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I might lose my job. I might lose my license.
I’m okay with that, if it means keeping me out of jail.
Twenty-Two
The next day, the decision is made to wean Caitlin from the ventilator. Once she’s off it, she won’t be sedated anymore and will be able to speak.
Liberating someone from a ventilator is a process. It’s not something that happens right away. We have to be sure a patient can breathe on their own before we extubate them. It can take up to an hour or more, and sometimes, at the end of that, we find that they’re not ready for extubation and it has to be delayed—which is what I’m hoping for, that when the respiratory therapist changes the ventilator settings or after we extubate her, Caitlin has trouble breathing and has to be reintubated.
Caitlin is taken off the sedative first, so she’s fully conscious. The respiratory therapist changes the settings on the ventilator, and for the next hour we watch to make sure there are no difficulties and that Caitlin can breathe on her own; that her breathing is not too rapid or shallow; that she stays properly oxygenated and things like that.
I have trouble breathing the whole time.
Caitlin passes the spontaneous breathing trial with flying colors.
Everyone is thrilled about this but me.
Caitlin is getting better.
Everyone thinks she will live, though no one knows in what capacity. The long-term effects of a traumatic brain injury can be significant. People with TBIs can suffer from motor deficits, nerve damage, vision problems, difficulties with fine motor skills, difficulty thinking and remembering and more.
Talking is hard for most people when they first come off a ventilator. Their voices are hoarse and they can breathe on their own, but they’re still weak and there is often brain fog from the sedatives and from the time spent on the machine. It’s hard to think and to form words at first, but eventually most do.
I’ve been losing sleep thinking about that, running over and over again in my mind what will happen if and when Caitlin is able to string words into sentences and tell everyone what I did.
Today when I come into her room, she’s awake. Her eyes are open like little slits and her head is turned toward the door so that she sees me come in, her head and her eyes following me across the room, though there’s no recognition at first, and my only remaining hope is that she doesn’t remember what happened and that she doesn’t know who I am. It’s not wishful thinking. People with head trauma lose their memories all the time.
Caitlin and I are alone in the room together for now. The Becketts were here earlier, but they’re gone, setting up a room in their house for Caitlin for when she comes home. Poor Mrs. Beckett must relish the thought of having her daughter back, of caring for her, though it’s premature. Caitlin won’t be leaving the hospital right away and even when she does, she won’t be going home but more likely to an acute rehab facility for treatment, where she will work with speech therapists, PTs and OTs and there, if not here, she will say what happened to her. The police will come and ask questions and sooner or later Caitlin will tell them that Milo Finch didn’t push her off the bridge like I suggested, but that I did.
I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all I think about anymore, about what happens when she tells them what I did.
I tell myself there were no witnesses. No one saw me push her off the bridge. The only witness was too far away—in a car on Lake Shore Drive—to get a good look. If Caitlin remembers, it will be her word against mine and will be easy to blame on the head injury. I’ll say that she’s confused, that she only thinks it was me on the bridge with her because of all the time I spent with her while she was unconscious. She heard my voice in the room with her. She’s twisting things around in her head, putting me on the bridge with her instead of in the hospital room. Things like that happen.
I could get away with that. I could convince people of my innocence.
Except for a few things. The first being that mammogram appointment. There is evidence that I was within a mile of the pedestrian bridge the same day she was pushed. And if it all comes out, how Caitlin pretended to be Nat to steal from me, then I had motive: revenge.
If Caitlin tells everyone that Sienna is not Ben’s daughter, all it will take is a paternity test to prove it. That won’t just be my word against hers. There will be physical evidence that her word is true.
I’ll never get away with this.
Her eyes are on me now, her gaze less vacant than it’s been and more fixed. I go through the Glasgow Coma Scale again and this time, when I ask, “Do you know what happened to you?” she replies.
It’s inarticulate at first, but then she gets visibly agitated.
“You. You,” she says.
My throat tightens.
It’s happening. She’s forming words. And not just any words, but incriminating words, words that will ruin me if I let them, if I don’t figure out a way to shut her up.
“I... I what?” I ask, my voice trembling, and in the next instant her hand latches down on my wrist. I gasp, trying to pull away, but she won’t let go at first. I have to use my left hand to wrest my right from her, and only when I manage to get it free, do I let my gaze go back to her face, where her eyes are wide.
I turn and walk quickly from the room, my heart racing inside of me.
There are people milling around the nurses’ station. I seek refuge instead in my stroke patient Mrs. Layley’s room, feeling hot all of a sudden, a heat that spreads over my neck and face and though I can’t see myself, I imagine my skin is red.
Just inside Mrs. Layley’s room, I pluck at my scrub top, pulling it away from the skin so that it billows and the air gets in. I try to breathe. I go to the sink. I wash my hands, letting the cold water run over them, taking a moment to catch my breath.
