Part 12 (1/2)

As if a ghost hadn't already made up his mind what he was going to do from the moment his shadow touched the door.

18.

”It wasn't his heart or another stroke. From what we can piece together, he must have slipped in the tub and banged his head,” Alex said, speaking in a near whisper.

The family was a.s.sembled in the waiting area at Jackson Memorial Hospital's emergency room, ushered by Alex, who was wearing her white lab coat with a bra.s.s nametag reading ALEXIS JACOBS, M.D., HEMATOLOGY. Jessica forced herself to stare at the grooves on the nametag, virtually shutting out the words flowing from her sister's lips. Jessica wanted to feel pain and shock at the suddenness of Uncle Billy's hospitalization, but her rational mind wouldn't allow it, as though it were afraid of shutting down.

What was it her grandmother had always said? Bad luck comes in threes. Princess, Peter, and now Uncle Billy. Was the run over now? Please, Jesus? Was this awful season of sadness finally behind them?

”The result is a brain hemorrage and swelling, complicated by the earlier bleeding and tissue damage from his stroke. He's in a coma, but I don't think he's going to last long,” Alex said. ”He can't breathe una.s.sisted.”

Bea sniffed, wiping her nose with a crumpled Kleenex she'd been turning over in her hand for the past two hours, since they'd all arrived at the hospital with Kira in tow. Bea nodded at every other word from Alex, her face set and impossible to read. Jessica hoped her mother wasn't blaming herself because Uncle Billy had his accident while she was away.

”It'll come down to the life support. His primary physician is Dr. Guerra, and he'll explain it in more detail,” Alex said, squeezing Bea's elbow. ”You may have to make a very hard decision, Mom. You know that, right?”

Bea nodded again, this time with a momentary gaze at the ceiling before closing her eyes. ”Doesn't seem right,” she muttered, ”deciding whether people will live or die.”

”Life support isn't life, Mom. It's machines.”

”I know.”

Feeling David's arm draw more closely around her waist, Jessica looked over her shoulder for Kira. She was sitting across the room, giggling with a blonde boy her own age while the boy's mother sat in a teary, red-faced daze. The other woman apparently had her own unexpected tragedy to sort through.

”Kira,” Jessica called sharply. Kira snapped to look at her, slightly startled. ”Come over here.”

”It's better if she doesn't hear this,” David said, close to Jessica's ear, forever Kira's diplomat.

”I just want her here. I want to hold her hand.”

When Kira came to her side, Jessica hugged her daughter close to her with one arm, stroking her cheek with her fingers. Jessica suddenly felt like crying, but she didn't think it was because of Uncle Billy. She hadn't had a chance to get close to him because she'd never met him before he moved to Miami. As bad as it sounded, none of them had expected him to live long, and Bea wanted him to die peacefully, with family.

Something else, deep inside Jessica, was tugging at her tears. Maybe it was the collection of misery in this room, where so much bad news had come for so many.

”I'm hungry, Mommy,” Kira said.

”We'll get something to eat in a little bit,” she promised.

Bea had called them as soon as she came home and found Uncle Billy sprawled across the bathtub's porcelain rim, with a bleeding gash at his temple. Water had been running over the sides of the tub, soaking the hallway. It was pure chance he hadn't drowned. That might have been better, more merciful, Jessica thought. A quick death had to be preferable to an artificially prolonged life.

In the hospital cafeteria, where they waited while Alex took Bea to the intensive-care unit, David read Jessica's thoughts. ”It would be better for Uncle Billy, and your mom too, if it was over,” he said. Kira was too mesmerized by dipping her steak-cut french fries in her mound of ketchup, covering all possible angles, to pay any attention to their more subdued adult preoccupations.

”I was thinking the same thing, but I feel sort of guilty.”

”I don't understand how he survived at all,” David mused. ”He should have died right away, from hitting his head. Or he should have drowned right after. It's inconceivable.”

”David,” Jessica scolded softly, indicating Kira with a nod of her head, ”please.”

He half smiled, embarra.s.sed. ”Sorry,” he said, playing with the wilting lettuce in his chef's salad.

Of all ironies, David had planned to visit Uncle Billy that afternoon. She'd heard David on the phone with him, and he'd been anxious to see some records Uncle Billy found. Uncle Billy called when the three of them were walking out of the house to pick up school supplies at the mall for Kira-they'd promised her a new bookbag, since her plastic strap was broken. After Uncle Billy's call, Jessica told David she'd take Kira herself. Go on and enjoy your music, she said.

If only he'd gone as he planned.

But David was still at home at his computer when they got back less than two hours later. As they walked through the door, the frantic phone call came from her mother.

”What made you change your mind about going to Uncle Billy's before?” Jessica asked David in the cafeteria. She felt penned in by the white lab coats and the incessant announcements, a sheen of sterility covering a building br.i.m.m.i.n.g with suffering. No wonder David hated hospitals. She wanted to leave this place, and soon.

David shrugged absently. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n copyeditors in France. They had questions on a piece I sent them three weeks ago. Wouldn't let me get off of the phone.”

”Daddy, you cussed,” Kira pointed out.

It was so weird how the mind could play tricks. When she first came home, Jessica was convinced that David had visited Uncle Billy because of the music. Finally, she thought she was redeemed for breaking David's record; as she and Kira walked down into the yard, she believed she heard vintage music floating through the open living room window, a Jazz Brigade song called ”Forever Man” she recognized from her early days with David. She'd been so sure of it, she imagined she could make out the energetic clarinet solo.

But by the time she opened the front door, the music was gone. And there was David, sitting at his desk, hard at work, amid utter and sudden silence.

19.

MR. PERFECT IS A TRIP. (P. DONOVITCH).

It wasn't until after noon that Jessica finished making her rounds in the newsroom, greeting colleagues she hadn't seen in weeks. Surprisingly, she'd missed them. She'd even missed the comfort of the sameness, the clutter, and the routine tasks being performed around her. She was glad to be back.

She purposely tried not to notice Peter's desk, which was cleared of papers and already robbed of its chair. She instead spent a half hour talking about good news with Emily, a young GA reporter who'd just found out she was pregnant after doctors had told her she would never conceive. That was the way G.o.d worked. One life gone, one miraculously created. Mysterious and wonderful.

So Jessica was in a good mood. She thought she was ready when she sat at her desk, turned on her computer, and pressed the keys to retrieve her e-mail messages. She braced herself for the possibility of finding old messages from Peter that she'd never erased; to avoid that, her fingers were poised to clear her screen as soon as she read the new ones. She found one message from Sy that morning, asking her to stop by his office when she had some free time; a system-wide announcement about the grief counseling, which had ended by now; and older messages from coworkers, mostly condolences and disbelief.

Then, she scrolled to the messages from her last day at work. There it was. The time displayed alongside the message was 10:22 P.M., so close to the coroner's estimated time of death. One of the last things Peter had done before he died was to send her a message.

MR. PERFECT IS A TRIP.

She didn't even know what it meant.

Before she realized it, a sob had risen in Jessica's throat. Matt, the black courts reporter who sat in front of her, glanced around. ”Sis? You okay back there?” he asked.

Jessica nodded, forcing her lips into a smile, but she stumbled to her feet and made her way to the ladies' room, where she sat on the toilet seat, fully clothed, and waited for the spell to pa.s.s. Her knees were trembling. G.o.dd.a.m.nit. G.o.dd.a.m.nit. Forgive me, Lord, but I'm using your name in vain today. Will this ever be over?

The message was so cryptic.

MR. PERFECT IS A TRIP.