“Oh, goodness, mon fils,” Aimée said empathetically. “I’ll let Hannah know so she can perhaps hold things up. If Juliette is positive, we’ll have to cancel the wake since we’ll all have to quarantine. This could be a disaster on top of a disaster. Can you call me as soon as you know? Hannah’s going to be really upset. All this planning activity is what’s holding her together.”
“Of course,” Brian said, feeling a tinge guilty with his reservations about the wake, especially whether Juliette should be subjected to seeing her mother’s body. He wasn’t even sure how he felt about it himself.
As they headed for the stairs with Brian in the lead, Jeanne asked: “What was the name of the chief medical officer who encouraged your wife to be discharged before she probably should have been?”
“Dr. Kathrine Graham,” he called over his shoulder.
“I thought so,” she said irritably. “What a lousy ambassador for the medical profession! She was also the one I blame for MMH Inwood not being all that motivated to find a heart for my husband. Of course, the real fault really falls on Charles Kelley, who’s responsible for the culture and hiring her. Doesn’t it all irritate you to death when you think about it?”
Brian paused at the top of the stairs and waited for her. “It makes my blood boil,” he admitted angrily as she gained the landing. “I even stormed into Kelley’s office right after Emma died, and I would have done the same for Heather Williams’s if it had been handy. But I can’t think about this kind of stuff right now. I’ve got to concentrate on Juliette and finding a way out of this mess.”
Chapter 22
September 1
Reaching into his pocket, Brian took out his phone and checked the time. “Shit,” he whispered. “We’ve been here almost two hours.” He was talking to Jeanne but didn’t want Juliette to hear, which was unlikely because she had earbuds in and was watching cartoons on his laptop. The three of them were sitting relatively by themselves in the corner of the ED waiting room.
Getting Juliette to come to the hospital hadn’t been easy. At first, she downright refused, but Jeanne used the same tactic she’d used to get Juliette to talk in the first place. She spoke extensively to Bunny, explaining to the toy why she had to go to the hospital for a Covid-19 test. Then when Bunny finally agreed, Juliette did the same. Camila drove them and also agreed to come and pick them up after Juliette had been seen.
“I’m starting to think they are definitely being passive-aggressive and making us wait,” Brian said, still speaking softly. “I’m not as confident as you that there is the disconnect between the business side and the clinical side here in the ED. It doesn’t seem that busy for us to have to wait almost two hours with a sick four-year-old.”
“Let’s avoid jumping to conclusions. They’ve been busy enough with the three ambulances that arrived since we got here. And the clerks and the triage nurse couldn’t have been nicer. Plus, we have no idea what’s going on back in the treatment rooms.”
“I’m surprised that Juliette hasn’t complained,” Brian said, glancing over at his daughter.
“She’s been an angel,” Jeanne agreed. “Let’s give the ED team the benefit of the doubt and hope she’ll be seen shortly.”
“I have another question for you as a school psychologist. When we were in my office, it was my mother who phoned. She was calling me to say that my wife’s wake was about to begin and wanted to know when I would be bringing Juliette. I don’t know how I feel about subjecting a four-year-old to her mother’s wake. What’s your opinion?”
“Probably like your mother, as an outsider of sorts I’ve developed a lot of respect for Irish funeral traditions, including wakes. There was a wake for my husband, and I was surprised by how many children showed up, including a nephew of ten and two nieces about Juliette’s age.”
“But it’s her mother, not an aunt or uncle. I’m worried that forcing her to see the body will just add insult to injury. I mean, she already had to witness her having two seizures.”
“My advice is to ask Juliette what she wants to do. Spell it out as an opportunity to say goodbye but remind her that her mother will not speak to her or even respond in any way at all. Just be totally up front and let her decide.”
“Really?” he questioned skeptically. It seemed beyond him to turn such a decision over to a four-year-old.
“In my experience, children are capable of making a lot of decisions for themselves,” Jeanne said. “More than a lot of people give them credit for. Anyway, that’s my advice.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll think about it.”
“What about the viral illness your wife had? Is it at all contagious?”
“No, eastern equine encephalitis needs the mosquito vector,” Brian said. “I’ve learned the mosquito has to bite an infected songbird, which is the normal host, and then bite a human or some other animal.”
“Why is it called ‘equine’?”
“It first showed up in horses.”
“Thank God it at least doesn’t spread like Covid-19,” she said.
“You got that right,” Brian said without a lot of enthusiasm. He had too many other things to worry about.
“It’s terrifying to think you can get a fatal disease attending a summer barbecue. What’s amazing to me is that I’ve never learned so much about viruses until this year.”
“We healthy human beings have no real appreciation of how close we are to the precipice at any given time,” he said. “It’s especially disturbing when the institutions you count on to help when you need it, like hospitals and health insurance, can’t be depended upon.”
“It’s a scary situation on so many levels.”
“How much did MMH Inwood sue you for?” Brian said. “I hope you don’t mind me asking.”
“No, I don’t mind at all,” Jeanne reassured him. “It was a bit over four hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yikes,” Brian said. “How did your bill get that high?”
“It’s easy,” she said. “There were multiple admissions involved, several stays in the cardiac intensive care unit, and the surgery to implant the ventricular assist device. It adds up quickly, especially for people like you and me with lousy health insurance.”
“That’s what I’ve been learning,” he said bitterly.
“The four hundred thousand — plus was before I got Megan Doyle involved. She’s cut it down almost in half.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“Yeah, but it’s still about a quarter of a million dollars,” Jeanne said. “That’s enough to bankrupt most Americans except the top one percent. What excuse did Peerless give for not paying any of your hospital bill? It couldn’t have been the preexisting excuse they used for us.”
Brian gave a short, disgusted laugh. “No, they didn’t claim Emma’s problem was a preexisting condition. There were two parts to their strategy. The first part was the ED bill, which they said they weren’t going to cover because Emma was ambulatory and should have gone to a GP who could have arranged admission. They said they were trying to rein in the overuse of hospital Emergency Department visits. It was just a bogus excuse, and they invited me to sue, the bastards. With the hospital bill it was a unique way of interpreting the deductible. I won’t bore you with the details. But even if they were going to pay, it would have only been a thousand dollars a day, which, when my wife and I were in the market to get health insurance we could afford, we mistakenly thought was a significant contribution. We had no idea how pitifully inadequate it is.”