They hadn’t been married in years. Did he really think she was weak enough to give him some of the money she’d earned? For his new girlfriend? For their child?
Although Helena had recently been feeling better than she had in years, the walking in the heat and through the sand had nearly destroyed her. Her heart thrashed in her chest. She raised her water bottle to gaze longingly at the few drops that remained. None of it would sustain her.
She suddenly felt like she was going to pass out: from exhaustion, from loneliness, from sorrow.
She had half a mind to call Matteo, right from this beach. She’d put his number in her phone, of course, she had. But she hadn’t considered calling it till now, when she felt so awful that he probably wouldn’t recognize her anyway.
Staggering back toward the trail, back toward home, Helena realized that she probably wouldn’t make it. There was a road not far from here. She could see it, its asphalt shining. She wondered if she should limp over there and try to flag someone down. She wished there was someone at this beach, someone who would notice her distress. But she was alone.
It was during this high-stress moment, this chaos, that she remembered she had health insurance. She didn’t have to let herself suffer just because she couldn’t pay to take care of herself any longer. As another moment of unsteadiness came over her, as her stomach tightened with nausea, she called an ambulance, telling the operator on the line where she was and what she was feeling. “I’m going to pass out,” she heard herself say, before she finally did.
Helena came to when EMT workers hauled her onto a gurney and carried her to the ambulance waiting on the road. She felt groggy, and everything felt unreal. The EMT workers had facesshe almost recognized, as though she’d gone to high school with them, as though she’d nearly forgotten them in some long-ago past. But she knew that was just in her overheated mind.
During the ride to the hospital, she mumbled to the EMTs that she had a liver disease, that she hadn’t been taking care of herself correctly. “I can’t take care of myself all the time,” she mumbled.
The EMT workers sprang into action, hooking her up with an IV drip that relieved her anxiety and plunged her in and out of consciousness. When she came to again, she was in a hospital room, hooked up to several machines, her body exhausted, her eyes half open. A nurse came in to check on her, smiling gently when she realized that Helena was half-awake.
“You’re going to be just fine, honey,” she told Helena. “The doctor will be in shortly.”
Helena’s heart filled with hope that the doctor in question would be Bethany, that kind-hearted woman who’d gone out of her way to suggest a free consultation. “Tell her that things have changed,” Helena mumbled to the nurse. “Tell her that I want to try.”
She knew she wasn’t making any sense. The nurse patted her shoulder again, then retreated, leaving Helena alone.
But the doctor who came in was a man, rather than a woman. Helena couldn’t hide her disappointment. After she’d told the doctor—briefly—about her liver disease, she asked, “But where is Bethany Sutton?”
The doctor looked taken aback. “She’s out, I’m afraid,” he said.
“But maybe I could see her tomorrow?” Helena suggested.
“I’m going to be your doctor going forward,” the man said. “But I can give Dr. Sutton a call and talk to her about your previous history together.”
Helena felt like a child, demanding things and people that didn’t matter. “It’s okay,” she said gently.
“I see that you’re on a list for a liver transplant,” the doctor went on.
“It’s a pipe dream,” Helena said. She didn’t add that she hadn’t had health insurance till now.
“Until then,” the doctor began, “we’re going to need to think about the medications you’re on, what you’re eating, and how you’re staying healthy. We’ll have to closely monitor your MELD score. We want your body as healthy as possible before it receives the liver transplant.” He said a few things that went in and out of Helena’s ear, things that she knew didn’t pertain to her, as she probably would never receive a liver transplant.
But when the doctor left her to fall back asleep again, the nurse came back in, her eyes buggy. “Honey, I just realized! You’re that artist I love on social media!”
Helena laughed as she drifted away. It was funny to be recognized as a minor “celebrity” so late in life. It was funny to feel at the end of it all, yet live in the hearts and minds of so many.
17
Two floors up from Helena’s hospital room, Bethany Sutton was on bed rest and out of her mind with misery. What had begun with a warning from Dr. Schreiber and a week or two of “slowing down” had eventually crescendoed to too many surgeries, too many events, too many family parties, and too much stress. It was like she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
She regretted it, to say the least.
Now, Bethany was hooked up to IV drips, splayed back, wearing a hospital gown that she thought made her look old and washed-out. She was nearly five months pregnant, and the baby made himself known under the blankets, a little mound that said, “Your life is different now! Listen to your body!”
Rod, Maddie, Tommy, and Phoebe were all there for a visit, eating snacks and asking Bethany how she was feeling. She’d been at the hospital since yesterday morning, a strange time of urgency that had begun with tears and ended with her collapse. Rod had stayed overnight with her last night, in a separate cot they’d wheeled in. But Bethany felt lonely and alienated despite having her family here.
That afternoon, before coming here, Rod had taken the kids shopping for school supplies. Incredibly, school started in two weeks, and they needed all kinds of pencils, notebooks, binders, and so on. A lot of their curriculum was available on computers and tablets as well, which wasn’t entirely thrilling to Bethany. But the future was inevitable. She knew better than to fight against it.
Just as her children prepared to pack up and head home for dinner, Dr. Marsh appeared in the doorway. He was a doctor from another floor who often worked in the emergency room if they were short-staffed. Bethany eyed him curiously.
“Dr. Marsh?”
