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Neither Treya nor Abe had called yet with any report from the hospital. Hardy, hamstrung by his overwhelming sense of dread, had his hand around the stem of his glass but hadn’t yet brought it to his lips. He simply stared at the fire.
Fra
He turned his head toward her, perhaps surprised to see her there, appearing out of thin air the way she had. “Hey.”
She crossed the remaining few steps to him and sat on the ottoman at his feet. “You’ve been just sitting there without moving a muscle since I’ve been in this doorway.”
“Isometric exercise. Every muscle tensed for maximum effect.” But there was no humor in it.
“Are you all right?”
He shrugged, his effort to smile halfhearted at best. “How’s Vi
“Good. He got a B-plus on his first poly-sci exam.”
“Slacker.”
“He wanted to know if we needed him to come up. He said he would. I told him I didn’t think so.”
“Probably right. Nothing for him to do.”
“You either,” Fra
Sighing, Hardy shook his head. “You think this stuff is buried so deep down, and next thing you know you’re blindsided by it.”
Fra
Hardy’s firstborn son had died in infancy thirty-five years before. A precocious seven-month-old, he’d stood up in his crib well before he was supposed to be able to and had pitched over the guardrail that they’d kept at half-mast. He had landed on his head.
“I don’t think I’ve consciously thought about him in five years, and now here he is, big as life. Bigger than he was in life.”
Fra
“I don’t know if Abe could take it, how anybody does. I don’t know how I did.”
Fra
She squeezed his leg reassuringly. “Let’s wait till we hear something. You want to come to bed?”
“I want to drink a bottle of gin.”
“You could, but you wouldn’t be happy about that tomorrow.”
“No. I know. Plus, if Abe needs something…” He shook his head and looked away, then came back and met her eyes. “Shit, Fra
“I agree. But Rachel’s going to be up early. We’re going to want to be rested. I’ve got to go lie down. You’re welcome to join me.”
“I’d be lousy company.” Then, softening it, he patted her hand with his own. “Couple more minutes,” he said.
And the phone rang.
“The best bit of news,” Treya was saying to both of them as they listened on the two extension phones, “is that he’s out of his twos. Evidently the younger you are, the worse the prognosis. Three is way better than two. And this is a Level One hospital, so they had a neurosurgical resident in house, which is also lucky since he could go right to work.” Her voice, while not by any stretch cheerful, was strong and confident-sounding. Conveying facts, honing to the bearable news, she was keeping herself together the way she always did, by sucking it up.
“They’ve cooled him down to make him hypothermic,” she went on, “which is what they always do, and taken some scans, and they’ve got him on a continuous EEG and his vital signs are good, so that’s all heartening.”
“But he’s still unconscious?” Hardy asked.
Fra
“He’s in a coma?” Fra
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Treya said. “They induce it with some drug to let his brain heal. And they’ve got him on something for the internal swelling, but the doctor says they still may have to operate. In fact, probably.”
Hardy, possibly leaving the actual ridges of his fingerprints in the telephone at his ear, asked, “When’s that going to be, the surgery?”
“Probably pretty soon, maybe by the morning. They’ve got him stuck with a couple of catheters in his head to measure his cranial pressure. It gets above fifteen, whatever that means, they’re going to have to go in. And it’s at thirteen now, up from ten when he got here, so…”
“Do you need us to do anything?” Fra
“Watching Rachel is enough. I don’t see either of us leaving here for a while.”
“Take whatever time you need, Trey.” Fra
“Both of us,” Hardy repeated. “So what’s next?”
“I think probably the surgery.”
“What are they going to do?”
“They take a couple of bones out of his skull to relieve the pres sure.”
“Not permanently?” Hardy asked.
“No,” Treya said, “I don’t think so. But I’ll ask now for sure. Anyway, then they make some slits in the dura.”
“What’s that?” Fra
“Oh, you’ll like this.” Treya obviously wearing herself down trying to keep a positive spin on things. “It means tough mother.”
“What does?”
“Dura mater. It’s the outer layer of the brain. Tough and fibrous. They make some small slits in it to let the brain expand.”
Silence collected in the line as this bit of horrifying, yet perhaps good, information began to sink in. Finally, Hardy cleared his throat. “So how’s Abe?”
Treya hesitated. “Quiet. Even for him.”
“It’s not his fault,” Fra
“I know that. It might not be so clear to him.” Again, a stab at an optimistic tone. “He’ll get to it.”
“I know he will,” Fra
Hardy, not so certain of that, especially if Zachary didn’t make it, turned to face away from his wife. Stealing a glance at his watch, he did some quick math: If the accident had taken place at five-thirty, it had now been five and a half hours. After they’d gotten his own son Michael to the hospital, he had survived for six.
The women’s words continued to tumble through the phone at his ear, but he didn’t hear any of them over his own imaginings-or was it only his pulse, sounding like the tick of a clock counting down the seconds?
2
Bay Beans West enjoyed a privileged location, location, location at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco.
The large, wide-windowed coffee shop had opened in the summer of 1998 and from its first days became a fixture in the neighborhood. It opened every morning at six o’clock, except Sunday, when it opened at eight, and it stayed open until ten. Between the UCSF medical school a couple of blocks east, the University of San Francisco a few blocks north, the tourists visiting the epicenter of the birth of hippiedom, and the vibrant and wildly eclectic local neighborhood, the place rarely had a slow moment, much less an empty one.
The smell of its roasting beans infused the immediate vicinity with a beckoning aroma; the management provided copies of the city’s newspapers-the Chronicle, the Free Press, and the Bay Guardian. The papers rarely disappeared before three o’clock. Even the homeless honored the custom, except for Crazy Melinda, who used to come in, scoop all the papers up, and try to leave with them-until the patrons started setting aside a copy of each paper at the counter for her to pick up whenever she wanted them.