The Christmas Wedding - James Patterson [18]
He handed the phone back to Lizzie.
“Your mom and Tom Hayden are already at the hospital. They’ll meet us outside ER.”
“Tom’s with Gaby,” Lizzie said, and was about to comment on how interesting it was that the two of them were together, but she didn’t get the chance. A scream came from the passenger seat. The garbling, gurgling, horrid sounds of another seizure began to explode.
Maybe it was Lizzie’s imagination, but this time it seemed louder and wilder and longer. Maybe Mike’s being confined by the seatbelt and shoulder belt made his flailing seem more intense than back at home.
From a distance she could see the long, low red brick building that was Stockbridge Hospital. She thought she might have to pull to the side of the road, but she decided that the emergency room was the safest place for Mike right now.
In the nearly empty parking lot she saw Gaby and Tom Hayden. Lizzie screeched to a halt, skidding in a complete circle, like the second hand of a clock, then stopping.
As Tom yanked open the passenger door, Lizzie shouted, “He’s having another seizure.”
The moment she said the words, the seizure seemed to stop. Mike’s eyes closed, then opened. His face was smeared with sweat again. He rubbed his wrist, sore from where he’d banged it so many times on the armrest.
Tom and Gaby managed to lift Mike out of the car. He stood by himself.
“I’ll get a wheelchair,” said Lizzie. Tallulah clung to her hand.
“No,” said Gaby. “Mike can make it. Right, Mike?” It was as if she were returning a tiny bit of dignity to him. And it worked.
Walking slowly, Mike turned to his wife.
“Lizzie, just look at me. I’m a mess. You’ve got to do something about your driving.”
Chapter 22
SOMETIMES GABY FELT that she knew the emergency waiting room of Stockbridge Hospital better than she knew her own house.
Not only had she been here a half dozen times during the last year with Mike and Lizzie, but, as the mother of four, she had waited in this same room while Claire had broken fingers set and taped (a diving-board accident), while Seth had twenty-nine stitches in his right thigh (a fall from the hayloft with a perfect landing on a pitchfork), while Lizzie got three hypodermic shots of antihistamine (she was four years old and had punched a beehive), while Emily had a stubbornly stuck tampon removed.
Finally, it was also right here that she had waited as a CPR unit tried to bring Peter back to life when he had his heart attack.
She thought about that horrible day as she walked into the cramped cubicle where they were keeping Mike for the time being.
The sweet, brave guy was wearing one of those ridiculous hospital gowns. Pathetic, Gaby thought. Hospitals got it so wrong. They made being sick even more depressing and depersonalizing than it had to be.
“Sorry to have messed up the morning for you and Tom,” Mike said. There was a definite teasing tone in his voice. But Gaby wasn’t biting.
“Don’t be annoying. The whole gang was there getting breakfast ready. Tom and I were the least important. How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I could swim the Housatonic River north to south,” Mike said.
Gaby shook her head. She could only imagine how frightened Mike must be—of cancer and pain and the whole ugly business of being sick and possibly dying. So Gaby did what she was famous for. She asked the simplest, most straightforward question she could think of.
“Mike, are you scared?”
“Would you pass me my clothes?” he said.
“Answer me, Mike. Are you frightened? It’s a good question.”
“Gaby, please hand me my clothes from that chair. I just want to get dressed and go home.”
“I’m going to keep asking.”
“Where are Lizzie and Tom? Is Tom the one, Grandma?”
“First answer my question. Then I’ll answer yours. Your first question.”
Mike pulled the ridiculous hospital gown around him.
“Everybody looks stupid in these nightgowns,” he said. “Even a good-looking