Would you like to order yours now? Amazon | B &N | BAM | Book Depository | Kobo | iBooks |
Trouble makes us
stronger, they say. It brings out the best in us and shows what we’re really
made of. But don’t you just hate it when blessings come in disguise?
—Shirley Evans, after she got the
news from her doctor about the Big C
“This was so not the time to take a
surgical rotation,” Heather Walker muttered as she scanned the lineup of
procedures for the day. Not that she didn’t love assisting. She did. It was truly
rewarding to be part of the surgical team at Coldwater Cove’s small hospital. She
went home “good tired” every day. But it would be so much easier if she didn’t
know her patients personally.
And Heather knew everybody in town.
Today was worse than usual because the
mother of her best friend, Lacy Evans, was on the schedule. Lacy pushed her way
past one of the curtains that divided up the surgical waiting area and made a beeline
toward Heather.
“Mom
was supposed to be in surgery an hour ago.” Lacy’s nose was red, a sure sign
she’d been fighting back tears.
“I know and I’m sorry,
but it can’t be helped. We had an emergency appendectomy this morning.” Heather
always tried to be calmly professional, however frazzled she might feel on the
inside. No one would be helped if she joined in barely suppressed panic. She strove
to be detached enough to get the job done. That was the goal anyway. It was a
hard line to walk when her friend was obviously holding herself together with
spit and baling twine. “Your mom is next on the list.”
Lacy nodded. “OK. Maybe
it’s just as well there was a delay. Michael’s not here yet.”
Lacy’s fiancé Jake had
called in a favor with one of his Marine buddies who was in intelligence, and between
them, they’d managed to track down the elusive Michael Evans. Lacy figured her
brother deserved to know what was happening, even though he’d shown precious
little interest in his family in the past few years. Lacy had confided in
Heather that she was relieved—and a little surprised—to discover her brother
wasn’t in jail somewhere.
“Are you expecting him
to come?” Heather asked.
“No, but Mom is.”
Her friend’s black
sheep brother hadn’t been home in ages. Hadn’t called. Hadn’t even sent a postcard.
Mike Evans had been in Heather’s class in school, but he ran with a totally
different crowd, so their paths had rarely crossed. Her only sharp memory of
him was when he christened her “Stilts” in middle school. Through no fault of
her own, Heather had shot up to five feet ten inches by her thirteenth birthday,
and she hadn’t been finished growing yet.
The name stuck. She was
“Stilts” Walker all through high school.
But even that indignity
wasn’t enough to account for the resentment simmering in her chest. According
to Lacy, Michael had shamed his family many times over the years. If there was
a way to go wrong, Mike Evans found it. Still, the frustration rising in
Heather’s chest was unproductive, so she tamped it down. Her relationship with
her own parents wasn’t anything to brag about. It was aloof rather than
estranged, but in a pinch, she was sure the Walkers would come together.
Any guy who couldn’t be
bothered to show up when his mother was facing cancer surgery deserved a swift
kick in the backside.
Lacy’s eyes went hazy
for a moment. “She doesn’t know how to swim.”
“What?”
“My mom. Every summer
she took us kids to the pool for lessons five times a week, and I mean religiously. At six-holy-cow-thirty a.m.,
we’d be hopping around by the side of the pool trying to warm up before they
let us into the water.” Lacy’s voice trailed away. “Mom swims like a rock, but
she made sure we all learned how.”
“Maybe she can take
lessons at the civic center as part of her physical therapy after surgery,”
Heather suggested. It was important for her friend to think positively about
her mom’s future.
“That’s not the point,”
Lacy said with a sniff. “The fact is she’s a terrific mom and I never
appreciated her like I should have.”
“She’s still a terrific
mom. Appreciate her now.”
Lacy gave her a shaky
nod. “But what if—”
“Hush now.” Forget being professional. Heather gave her friend a hug. “You’re
borrowing trouble. Until after surgery, we won’t know if the cancer has spread.
And until we know that, it’s hard to say what treatment Dr. Warner will
recommend.”
Or
if we caught the disease in time to make treatment worth the misery,
Heather thought but didn’t say. No point in rehearsing the worst-case scenario.
But Lacy had evidently
been imagining it.
“Come on. I need to get
your mom prepped.” Pasting on what she hoped was an encouraging smile, Heather
led Lacy to the surgical waiting room and drew back the first curtain. The
scent of antiseptic cleansers and bleached linen was second nature to Heather,
but hospital smells put most people on edge. Mrs. Evans wasn’t troubled by it, though.
She was always awash in a personal cloud of Estée Lauder.
She wouldn’t have smelled a skunk if it had built a nest under her bed.
Heather’s patient was
sitting up on the gurney, trying to wrestle a pillow away from Lacy’s older
sister, Crystal. Heather wasn’t sure what offense the pillow had committed, but
Crystal was doing her best to pound it into submission.
Everyone
deals with stress in their own way.
“Good morning, Mrs.
Evans,” Heather said as she edged past Crystal to reach her patient. “How are
we doing today?”
“Fine, Heather. Ready
to get this over with.” Mrs. Evans gave up and surrendered the pillow to her
daughter. She was already festooned with electrodes monitoring her heart rate, and
the pillow fight had sent her pulse racing. An IV pumped saline into her system.
In a few minutes, Heather would add a drug cocktail to prepare her for the
general anesthesia to come. Doc Warner called it the “don’t-give-a-darn” drug.
Only he didn’t say “darn.”
“I’ll see what I can do
to move things along,” Heather promised.
“Thank
you, dear,” Mrs. Evans said. “Crystal, for heaven’s sake, stop worrying that
pillow.”
“I’m not worrying it.
I’m trying to give it a little shape. It won’t do you any good if it’s flat.”
“Flat or fluffy, it’s
not doing me a speck of good if it’s not under my head.”
“You
heard your mother,” Mr. Evans chimed in from the only chair on the other side
of the bed.
With a sigh, Crystal stuffed the pillow behind her mother’s shoulders. Heather suspected Lacy’s sister didn’t fluff and plump for her mom’s comfort. She might not even be doing it out of nervous energy. Crystal had always been the sort who arranged things to suit herself.
With a sigh, Crystal stuffed the pillow behind her mother’s shoulders. Heather suspected Lacy’s sister didn’t fluff and plump for her mom’s comfort. She might not even be doing it out of nervous energy. Crystal had always been the sort who arranged things to suit herself.
Of course, everyone was
entitled to their own opinion, but if they wanted to be right, they had better
agree with Crystal.
Looking gray and stretched thin, Mr.
Evans retreated behind the Coldwater
Gazette, rattling the paper noisily.
A
prime example of the “ostrich with his head in the sand” way to deal with
stress.
Then he began to quote snippets from the
Gazette whether anyone was listening
to him or not.
“Labor Day is fast approaching,” he
read, “the traditional time for all graduates of Coldwater High to gather for their
class reunions. Like lemmings rushing to the sea, we expect a number of
Fighting Marmots will make their way home for the festivities.”
“I did not write that,” Lacy was quick to point
out, though she did work for the local paper. “That’s my boss all the way. It’s
not enough that our high school mascot is an oversized rodent, Wanda has to
lump us with suicidal ones, too.”
Heather had been a Lady
Marmot once, a star power forward on the girls’ basketball team back in the day.
But she’d often wondered who had first decided it would be a good thing for the
Coldwater Cove teams to be named after a glorified ground squirrel.
“Looks like our class is hosting a
supper at the country club on Saturday as one of the reunion events, Shirley.” Mr.
Evans glanced up from the paper long enough to make eye contact with his wife
before focusing back on the Gazette.
“Think we’ll be able to make it?”
Classic
denial, Heather thought. If George Evans acknowledged that his wife was
about to undergo surgery, it would make the breast cancer real.
“Well,” Shirley Evans said as
Heather wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm and pumped it up.
“I—”
“How can you ask that, Dad?” Crystal
interrupted. “Mom will still be recovering this weekend. She might not even be
out of the hospital by—”
“She
might also like to answer for herself, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Evans said,
with an arched brow at her oldest daughter. “I’d like to go, George, but we’ll
just have to see. Buy a pair of tickets anyway. The class always gives any
excess to a local charity, so whatever happens, you know the money will go to a
good cause.”
Whatever happens . . .
Heather had to either lighten
the mood or get things moving, preferably both. When she opened Mrs. Evans’s
chart, her heart fluttered a bit. No one had gone through the pre-op documents
with the patient. Of all the aspects of her job, Heather rebelled against this
part most. She was a healer. She hadn’t studied nursing to push papers. Especially
not these papers that dealt with some of life’s toughest decisions. “There are
a few things for you to sign.”
“What sort of things?”
Mr. Evans rose. Since he was a retired lawyer, papers were his life.
“First, there’s consent
for treatment.” Heather explained the procedure Mrs. Evans was about to
undergo, the possible risks, and the expected outcome. They’d heard it all
before, but Heather was required to repeat it now. When Mr. Evans nodded, his
wife signed. Heather drew a deep breath. She hated this next part, but it was
absolutely necessary. “Then there are advance directives to consider. Have you
made out a living will or durable power of attorney?”
Mr. Evans snorted. “I
wouldn’t be worth my salt as a lawyer if she hadn’t, would I?”
“Dear George made sure
we took care of all that a few years ago when we were both healthy.” Mrs. Evans
patted her husband’s forearm. “It’s always easier to deal with the hard things
when they seem a long way off, don’t you think?”
Mrs. Evans gave Heather
a tremulous smile. She was bearing up well for her family’s sake, but it was
hard to head into surgery not knowing if your worst fears were about to be
confirmed.
“Lacy,” Mrs. Evans
said, “why don’t you show Heather your wedding palette? I bet she hasn’t seen
it yet.”
Heather had seen Lacy’s colors. She’d even
helped her pick them out one evening over a nice merlot. Heather was Lacy’s
maid of honor, after all. But to change the subject, she asked to see the
swatches again. Lacy pulled out her cell phone and brought up the navy blue, pale
pink, and ivory palette.
“You’ll be in ivory, of
course, Lacy, and Jake and the male attendants in navy,” Mrs. Evans said with a
wistful smile, her gaze fixed on a distant point as if imagining the wedding
party in their finery. “And the bridesmaids’ gowns will be bright pink.”
“No, Mom,” Lacy said
gently. “We discussed this, remember? Jake will be in his dress blues. He
deserves to wear the uniform.”
Since Jake had lost a
leg from the knee down in Afghanistan, Heather agreed. He’d more than earned
the right to wear the blues. Besides, nothing looked better in wedding pictures
than a groom in uniform.
Of
course, in my case, any groom would look good. Not to mention surprise the heck
out of my mother.
Heather quashed that
thought. Having no guy in her life was better than having the wrong guy. She
was single by choice, she told herself. But her mother argued she was “single
by choosy.”
While Heather prided
herself on being particular, it didn’t put an extra place setting at her table.
Or an extra head on her pillow.
“The bridesmaids’ dresses
will be navy, too,” Lacy went on. “Pink is just the accent color.”
Heather silently blessed
her friend. A navy dress would help her blend into the background. As gangly as
she was, a pink one—especially the violent pink Mrs. Evans favored—would make
her feel like an overgrown flamingo.
The curtain enclosing
the waiting area ruffled, and Mrs. Evans looked up expectantly.
“Michael,” she
whispered, but when she saw who it was, her smile turned brittle. Instead of her
son, her future son-in-law stepped into the small space. Heather knew Mrs.
Evans both liked and approved of Jake Tyler, but he wasn’t Michael.
The
one who isn’t here is
always the one they want to see most.
Jake gave Lacy a quick
kiss. “I overheard you talking about the wedding colors again. Isn’t it settled
yet?”
“The devil’s in the
details,” Mr. Evans said morosely.
“I tried to talk Lacy into
jarhead camouflage, but she insists on navy. Navy, of all colors!” Jake shook his head.
“Hey.” Lacy gave him a
playful swat on the shoulder. “I could always go Army green.”
Jake shook his head. “It’s
enough to make a Marine consider an elopement.”
“I’ve got a ladder you
can use, son,” Mr. Evans groused. “This wedding is gonna cost the earth.”
“Now, George,” Mrs.
Evans chided, “you’ll love giving Lacy away in style and you know it. After
all, she’s the last daughter you have to walk down the aisle.”
Heather had finished
her nursing degree and moved back to Coldwater Cove to take a position at the
hospital in time to be around for the wedding of the decade, the joining of
Crystal Evans and Noah Addleberry. Years later, folks still talked about the
event. The Addleberrys were one of the town’s first families, so everything had
to be just so. Mr. Evans had complained loudly and often to anyone who’d
listen, and a few who wouldn’t, that if the Addleberrys wanted to bankrupt
someone over a wedding, they should start with themselves.
But the real driver of overspending
was his own wife. Mrs. Evans got her way in the end, and the wedding was elegantly
excessive. Everyone in Coldwater Cove had a guesstimate about how much the
wedding had cost. On the low side of the gossip scale, Crystal’s wedding could
have provided a substantial down payment on a house. If you took Mr. Evans’s complaints
into consideration, the amount would have run a small country for a week.
He disappeared behind
his paper again. Lacy and Crystal and Mrs. Evans nattered on about the color
scheme. Heather injected the sedative into her patient’s IV and waited for it
to take effect.
“It says here in the
paper that Levi Harper needs a liver transplant,” Mr. Evans told Jake. The
young Sooner quarterback was one of Coldwater Cove’s favorite sons, a rising
University of Oklahoma star. Then he’d gone on a mission trip with his church
group to some backwater country over the summer and come home with an exotic
parasite that demolished his liver. Now he was forced to sit out his junior
year.
“That’s a shame.” Jake had
been an all-conference halfback himself when he was in high school, so
following college football was second only to following Lacy. “If Levi gets a
new liver, will he be ready to play next year?”
“Hope so,” Mr. Evans
said. “He comes from good stock, I hear. Aren’t the Harpers related to the Walkers,
Heather?”
“Yes,” she said. “Levi
is my cousin several times removed. His mother’s uncle was my grandmother’s first
cousin or some such thing.”
Levi was eight or so
years younger than Heather, but she remembered him from the big Walker
reunions. Levi had been the self-proclaimed leader of a whole gaggle of little
boys that styled themselves the “Monkey Troop.” They terrorized the great-aunts
piecing quilts and then made off with the pies before the rest of the picnic
things had even been laid out. No watermelon was safe from their predations. No
jug of Kool-Aid stood a chance against their not-so-stealthy marauding.
No one held those
youthful indiscretions against Levi now. Since he was family, Heather had been
tested for a possible partial liver donation. Unfortunately, she was not a
match. If he didn’t get a liver soon, he’d have more to worry about than
missing a football season.
Heather focused back on
her patient at hand. Mrs. Evans was trying to referee while Lacy and her sister
wrangled about whether the bridesmaid dresses should be tea length or drape to
the floor. Heather was grateful that their argument was distracting their
mother. Once the box was checked to indicate whether or not the patient was
willing to be a donor, no one going into surgery should be subjected to a
prolonged discussion about transplants.
Mrs. Evans was blinking
more slowly now. It was time.
Heather told the
family. The good-byes took a while because there was a lot of kissing and
hugging involved. Through it all, Mrs. Evans assured them that everything would
be all right. She stared at the closed curtain once more, as if thinking hard
about her son Michael would magically summon him. When he didn’t appear, she
sighed.
“I’m ready.”
Heather pulled back the
curtain and started pushing the wheeled bed down the hall.
Then Mrs. Evans waved
her hand in the air and sang out gaily, “If anything happens, give my liver to
that football player!”
Behind her, Heather
could hear the Evans family chuckling despite their tears. Shirley Evans was a
wonderful human being. She so deserved the support of her entire family.
If Heather ever ran
into Michael Evans again, she’d happily lock him in an examination room with a
first-year proctology resident and let the new doc practice till he got it
right.
However long it took.
~~~
Available now!
Would you like to order yours?
Amazon | B &N | BAM | Book Depository | Indiebound | Kensington
Love reading with friends? All of Lexi's books feature a Readers' Guide with questions to lead your book club's discussion!