The Second Heart Page 6

  Chapter 6

  It was still dark in the bedroom when Meredith opened her eyes again. Her stomach continued to ache, and she figured the pain was what had woken her up. She resolved to get herself a midnight snack of more antacids and toast.

  Meredith folded the blanket back, careful not to wake Vi. The night air was cold and uninviting, and she hated to leave her warm cocoon. As she stood up, the nagging pain in her stomach deepened into a gut-twisting cramp. Gritting her teeth, she doubled over, clutching at her midsection. After a moment, the pain receded and Meredith walked gingerly from the guest room and into the hall bathroom, flicking on the light.

  She splashed her face with water and looked at herself in the mirror. Her complexion was sallow, and her normally clear eyes looked bloodshot and tired. She felt physically weakened, like she wanted to sleep for years on end.

  Her stomach cramped again, and Meredith squeezed her eyes shut, seeing stars. Her knuckles were white from gripping the edge of the counter so tightly. The pain was all encompassing, and she sank to her knees while tears streamed down her cheeks from the corners of her closed eyes.

  Once again, the cramp receded, leaving Meredith feeling weak and hollow. The last time she had felt pain this intense was when she had had a ruptured appendix, a few years earlier. Thinking of that, she fingered one of the small scars on her abdomen. She pulled herself back up to a standing position using the bathroom counter as a brace; her knees wobbled for a moment, and then held.

  Quietly, she made her way down the hall to the master bedroom as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She pushed the door open and went into the room, hoping that she wouldn’t trip over anything. As she walked toward the bed, another cramp tore at her gut, and she cried out as she fell to the floor. Reflexively, she pulled her knees up toward her chest while she lay on her side, gasping for breath as the pain overwhelmed her.

  In the bed, Amelia sat up and pulled the chain on her bedside lamp, bathing the room in soft light. “Meredith? Sweetheart?” Alarmed, she leapt from the bed and knelt at Meredith’s side.

  As the cramp released its tension, Meredith felt as if all the energy were draining from her body along with it. “I’m really sick, Mom,” she managed weakly.

  “I can see that, sweetie.”

  “I need to go to the hospital. I think I’m dying. Or at the very least, I want to die.” She offered a small smile to combat the stricken expression on Amelia’s face.

  “Rob, wake up,” Amelia commanded toward the bed.

  Sleepily, Rob sat up and stared confusedly at the two women on the floor at the foot of the bed.

  “Can you walk?” Amelia asked.

  Meredith nodded and started to sit up, but another cramp took hold. Amelia pulled Meredith’s head into her lap and stroked her hair as tears streamed down Meredith’s face, soaking Amelia’s flannel pajamas. Normally a grin-and-bear it sort of girl when it came to pain, Meredith felt helpless under the onslaught. A small whimper escaped her as she tried to distance her mind from the agony that wracked her body.

  When the cramp passed, Meredith said, “We need to hurry. They’re getting worse.”

  Rob already had his shoes and coat on, and he and Amelia helped Meredith to get up off the floor. Once Meredith had found her footing, she and Rob headed down the hall toward the car while Amelia threw on some flip-flops and grabbed her purse.

  The car ride to the hospital was grim, peppered by bouts of cramping that Meredith was powerless to ignore, leaving her sobbing uncontrollably. Amelia sat in the backseat with her, stroking her hair and murmuring while shooting worried looks to Rob in the rear-view mirror.

  At last they arrived at the emergency entrance to the hospital. Rob pulled up to the curb in front of the double doors, and Amelia and Meredith went inside to sign in while Rob went to park the car. The waiting room was packed with people, which wasn’t surprising, given the weather.

  The triage nurse at the front desk took their information and gestured to the overcrowded waiting room before moving on to the next patient. There were no empty seats to be had, so they made their way over to a wall where at least they could lean or sit on the floor while staying out of the way.

  As they walked, Amelia leaned in closer to Meredith. “Listen honey, I know you’re in a lot of pain.”

  Meredith nodded.

  “Sometimes when someone is obviously in a lot of pain, they’ll let you cut the line for pain killers. Got it?”

  Meredith gave her a blank look.

  “Make a lot of noise, Mere. They’ll give you drugs just to shut you up.”

  Comprehension dawned on Meredith just as another cramp started to twist apart her insides. Instead of trying to hold in her pain as she had before, she let it all out in a loud groan that caused everyone in the room to turn and stare at her. As the pain intensified, she sank down onto the floor against the wall, shrieking all the while. She found that releasing the sound actually helped her to cope with the anguish that consumed her. It was something she could focus on, something she could do, in response to the pain.

  After the cramp faded back into the now-familiar ache, a nurse came over to them and told them that she was authorized to give Meredith something for pain management while they waited. Meredith and Amelia’s eyes met, and Amelia stifled a smug smile.

  “That would be great,” Meredith said breathily.

  “Come with me, then,” the nurse said. She was an older woman with closely cropped iron gray hair. She wasn’t overweight, but she seemed stocky, like a miniature tank. Standing, Meredith was an entire head and shoulders taller than the no-nonsense nurse.

  Leaving Amelia in the waiting room, Meredith followed the nurse through a door and down a hallway littered with gurneys and other medical supplies.

  Once they were ensconced in a small exam room, the nurse prepared a syringe. “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” she asked.

  “Definitely not,” Meredith responded.

  The nurse scrutinized her face, as if trying to decide whether Meredith told the truth. After a brief pause, she said, “I’m going to give you morphine, which will probably affect you one of two ways.”

  Meredith nodded, waiting for the nurse to continue.

  “Either way, you’ll feel a lot better. Some people who take it get very chatty, and others get pretty nauseated. Let’s hope you’re the chatty type. Just in case you’re not though, I’m going to give you some anti-nausea medication to go with it. Do you have any allergies to medication that you know of?”

  “No,” Meredith said. The nurse’s nametag said, Eleanor.

  “Okay, then.” Eleanor held the syringe up at eye level and tapped it before pushing out the air bubbles. A small amount of the clear liquid squirted out of the syringe and onto the tile floor. “I’m gonna put this in your thigh, so I need you to pull the leg of your shorts up. You’ll feel a poke, okay? But nothing like those stomach cramps. Ready?”

  Meredith did as she was told and tried to focus on something other than the needle that was being shoved into her leg. As Eleanor bent over, Meredith caught a glimpse of a necklace that the nurse was wearing under her shirt. It had an unusual red stone pendant that was about the size of an acorn. The stone was a deep scarlet, with even darker veins of burgundy throughout. The setting was simple, a plain silver chain with a delicate claw that curled around the polished stone.

  “All done,” Eleanor said gruffly, handing Meredith a little paper cup of water and a second paper cup with a pill in it. “Now take this for the nausea, and when you’re ready you can head back out to the waiting room.”

  “That’s an interesting necklace you have on,” Meredith said. “What kind of stone is that?”

  Eleanor’s steely gray eyes met Meredith’s cool blue ones. The nurse regarded her curiously for a moment before saying, “I wouldn’t know. I found it at a garage sale.” Eleanor gestured to the cups in Meredith’s hands. “Now, bottoms up.” With that she gathered up her paperwork and lef
t Meredith alone in the exam room.

  Meredith downed the nausea medication just as another cramp came on. She lay down on the exam table until it had passed, and then she went back out to the waiting room. Rob had joined Amelia next to the wall, and they both looked at her expectantly when she walked up to them.

  “They gave me some morphine, but it hasn’t kicked in yet,” Meredith told them.

  “Well give it twenty minutes. Hopefully by then you’ll be a new woman and we can figure out what’s going on,” Rob said.

  As Rob predicted, once the medicine started working on her, Meredith found the cramps uncomfortable but manageable. As they sat waiting in the crowded lobby, the sun’s rays started to peek through the glass double doors at the entrance. Slowly, seats started to empty as patients were seen, and Meredith and her parents were able to relocate from the floor to a small bank of seats in a corner next to a stack of outdated gossip magazines and a fake ficus tree.

  Meredith wished that she had remembered to grab her cell phone before leaving the house; playing games would have helped to pass the time. She couldn’t even call Vi to let her know where they were, since she didn’t know her friend’s phone number by heart. She sat quietly, playing with one of the plastic leaves that had fallen from the ficus tree. She twirled it around in her fingers and folded it in a number of different ways. It always sprang back into its original shape.

  Next to her, Amelia thumbed through one of the magazines. She let out a surprised gasp when she read that a well-known actress had gotten married, showing the story to Meredith.

  “And then she got divorced, six months ago,” Meredith updated her.

  “Oh,” Amelia said, put out. She returned the magazine to the little table next to their chairs. She was quiet for a moment, gazing out the windows at the front of the waiting room. “Hey, it’s stopped raining.”

  Meredith and Rob both turned to look out. It had indeed stopped raining, though the sky was still gray and overcast in the early morning light. They all looked out in silence, contemplating the weather more seriously than they had ever done previously in their lives. Was it just a break in the storm, or did it signify better news?

  “Do you think everyone was freaking out over nothing?” Meredith asked hopefully. She was beginning to feel a bit giddy, and thought she might be one of the “chatty types” that the nurse had mentioned.

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s over nothing, sweetheart,” Rob said, patting her on the arm and smiling ruefully. “Our world is changing whether we like it or not.”

  “That’s it, I’m moving to Mars,” Meredith joked. She giggled at her own humor while Rob chuckled politely.

  From across the room, a nurse called out Meredith’s name.

  “Finally,” Meredith said loudly as she stood up. One of the other waiting patients looked up at her curiously. “I’m here for a boob job, how ‘bout you?” She laughed at her own joke again and threaded her way through the rows of chairs to where the nurse was standing. Amelia and Rob exchanged an embarrassed look and followed close behind, smiling apologetically at the other patient as they walked past.

  The nurse asked Meredith a bunch of questions about her medical history, weighed her, and took her blood pressure. Then Meredith was led to a curtained area with a bed and a chair, surrounded by numerous machines. There was a hospital gown folded up on the foot of the bed, along with a thin white blanket.

  The nurse handed her a clear plastic bag that had the words “Personal Belongings” printed on the side. “Go ahead and get undressed and put all your stuff in here. The doctor will be in to see you shortly.”

  Amelia and Rob waited outside the curtained area while Meredith changed. After she was settled on the bed with the blanket draped over her lower half for modesty, Meredith called them in. Amelia sat in the chair while Rob leaned against the foot of the bed.

  The nurse who had given Meredith the morphine, Eleanor, pulled aside the curtain and stepped into the makeshift room. “Did the morphine help? You feeling better?”

  Meredith smiled broadly. “I’m feeling great.”

  “I can see that,” Eleanor said without a smile. “Why don’t you tell me some more about why you’re here this morning?”

  “Well, I had a stomach ache all day yesterday, and then this morning it started cramping really bad,” Meredith described. It seemed that the morphine had also robbed her of her advanced vocabulary skills, which she found amusing. She chuckled softly to herself.

  “Okay, so on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the pain you felt?”

  “Well that’s a toughie. Assuming ten is ‘my face is on fire’, and one is ‘I have to burp’, I’m going to say an eight. Maybe a seven? No, an eight. Definitely an eight. Am I being graded on this?”

  Eleanor didn’t respond, simply writing the number down on Meredith’s chart. Still looking at the clipboard, she asked, “How would you rate your pain now?”

  Meredith rested a hand on her chin and looked toward the ceiling. “Um, I would say a three, which is way better than an eight. So, thank you for the drugs. Seriously. Not that I’m a drug-seeker, ‘cause I’m not. But I feel better, so thanks.”

  Amelia and Rob looked aghast at their seemingly drunk daughter. Taking in their concerned expressions, Eleanor said, “This is a normal reaction to morphine, so just enjoy it and take lots of video.” She smiled for the first time, and the expression seemed unnatural on her broad face.

  Meredith’s parents chuckled and relaxed visibly.

  Turning back to Meredith, Eleanor asked, “Can you show me where you feel the most pain?”

  Meredith gestured toward her midsection, saying, “But it’s not my appendix. I had that taken out a couple of years ago ‘cause it looked at me funny.”

  Ignoring the joke, Eleanor continued, “Okay, well there are a lot of different reasons why you could be hurting right now. I’m going to give you some contrast dye to drink, and then the doc wants us to take some pictures to see what’s going on in there. Sound like a plan?”

  Meredith nodded and Eleanor left, returning after a moment with a Styrofoam cup full of blue liquid. A straw bobbed up and down in the cup. Meredith looked at the concoction dubiously.

  “It’s Gatorade with the contrast dye in it, so it’ll taste a little metallic,” Eleanor explained. “Drink it all up, and we’ll be back soon to take you back for your scan.”

  Meredith took a sip of the drink, making a sour face. “Ugh, it tastes awful,” she whined. She took a deep breath and then drank the rest of the cup down in several large gulps, getting it over with.

  “Good girl,” Eleanor said. “Now don’t eat or drink anything else.” She took the empty cup from Meredith and left them alone.

  A little while later, a hospital worker came in and showed them how to use the TV that pulled out on an arm from the wall. He told them it could be an hour wait for the scan, and to make themselves comfortable. Rob decided to go home and get changes of clothes for himself and Amelia, and Meredith asked him to get her cell phone as well.

  After he left, Amelia fished around in her purse and pulled out a small spiral bound notebook and a pen. She thought for a moment and then drew something on a blank page, holding it up for Meredith to see.

  Meredith smiled. Her mother had drawn out a game of Hangman, which was a game they used to play in various waiting rooms when Meredith was younger. The puzzle Amelia had drawn had two words, four and five letters long. Meredith guessed a few letters, earning some filled spaces along with a head and shoulders dangling from the stick gallows. After a few more tries, she guessed the puzzle. “This sucks!” She said triumphantly, laughing.

  Amelia grinned and handed Meredith the notebook. “Your turn.”

  They went back and forth, playing several more rounds of the familiar game while they waited. After a while, an orderly came in with a wheelchair to take Meredith for her scan. The morphine had started to wear off, so Meredith began to feel increasingly uncomfortable again
as she was wheeled away.

  For the test, Meredith lay down on a slab that moved her inside a long tube. The technician told her to lie perfectly still for the scan, which Meredith found very difficult to do as her stomach cramped intensely. Fortunately, she was only in the machine for a few minutes, and then she was taken back to the curtained area where Amelia waited.

  Back in the bed, Meredith wished they would come back with more morphine for her. She closed her eyes and lay silently, hoping she might fall asleep or have some other escape from the pain.

  As if she had read Meredith’s mind, Eleanor came back into the room to check on her. “How are you doing, pain-wise?”

  Meredith gave her a weak I’m-trying-to-be-a-trooper smile. “Not so great.”

  “Well we don’t want that. Let me check with the doc to see if I can make you more comfortable. Have they come to get you for your scan yet?”

  Meredith nodded, closing her eyes and clamping down her jaw in response to another wave of pain.

  “Good. The doc should be able to have a look at the pictures shortly, and then she will come in to talk to you.” Eleanor turned to leave, but changed her mind after taking another glance at Meredith’s drawn face. She added, “It’s good you came in. We’ll take good care of you.”

  After Eleanor left, Amelia commented, “I wonder if that’s the warmest thing she’s ever said.”

  Meredith snickered through the ache in her stomach, and then said, “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts!”

  “Well, I’ll take competent over friendly any day,” Amelia concluded.

  Eleanor came back and placed an IV in Meredith’s wrist so they could keep her hydrated and administer more pain medications as needed, and shortly after that, Rob returned with Vi in tow. This was the third day in a row that Meredith had seen her friend without her typical pin-up girl make-up, and seeing Vi clean and fresh-faced reminded her again of their younger days.

  Vi came to the side of the bed and tousled Meredith’s hair. “Your hair looks like a rat’s nest,” she teased.

  “I know that hurting me is how you show your love,” Meredith responded, with an overly affectionate, sickeningly sweet smile. The pain medication was working, and Meredith was once again feeling loopy.

  Vi settled into the chair next to the bed while Rob and Amelia left in search of the hospital cafeteria, as they had been up for hours without a drop of coffee.

  “So that was weird waking up alone in your parents’ house,” Vi remarked conversationally, tossing Meredith’s cell phone onto the bed. She pulled a zip lock baggie of dry Cheerios out of her purse and popped one into her mouth with a little crunch.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. We kind of forgot about you in the throes of me dying and all.”

  “You don’t look dead to me.” Crunch.

  Meredith rolled her eyes. “Try not to sound too disappointed.”

  Vi gave her a brilliant smile and tossed another Cheerio into her mouth.

  Meredith checked her cell phone and saw that she hadn’t missed any calls. She resolved not to call Miguel again, considering that she had already tried twice. Now the ball was in his court.

  They sat conversing for a while until they were interrupted by yet another hospital worker coming into their curtained area. He was a tall, heavyset man in his mid-forties, with sandy brown hair and eyes the exact same color. “Hello, I’m here to take you back for another scan.” He smiled broadly at Meredith before continuing. “This one’s going to take just a little bit longer,” he then said, turning to Vi. “Now would be a good time for a trip to the cafeteria or something, if you want.”

  Meredith swung her legs off the bed, doing her best to keep herself covered as she did so. Matters were complicated by the fact that her hand was connected by a long tube to an IV stand. With the hospital worker’s help, she managed to get herself settled in the wheelchair without getting tangled up in the IV tube. Meredith tugged at the bottom of the too-short hospital gown, and once again draped the blanket over her bare legs, ready to go.

  The man pushed Meredith down a long hallway and past a nurses’ station, where two doctors and a nurse were standing together intently discussing a patient chart. They all looked up and fell silent as Meredith was wheeled by, and she could feel three sets of eyes following her down the hall. That was weird, she thought to herself.

  The second scan was much like the first; she lay down on a long table that inserted her into a tube. The machine was extremely loud, and the technician gave her some headphones so that she could listen to the radio while she was being scanned. For the next twenty minutes, she listened to watered down pop music and overly peppy DJ’s, which she supposed was still better than nothing at all.

  Back in the curtained area, Vi had pulled out the TV and turned it on to the news. She stared at the little six-inch screen with her mouth slightly open, and she barely looked up when Meredith returned.

  “What is it?” Meredith asked as soon as they were alone. While she settled into the bed, Vi turned the TV screen so they could both see it.

  Vi muted the TV and caught Meredith up on what she had missed. “Something weird is going on. All the crazies are out in droves shouting that the Day of Judgment is upon us. Although at this point, I almost agree with them.”

  “What? Why?”

  “In the last half hour there have been earthquakes in California, the Indian Ocean, Chile, and a bunch of other places. They weren’t huge or anything, but there have never been so many that have happened at the same time before.” Vi’s face was pale as she shared the news.

  Meredith sank back into the pillows on the hospital bed, her eyes glued to the pretty brunette newscaster’s silent face. Vi unmuted the program as the newscaster said, “So far the worst of the worldwide earthquakes appears to be in the United States. The California Earthquake Information Center estimates that the earthquake centered approximately 15 miles northeast of San Diego’s bustling downtown, shaking commuters as they headed to work at about 9:30 this morning. The Center’s assessments give this quake a magnitude of 3.4, though this is a preliminary estimate. Currently, there are no reports of immediate damage. We are now going to our correspondent, Wei Pham, who is in Pasadena with Professor Geoffrey Simonson of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory.”

  Professor Simonson’s face filled the screen. He had a leathery look to him that spoke of countless hours in the sun, and his dress was casual. It was apparent that he hadn’t planned to be featured on national television that morning. Meredith and Vi listened as Professor Simonson discussed the unprecedented nature of the worldwide earthquakes, without providing a lot of concrete explanations.

  “He’s just as stumped as the rest of us are,” Meredith said when he was finished.

  Vi nodded absently. She seemed lost in thought. Suddenly she sat up straight and gripped the arms of her chair. “Oh shit! Mere, don’t you see?”

  Startled, Meredith looked at her blankly.

  “It started with fire--” Vi began. She was cut off, however, by the curtain being yanked back to reveal a lively looking doctor with startling green eyes.

  The doctor had short blonde hair cut into a pixie cut, and she wore brightly patterned scrubs under her white lab coat. She was one of the doctors that Meredith had seen at the nurse’s station.

  “Hello, hello!” The doctor chirped energetically. “I’m Dr. Sparling.”

  Vi turned off the TV and pushed it back against the wall, giving the doctor her full attention.

  Dr. Sparling looked back and forth between the two women, Meredith in the bed and Vi sitting next to her. “Which one of you is Meredith?” She laughed at her own joke and then said, “Just kidding. I’m assuming Meredith is the one with the glassy look in her eyes?” Her eyes twinkled at Meredith as she reached down and gave Meredith’s foot a playful jostle through the blanket.

  “Yep, that’s me,” Meredith said with a friendly tone. She liked the young doctor immediately.

  “Well, m’d
ear, I’ve had a chance to look at your scans, and I think the best thing we can do for you is admit you into the hospital so we can learn a bit more about what’s happening with you.” Though Dr. Sparling kept her tone light and conversational, Meredith could tell that it was a veneer.

  “Why? What did you see on my scans?” Meredith asked with a sharp stare.

  “Well, this really isn’t my area of expertise, so I’m going to hand you off to someone far more qualified to treat you.” Dr. Sparling smiled and flipped Meredith’s chart closed. “Don’t get too comfortable here, ‘cause we’re gonna move you upstairs as soon as someone’s available to push you there.”

  “I can walk.”

  Dr. Sparling laughed. “You can also trip and fall and sue the pants off of us. No thanks!” Still chortling softly to herself, she left them alone.

  Vi scowled. “I am so annoyed that I can’t hate her.”

  Meredith chuckled. “I know, right? Like, can’t she just be a bitch for our sakes?”

  Just then, Meredith’s cell phone rang, and Meredith answered it, seeing that it was her mother calling.

  “Hi honey,” Amelia said. “They aren’t letting us come back to see you. There must be a high-profile patient here, because there are a bunch of reporters in the lobby.”

  “Oh, what a drag,” Meredith said sympathetically. “Well, the doctor just came in and said that they’re going to admit me. Once I know what room, I’ll call you and let you know.”

  Meredith hung up the phone and handed it to Vi for safekeeping. “Hey, so what were you going to say before the doctor came in?”

  Stowing Meredith’s phone in her purse, Vi looked at her contemplatively. “Right. So on Wednesday, there were fires everywhere, you know?” Vi waited for Meredith’s assent before continuing. “And then yesterday, it rained all over the world. Super weird.” Again Vi waited to ensure that Meredith was following her line of thought. “And now, today, there’s a bunch of earthquakes?”

  “So you think they’re all related.”

  Vi laughed. “Damned if I know. But, let’s say they are. What’s the pattern?”

  “Fire, water, earth… air!” Meredith exclaimed.

  Vi nodded in agreement. “Air.”

  Surprisingly, Meredith believed her. “So what should we do? It’s not like we can issue a tornado warning.”

  “Why not?”

  “Who would believe us, for one thing!”

  Vi sighed. “Yeah, they probably wouldn’t.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, staring at the floor.

  Meredith sat thinking to herself for a moment. Then, somberly she said, “But if we’re right… tomorrow we would have to live with knowing that we did nothing.”

  Vi looked up and her eyes met Meredith’s. “Let’s let someone else decide to do nothing.” Grinning, she dug around in her purse for her cell phone. She found Meredith’s first and pulled it out.

  After a quick internet search, Vi had the phone number for the National Weather Service. She pressed the phone to her ear as she listened to it ring on the other end. Then, “I think there’s going to be tornadoes tomorrow. Can you issue a warning?”

  Impatiently, Meredith blurted, “Speaker phone!”

  Vi looked down at the phone and turned the speaker on, holding the phone where they could both hear. The man at the other end was saying, “Our weather predictions are based on meteorology, not anonymous tips.”

  Vi said, “I realize that, but it’s part of a pattern--”

  Cutting her off, the man said, “We appreciate your feedback, and encourage you to send us email with your suggestions for how we can improve our service. Do you need that email address?”

  Vi tried one last time. “Meteorology didn’t predict the rain yesterday, did it? What harm is there in issuing a warning? So people hang out in their basements for a while. Big whoop.”

  “I suggest you head to the library and check out The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and then you’ll understand what the ‘big whoop’ is,” he said snidely.

  Vi told him where he could stick his book and hung up the phone.

  “Vi!” Meredith scolded.

  “What? He was an asshole, and he pissed me off.” In Vi’s mind, this was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the string of curse words that she had lobbed at the man. Her non-apologetic view of the world was one of the things that Meredith loved about her.

  Soon after that, Meredith was moved to a private room on the second floor of the hospital, and she called her parents to let them know her room number. She also made sure the nurses knew to let them in, and then happily, with another dose of morphine, she took a nap.