to any of them, not when she felt responsible for all that had happened. With her heart breaking, she quickly left with Melody, went home, crawled into bed, and retreated from life.

Three days later, Melody insisted Lani come to the kitchen to talk. Wrapped in an old quilt, Lani dragged herself to the table, where a bowl of soup waited and the old blue teakettle bubbled on the stove. Melody motioned to a chair and Lani dropped into the seat like a rock. The whistling kettle began to scream, and Lani clamped her hands over her ears. “Make it stop, Mel.” Her plea went much deeper than silencing the kettle.

Melody lifted the wooden handle and poured boiling water into two mugs with tea bags. She walked them both over, set one in front of Lani, the other on the table at her place. “Lani, I'm worried about you. You've quit the nursing program, dropped out of school, won't take calls from people who are concerned about you….Come on, you can't go on like this.”

Lani hunched over, tucked her hands between her knees. “I don't want to be a nurse. That's why I quit. I see now that becoming an RN isn't for me.” Gabe's passing made her realize there was no way she could ever separate her head from her heart, nor ever again endure losing a child she cared for and loved. All the light had gone out of her life. And at the funeral, the look of loss and grief on Dawson's face had broken her spirit.

Pity flooded Melody's eyes. “It's all you've ever wanted. Quitting won't change what happened, and it won't bring Gabe back.”

Lani winced as the words struck her.

Melody grimaced. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to be so blunt, but I'm worried sick about you. So are Mom and Dad. We can't change what happened, Lani, and if you're still blaming yourself, please stop.”

Lani dunked the bag listlessly, remembered Randy's voice through her phone from so far away. “Oh, sweet baby girl, wish we were there to hug you.” She'd cried harder. “I guess buying you a horse won't fix it this time, will it?”
No, Daddy, not this time.

Mel said, “Here's a travel update, Lani. We're not waiting until Christmas…we're flying to Alaska tomorrow. Tickets are bought. Mom and Dad will meet us in Anchorage. I'm taking vacation time through Christmas, but you'll stay on for a while.” Melody used her attorney voice, no room to quibble.

Lani looked up sharply, started to speak, when it hit her that without her job at Dawson's, without Gabe, without school, without the hospital, what else did she have to do? “Oro—”

“Is taken care of. I've spoken with Ciana, and she says she and Jon will look after your horse.”

Lani wrung out her tea bag and plopped it on a napkin, too wounded to argue. Maybe it would be a good thing. Alaska was dark and snowy and wicked cold. Just like she felt inside.