Man in the Empty Boat by Mark Salzman

Author:Mark Salzman [Salzman, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2110-5
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

ON MAY 5, MY BROTHER, Erich, called before dawn. “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, but when he told me that Rachel was in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Connecticut with severe pneumonia, I got scared. “If there’s any way in the world you can get out here,” he said, “now would be the time.”

I woke Jessica and told her what was going on, and all she said was, “You have to go there right now.” She emerged from the bedroom five minutes later with her laptop in her hands. She had booked a seat on a plane to New York for me already and was just confirming the reservation on a rental car.

I made breakfast for Ava and Esme, dropped them off at school, and drove straight from there to the airport. I didn’t think I would have enough time to check in any luggage, so I brought only what I could pack in a carry-on suitcase. Good thing, too, because the flight attendants were about to shut the door to the plane when I made it to the gate.

I called Erich just before we took off. He said that Rachel’s fever had gone down and she was able to speak again, but for some reason, the infection in her lungs was not responding to antibiotics. He explained to me that just four days earlier, he had invited Rachel and her family over for dinner. Before they started eating, Rachel said she felt tired and wanted to lie down. She stayed on the couch the whole evening. The next day, she had a fever of 105 and said she felt like she’d been run over by a truck. She was so weak that our father, who was at that time living in a small apartment over Rachel’s garage, had to drive her to the doctor’s office. The doctor examined her, detected fluid in both of her lungs, and recommended that she check herself in to the hospital right away. Once there, she was sent straight to the ICU, where she began receiving antibiotics, the standard treatment for pneumonia.

She responded well, and after two days was able to move into a regular room. But that night, the infection suddenly got worse. Rachel was moved back to the ICU, and that was when Erich had called me. The doctors, he said, were beginning to suspect that Rachel had contracted an exotic virus on a recent trip she had taken to Costa Rica and Panama.

On the flight east, I decided that I would offer to stay in Rachel’s house and help take care of her daughters, Isabela and Livia, until the crisis had passed. The girls were nine and six years old that year—exactly one year older than Ava and Esme. With me watching the girls, Rachel’s husband, Daniel, could spend as much time as he needed at the hospital. And who could be better qualified for the job than me? I could take over without missing a beat.

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