18. Kate
Kate sat in the ICU at three in the morning, fighting tears and exhaustion as the second sleepless night in a row pressed down on her.
Trying to shake it off and appreciate these few moments the kind nurse had allowed her to have with her mother, she looked around, maybe for the first time since they’d rolled Jo Ellen in here after surgery.
The room, which was surprisingly spacious, was lit only by the green and amber glow of the monitors and the LED strip over the small stainless-steel sink, with one cool white beam spilling in from the corridor every time the door opened.
The space was quiet but not silent, because of the ventilator, which hummed and huffed and breathed for a woman who could not do it on her own.
Her sweet, optimistic, fun-loving mother lay perfectly still in a medically induced coma, still not yet awakened or able to learn that she’d fallen and nearly died.
Kate had to have the distance confirmed, which Eli had done, explaining that the garage isn’t as high as a typical first floor and the apartment was not technically on the second floor.
It was bad—a twelve-foot fall—but survivable. She’d landed on her side. She’d fallen on grass. She’d survived at her age. There was much to be grateful for.
But this was also… “touch and go,” as the doctor said.
Kate studied the small bolt wrapped in gauze at Mom’s hairline above her temple. That device—the ICP or intracranial pressure monitor—measured the pressure on her brain. It would come out when the vent did, which felt like an eternity from now.
Kate sat in the visitor’s chair next to the bed with her glasses pushed up into her hair, her phone face-down on her thigh, and her mother’s hand in hers.
She had been studying the hand for a long time.
The pink nail polish, still soft and pearly from the manicure she and Maggie had treated themselves to for Tessa’s wedding, was starting to chip a little.
Her gold band and humble engagement ring had been taken off and put in her bag of belongings, and those familiar fingers somehow seemed naked.
Kate had never, not once, seen her mother not wear those rings.
There was a smattering of brown age spots, wrinkles on her old knuckles, and…lifelessness in her fingers.
Not lifelessness, no. Life that would return. It had to.
She closed her eyes and replayed the moment Dr. Winslow had come into the waiting room, just after eleven on the longest night of Kate’s life.
He gave the results slowly, as if he understood they all had survived a hurricane like the rest of the Panhandle, only to be hit with a new and unthinkable tragedy.
Surgery had been a success, the bleed evacuated within the golden window, the ICP currently controlled at seventeen, sedation holding, mean arterial pressure stable, the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours determinative.
In other words, if she made it to Monday—or Tuesday—she would likely survive. If her brain didn’t swell or her heart didn’t give out from the stress or something equally catastrophic didn’t happen, all of which were still very much a possibility.
Kate, of course, volunteered to stay the night. After begging Eli to take Emma and Maggie home, she and Tessa and Vivien stayed for the first shift. Vivien left a while ago and Tessa went to get food and coffee.
Eli texted every half hour or so, and she replied, then put the phone down, letting exhaustion and her thoughts weigh on her shoulders while the ventilator clicked and sighed.
A soft knock on the doorframe made Kate turn to see Tessa, who must have gone back to the Summer House because now she wore yoga pants and a Destin sweatshirt. Her hair was damp, loosely pulled back in a ponytail. She held two paper cups, and had a small white bag was tucked under her arm.
The sweet smell of warm donuts wafted in with her.
“Sustenance,” she said. “And by that, I mean sugar and caffeine.”
She set the bag on the rolling table at the foot of the bed and carried a cup to Kate, handing it to her. “Any change?”
“No. Thanks for this.” Kate took the hot coffee and suddenly realized that she wanted it more than her next breath. “Were you home? Emma okay? How’s Olive? And Maggie?”
“Everyone is fine. I had to fight Eli not to come and Meredith helped me. They agreed we can have overnight, since we have daughter priority. We have to leave and get sleep in a few hours.”
“You can leave anytime, Tess.”
“I’m okay. Had a shower.” She gazed at their mother and sighed. “She’s gonna hate that hairstyle when the bald spot grows in.”
Kate smiled at the optimism—a trait Tessa and Mom shared—and watched her sister go around the bed and push the rolling recliner to the other side. She settled into it, crossing her legs like a little kid in school and guiding the IV pole out of her way so she could see Mom and Kate.
“She looks small,” Tessa said after a minute.
“I know.”
“I never think of her as small.” Tessa angled her head and studied their mother. “She’s going to be mad she missed all the excitement.”
Kate snorted her first sip of coffee. “Yeah. She’ll say, ‘Oh, all those cute firefighters and I was out cold.’”
Tessa smiled, but then it faded and her eyes filled. “I don’t think I can go through it again,” she whispered.
Kate knew exactly what she was talking about.
“It hasn’t even been a year,” Tessa added.
“It will be at the end of this month,” Kate said.
A year since they lost Dad. A year since that horrendous five weeks from the diagnosis to hospice. They had stood next to him at that bed, the three Wylie women, saying goodbye to the glue that held them all together.
Kate had been strong because Tessa and Mom were wrecked. For months, she’d been a rock, until somehow, by some fate of the universe, they’d all found their way back to Destin and started to heal.
Tessa sniffed and Kate looked up, not surprised by the tears. Tessa cried when she couldn’t make a joke and even she didn’t have one in her now.
“Kate, I cannot lose both of them in a year,” she repeated, wiping her nose. “I really can’t. I don’t have it in me.”
“We’re not going to.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know what Mom is. She’s not done.” Kate said it with more conviction than the chemist in her actually had. The chemist had run the grim numbers.
But sweet Tessa, whom she’d known since they shared a womb, needed hope.
“I know I’m not a medical doctor, but I do know a little about what’s going on here. She’s going to pull through. She’s going to laugh about the EMTs and complain about her bald spot and make Maggie do something outrageous to celebrate her recovery.”
Tessa swiped her face and tried to smile. “They’re like teenagers, those two. What were they doing at that biker bar?”
“We may never know,” Kate said. “Unless this lady…” She tapped Mom’s hand. “Has one chardonnay too many and spills the beans. I’ll get it out of her.”
Her sad smile frozen in place, Tessa looked at their mother’s hand in Kate’s. “You two were always like that.”
“Like what?” Kate asked.
“Your hand in hers. Hers in yours. You’d be reading on the couch, and she’d come sit down next to you and just take your hand. Like she needed somewhere to put it.” Tessa’s smile was watery. “I used to be jealous of it when we were little.”
“She had two hands and always gave you one,” Kate said. “But you were off with Dad, fishing or…something.”
Tessa breathed out and nodded. “She felt safe with you,” she said. “You were logical, like Dad.”
“And Dad had a crazy soft spot for you because you were silly and fun like Mom. You’d walk into the room and steal all the air, and nobody cared about my report card.”
Tessa snorted. “And did you see him weep when you walked the stage at Cornell?”
They smiled at each other. The truth was, neither sister had gotten less than the other.
They had each gotten the parent who had been theirs, and they had loved both, and now they were sitting on opposite sides of a hospital bed at three-thirty in the morning realizing what it would cost to lose Mom and Dad this close together.
Immeasurable. Incalculable. Unfathomable loss.
They didn’t talk for a long time, but sipped coffee and split a way-too-sweet glazed donut.
Around four, the door opened and the ICU nurse came in. A Black woman in her early fifties, tall, with close-cropped hair starting to silver at the temples and a name tag that read Marlene.
“Hello, ladies,” she said softly. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“Please.” Kate put Mom’s hand down and stood, but Marlene waved her back into her seat.
“You can stay for a bit more. The day nurses aren’t so lenient, but you’re…her daughters, right?”
They both nodded.
“We’re twins,” Tessa said, which was surprising because they’d stopped announcing that to strangers years ago.
“Really.” She looked from one to the other, a frown pulling. “Fraternal, obviously.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “She’s the beautiful one.”
“Stop it,” Tessa replied and pointed at Kate. “She’s the genius.”
Marlene chuckled and moved around them with the ease and grace of someone who had navigated this situation a thousand times.
She glanced at the monitors. She adjusted a piece of tape on Jo Ellen’s wrist where the IV had pulled at the skin.
Tessa cleared her throat. “Marlene, can I ask you something?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Can she hear us?”
The nurse paused, her hand still on Jo Ellen’s wrist, and looked up, taking time to think before she settled her weight back on one hip.
“Honey, I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years. The studies will tell you the science is mixed.”
She was right about that, Kate thought, watching the woman closely.