Page 83 of Tear Me Apart
Into how Dr. Castillo got Mindy in the first place. Remember, a woman was murdered. We’ll have to find out what happened. But don’t worry. None of that will affect Mindy. Did you tell Dr. Oliver what I was doing?
“Mom?”
Gotta go, Mindy’s calling. Fly safe.
She stashes her phone in her right back pocket and hurries down the hall to Mindy’s room.
“You okay, sweetie? What’s wrong?”
Mindy is holding an arm across her stomach. So small, suddenly, so wasted. She looks about eight, her eyes huge in her face, her bald head shiny under the light. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Your tummy hurts? What do you want—ginger ale?”
“Yeah.”
“Hang on, honey. I’ll go get some.”
Lauren’s heart hurts. Her Mindy is morphing into another child, another soul. Competitive Mindy hated to ask for anything. She hit her self-reliance stage early, and never grew out of it. Until now. Lauren worries for a moment that she is giving up, that she’s resigned herself, then decides no, the treatment protocol so close to a transplant is especially awful and the antiemetic needs to be adjusted. No going to the dark side, she promises herself. Not when hope incarnate is on a plane west.
She grabs a can from the refrigerator, pours it over a cup of ice, tosses the empty can into the recycling bin. Finds a bendy straw, sees a Sharpie on the counter. She carefully draws on the full cup, a goofy-eyed smiley face, eyes crossed, tongue out, a perfect rendering of an emoji she’s seen Mindy use to indicate she feels silly. Anything, anything, to keep her cheered up, engaged. The drop-off from yesterday’s flush of excitement is frightening. She doesn’t know how to manage it, outside of continuing the daily grind of smiles and assurances.
Will these assurances still be enough if Zack Armstrong isn’t a match? Or will Mindy simply wither away, let herself go, stop fighting? The patient is in control of their recovery, Dr. Oliver has said repeatedly, but at what point does the pressure to control your destiny become too much, and the patient decides to give up?
Lauren witnessed the moment her mother gave up. She died quietly twelve hours later. No fanfare. No drama. Just a small life ending.
Please, God. Please. I’ll do anything if you give her strength. Give her hope. Help me fix my girl.
Back in the room, Mindy sits with her trashcan in her lap.
“Did you get sick?”
“Not yet. It was close, though.” A wan smile, and Lauren hands over the silly-faced cup. Mindy takes a few sips, closes her eyes, then throws it all up neatly into the can.
44
VAIL HEALTH HOSPITAL
“Gastroenteritis,” the nurse proclaims, taking Mindy’s blood pressure and temperature. “There’s a stomach flu making the rounds on the floor. We’re going to give her fluids and some stronger antiemetics, see if we can get her through it quickly. It’s been a twenty-four-hour bug.”
They admit her, start an IV, hang a bag of saline, and get her settled in a room. Apparently, four kids on the floor are showing symptoms too, all of whom were attended by the same overnight nurse who called in sick for her shift this evening.
Everyone assures them it will run its course, but it is a concern. A virus in the hospital is dangerous enough. One on an oncology floor can be devastating. Lauren warns Jasper not to come, and tends to Mindy herself, praying for the best, that she’ll get Mindy through it okay and won’t be felled herself as well.
Hours later, Lauren has just gotten Mindy into an exhausted sleep when a shadow darkens the door.
Juliet, and by her side, a tall, solidly built dark-haired man. Lauren recognizes him from the news reports. He is a little older now, lines around his eyes, some silver threading in at the temples, but not much changed otherwise over the past seventeen years. He looks very tired, very overwhelmed.
Lauren gets to her feet, surprised by how exhausted she feels—oh, no, is she coming down with it?—and gestures for them to go silently into the hall.
Juliet steps out, but Armstrong doesn’t move. He stands in the doorway, staring at the child inside the room, who sleeps fitfully, tethered to an IV. The beeps and moans and chirps and calls surround him, and Lauren watches the tears well in his eyes. She swallows hard, knowing the next few days are going to be the most trying of all their lives, and calmly waits for him to pull himself together.
This is what it’s like to lose a child, she thinks, and her heart surges toward him. As if she can fix this. As if she can give him back the last seventeen years.
He finally sniffs and moves slightly, and that’s when she sees the dog. A dog, in the hospital? What right does he have...and then she notices the harness. A service dog. This man, this big, strapping man, needs a service dog?
Well, he was military. Perhaps something happened on one of his postings, some sort of post-traumatic stress. She’s read a number of stories about PTSD in the paper recently.
Or maybe losing his wife and daughter undid him.
