CHAPTER TWENTY
Emma
As I finishthe last word, my heartache continues to grow for Grams, both for what she endured back then and for what she is going through right now. At least I know she somehow survived that ordeal all those years ago, and I’m eager to find outhow.
I hear feet storming through the hallway amid breathless gasps, and I can only imagine the sounds belong to Mom. The running stops, probably when they direct her to this cave they refer to as a waitingroom.
Just as I predicted, the door opens, and I slip the diary back into my bag to avoid questions since Grams asked me to keep this to myself, which I’m starting to understandwhy.
Mom falls into me without a word, and her body trembles as she bursts into tears. “I’m not sure how much more I can take,” shesays.
“We’re going to make it through this,” I tell her, trying to sound as positive as I can. “Grams doesn’t give up.” I know thisnow.
“How did you get here so fast? Where were you when you got the news? Please tell me you weren’t at Mike’shouse.”
I take in a slow, deep breath, needing a moment to switch gears from death and morbidity to explaining how I’ve suddenly fallen into a committed relationship with my grandmother’s doctor over the past two days. “I was with Jackson,” I tellher.
Of course, her face registers a look of surprise as she glances down at her watch to confirm the time. Since she was, in fact, woken from a dead sleep in the middle of the night, and I was with Jackson when that happened, it only takes a moment for her to put two and twotogether.
“Are you two—” She puts her hands together and tries to smile, but her lips quiver instead. There’s no hiding how scared she is—I understand. “At least something good is happening now with all this other horrible stuff going on with Grams,” Mom says, trying to sound upbeat. She looks away for a second and then back at me, her eyes burning with curiosity. “Were you…” she stops short of finishing the question and says, “Never mind, it’s not my place.” There isn’t much Mom won’t ask me, but for some reason, she is respecting my privacy tonight. She already has too much on her mind while worrying about Grams, so I assume that’swhy.
Mom repositions herself in the seat beside me and places her hands over her heart. “Where were the nurses when she gotup?”
“I don’t know,Mom.”
“Someone should have been withher.”
“I don’t know how that works,” I tellher.
“Well, I’ll have a word with whoever is incharge.”
That’s not what I would be doing now. “We want them to help us with Grams. You can’t start threatening and scolding them. Have you talked toAnnie?”
“She should be here any moment.” Mom picks up her phone, checking for missed calls or text messages, but her phone is always on the loudest volume, so I don’t see how it would be possible to miss anything. “How long before we’ll hear something?” sheasks.
“I really don’t know any more than you do,” I tellher.
Annie quietly makes her way into the room. Her rosy cheeks are stained with tears, and her makeup-less face gives the appearance that she’s closer to her actual age than she typical looks. “How did you hear about her first?” Annie asksimmediately.
“Oh, she just happened to be at the hospital checking in on Mom when it occurred,” Mom says toAnnie.
For the fact that Annie doesn’t question the time of night I was apparently checking on Grams, I’ll assume she’s as exhausted asMom.
I am impressed that Mom isn’t pressing the matter. She likes to find distractions when she’s upset, so this is big. Maybe she doesn’t want to jinx it. I’m sure under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be able to contain herself, and the information she thinks she has would have been blurted out to Annie by now. Mom and Annie are like two peas in a pod. Annie never had children, so I have been her sole focus just as I have been Mom’s. Three women, including Grams, have simultaneously lived vicariously through my life since I was old enough to be considered a prime age for love, and all the other exciting stuff that young women are supposed to experience. They all think I should be focused on marriage, having children, and keeping the perfect home. Yet, here I am, the ultimate disappointment who has preferred her career over everything else, including a normal relationship with a man. Jackson may be a game changer, but I still don’t see a reason to rush my lifeaway.
With the thought of Jackson lingering through my over-stressed mind, the door opens, revealing his scrub-clad body and a look of exhaustion. We all stand up, waiting for his life-or-death answer to our burningquestion.
“I was able to revive her. My assumptions about the pacemaker dislodging when she fell forward, were accurate. It didn’t cause her harm, but it wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. Her blood pressure elevated from the fall and her heart was racing at a fast pace, so the arrhythmia caught up to her, which caused her heart to panic after losing a sense ofdirection.”
“Is she going to be okay?” I blurtout.
“Before we re-attached the pacemaker, we did some more in-depth scans of her heart. During a CT scan and an angiogram, we noticed that her aortic valve is very narrow. Even though the strokewascaused by the atrial fibrillation, we now know that she is also dealing with a restricted and narrowed valve. The narrowing means that it’s harder for the blood to get through the valve. This may have been a contributing factor to her falling tonight too. I believe she may have blacked out when she stood up due to a lack of blood supply getting through the valve and to the brain.” The information rolling off Jackson’s tongue is jumbling in my head—it’s a lot to take in. I know there is a reason for all the information, and I’m scared of the outcome. “The bright side of the story is, we spotted the narrowed valve because of the accident. It would have been spotted eventually, but with everything that has happened to her in the past few days, the most important thing was to stabilize her and then see what else was going on, but now weknow.”
“What does all of this mean?” Mom pleads. The medical jargon is confusing, and I’m trying to understand it all too, but I can assume it all means that there’s a bigger problem with Grams’s heart, and it isn’t being fixed by thepacemaker.
“It could mean more surgery—an aortic valve replacement, to be exact,” hesays.
“Is it risky?” Annie asks as she trembles while holding onto Mom’sarm.
