But he’d carry the weight of it for the rest of his life, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forgive himself.
At Langstrom’s direction Eva gently eased Lucas forward and pressed the ice pack to the injured area on his back, providing some relief with cold. They all waited, Terry and Langstrom quietly tossing medical jargon at each other that Lewis only vaguely understood. Probably as much to fill the silence as to discuss the injury and how it related to Lucas’s condition. They were infrequently interrupted by more coughing/screaming fits, and Lewis wanted to run each time.
After about fifteen minutes Langstrom had her remove the pack, and with another clean cloth and rubbing alcohol from his bag wiped the area clean and dry. Then he prepared to tape the rib.
Even knowing the necessity of it, Lewis still winced slightly as the surgeon laid strips of duct tape directly on Lucas’s skin, horizontally across his back and around the side to the front of his chest, as well as diagonally over one shoulder and down along the spine just behind the shoulder blade.
“Shouldn’t you go all the way around?” Lewis asked. He thought of movies where tightly wrapped strips of cloth completely covered the injured person’s chest.
Terry answered for the busy surgeon. “A full wrap would prevent the lungs from expanding. Deep breathing is hard for a patient suffering from Pertussis, but it’s important he breathe as deeply as he can.”
“Even with a broken rib?” Eva asked worriedly.
“Even then,” Langstrom replied. “As much as the pain allows.” He applied one last strip of tape, carefully smoothed them all to make sure they’d stuck, then backed away. “You mentioned when you hurt the other two ribs that lying flat is difficult. Let’s prop you fully upright and find a way to support your head on either side for when you sleep.”
Lucas nodded and started to speak, then abruptly began the unbroken series of soft, wheezing coughs that were a prelude to the more intense coughing fits. The expression of fear and resignation on his face as he finally sucked in a breath after almost ten seconds, then began violently coughing hard enough to hunch over, was one of the most terrible Lewis had ever seen.
Although he could barely see through his tears he still looked away, gut wrenching, as his dad once again gave strangled cries of pain through his coughing. The tape didn’t seem to have helped at all.
The cries abruptly stopped, and he turned to see his dad twitching violently, then slumping bonelessly against his wife as he blacked out, eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. A couple seconds later he came to, jerked upright, and sucked in a sobbing breath as he screamed in pain again.
His screams cut off into panting, desperate breaths, broken by wrenching moans. “I can’t,” he begged. “Dear God, I can’t do this. Please make it stop.”
Lewis looked at Terry and Langstrom, and from the frustrated and hopeless expressions on their faces knew there was nothing they could do.
“If there were any painkillers I’d give them to you in a heartbeat, Lucas,” Terry said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Lewis flinched at that and felt a new surge of guilt.
Lucas barely seemed to hear. “Months of this,” he mumbled. “I’m not sure I can last a day. I’d rather be dead.”
“Don’t say that!” his wife said fiercely, gripping his hand so tight her knuckles were white. “We’ll get through this.”
Lewis looked away as his dad started crying again. “I’ll go ask around for medicine again,” he mumbled, backing out of the room. Nobody spoke as he fled out the door.
It was the middle of the night, he’d already canvassed the whole town searching for anyone who had anything that could help, and in the cold and dark the best he was going to accomplish was to make himself sick too. He’d go back inside soon, although he wasn’t sure how he’d bear it, but for now he’d just needed to escape.
He huddled down against the wall of the house, the snow soft beneath him, and stared at nothing. A few minutes later Langstrom and Terry emerged, splitting off to return to their homes. Either they didn’t see him in the dark or they were giving him some space, but either way he was left alone to try to come to terms with what was coming.
His dad wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t.
Chapter Nineteen
Nature
It seemed like a miracle when Lucas went the whole day without coughing. He even managed to sleep, waking frequently to take great gulps of water before sinking down into unconsciousness again.
Lewis didn’t know if some protective instinct was keeping his dad’s body from coughing, to prevent doing further injury to the rib and causing more unbearable agony. Or maybe it was just luck. Either way he was fervently thankful all the same.
He spent the reprieve scouring the town again, desperate to find someone, anyone, who had medicine. Anything that could help with pain, or ease coughing, or even an inhaler or something that might help clear his dad’s airways to make breathing easier and reduce the frequency of coughing fits.
There was nothing. What little the town had had been “donated” to the military, or used up by this point with no chance to replace any of it. If any individuals had private stores they weren’t saying, and although Lewis had numerous debts he could call in if he wanted, nobody seemed willing or able to help him like he’d helped them.
That wasn’t how he wanted to think, but in his despair and frustration it was hard not to. As night fell he trudged back home, hoping and praying that his dad was still enjoying this reprieve, able to rest and hopefully benefit from some miraculous recovery.
But there was no miracle, and the reprieve had been short-lived. Lewis returned to the sound of coughing, his dad’s obvious agony throughout the fit, and it hit him like a bullet to the heart. Even knowing it was irrational he’d tried to fool himself into believing that the coughs would suddenly and permanently stop.
His mom rushed out of the sickroom when she heard the door open as Lewis came in. Her face was lined and haggard, her shoulders hunched. She looked as if she’d aged a decade, and he was suddenly worried that the stress she was under would cause her to fall ill, too. If not with whooping cough then with something else.
“You have something,” she said, more a plea than a question. “Please, tell me you have something.”
He shook his head woodenly, unable to speak his failure. His mom’s shoulders slumped even more, and she dropped onto the end of his and Jane’s bed and collapsed into exhausted, despairing weeping.
His dad had refused to eat after the new broken rib, since even soup was bringing on coughing fits. And their hopes that a day of rest and healing might’ve done some good were quickly dashed as those fits came on more frequent and severe than they ever had before. That night was the worst yet.
The next morning the Smiths came over to be with them during this most difficult of times. Eva, Mary, Aunt Clair, and Linda huddled into a weeping ball, while George and Trev came to rest a hand on Lewis’s shoulder, then stand with him silently.
After a short time of mutual comfort Lucas, speaking in a weak, whispery voice, called from the next room that he’d like to speak to each of them in turn. He obviously intended it as his final farewell and last bit of fatherly, brotherly, and unclely advice.
No one wanted to acknowledge that that’s what he was doing, but when he called for his sister to come in she went, shutting the door behind her at his request.