Chapter Eighteen
Just as I emerged from my bedroom and headed to breakfast, Anna came running, wearing the most terrified expression I had ever seen her have.
“Your grandfather,” she said, gasping. “He got out of bed and collapsed on the floor.”
“What? Call Dr. Bush,” I said. I started for Grandfather’s bedroom. “Where’s Daddy?”
“He never came home last night,” she said.
I hurried on. Grandfather was on the floor struggling, one side of his body trembling. I grabbed a pillow and put it under his head and then lay down beside him. He turned to me and tried to speak, but his lips were twisted and he made only guttural sounds.
“Dr. Bush is on his way, Grandpa.”
I put my arm around his shoulders and cradled him to my breast. I could hear his heavy breathing. We were like that when Dr. Bush arrived with assistants carrying a stretcher. I got up quickly, and he examined him.
“Get him to the ambulance,” he told his assistants.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked. Anna was embracing me.
“He’s had a stroke,” Dr. Bush said. “I need to get him to the clinic. There’s no time to travel to Bar Harbor.”
Anna and I followed him out and then got into my car to follow the ambulance to the clinic.
For a small clinic serving Birdlane, Dr. Bush’s facility was as good as it could be.
In his emergency room, he began to do as much as he could, easing Grandfather’s breathing, dissolving blood clots, and maintaining observance of his blood pressure.
Of course, we called Daddy, who rushed over and almost immediately began to complain. “Why wasn’t he taken to Bar Harbor?”
Dr. Bush was never intimidated by Daddy, or anyone for that matter. He stood calmly in front of him and said, “There was no time. He probably wouldn’t have survived the trip. I have him resting comfortably, but you should all know that he won’t return to the way he was.”
There was a saying about Dr. Bush: he never beat around the bush.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Once we are done here, you’ll take him home.
If you don’t have one, get a wheelchair ASAP.
I’ll start to arrange for nurses around the clock.
They will administer medications, and I’ll arrange for a therapist to start therapy and see what we can restore in terms of movement and speech,” he explained.
“I’ll get the wheelchair,” Daddy said, welcoming a reason to leave. “It will be at the Crest in an hour.” He hadn’t even asked to see Grandfather. I watched him leave, knowing he was really elated, believing now that there was no check on what he could and would do at the business.
Anna and I sat and waited. One of Dr. Bush’s assistants brought us some coffee.
I didn’t know how news spread so fast on Birdlane.
Sometimes I thought a seagull told another bird who told another, and all those birds sitting on telephone wires were transmitting the news around the island. Twenty minutes later, Jamie appeared.
“How is he?” he asked immediately.
“A stroke. Looks like his right side is damaged, and his speech.”
Jamie sat beside me and took my hand. I wondered if Kyle, even at his best moments, would have spent any time beside me in a clinic. It just didn’t seem to fit his image.
Dr. Bush emerged again to address us.
“Anna, you should return to the Crest and prepare his room. I’m going to have some equipment brought there to monitor him. He won’t be able to stand on his own or walk at all right now. We’ll see what therapy can do. Actually, you should all go to breakfast. It will be a while yet.”
“Okay,” Anna said.
“I’ll take you back,” Jamie offered. “In a truck, I’m afraid.”
I had my first laugh of the day.
“Anna and I will ride in the back.”
“What?”
“Just joking, Jamie. Thank you.”
The gray, overcast sky seemed perfect for the mood we were all in.
The silence was like a door slammed on any joyful thoughts.
I could almost see the shadows deepening over the Crest as we approached.
This was, after all, Grandfather’s home.
To me, the house was a living thing, its walls absorbing happiness and sadness, and the halls and stairs, even the pictures on the walls, seeming to darken with the trouble and brighten with the joy we experienced while there.
I was hoping I had captured that in my landscape.
It was something Kyle didn’t feel in his work.
Daddy was true to his word, out of either real concern or eagerness to relegate Grandfather to this new isolation.
The wheelchair, a very comfortable and expensive one, was waiting in the entryway.
Anna took it to Grandfather’s room, and I went to the kitchen with Jamie to work on some breakfast. He got right into it, preparing a new pot of coffee and toast while I made scrambled eggs with cheese.
We ate in the kitchenette, whose paned panel doors and windows looked out on the rear of the house, Grandfather’s view from his office.
Anna was too nervous to eat anything and wanted to get Grandfather’s room spick-and-span.
She put all her nervousness and sadness into her vigorous cleaning.
I wasn’t hungry but knew I had to eat. This was not the time to be weak and tired.
Late in the afternoon, Dr. Bush called to say Grandfather would be brought back in the ambulance, and the first of three nurses, Mrs. Cohen, would accompany Grandfather and get him set up with the monitors. Jamie and I sat outside, watching the hill for signs of the ambulance.
“It’s easier for someone who hasn’t done half of what your grandfather has done in his life to shift into sitting in a wheelchair and staring at the grass,” Jamie said. “In a sense, that’s where they already were.”
“Funny way to put it, but makes sense to me,” I said. I looked at him. “Where did you suddenly get such wisdom, Jamie Fuller?”
“From the sea,” he said. “If you look at it enough and watch all the sea life and the way the water changes, you think about things in your own life more.”
“My goodness, what am I going to do with you? An old man already.”
He laughed.
What would I do without him? I thought.
We saw the ambulance. I had been wishing this was all a nightmare and I would soon awake, but the sight of it coming up the hill was like a drumbeat culminating in a loud clash of cymbals when it came to a stop in front of the house.
We rose as the attendants came out and opened the rear.
I wanted Grandfather to see me immediately and know I was there for him.
But he wasn’t looking at anything. His eyes were closed.
“He’s asleep, which is good right now,” Mrs. Cohen said, coming around to me.
She was a woman in her fifties, with graying black hair she apparently didn’t care to hide. She kept it short like Aunt Frances. Maybe it was a nurse thing.
They brought Grandfather to his room, and Mrs. Cohen began to set up the equipment.
“I’ll let your father know he’s home,” Anna told me. “I suppose he will want to know.”
I nodded, not imagining him sitting on pins and needles, waiting for the news. I told Jamie he didn’t need to stay, especially if he had things he was supposed to do.
“This is what I’m supposed to do,” he said, which made me laugh.
I hugged him. “I’ll be fine. Probably should take a rest. There will be lots more to do now.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“Come back for dinner,” I said.
“Really?”
“Grandfather thinks you’re part of the family.
” It was a half joke, but he liked the sound of it.
We hugged again, and he left. I did go to my room to lie down, but not because I was physically tired.
I was emotionally exhausted. Nevertheless, I did fall asleep for a while, and I woke up abruptly when I heard Anna talking loudly to someone.
I rose after I heard her say, “He won’t like you doing that! ”
“He won’t realize anything anymore,” I heard Aunt Frances say when I stepped out into the hallway. She was at the bottom of the stairs, holding two cloth bags in her hands.
“What is going on?” I demanded, and approached them.
“She’s taking your grandmother’s jewelry,” Anna said. “She knew where your grandfather had stored everything.”
“She was my mother. I should have these things; they shouldn’t be going to you. He’s stopped all financial support for me. I need this,” she said, holding up the bags.
“But Anna’s right. He should know first.”
“He can’t understand anything anymore. I know he’ll leave me out of his will.”
“He’s not dead yet,” I said, feeling my eyes widen and bulge with anger.
She laughed. “I know what a stroke like that is. He’s as good as dead,” she said, and started for the front door.
“I’m going to tell my father,” I threatened.
She paused and smiled. “Go ahead. Who knows what he’s taken already,” she replied, and left without even taking the time to see Grandfather.
I ran to the door as she was getting into the car she had rented at the pier.
“You’d better not have taken anything of my mother’s!” I screamed.
She looked at me and shrugged. I watched her drive off. I hope Grandfather didn’t leave her anything in his will, I thought.
Daddy didn’t come home until just about dinnertime. He looked at me as if he was about to say or ask something and then went to speak to Grandfather’s nurse. I followed him. She explained everything that was being done. While she spoke, Grandfather opened his eyes and looked at Daddy.
“You should have retired years ago,” Daddy muttered.
“Can’t you say anything loving to him, especially now?” I asked him.
He looked at me. “I just did,” he said, and walked out.
Grandfather put his whole smile into his eyes.
I went to him and held his hand. “We’re here for you, Grandpa. Don’t worry.”
He tried to speak but stopped and leaned toward me so I could kiss him.
“You’re a very sweet granddaughter,” Mrs. Cohen said.
I hugged Grandfather and went out because I could hear that Jamie had arrived. Anna had prepared a roast chicken dinner.