Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [43]
“Run the tests.”
The rest of my day was spent on an examining table or in a waiting room flipping through magazines: Field & Stream, Ladies’ Home Journal, Architectural Digest. Stephanie Riggs drew blood, and then in a back room a technician drew more; a few hours later, Dr. Riggs drew blood again. The probing was the worst, umpteen feet of coil with a miniature camera on the end of it shoved up my rectum like a plumber’s snake. I was X-rayed, given CT scans. Nothing is more exhausting than lounging around a hospital all day with your heart in your mouth. Samples of my hair, urine, sputum, stool, fingernails, and skin were taken away.
Just before eight that evening, Stephanie came into the lounge area where I was waiting and told me I was free to go home.
“What’d you find?” I asked, trying on a smile I knew was a little tight.
“Too soon for most of it. Your X rays and CT scan were fine. The blood workups haven’t told us a thing. You’re slightly anemic, but that may be normal for you. The dermatologist says the growth on your hands is the same as Holly has on her hands. I’ll be here most of the night. I want to hand-carry some of these samples through the lab, watch the tests myself. You take care of yourself. Stay hydrated. Get lots of rest. If anything changes tonight or tomorrow morning, call me. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be in touch tomorrow morning.” She gave me a slip of paper with her cell phone number on it. “You have somebody who can watch out for you?”
“My girls.”
“I mean an adult.”
“They’ll do.”
“Okay.”
I’d been feeling anxious in North Bend, but the dramatic change in Stephanie Riggs was bothersome to say the least. I’d driven down here thinking I might have some contagion, but now a knowledgeable doctor thought I was going to be a vegetable. She hadn’t said it outright, but you could see it in her face.
She thought I was headed for the same fate as her sister.
I’d been hopeful on the drive down, but that was before we found out my symptoms and those on Stan’s list correlated with what Holly had documented in her diary. Odds were if Stan hadn’t died on I-90, he would have ended up in the brain ward—just as he feared. Odds were I would be forced to make the same decision Stan had: turn into a vegetable or commit suicide. Trouble was, I didn’t know if I had the guts to kill myself. Would you? I mean, one day I’m walking around worried about weeds in the yard; the next I’m trying to figure out if I should kill myself. It was too weird.
I was trying to figure out which option was better for my daughters. Which did I not want to put them through?
“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said. “I wish things had turned out differently.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“I’m a firefighter. I signed up for a bad ending. I didn’t think anything was going to happen, but in the back of my mind I always knew it might. Holly didn’t sign up for anything more than sweetness and light. That’s what she deserved.”
When tears began creeping down Stephanie’s face, I said good-bye and got out of Dodge.
DAY THREE
21. BAD HEADACHE, DIZZINESS, FALLING DOWN
Disoriented and somewhat confused, I came fully awake on the floor next to the bed. I was clad in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, my usual nighttime attire, but it was morning, the sky bright and blue outside my bedroom window.
Wednesday.
Day three.
I knew I hadn’t stumbled or tripped but had simply lost my balance on the way to the pissoir, and not with a topsy-turvy feeling of light-headedness as in a faint, but as if I’d been caught by a trip wire.
I’d gone down like a sack of shit falling off the back of a manure truck.
The on-again off-again headache from yesterday had returned with a vengeance. Headache, dizziness, falling down—it occurred to me with a jolt that I had all of the symptoms for day three.
When I spotted the cotton ball taped to the inside of my arm, the events of the previous day flooded my consciousness.
Arriving back in North Bend the night before, I’d driven straight to the mayor’s house. Haston lived on the eastern edge of town, three