This chapter is a bit of a downer, but it will get better after this one. Please stick with me.

In a nice bit of synergy, before posting this Chapter 29, I posted Chapter 29 in Lady Catherine's Condescension. Both stories both seem to be almost wrapped up. I am hoping that Chapter 30 is the magic ending chapter in both.


XXIX

Elizabeth sat quietly in the passenger's seat of Darcy's car as he expertly drove them back toward the hospital. She felt secure that he would get her there in an efficient manner, but she still felt anxious. If Elizabeth were a bird she would pecked at the window until Darcy rolled it down and then launch herself into the sky like an arrow from a bow. Then she would have beat her wings as fast as they would go and take advantage of every updraft to edge closer to where she needed to be in a straight line, rather than having to take one highway north and then another east.

In the silence, Elizabeth had time to observe Darcy's driving. He was a cautious driver, she had noticed that before. He always signaled, always head-checked, smoothly glided the car into the passing lane when behind a slow motor home that was only driving 55. Normally such driving would have made her feel safe. He drove like her Uncle Ed, who was a prudent, practical man. But she felt an irritation that Darcy drove only five miles over the speed limit on the interstate which was more cautious than Elizabeth was even on an ordinary day when she was in no particular hurry.

Elizabeth's mother and Elizabeth's aunt, by contrast were careless drivers. Either would not have hesitated to weave their way through traffic with nary a backwards glance, to drive certain stretches at 85 or 90, trusting their instincts to slow down at the right time. If her mother was driving, she would have filled the stillness with chatter in which she voiced all of her worries in a haphazard way, in no particular order of importance.

Elizabeth hadn't noticed Darcy's driving speed earlier in the day when she'd been in the car with Darcy and his sister. Then she had been enjoying the journey, the companionship, the music. When they started driving this time, Darcy had offered, "Do you want to put in some music?" But unlike before, Elizabeth had no curiosity about what other CDs he had. She felt she could not have any enjoyment of music now and it seemed almost unseemly to try.

Her mind was too filled with what might be happening at the hospital to have any thoughts about more mundane topics like, Am I dating Darcy now?

However, the longer they drove in silence, the more she pondered whether she should just pick some music. Perhaps it would have distracted her from letting her eyes constantly drifting toward him to look not at him but to examine the speedometer on the dashboard. Darcy had one of those cars that rather than having a needle which turned clockwise as he drove faster, had a digital number representing the miles per hour. With the former kind of speedometer, the passenger might read it slightly wrong, but on this one, there was no mistaking that he kept the car at an even 75 miles per hour.

Elizabeth wished Darcy would talk, would say something. The minutes seemed to drag with no relief with nothing to hear but the hum of the road. The particular stretch of road they were on was not even interesting. It was flat, dull. It could not distract from the stabbing fear Elizabeth felt. It was not so much fear for her Nana but fear for how any permanent damage to Nana would hurt her father, her sisters.

Elizabeth knew she was cynical when it came to her grandmother. Nana was not a very nice person in general and Elizabeth had no illusions about that. Nana might not be clever enough to be as cruel as she had been, but Elizabeth didn't doubt that if the clock had been turned back her cruel side would have been as honed as ever.

Jane was always brimming with compassion for the feeble woman in her twilight years that had become broken when her husband died. Jane excused the way Nana had hurt her feelings over and over, the way she had driven any interest in music from her because Jane was not as quick to learn as Elizabeth or Mary. Jane was always trying to justify Nana's actions, claiming "I was just too sensitive when it came to learning the piano. She didn't mean to hurt me. Maybe I misunderstood. She was just a perfectionist about doing things right and I didn't try my best. Look at how much she taught me about cooking and baking."

While Jane might have forgiven and excused Nana, Elizabeth had not. Jane was too kind by half, but thereby deserved to be treated kindly by others. Jane was a delicate flower, easily bruised, and Nana a bulldozer.

Elizabeth didn't understand her sister Mary nearly as well, but knew that compared to Jane, Mary was made of sterner stuff under her meek demeanor. Mary did not make excuses for Nana but somehow loved her anyway, Elizabeth suspected because that was the right thing to do. Mary faithfully served Nana without expectation of thanks or reward.

But the one whom Elizabeth suspected would be most devastated should something befall Nana was her own father. She recalled the way he had withdrawn into his books when Pop-Pop died, the way he snapped at anyone who tried to draw him from his study, the way he subsisted on books, cigars and gin, even sleeping in his arm chair rather than leave. He had missed the funeral, yelling at his wife when she brought him his dark suit, "Leave me alone, he will still be dead and gone whether I go see him buried or not!"

Elizabeth remembered hearing her father shouting the words from her bedroom and had emerged to see her mother leaving the study with the suit, her face pale like the white shirt, her eyes wide and lip trembling. Then her father slammed the door so hard that the windows rattled and then there was the snap of the old rusty lock being turned.

Her mother told Elizabeth and the other girls in a hushed tone, "Go get ready, I guess we need to leave your father alone." Her mother hadn't made any comment when Mary had worn red shoes with her dark brown dress, had talked about everything during the car ride to the funeral home except their father and how he was taking it.

Elizabeth didn't remember the details of the funeral very well. Her mind had been back in her Papa's study, wondering how he was. She hoped that he was not cleaning Pop-pop's gun.

When they returned from the funeral and reception, Elizabeth was first in the house, running up the stairs as fast as she could, eager to reassure herself that all was well, but the story door was still locked and her father didn't answer when she knocked for a very long time, finally yelling "Go away!"

She left only a little reassured. Several times each day she had checked the door, and time it remained locked, for three interminable days. It was the summer, so there wasn't even the distraction of school. But finally her father emerged, smelly, rumpled, with scruffy beard growth and red eyes. He looked at Elizabeth as he walked past her, but said nothing. A few minutes later Elizabeth heard water running in the shower and her mother came out of the master bedroom, her arms filled with her father's dirty clothes.

Upon spotting her, her mother said, "Lizzy be a dear and tidy your father's things in there. I cannot imagine the temper he would be in if I attempted such a thing, but he surely wouldn't yell at you."

Elizabeth hadn't wanted to go in there, but finally she obeyed. She found empty bottles, crumpled papers, cups of urine and half smoked cigars in the ashtray, in the pot of a fern, stuffed in the neck of an empty bottle of liquor. Her eyes hurt from the lingering smoke and she pulled open the blinds and pulled up the window sash to let sun and fresh air inside. But rather than the half-cloudy, half-sunny sky from a few minutes before, now it was raining.

Elizabeth considered closing the window again, but the rain was soft and the overhang protected the opening from getting wet. She felt the beginnings of a headache start to leave and stood at the window for a few moments breathing deeply of the moist air, before starting to collect the rubbish, trying not to breath in the acrid smell that lingered in the room.

The empties went into the trashcan along with the cigars and Elizabeth took the whole can to the outside trash bin, not worrying about the drizzle hitting her as she separated out the bottles for recycling, wondering what the neighbors would say if they saw them. Would they think the Bennets had had a party when their grandfather died? Would they think someone in her household was an alcoholic? Would she get a pamphlet at school from the counselor entitled something like: "So your father's an alcoholic."

Then Elizabeth had to return to inside and walk back up the stairs tackle the cups. She only trusted herself to take one at a time without spilling (some were almost to the brim and sticky on the outside, she tried not to think of why) to dump their contents in the hall bathroom toilet, then stacking the empties inside the white can, and washing her hands afterwards each time.

A cleaner but still unshaved father came into his study dressed in a bathrobe, his balding hair dripping on his collar. He looked around with bleary eyes. It was the first time Elizabeth ever thought about him looking old.

Tom saw his daughter taking the final cup away and declared, "I needed those." However, he made no move to stop her as she took it. When came back to the room to see if she had missed any trash, she saw her father leaning with a hand on either side of the window, holding onto the trim, head half out, watching it rain.

As Elizabeth remembered the rain from that day several years ago, as if on cue it began to rain as they drove. Darcy immediately switched on the windshield wipers and then the car lights. He slowed down to 70 even though it was barely more than a sprinkle. Although Elizabeth didn't believe in portends or signs, she still found the rain disquieting.

At the hospital, Tom Bennet sat quietly by his mother's bedside. He could faintly hear the rain but it did not permeate his consciousness in any discernible way. He had walked beside his mother's wheel chair earlier as she was relocated to an intensive care unit bed in the hospital's stroke unit and placed in the hospital bed by two orderlies as he stood and watched.

Almost immediately his mother began taking a nap. Mr. Bennet had nothing to do but watch his mother breath as the infusion of tPA slowly entered her veins. As the minutes ticked by, he watched intently for any change in her while she received the infusion which was supposed to take around an hour.

A medical professional, who introduced herself as "Dr. Hak," came by perhaps half an hour into this process. She was a petite woman with black hair that just brushed the color of her white lab coat. She looked like she was of a mixed race background, perhaps Korean and African-American, and to Tom's eyes looked far too young to even be a new medical school graduate. Seeing her, made him feel old.

Dr. Hak asked, "All settled in now?" and not giving Tom an opportunity to say anything in response said, "I'm going to give you a quick update on what has been going on with Mrs. Bennet and explain the protocol for the next twenty-four hours. We could not discuss much with the granddaughter. Your mother has a middle cerebral artery obstruction but it appears it was caught early and so she was an ideal candidate for us to prescribe her the standard intravenous tissue plasminogen activator, known as tPA or Activase. After the infusion is complete, we will reassess your mother on the National Institutes of Heath Stroke Scale."

Dr. Hak quickly scanned through the chart. "She scored an eleven earlier, which shows definite impairment, but is actually not a bad initial score."

"So, she may get better?" Tom asked.

"Yes, she very well may improve from the tPA alone," Dr. Hak told him, giving him an emphatic nod. "But rehabilitative therapy is commonly needed as well."

Tom felt himself relax a little, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

"And if the tPA infusion is successful the improvement could occur quite soon. According to studies there can be as much as a ten or more point improvement on the stroke scale or to a three or less score in up to 22% of patients after the infusion is complete. That type of improvement occurs when the tPA is given early enough and is able to restore more than 50% of blood flow to the area. If she is one of those lucky patients it will be because her granddaughter recognized the situation quickly."

"Mary is an attentive granddaughter," Tom responded, feeling a bit of pride for his youngest, often overlooked daughter.

"Of course, we don't know how Mrs. Bennet will respond, but at this point there is every reason to be hopeful. The nurses will keep a close eye on her over the next twenty-four hours. She will be rounded on in the morning. If you do not see me or another doctor before then, that is generally good news. Our nursing staff is excellent and will follow all the protocols for her care. Our stroke unit has very good outcomes with tPA generally and with your mother it was agreed this was the treatment of choice over endovascular thrombectomy. We will give her another CT in a day or two to see if the blockage has been cleared. We will have a better idea then what her ongoing prognosis will be. Because she has atrial fibrillation (A-fib), she will need to be on blood thinners to prevent another stroke."

Dr. Hak gave another nod and said, "No more questions, right?" and then to his mother who briefly opened her eyes, "Be well Mrs. Bennet." Then the doctor was out of the room before Tom could even consider whether he had anything he wanted to ask.

Tom turned to say something to his mother, but she had already closed her eyes again. He watched as she slept, the IV running into her arm. He was struck by how old his mother looked; her deep wrinkles did not ease much even with sleep and her skin seemed papery, with age spots and noticeable sagging. It seemed not long ago when his children had been young and his mother an energetic, vital woman, with a few lines but young looking for a grandmother.

Tom suddenly felt very much alone. He pulled out his phone, scrolling down his contacts intending to call his daughter Elizabeth. However, when the names came up on his contacts, his thumb skipped past Elizabeth to Francis and he went ahead and pressed call.

Franny answered on the second ring, "Tom, Tom how is she? How are you?" He heard concern in her voice.

"My mom is resting now. They are giving her this treatment that may reverse the effects of the stroke if she got it soon enough. I am worried and hopeful and I also feel so guilty." Tom confessed.

"Oh Tom, you didn't do anything wrong. Strokes just happen." Franny hurried to reassure her husband.

"No, it's not that. It's that I've been a terrible son," Tom told her. "I've taken for granted that I could just see her anytime that I wanted to, but then I didn't go. I've let Mary and the other girls carry the load of dealing with her."

"Tom, you've had your reasons," Franny comforted. "Me, among them. It is no secret that your mother always despised me. Still, I should have encouraged you to see her, even if I didn't go, too."

Tom was pleasantly surprised at his wife's kindness and maturity. He had half expected her to say, "I hope that witch dies."

"Thank you, dear," he told her. "I suppose I should go and update the girls."

"Alright," she responded. "If you get home late, go ahead and wake me up. I love you."

"Me, too. Goodbye."