Chapter 19

Aja sat in the passenger seat as Jason drove toward his childhood home. “Your hair turned out really nicely,” he remarked. “I like it that you’re wearing it down, with the headband.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I liked how the headband worked the night before last. It keeps it under enough control. I may make this my day-to-day look.”

Jason placed his hand on her thigh. “You’re doing better in the car than I expected,” he said to her.

“I’m doing better than I expected,” she replied, “although I wish you’d slow down.”

“I’m doing the limit. They recently upped the speed limit on the Interstates to seventy-five.”

“You’re passing so many cars.”

“That’s not my problem. I have the cruise control set at seventy-five. Plenty are passing us, too. I think going too slow can be as much of a hazard as going too fast.”

Jason signaled a lane change and went past a minivan. He signaled again and returned to his original lane. A black Dodge Charger zipped past him, pulled in front of him and slowed.

“God dammit!” he exclaimed, “I hate it when they do that.”

“What’s that?”

“They break their necks to get ahead of me and then slow down. I hate that behavior.”

“Please don’t do anything rash,” she pleaded.

Jason signaled, stomped on the accelerator and pulled around the Charger. He returned to the right lane. “I don’t like being held back,” he said. “If the limit is seventy-five, we should be doing seventy-five.”

“Driving isn’t a competitive sport,” she replied. “At least, not this kind of driving.”

“I don’t care if someone wants to go faster than me. That’s their decision ... just don’t get in my way!”

“Jason! PLEASE slow down!”

“All right...” He adjusted the cruise control to reduce his speed by five miles per hour. “Better?”

“Thanks.”

“Just think, though -- the faster we go, the less time you need to endure it. Besides, you’ll have plenty of slow going once we turn off the Interstate and onto the milk route. I don’t think the speed limit the whole rest of the trip exceeds forty-five.” Jason glanced in the rear-view mirror. “That Charger is back and closing in on us ... now he’s tailgating.”

The car pulled around and in front of Jason and then slowed suddenly so that Jason had to use his brakes. “Jason -- don’t do anything to antagonize him.”

“I know. He’s only doing forty-five now ... payback for us passing him and then slowing. If I try going around him, he’ll probably want a drag race. I’m hoping he’ll tire of this in a while.” Jason eyed his rear-view mirror. “I’ll pull onto the shoulder.” He signaled and stopped.

The black Charger pulled to a stop ahead of him. The driver got out and began walking toward Jason’s car. He was halfway there when Jason stepped on the accelerator, pulled back into traffic and headed down the Interstate.

“I’ll bet he’s pissed-off now,” Jason remarked. “He looked like he was itching for a fight.”

“Oh, God, Jason!”

“It’s not me -- that guy is the one with the issues.”

“But what if he has a gun?”

“Here he comes...” Shortly the Charger had overtaken Jason, pulled in front and slammed on its brakes. Jason tried to pull around but was boxed in by other traffic. The Charger again slowed to around forty-five miles per hour.

Other vehicles began whizzing past them on the left. Jason glanced again in his mirror. “There’s a wolf pack coming up behind us.”

“Wolf pack?”

“That’s what I call a string of cars stuck behind a slow one. They’ll start passing us, soon. If there’s an opening maybe I can slide in.”

“I can’t watch!” Aja exclaimed. She closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands.

“Here’s an opening...” Jason gunned it and zipped by Charger, which immediately accelerated. “We’re in -- These other cars will run interference for us.” Jason followed the cue of the cars ahead and behind him. He kept a closer than comfortable interval with a blue Ford Fusion ahead of him in order to deny the Charger an opening.

The black Charger went past the line of cars at a high rate of speed. The driver slowed alongside Jason’s car, blew his horn and made an obscene gesture. Then the black car accelerated past the wolf pack and shot down the Interstate, weaving and passing some cars on the shoulder before disappearing in the distance. “It’s over,” he said. “He’s gone.” Jason signaled and eased back into the right lane.

“Thank God. I’m shaking, Jason. I still can’t watch.”

The wolf pack began to dissipate as the lead vehicle turned toward an off-ramp. “Clear sailing, now. Aja! Look!”

The black Charger was stopped on the shoulder ahead of a Highway Patrol squad car, its lights flashing. “There is such a thing as karma,” she remarked.

“He’s getting what he deserves.” Jason glanced at Aja. She held her hand above her left breast. “Are you okay?”

“My heart was palpitating but it’s settling down. Jason -- I do think you handled that well. I’m sorry I asked you to slow down. From now on, I’m leaving the driving to you.”

“Yeah, it could’ve turned ugly. I’ve only been in a couple of road-rage incidents. I basically try to stay out of their way. Well, things are about to turn boring -- our exit is only a few miles ahead.

Jason parked his car in the lot outside Memorial Hospital. “Naomi said to meet her in the ICU waiting room,” he said. “It’s on the first floor in the back.” He held the door for Aja and stepped inside. Holding hands they navigated the corridors, following signs, toward the intensive care facility.

Jason sat in a chair along the far wall of the waiting room. Aja sat beside him, her fingers tightly laced with his. She caressed his forearm with her free hand. “I don’t see Naomi,” he said and slipped his phone from his pocket. “I’ll text her that we’re here.”

Shortly Jason spotted his sister coming through a pair of doors. Naomi was a large woman: She was big-boned but physically fit and she wore a sleeveless top that showed the muscle definition in her arms. Her skin was light brown and her curly, brown hair was tied into a fluffy ponytail.

Jason stood and embraced her. Naomi turned to Aja. “You must be Aja -- Jason’s girlfriend.”

“Fiancee,” Jason interjected. “We’ve set a date.”

“Congratulations,” Naomi replied. “What date?”

“October twenty-one,” Aja said, “next year.”

“Gives you time to plan.” Naomi embraced Aja. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I wish it had been under better circumstances. Did Mom know?”

“It’s pretty fresh news,” Jason said, “we only set the date on Friday. We were going to tell her when she visited. I guess that’s all changed, now. May I see her?”

Naomi swallowed hard. “I think we should wait until we’ve had our conference with Doctor Popp.” She looked into her brother’s eyes. “I mean it, Jason.”

Jason flashed an anguished look at Aja. “She’s that bad off?”

Naomi nodded. “I’m afraid so. Our appointment is at one. Let’s go to the commissary where we can talk in a cheerier environment. We have quite a nice cafeteria here, and I’m famished. I didn’t have breakfast.”

They reached the cafeteria and went through the line. “I’m hungry, too,” Aja remarked. “The chili looks good.” She regarded Jason’s tray. “A bagel and coffee? That’s all?”

“I don’t have much of an appetite,” he replied.

Naomi found a table and they sat together. “How did it happen?” Aja asked. “Who found her?”

“I found her,” Naomi replied. She drew in a breath. “Mom agreed to keep the twins overnight so Ang and I could have an evening together. I came to pick them up yesterday morning and found them still in their jammies. I asked where Grandma is and they said, still in bed. I went upstairs and found her.”

“Was she unresponsive?” Aja asked.

“She was incoherent, and I could tell she suffered some sort of cerebral catastrophe. I called 911 and then I called Ang to come get the twins. By the time she got to the ER, she was comatose.”

“You said she had a stroke,” Jason remarked.

“This sounds more like a cerebral hemorrhage,” Aja added.

“That’s what it was.” Naomi looked Jason in the eye. “We have to face it, Jason. Mom’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“There’s no brain activity -- she’s brain dead. Doctor Popp will give us the full details.” Naomi looked at her watch. “He has an office in the professional building connected with the hospital. He’s opening it up for us and we should head over there.”

Naomi led Jason and Aja toward the professional building. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor and found the office. The door was open and the stepped inside. “I’ll sit in the waiting area,” Aja said, “seeing as how this is a conference between an attending physician and next of kin.”

“He said we should go on in,” Naomi said. The entered the office of a gray-haired man wearing scrubs. “Good afternoon, Dr Popp.”

“Hello, Naomi.” He turned toward Jason. “You must be...”

“Jason ... Jason Brown.”

“Hello, Jason. I’m afraid the news I bear isn’t very good. Your mother, Mildred, suffered an epidural hematoma, otherwise known as a brain bleed. The incident has left Mildred brain dead. She currently is on a ventilator, which is maintaining her other organs.” Popp set a sheet of paper before them. “This is a release form we request that spouses or next-of-kin to sign prior to discontinuing a patient on a ventilator.”

Naomi reached for a pen and signed her name. She handed it to Jason.

He read the document. “I don’t want to sign this,” he said. “It would mean I’m authorizing discontinuing life support -- it’s like signing her death warrant!”

“No, Jason ... You’re not authorizing anything.”

“Naomi is correct,” Popp said. “This is a release form the hospital requires. Your mother is legally deceased. We need no authorization to withdraw a ventilator from a deceased patient.”

“Then, why have this form?”

“The hospital requires it,” Naomi answered, “to document that next-of-kin have been assessed of the patient’s condition.”

“It’s the result of a lawsuit brought by a next-of-kin who believed for religious purposes that the patient should’ve been kept on life support,” Popp explained. “The hospital prevailed but it was an ugly incident.”

“What happens if I refuse to sign?”

Popp drew in a breath and released it as an exasperated sigh. “Then the lawyers get involved. It can end up delaying the inevitable for days or weeks and increases the cost for all involved.”

“Why be in such a rush?” Jason asked. “Isn’t there a chance of a miraculous recovery?”

“Those odds are so small as to be at the vanishing point,” Popp replied. “A patient with this level of brain injury has zero chance of recovery.”

“How do you know? I mean ... I’m not trying to be difficult, but I need to understand how you know there’s no hope.”

Popp manipulated his computer’s keyboard and turned the screen so Jason could see it. “This is her latest EEG. There’s no activity.” He brought up another image. “This is a CT scan of her brain. I’ve never seen a larger hematoma.”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t feel comfortable signing this. Excuse me.” He headed out of the doctor’s inner office and saw Aja sitting in the waiting area with a magazine.

Naomi pursued him. “Jason,” she called. “Stop being difficult and sign the release!”