Life Support by Robert Whitlow

yet.”
    The detective nodded. “Of course. What’s his name and the numbers?”
    Rena gave the contact information for Ezra. Once again, the detective made no effort to write down any of the data.
    â€œI’ll try to contact him as soon as possible,” he said. “I hope your husband makes it.”
    After the detective left, Rena approached a male hospital employee who was monitoring ICU visitation. The young man was sitting behind a desk in a corner of the waiting area. A clipboard rested on the desk in front of him.
    â€œI’m Rena Richardson,” she said. “They told me at the entrance to come here and wait for news about my husband. He’s in surgery.”
    â€œWas he in the ICU unit prior to surgery?”
    â€œNo. He was in an accident and came to the hospital in a helicopter.”
    â€œOkay, then he’s not on my list. I’ll let you know as soon as he’s brought to a room.” Rena sat down in a gold vinyl chair with wooden arms. Fatigue returned, but it was impossible to get comfortable. She made an effort to doze for a few minutes; however, whenever she closed her eyes, she replayed images from the edge of the cliff. By refusing to die, Baxter had doomed her to ongoing connection with him. His death grip remained. She flipped through a few stale magazines but couldn’t focus on the words and pictures, which portrayed a world that seemed so phony when compared to the harshness of her reality.
    It was almost midnight when the desk clerk answered a phone call. Then he looked in her direction and called her name.
    â€œMrs. Richardson!”
    A few seconds of sleep had finally come to her shortly before he spoke, and Rena awoke with a start.
    â€œNo!” she said in a loud voice that caused the other people in the room to give her a puzzled look.
    Coming to her senses, she walked to the table.
    â€œThey called from the nurses’ station,” the young man said. “Your husband came up from the recovery room a few minutes ago and is in a room. You can go back and see him.”
    Her heart pounding, Rena opened the door and went into the ICU area.
    The patient rooms were clustered in a circle around an open area where nurses constantly monitored the condition of the patients. She walked up to the nurses’ station. A young nurse looked up from a chart, and Rena introduced herself. The woman’s face immediately registered concern.
    â€œI’m sorry about your husband,” she said. “He’s in room 3824. Dr. Kolb, the neurosurgeon, had to go into another surgery and won’t be here for a while. I’ll go with you.”
    Rena followed the nurse toward the door. She wasn’t sure how she should or would react to the sight of her husband. The nurse slowly opened the door. Rena held back slightly. As the nurse moved to the side, Rena stepped forward and reluctantly renewed contact with her husband.
    Baxter was lying on his back with his eyes closed and was surrounded by tubes running to all four points of the compass. His chest rose and fell in rhythm in response to a ventilator that was inflating his lungs via a tube inserted into his nose. The machine made a slight hissing noise that immediately grated on Rena’s nerves. A heart monitor was emitting a low-level beep, and an EKG of his cardiac function played across a small screen on the wall behind his head. His broken right leg had been set and im-mobilized in an air cast. An IV was attached to the back of his left hand.
    Rena stared. It was Baxter but then not Baxter. His skin was a pale yellow, and his eyes were sunk into his skull. She shook her head. It was a pitiful sight. He would have looked better in a casket. At least a mortician could have applied a fake tan that mimicked the effects of the sun after a day on the golf course.
    Something else was different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It wasn’t just the high-tech apparatus. It was