Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [81]
He shut the desk drawer, bent down, and picked up the box. He taped it shut, then stood up, placing it next to the other boxes near the door. He looked at his watch. He planned to drive to Gallup, meet with the Monsignor, and then catch a bus to San Francisco, then over to Berkeley later in the week. He would start his new job in a few days. This would all be behind him soon enough.
Pie Town and pregnant Trina, losing everything in a fire at his first parish, the crazy townspeople who never really liked him, the rattlesnakes, the skunks, the desert heat, it would soon all be behind him. “I will soon be able to start a new life,” he said out loud. He leaned against the wall, looking at the boxes, and shook his head. He did not want to admit it, but he clearly realized that this was not the first time he had said those words to himself.
Chapter Thirty-one
The nurse had come and gone. She had called the doctor and ordered morphine, in hopes that the medication would ease the pain in Alex’s legs, lessen his anxiety, and help him rest. Malene peeked in his room, after walking the nurse out and saying good-bye, and watched him sleep. It had been a long and restless night.
With the decline in his health, his body worn out from repeated infections, the birth defect with its never-ending ramifications, and the recent bout of pneumonia, Alex was losing his battles. At first, when his fever spiked again, the first night home from the hospital, the night of the fire, the boy had refused to let his grandmother call an ambulance. Adamant that he did not want to leave Pie Town, he took the Tylenol, let her bathe him in alcohol, and ate chips of ice, and finally the fever went down. The next day, feeling somewhat stronger, eating a little something and keeping it down, and with his temperature back to normal, the boy had spoken seriously and decisively to his grandparents.
He explained that he didn’t want to go back to the hospital again, and with an understanding well beyond his eleven years, he stated that he knew that his body was tired and would not be able to fight much longer. He wanted, he carefully and genuinely explained, to stay at home.
Malene had fought the boy, resisted his arguments for days, even stormed out of the room the first time he mentioned it. Roger hadn’t fared much better. He hadn’t argued with Alex or refused to let him finish what he wanted to say, but he was certainly not willing to go along with his grandson’s decision. Finally, after three days of hearing him say the same thing again and again, they gave in and said they would talk to the pediatrician in Albuquerque about his wishes. They all agreed to follow whatever plan of treatment she recommended and to take whatever advice she offered.
They never told Alex, but they fully expected the health care professional to side with them and to give them ideas on how to keep Alex willing and focused on getting better, how to get him to agree to go back to the hospital. They left Pie Town and drove to Albuquerque convinced that the doctor, a pediatrician whose life oath was to do no harm to children and to offer them quality of life as well as quantity of life, would agree with their sentiments and offer them strategy and alliance to counter their grandson’s wishes.
After they had arrived at Presbyterian Hospital and had a long talk with the doctor, who had cared for Alex since his birth, after she had gone over the boy’s history, his last hospitalization, the findings and X-rays showing scar tissue as thick as smoke in the little boy’s lungs, after she detailed the steps they would need to take as his condition