Free The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb Page A

phone, it’ll seem like the voice of God.
    “And the lite favorites just keep on rolling,” the radio said.
“If you like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain …”
Oh, God, not
that
stupid song. Guy decides to cheat, so he answers his own wife’s personal ad? Yeah, like
that’s
going to happen. In real life, some psycho chick would be waiting at that bar, and they’d go to a Motel Six, and he’d have erectile dysfunction. Have to call Bob Dole for some Viagra. Shit, he goes from running for president to being the poster boy for the All-American boner? How much did he get for
that
gig? …
    “If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the Cape …”
No, thanks. Too many sand fleas. Now that shitty song was going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. And if that Dan guy thought I was indifferent because I couldn’t make it back to Connecticut, then fuck him. I
loved
Lolly. She’d been more of a father to me than my father ever had. Taken me fishing, taken me on my first trip to Fenway. I had almost total recall of that trip. Boston versus Milwaukee, an exhibition game. Lolly’d won tickets on the radio, and we’d gone up in her old green Hudson. Nineteen sixty-one, it was. Yastrzemski and Chuck Schilling in their rookie year, Monbouquette on the mound. We’d had a blowout on the way home, and Lolly’d given me a lesson on how to fix a flat…. But shit, this was the busiestStretch of the school year. Curriculum meetings, placement meetings for the special needs kids, term papers to grade, exams to write. I could get back there once school was over, but—
    “Hey there,” a woman’s voice said. “You’re the nephew?”
    Dr. Salazar was a fast talker, devoid of personality. Lolly’s vitals had stabilized, she said. Her stroke was ischemic, caused by a clot rather than a rupture. She’d come in exhibiting classic symptoms: weakness on her left side, double vision, aphasia.
    “What’s aphasia?” I said.
    “A disconnect between what the patient’s trying to say and what’s being communicated. For instance, Louella thinks to herself, I’m thirsty. I want more ice chips. But when she verbalizes it, it comes out as gibberish.”
    “So you’re saying she’s incoherent?”
    “Less so than when she first came in.”
    The EMTs had given Lolly magnesium on the ride in, Dr. Salazar said, and that had put the injury in “slo-mo.” And with stroke victims, “time was brain,” she said; the quicker there was treatment, the better the odds of avoiding permanent damage. “When she got here, we gave her a clot-buster called tPA. Great drug if the patient gets it in time—acts like Drano on clogged arteries—but the operative word here is
if.
Time-wise, there’s only a small window of opportunity. When the blood supply’s cut off, brain cells begin to die. I think you’d better prepare yourself for the fact that your aunt will most likely have an altered life.”
    “Altered how?”
    “Too soon to tell. We’ll know more in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Are you coming to be with her?”
    “I don’t … We’re out in Colorado. The timing’s not great.”
    “No, it never is.”
    After I hung up, I paced. Let the dogs out. Let them back in. I had to chaperone the post-prom party that night. Two of my classes were handing in their term papers on Monday. I had meetings all week….
    When Maureen got back, I showed her what I’d scrawled in the margins of the newspaper: “Salazar, ischemic, magnesium, Drano.” Mo rattled off Lolly’s medications: Lipitor for her cholesterol, Triamterene for her blood pressure, an antidepressant called Trazodone.
    “She takes an antidepressant?”
    She nodded. “Since Hennie died. You knew that, didn’t you?”
    Did I?
    “They’re pressuring me to fly back there and be with her,” I said. “Are you going to?”
    “I can’t. Not until the school year’s over.”
    For several seconds, she said nothing. Then she volunteered