Mrs right zakrzewski ant.., p.26
Mrs. Right (Zakrzewski Anthologies), page 26
“Does he know I’m here?”
The doctor kept her gaze on Kolya for a few seconds before looking again at Jackie.
“I really don’t know for sure, one way or another. Your husband is young and healthy, and he has been showing steadily increasing responsiveness to stimuli. In a perfect scenario, he’ll continue to improve, and you’ll be able to ask him yourself how much he heard. But again, that’s a hope. Not a promise or even a prognosis. Sometimes there’s serious damage that we aren’t able to pinpoint, and sometimes the brain simply shuts parts of itself down temporarily to heal.
“I’m Dr. Michelle Hubbard, by the way. I’m a neurology resident, and I’ve been following your husband’s care since he was admitted yesterday.”
“That you, Dr. Hubbard.”
Jackie moved again to climb out of the bed, and the doctor smiled and held out a hand to help.
“These beds are continually being improved,”—the doctor made air quotes around the word improved—“to provide greater flexibility and connectivity, but they certainly don’t encourage skin-to-skin contact, and we can only get a wider-than-average bed by special request.”
Jackie got to her feet. She shook her hair back, slipped a ponytail holder around it, and attempted to straighten her clothes. The doctor’s hand had been warm and comforting, and Jackie realized they were probably about the same age.
“Do you have children?”
Jackie bit her lip, regretting her impulsive question, but the doctor smiled and nodded.
“I’ve got two little ones: one three and the other four and a half. That half is very important, as he’ll tell you repeatedly, if you ask him.”
Jackie laughed. “Our baby’s only five months,” she said softly.
“Then you probably already know how important skin-to-skin contact is. They teach us lots of scientific facts in med school, but as a mom, I’ve learned that a good, long snuggle can do wonders.”
The air in the room suddenly felt lighter, somehow. This woman was caring for Kolya as a physician, but she obviously knew a thing or two about love, as well.
“What should I do?”
“Well, my official medical response is to wait. My unofficial thoughts are that what you were doing certainly can’t hurt. I’d talk to him and touch him as much as possible. And if you want to throw in a prayer or two, you’ll find no argument from me. I can’t point to a specific spot on a model of the brain and say, ‘We need to repair that area.’ The neurons in his cortex took a jolt, and right now the axons between those neurons aren’t communicating. But the brain, like most of the human body, is remarkably resilient, and with luck, new connections are being formed as we speak.”
This woman must be an angel.
“Thank you, Dr. Hubbard. You’ve made me feel much better.”
The doctor held up her hands. “Remember, I’m not making any promises. We have to continue to monitor him and hope for the best. There are no guarantees with head injuries.”
“I understand. But thank you.”
The doctor moved to the elevated stand next to the bed where she attached her tablet to the monitoring base. She spent a few moments working on her screen before turning to examine Kolya.
“Nicolas, can you hear me?” Her voice was clear and direct as she shone a pin light into Kolya’s eyes.
Jackie thought she saw some movement from Kolya, but she wasn’t sure. The doctor continued to examine him and focussed intently while listening with her stethoscope against Kolya’s chest.
“His lungs still sound perfectly clear. That’s a positive sign. I’m going to try to get him to take some liquid. Sometimes a patient will respond to instructions to drink from a straw, and if he’s able to follow direction and swallow successfully, we can postpone the need for a feeding tube.”
“He can do that? He can follow directions without waking up?”
“We’ll have to see. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a nurse to assist me.”
She sent Jackie another brief smile and then was gone, as quietly as she had come in.
Chapter Seven
KOLYA
He was floating, and then he wasn’t, again and again. He struggled to turn away from the noise and the bright light and go back to the quiet oblivion. But there had been moments of happiness? peace? calm? At one point, a warm sensation of ecstasy seemed to sweep up his entire being. Later—or was it before?—a cooling, welcome fountain of delight ran through him. Ice cream. Was he living in warm ice cream?
“¿Qué le pasó?”
“No sé, pero es muy guapo, ¿no?”
Were they talking to him? About him? He wanted to open his eyes, but he was so very tired. He floated back towards the cloud. Who was handsome, and what had happened to him? He was slipping away, but like a stone in a shoe, something was niggling at him, the comforting cloud of oblivion remaining just out of reach. He understood the words, but something was wrong.
Spain. The word came to him just as he was drifting away. He must be in an ice cream land in Spain. He hoped there would be more ice cream soon.
No, not Spain. Spanish. Someone was speaking Spanish, but he needed to remember something . . . French. French. Had he been drinking French ice cream? An image shimmered in his consciousness. Jackie! Was Jackie in France? He needed to get up and find his Jackie, but he was too tired—more tired than he had ever been. Please let her not be in France. He needed to find her, needed to hold her. He didn’t want to be in this world, or any world, without her, ever again.
Chapter Eight
JACKIE
Jackie leaned over Grisha’s sleeping body and propped one of the large hotel pillows against the bed table, forming a bumper in case he should roll over. She should get up and put him in the crib, but even the thought of standing up was too demanding, and she wanted—needed—his physical presence next to her.
She had read a board book to him before nursing him for the last time. She and Kolya did so every night, delighting in the nonsensical stories. Grisha had no way of understanding what a hippopotamus was, but he already knew to follow Mama’s or Papa’s expression and smile when they laughed. At least he’d grow up knowing that books brought joy.
Jackie sniffled. She should have thought to put the tissues near the bed. She didn’t want to wake Grisha or her mother, asleep in the other bed, but she was helpless against the tears that trickled down her cheeks. She kept seeing Kolya’s vacant stare when his eyes had opened. What if he never came back to her—to them? She could give Grisha words, but certainly not in as many languages as Kolya could. And she couldn’t teach him to sing as Kolya sang or give him the fatherly love that Kolya himself had lost at way too early an age.
An image came to her, and she put her head back against the padded headboard. They had given her the baby to hold immediately after his birth, and she had gazed at him in wonder and kissed his mucky, wrinkled, red face. Then they said they needed to clean him up and get a second Apgar score.
Kolya had reached down and lifted Grisha from her arms. But before he handed the infant to the waiting nurse, he brought him tightly to his chest, cradling the baby in his left arm while gently cupping his face with his right hand. The look of adoration on Kolya’s face had been so profound that Jackie had caught her breath. In that moment, she had known absolute contentment. All of the emptiness that had defined her life had been replaced by joy, and she had known herself to be the luckiest person on the planet.
She looked over at her sleeping son. She was still incredibly lucky. Her own mother was asleep a few feet away, having dropped everything to come to her daughter’s side. She had a beautiful home, a job she loved, and even a loyal and smarter-than-average dog. Was she asking too much of the universe to want Kolya back?
She raised her arm to wipe away tears with her sleeve and caught sight of the scars on her wrist and forearm. Two years ago she had been caught in a mass shooting, and Kolya had saved her life. They had gone to hell and back, both individually and as a couple.
No. She wasn’t being greedy. They had fought for the life they now had together, and she wasn’t going to let go that easily. She was going to go into the hospital again tomorrow and find him. He was there. She knew he was. She had to reach him and convince him to come back to her. There was no alternative. He had to come home.
Chapter Nine
KOLYA
“Nicolas. Mr. Polivanov, I need you to open your eyes.”
The smile on his father’s face vanished with the rest of him.
“No, Papa. Please don’t go.” He wanted to shout the words, but no sound came from his throat. How he had missed his father these many years, and now this yelling had chased him away.
He turned his head, anxious to avoid the bright light.
“Kolya. Kolya, look at me, please. I know you’re there.”
He knew that voice. Happiness washed over him. How he loved that voice. She was calling him “Kolya.” Was that his name? He struggled to focus on the word. Kolya. Yes. It was what his father had been calling him before he disappeared, so it must be his name.
But he was so very tired. He loved that voice. Jackie. The name more precious than his own came to him again, and he rode the wave of oblivion that carried him away. Jackie.
Chapter Ten
JACKIE
Jackie’s groan was loud and probably rude, but she didn’t care.
“I thought he was waking up. Did you see how his eyebrows came together?”
“Yes. But please try not to expect too much, too fast, Mrs. Polivanov. I think your husband is, indeed, trying to find his way back. His physical responses are all excellent, and he is definitely reacting to verbal commands, even if it’s not to the extent we’d like. But it would be wrong to let your expectations get out of hand.”
Jackie studied the man speaking to her. He seemed competent, but he didn’t exude the warmth she had appreciated from Dr. Hubbard. And whereas Dr. Hubbard had indicated Jackie’s ministrations might help, this Dr. Granger’s attitude implied that family members were only a bother. But this was her husband, and she sure as hell wasn’t inclined to sit quietly and wait.
“What can I do?”
His glance seemed to move towards the standing partitions that separated sections of the ICU rooms, and Jackie narrowed her eyes. Was he looking for a mop or cleaning cloth she could busy herself with?
“We’ll be doing another CAT scan later this morning, and we’ll know more then. We have your contact information, right?” He studied his tablet for a few seconds and then read off her cell number. “Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll let you know if there’s any change, or if we learn any more from the scan.”
He’d just said they’d know more and now was saying “if” they learned more. Frustration roiled up inside her. She wanted answers; she wanted to see real improvement. She wanted her husband back.
She fixed her gaze on Kolya. His eyes were closed again, and his arms lay more or less straight down to either side, lines attached to each, leaving his chest covered by the white sheet. That broad, firm chest where her own head liked to lie and where their baby was used to snuggling. A thought came to her.
“Will Dr. Hubbard be back again?”
He shot her a look that seemed to question why she’d ask such a thing, but then he nodded.
“I believe she comes in again tonight at 7. But we should have the results from the scan before then. I told you we’d be in touch.”
“Yes. Thank you. I hope there’ll be some good news.”
He nodded and left the room.
Jackie moved closer to the head of the bed and glared again at all the paraphernalia that surrounded Kolya and obstructed her. Skin-to-skin contact. Not bloody easy, in this set-up. She reached out and gently ran her palm down the side of Kolya’s face. Thick stubble now covered the cheeks he always shaved, but she saw traces of the college boy she had known who had tried to grow a beard during the start of their junior year. They had laughed all the time back then, and Jackie blushed with a sudden memory she hadn’t thought of in years: Kolya had been taking a physics class for non-majors that semester, so he had insisted she treat his idea like a lab assignment, telling her to assign a numerical value to her pleasure when he went down on her clean shaven and again two weeks later when he did it with his uneven facial hair. He had made a show of keeping a tally sheet and pen next to the bed, coming up to demand a score and then returning to rub his face between her thighs with exaggerated thoroughness before his lips and tongue found their target.
Her groan this time was muffled and filled with both anguish and a pang of remembered sexual delight.
She leaned over to press her lips against his—waiting, hoping, praying for some response. Had they moved? She wasn’t sure. He didn’t smell like her Kolya right now. All the more reason to get him back. He needed to get out of this place and get back to smelling like himself and being himself.
“Jackie, darling. How is he doing?”
It was Brenda, looking older and more wrung-out than Jackie remembered.
She straightened up.
“No real change.” She moved towards the older woman, holding her hands out, but Brenda pulled her into a hug.
“I feel so badly about all this, Jackie. I dragged Kolya out in the rotten weather, and then he got hurt trying to help me.”
Jackie breathed in the crisp winter air that clung to Brenda’s jacket and shook her head into the woman’s shoulder before pulling back.
“Please don’t think like that, Brenda. It was an accident. Stuff happens, and somehow or other Kolya often seems to be around when it does. I know for absolute certainty that he wouldn’t want you to feel guilty.”
“Well, I do, regardless.” She moved closer to the foot of the bed and sighed as she looked at Kolya.
“He hasn’t woken up?”
“No, not really. He does seem to respond sometimes, and the doctor I like suggested his body was trying to heal itself by putting aside everything extraneous. If you look at it from that perspective, then I feel guilty for trying to wake him up all the time.”
“Do they say how long he might stay this way?”
“No. No one wants to commit to anything. But I’m going to try something tonight when the good doctor will be back. I’m going to try to sneak Grisha in.”
At Brenda’s look of confusion, she clarified. “Baby Greg. We call him Grisha.”
Brenda’s eyes widened. “I have trouble keeping track of who’s called what in your family.”
Jackie laughed, and then couldn’t stop laughing. “Yeah, I guess that’s understandable, especially considering how long you’ve probably known Nicolas.”
“And when I first knew him and wasn’t supposed to know anything, I think he was Nikolai, but only briefly.”
“Well, he’s Kolya now, at least at home, now and forever. And since he often hears Grisha at night before I do, I’m hoping that maybe he’ll respond to Grisha if he’s making noise and just wake up.”
“Are babies allowed in here?”
Jackie looked around, hoping no one could hear them.
“I don’t know. I tend to doubt it, but I’m afraid to ask. I Googled babies in ICUs and mostly got links to sites about all the poor little ones in NIC units. A few hospitals had visiting protocols listed that said only one child could visit at a time with an adult, but I didn’t see anything for this place, and I don’t want to be told no. I’m hoping Dr. Hubbard will give her okay, even if unofficially. She seems open to ideas outside normal protocol.”
“So you’ll bring him in and wing it?”
Jackie looked down, biting her lip. She lifted her eyes and met Brenda’s. The woman was her book editor, but more importantly, she was a friend whom Jackie had seen behave cooly in difficult circumstances before, and she was married to Bill, Kolya’s life-long friend and protector.
“I was hoping I’d rope you all in to providing cover and distraction.”
“Oh, goody. It’s usually Bill who gets to do the cloak and dagger stuff, so I’m game. What would you like me to do?” Her eyes darted theatrically around the room. “I don’t see a fire alarm in here, but I suppose I could find one, somewhere.”
Jackie laughed again.
“No, Brenda. I don’t want you to end up in jail.”
“All right. I’ll think of something. What time tonight?”
“About seven? That’s when Dr. Hubbard should be here, and I’ll still get Grisha back to the hotel with me at a somewhat reasonable hour.”
“Sounds like a plan. Operation infant infiltration at nineteen hundred hours.” She stopped her animated chatter when she saw Jackie leaning over Kolya.
“Is he awake?”
Jackie shook her head, all laughter gone from her face.
“No. I thought there for a minute he might be. His eyebrows draw together as if he’s trying to understand things, but then his expression goes placid again. I’m so frightened, Brenda. They keep saying to be patient, but the longer this goes on, the further away he seems. They’re definitely putting in a feeding tube tomorrow morning because even swallowing a little here and there, plus the IVs, he’s not taking in enough calories.”
“Oh, Jackie.” Brenda’s words were now subdued, and there was sympathy and understanding in her eyes.
“I don’t want to lose him again, Brenda. I thought he was dead for almost ten years. I can’t bear to be without him again already.”
“I know, sweetheart. I understand. But I also know that this man loves you. He doesn’t want to be apart from you either. Don’t give up hope.”
She picked up her purse from the chair by the bed.
“I’m off to ponder mischief. I’ll stop by your room and check in with your mother. Two heads are better than one, and if we throw my husband’s devious mind in the mix, we’re bound to come up with something.”
