“I didn’t say that, Frannie. I said we discussed you.”
Fuming, I began pulling up handfuls of innocent grass and throwing them at innocent Chuck. They were too light to reach the dog, but he woke up and kept an eye on me just in case. “Yeah, well, tell me, what did you two prognosticates decide?”
Inside his house the phone rang. Suspiciously, George got right up to answer it. That wasn’t like him. I had the feeling he did it only to stall for time. He came hurrying back out with a portable telephone extended in front of him stiff-armed. “Frannie, it’s Pauline. Magda just collapsed. She’s unconscious.”
In the minutes it took for George to drive me home, the ambulance I’d called from his place was already coming down the other end of our street, siren howling. As both vehicles pulled up to the house, the word “oxymoron” came to mind. Because that is exactly what this situation was—an oxymoron. Knowing what was wrong with my wife before a doctor even felt her pulse was of inestimable advantage. The irony being that I also knew her situation was hopeless. Take your time, Doctor. Because no matter what you do it’s useless—she’ll be dead of a big fat juicy brain tumor within a year. I hadn’t told George about it. I’d only said that as an old man in Vienna I was married to Susan Ginnety. In typical Dalemwood fashion he’d paused, taken another bite of his chocolate bar and said flatly, “That’s interesting.”
The four of us raced into the house. When we slammed the door, Pauline called out to us from the kitchen. Magda lay on the floor in there next to the table. Pauline had put a pillow from the couch under her head and lined up her arms and legs so that she looked at peace lying there but also too much like a corpse. I immediately looked to see if she had “posturing”– where limbs twist inward as if the muscles have drawn too tight on the bones—which is one of the worst possible signs of brain tumor.
The paramedics dropped to their knees and began their grim work. I had been a medic in Vietnam and knew what they were doing. That didn’t make it any easier to watch. I kept wanting to say things like “Check the Babinski” and “Is she decerebrated?” but I didn’t because they didn’t need anyone interfering in their very strict by-the-book procedures. Nevertheless I watched what they did very carefully.
One hand across her mouth, Pauline gestured me over urgently with the other. George saw this and moved over behind the paramedics, as far away from us as possible.
“What happened, Pauline?”
“We were talking and her eyes, like, suddenly rolled up in her head? Then she slid out of the chair. Like she was playing some kind of creepy joke? Mom’s been having bad headaches for the last couple of weeks. She didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you to worry.”
I’m sure she was surprised by my reaction. Probably expecting me to go ballistic because I hadn’t been told about these headaches, I only looked long at my shoes and nodded.
“I haven’t noticed it, but has she acted strange recently? Like has she been grouchy or irrational suddenly out of the blue?”
A paramedic pushed up one of Magda’s eyelids and shone a small yellow flashlight into her eye. He said, “She doesn’t have any posturing but there’s some kind of unequal pupil response here.”
I couldn’t hold back any longer. There was no point to it. “Look for signs of a brain tumor.” Both men looked up at me. “She had blurred vision and bad headaches recently.”
“She never said anything about blurred vision to me, Frankie.”
I squeezed Pauline’s arm to be still.
“Do you know the signs, Chief McCabe?”
“I was a medic in the service. Do a pinprick test. See her response to pain.”
One of the guys looked at his partner. “Christ, I never had a brain tumor case before.”
Pauline stepped in close. I could smell her breath when she spoke. “Frannie, do you really think Mom has a brain tumor?”
Lie to the girl? Tell her the truth? “I don’t know, sweetheart. But I want them to check that possibility. Let’s wait to hear what these guys say. It’s always better to be safe in things like this. Let them check everything.” I moved Pauline so that she stood in front of me. I wrapped my arms around her and held on for dear life. She stood stiff and trembling. I felt so helpless and goddamned sorry for her. I didn’t want to know what I knew about her mother’s condition.
She moaned. “Mom. Oh, Mom.”
For the first time in my life, my heart began beating erratically. It was the damnedest feeling. Suddenly it appeared to climb higher in my chest until it felt like it was at the bottom of throat. Then it began pounding hard and unevenly. My cheeks got hot. I touched one of them and my fingers felt very cold on it. My heart pounded throughout the whole top of my chest. It went fast fast fast, then seemed to stop, go fast a couple more times, stop... The normal rhythm was gone, it was on its own, lurching around inside me like a car being parallel parked at high speed.
While still holding Pauline, I slid my hand down from my cheek to the left side of my chest. I thought I could feel my heart banging away under there. It was strange, fascinating and terrible.
“Frannie, are you okay?” George was watching me.
“Yeah, I’m just having some arrhythmia. It makes sense though with the stress.”
“What is that, Frannie? What’s wrong with you?” Pauline’s voice was afraid. Was I going to collapse next?
“It means my heart’s beating fast. No big deal. Don’t worry.”
“You want me to check you out?” One of the men asked with the blood pressure cuff in his hand. I shook my head.
They moved Magda onto a stretcher and hooked up an IV. Pauline kept asking what they were doing at each step and she deserved to know. I carefully described the procedures, keeping my voice cool and confident throughout. That tone appeared to work because her shoulders unhunched and after a while she stopped nervously licking her lips every few seconds.
“We’re all done here. You want to ride with us to the hospital?”
“Pauline, you want to go with your Mom? George can drive me over in his car.” I thought I needed about ten minutes alone with George to talk about things. Just enough time to ride from our house to the Crane’s View hospital.
Her body immediately clenched again. “No! I’m not riding in any ambulance. I don’t want to, Frannie. Please let me go with George. Please!”
Her quick, unexpected hysteria threw us all off. Bypassing the diplomatic, I took her firmly by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Stop! It’s okay, honey, everything is okay. You don’t have to go in the ambulance. Go with George and I’ll ride with Mom to the hospital. Just take it easy, huh? Everything will be okay.”
While I spoke she looked at the floor, nodding the whole time like her head was mounted on a spring. “Good. Okay. I’ll come right behind you. But, Frannie? Should I ask the doctors about my tattoo when I get there? Do you think I should ask them why my tattoo disappeared?”
What the hell was she talking about? When it eventually dawned on me I had to squint to focus my mind on what had happened to her earlier that morning. “Uh, no. We’ll do that another time. Right now let’s take care of Magda.”
“Okay. But Frannie, will Gee-Gee be at the hospital?”
“I—I don’t know, honey. I don’t really know where Gee-Gee is right now.”
Magda regained consciousness riding in the ambulance. I had been talking to one of the paramedics who, it turned out, went to the high school the other day to pick up Antonya Corando’s body. I hadn’t recognized him.
“Frannie?” My wife’s voice sounded very soft and sexy. It sounded perversely like she was inviting me to bed. She might even have said my name more than once but her voice was so faint that it would have been easy to miss.
“Magda, how are you? How do you feel? Are you a little foggy?” I touched her temple and stroked it. Her face felt cold in some places, hot in others.