A TEST OF SURVIVAL (continued)

C H A P T E R 2
All of Milwaukee was trapped under the monotone sweep of a mile-high cloud cover, shedding its fine icy snow. Whitened limbs of oak and evergreen bowed over the choppy gray edges of Lake Michigan. Though it was barely past noon, car headlamps cast their cones of light onto the slick streets surrounding the Century Hospital complex. The yellow squares of occupied rooms in the seven-story structure poked holes through the gloom.

The light in one square, Room 378, blinked off and on. Gretchen Judd, physician and 41-year-old pancreatic cancer patient, lay curled on her side in a daisy-flecked hospital gown, thumbing the wheel switch of the overhead bed lamp and watching her cousin Alta’s profile at the window turn from pink to gray to pink. Gretchen was twenty hours out of surgery and momentarily pain-free, thanks to a PCA pump full of her wooly little partner, morphine.

“We done cheering each other up now?” The words slurred like liquid mud in Gretchen’s mouth. “’Cause it sure worked great.”

Alta Tomasini, thirteen years Gretchen’s senior, knew better than to answer. She was an ample woman with a commanding nose and bosom, wearing a floor-length red-checked skirt and denim shirt, her graying hair in a loose topknot. She directed her gaze at a snowy intersection below, where a minivan slow-motion drifted into a black Mercedes. A man stepped out of the sedan. Large furry hat. Large angry gestures.

“It’s blowing up a fury out there,” Alta said. The wind cut in from Lake Michigan. Sleet ticked the window glass. She turned a worried face to Gretchen. “They’ll be letting out classes early. Do you think I should go, so Leo doesn’t come home to an empty apartment?”

Gretchen dropped the light cord, pulled the pillow from under her head and curved her body around it. “Not a baby. He’s used to it.”

“I could bring him back with me.”

“No!” Gretchen closed her eyes against the image of her son prowling the hospital room with panic in his eyes, looking everywhere but at his mother in her technology cage. She was tethered to the bed, an NG tube up her nose, a Foley in her urethra, an IV taped to the back of her hand. Her hair coiled over one shoulder like a skein of dark yarn. She drew it across her face.

“You’re tired,” Alta said. She sat on the stiff baby blue recliner and fished underneath it for her boots. “I should go, let you get some rest.”

“More like bored,” Gretchen said. “Waiting around for the Big Schleep. Sleep.”

Alta pushed to her feet with a grunt and crossed on stocking feet to the bed. She sat gingerly and stroked Gretchen’s hip. “Gretchen dear. You don’t have to be big chief perfect with me. You can talk to me, you know. Tell me. If you’re scared.”

Gretchen’s answer came slowly. “Too gorked.” She groped for Alta’s hand and circled her fingers around her cousin’s wrist.

Alta smiled. “Pretty strong grip for a gorked lady.”

They sat quietly, listening to the wind, to the gurgle of the suction unit on the wall, to the squeak of rubber on tile and a nurse’s voice encouraging someone: That’s fine Eleanor. Two more. Can you take two more?

Alta cleared her throat. “Sweetheart. What you said this morning. It was the truth, wasn’t it? That the operation went well?”

If that’s what she had heard, then Gretchen determined not to disillusion her.