Return to Gladewater

Dani felt icy fingers of foreboding skittering up her spine as she reached for the cold metal handle of the break room door. She shivered. Shake it off girl! Everyone’s stable, that’s the only reason you’re able to grab a few minutes! She whipped the mask off her face as she dropped into a chair. She was eight hours into her twelve-hour shift in the CCU and had been running non-stop. Her feet were throbbing, and she had an ache building behind her eyes. She smiled thankfully at her friend, Kim, who pushed a 44 oz Diet Dr. Pepper in her direction across the table. “You’re a lifesaver!” Dani said, taking a large gulp of the icy drink. Since she didn’t drink coffee, Diet Dr. Pepper was her main vice. To her ongoing dismay, the break room soda machine didn’t carry them, so she went without unless she was able to sneak downstairs to the cafeteria. “This is the first time I’ve been able to take a break all day. How did you know I’d be here dying for one right now?”

Kim chuckled. “Brandon said you texted him a few minutes ago that you were going on break. His case is running long so he let me go on break early and asked me to bring it to you.” Kim was Dr. Brandon Walker III’s scheduling nurse and, Dani often thought, knew more about Dani’s boyfriend than she did.

“That man does have his moments.” Dani took another large gulp of soda. She did wish those moments were more frequent.

“Just four more hours to go.” Dani slid off her clogs and propped her feet up on an open chair. “I’m hoping Bed 5 stays stable until tomorrow. It’s been touch and go all day but his vitals are looking better now and we haven’t had to put him back on the vent.”

“We’ve been pretty smooth all day,” Kim said, taking her popcorn out of the microwave, “until this guy Brandon has on the table now. The guy’s vessels are pretty friable so he’s had to go slower than he normally does.” She took a sip of her coffee. “He was about to finish when he let me go though. I’m sure he’ll have his fellow close up and be out shortly.”

Dani thought again how she seemed to spend much more time with Brandon’s scheduler than with Brandon. Kim had fallen into running interference between them more and more lately as Brandon had less and less time to spend with her himself. They really needed to get away. Maybe she could finally get him out to Gladewater for Memorial Day since they’d had to cancel Easter at the last minute for that quadruple bypass. He did have partners after all.

“Too bad I’m going to miss him again. We can’t seem…” Dani was interrupted by her cell playing Tanya Tucker’s Texas When I Die. Dani smiled ruefully. The tone was her Aunt Lu’s designated one. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to have time to hear her aunt’s always entertaining updates on Gladewater life before she was due back on the floor.

“Hi, Aunt Lu! Sorry I can’t visit right…” Dani was interrupted not by her aunt’s chatty soprano but her uncle’s slow, deep bass.

“We need you, baby girl. The doctors say it’s real bad.” She could hear the agony in Uncle Eustace’s voice behind that slow, Texas drawl.

Dani straightened and her feet hit the floor. “What happened?” Kim’s hand froze inside the popcorn bag as she heard the fear in her friend’s voice.

“Lu’s had a stroke,” her uncle said with a catch in his voice. He paused and she heard him take a strangled breath trying to cut off a sob. “They don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”

Dani had never heard her uncle break down. The man who had raised her since she was eight, and her parents were killed by a drunk driver, was a rock. Stoic and steady. Always there for her and anyone who needed him.

“Oh my God!” Time slowed. Her breath caught in her chest and she heard her heart pounding loudly in her ears. She clutched at the small, silver caduceus necklace that Aunt Lu and Uncle Eustace had given her for her graduation from nursing school. It was the only jewelry she ever wore at work. Stroking the charm, she pulled herself back into nurse mode by sheer force of will. She didn’t have time to fall apart.

“I’m on my way! I’ll find someone to cover the rest of my shift and leave asap. You hold on, Uncle E. I’ll call you when I’m on the road.”

“Hurry,” was his only response.

“Kim, my aunt’s had a stroke.” Dani’s voice was steady but her friend could see the terror in her bright green eyes. “Can you please let Brandon know I have to go to Gladewater? I’ll call him when I know something.”

“Of course, Dani, anything! Do you need me to help with anything else?”

Dani tried to think of what she had to get done before she could get on the road. “Not right now but thanks. I’ve got to go tell Margarite I’ve got to leave early. She’s not going to be happy since we’ve been so short staffed lately but she’s going to have to make it work.” She hated to leave her team in a lurch, but she couldn’t feel guilty about it right now. Her aunt and uncle were too important to her.

“I can call Janice and see if she can come in,” Kim suggested. “She’s been cross trained in the CCU.”

“That would be fabulous, Kim! Thanks so much.”

Dani quickly slipped on her shoes and ran out the door to get back to the unit. Between giving report to one of her coworkers and tracking down her supervisor, she ran headlong into her friend, Zane, while she was taking a corner at full speed.

“Dani, whoa!” He grasped her arms to keep her from falling. “What’s happening?”

“Oh, Zane! Thank God!” The collision almost made her lose the tenuous hold she had on the panic bubbling just under the surface, but she pulled it back just before it spilled over. Not now Dani. Keep it together. “My uncle just called. My Aunt Lu has had a CVA. He says it’s bad.”

“Oh, Dani, I’m so sorry!” He gave her a quick hug. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“I may take you up on that,” she said. “I need to see what the doctors there are saying. I’m trying to get out of here right now.”

“Of course!” Zane replied. “You just let me know if there’s anything I can do and I’ll be there.”

“You’re the best, Zane! I’ll call you soon!” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and was back on the run.

Half an hour later, she was in Pearl, her white Mercedes convertible, speeding toward her condo. In her bedroom, she threw everything haphazardly into a large Prada bag that Brandon had given her for her 29th birthday. Fifteen minutes later she was jumping in Pearl again, not worrying who saw her in ratty yoga pants, an old T-shirt and flip flops with her long red curls in a messy bun on top of her head. The people who had stepped in to save a little girl, when she had no one, needed her and she had to get to them.

At the little community hospital in Gladewater, Dani found her uncle in the ICU waiting room. He looked deflated, not like the large, solid man she knew and loved.

“Uncle E!” she cried, running to him. As his big arms enveloped her, she could feel the fine tremors in his body.

After a long moment, she pushed back from him and looked up into his bloodshot eyes. “Tell me what the doctors are saying.”

Eustace breathed out a long breath. “It’s a big one, baby girl. They said she…she might not walk or talk again. Can you imagine Lu not being able to talk?” His voice broke again.

“She’s gonna beat this,” Dani told him, hugging him forcefully. “They don’t know Aunt Lu. Small but fierce, right?”

Her uncle took her to her aunt’s room. The silence was only broken by the beeping of monitors and her aunt’s breathing which seemed louder than normal with the oxygen mask that covered her nose and mouth.

As Dani saw her aunt’s small, pale form lying so still in the crisp, white hospital sheets, all the trappings of success she had acquired didn’t seem important anymore. Not her coveted ICU nurse job, not her high-rise condo, not her accomplished surgeon boyfriend. Only this little woman lying in the hospital bed and the large man beside her holding her hand, had any meaning for her.

Dani stroked her hand lightly over her aunt’s white hair. It was a shock to see it laying loose on the pillow and not in her normal, hard-sprayed updo. She fought back tears as she held Uncle E’s hand tight and remembered that night - the night they had come to save her.

***

Flashing lights. Lots of flashing lights. Blue and red strobe lights came through the windows of her bedroom and bounced off eight-year-old Dani’s pink walls. They startled her when they first woke her up but then she lay there mesmerized by the colors. She thought they were really pretty dancing through her windows and onto her bedroom wall. Then she heard Melanie, her babysitter, scream. She jack knifed up in bed, held her covers up to her chest, and froze, scared to move. She listened hard but after that scream, all she could hear were low mumbles and crying. She gathered her courage, slipped on her bunny slippers, and crept down the hall to the top of the stairs. She squatted down to make herself as small as possible and listened again. She tried to process what she was hearing but didn’t understand. She heard heavy steps coming up the scuffed, wooden steps but couldn’t seem to move. A large shadow loomed over her and she looked up with big wide eyes. A policeman. A policeman in a dark blue uniform.

He sat down on the step just below the little girl in the Cinderella nightgown. “Dani, honey? I’m Officer Garrett.” She just stared into his tired looking, deep brown eyes. “Can you come downstairs with me?”

Dani couldn’t answer. Her mind was racing. Mama and Daddy always said if she needed help, she should find a policeman. Do I need help? She didn’t know.

“Is it ok if I pick you up? We can go see some people outside that are here to help you. Is that ok?”

She peeked around the corner and looked through the stair rails at Melanie in the living room. She was sitting with another policeman and sobbing with her hands over her face. Melanie was always laughing. Dani had never seen her cry. Maybe she did need help. Dani glanced at her bunny slippers, then nodded. Mama wouldn’t want her to get her slippers muddy and it was raining outside. If she was going outside, he should carry her. Keeping her slippers clean seemed very important right now.

Officer Garrett picked her up and on the way to the door grabbed the Aran afghan her Aunt Lu had knitted that was on the back of the couch and wrapped her in it. She stared at Melanie over his shoulder as the policeman took her out of the house.

The lights that were so pretty on her bedroom wall became overwhelming when she was outside in the middle of them. There were lots and lots of people there, too – other policemen, neighbors under umbrellas, an ambulance with more lights and even a fire truck. It was all too much for a little girl woken from sleep in the middle of the night. She hid her face in Officer Garrett’s shoulder and tried to block out all the noise. She concentrated on the way the scratchy material of his uniform felt on her cheek. He smelled like some kind of cologne and that reminded her of the way Daddy smelled when he went out with Mama. She liked it.

She felt the policeman carrying her up a big step and then he was putting her down on a skinny bed in a very bright car – no, this was an ambulance.

“Dani, sweetie, can you hear me?” Officer Garrett asked her as he sat her on the bed inside the vehicle. The rain was loud as it continued to pound on the roof of the ambulance. She pulled the afghan tighter around her and studied her feet again. Good, they were still clean.

“She’s in shock.” A woman’s voice now. One she didn’t recognize. The lady was in a different kind of blue uniform. She wondered what shock was. Did I do something bad? Was that why all the policemen were here?

“I’ll start some fluids,” the strange woman continued talking to the policeman. “Is the babysitter going to be ok? Can she talk to us about allergies or anything about her medical history until we locate some family?”

“I think she’s starting to settle down now. Ben has her in the living room. I’ll go see what I can find out while you take care of this little one.”

“Dani,” the nice officer who had carried her here said to her in a calm, soft voice, sitting on a bench next to her, “this is Amanda. She’s going to take good care of you. I’m going to go talk to Melanie again.” He rubbed her back a little, then left.

Dani looked up quickly, her big green eyes widening with fear, following his exit and what was going on around her. More bright flashing lights. They hurt her eyes. Crackling static and talking from police radios. Neighbors staring at her. She tore her eyes from the scene outside the ambulance and looked at the lady.

“Here ya go, honey. Let’s scoot on back here. I think I may even have a teddy bear back here that needs a new home.”

The little redhead looked around at all the strange metal and black things hanging from the wall as she scooted farther into the ambulance on the white bed.

Where was the teddy bear? Was Melanie ok? Where are mommy and daddy? Why are all these people here? As the nice lady handed her the stuffed animal and let her lie down on the bed, she closed her eyes tight. She felt her bunny slippers still on her feet under the blanket and she was just happy they would stay dry now and mama wouldn’t be upset.

Dani only vaguely remembered the ambulance ride. The next thing she knew she was in a very white, very quiet room with only the newly acquired teddy bear for company. She thought it must be a hospital because it smelled funny – like the time she had fallen off the monkey bars and broken her wrist. Mama and Daddy had taken her to a hospital then and she had gotten a purple cast. It had hurt a little but the cast was pretty neat. Mama had made her promise not to hit anyone with it at school, not even Billy, who was mean and pulled her pigtails. She was a good girl, though, and didn’t hit anyone with it. Do I need another cast? Were Mama and Daddy on their way?

She must have fallen asleep again because the next thing she remembered was her Aunt Lu and Uncle Eustace standing by the bed in full, dazzling color against the sea of white in the room. They looked down at her and looked sad.

“Hi there, baby girl,” Uncle E had said in that slow East Texas drawl he had. “You don’t worry about nothin’. You’re gonna come home with us and everything is gonna be just fine.” He ran a hand over her head softly, then picked her up, kissing her on her forehead and hugging her to him.

Her aunt had tears in her eyes but kissed her on her cheek and rubbed her back up and down, smiling at her. “You’re gonna be fine, Dani Lynn, just fine. We love you so much and you’re going to love living in Gladewater. You’ll see.”