At the Scent of Water (33 page)

He looked at her intently, and when he answered, his face had lost the polished, plastic look. “I want this hospital to be the premiere neonatal cardiac surgery center in the world. I want people to come here from Asia, from Europe, from Africa and Australia. I want our doctors to be the legends, the ones who mark the path for future generations.”

“Why?” She asked it gently, without challenge.

He answered quickly and decisively. “Because we can. And if we can, we should.”

She looked at him and realized that was the culture of this place, the unspoken assumption behind every decision. She rose and extended her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Bradley. You’ve been very helpful.”

He was surprised and therefore suspicious. “That’s it?”

“I think so.” She gathered up her things and left and could feel his eyes on her back as she walked away.

****

She did not stop to think or eat or rest. She drove straight to the Rosewood Manor care center. She parked her car, not sure what she would do now that she had arrived. She got out, locked it, and just looked around for a moment. It was not what she had expected, and she felt an ache of pain. Somehow it had been more bearable when she imagined the girl in a pristine hospital, surrounded by landscaping and flowers, not this decrepit sprawl of concrete and brick. What difference did it make? she asked herself. Kelly Bright did not know or care where she was.

She walked to the entrance. The automatic doors opened, and she stepped in, but there was not much more cheer in here. The air smelled of urine and deodorizer. There was a line of residents milling around the foyer in wheelchairs and a beleaguered receptionist answering the telephone. A large notice proclaimed that all guests must sign in, that all press personnel must speak to the administrator, and Annie had a moment of indecision. Should she declare herself press or just walk on by?

“What’s your name?” Not from the receptionist as she’d been expecting, but from a wizened old woman in a wheelchair who pushed right up to her and smiled.

“My name is Annie,” she said, smiling back. “What’s yours?”

“Eugenia Marie Whelty,” the woman said, holding out her hand, and Annie shook it. The next sentence would tell if the woman was coherent, or if she greeted everyone who came through the door with a handshake and an introduction.

“I was going to the activity room to play bingo,” Eugenia said, shaking her head, “but bingo’s cancelled today. Delaphine’s got the flu.”

“Delaphine?”

“Activity aide. They’re understaffed around here. One person out sick and the whole joint shuts down.”

Annie grinned, all doubts about Eugenia’s mental competency removed.

“You here to see somebody?” Eugenia asked.

“Not exactly,” she said.

“Want a cup of coffee? The church ladies are serving down in the Grassy Meadow lounge.”

“Sounds good,” Annie said and followed along beside the woman’s wheelchair. They were indeed serving coffee in the Grassy Meadow lounge, actually a comfortable room in spite of the plastic furniture. It was full of hanging plants, and incredibly, a golden retriever lounged beside the sofa. There was gospel music playing softly from a portable CD player, and another woman was leading what looked like a Bible study in the corner.

“That’s Elmo,” Eugenia said, pointing to the dog, and he patted his tail down once and raised his head upon hearing his name.

A pleasant-faced woman served them cups of coffee, and Annie took a tentative sip while the woman went back for a plate of cookies.

“This is good,” she said, surprised.

“The Baptists make good coffee,” Eugenia agreed. “The Methodists? Terrible. Watery. You put your cream in, and it looks like tea. I’ll tell you who makes the best coffee, though, is Lutherans. I come from North Dakota, and if you want to have a good cup of coffee, just put a Lutheran in charge.”

Annie grinned and sipped, and she took a brownie when the Baptist church lady passed the plate. It was good, too, the Baptists apparently understanding chocolate as well as coffee.

“How did you end up in North Carolina from North Dakota?” she asked.

“Came out here in sixty-three to take care of my brother. He died, and I didn’t have much to call me back. I lived in his house until I had a stroke, then I ended up here.”

Not much to call her back, and Annie suddenly saw a similar picture of herself at that point in life. What would she have, she wondered, to call to her?

“How long have you been here?”

“Six years next fall.”

Annie nodded.

“So what brings you here?” Eugenia asked. “Just passing the time?”

She shook her head and decided to be honest. “I came because I’m interested in Kelly Bright.”

“You and everybody else,” Eugenia said with a philosophical shrug. “You a reporter?”

“Sort of. Yes,” she admitted frankly.

“Thought so. Had you pegged the minute you came in the door. Want to know what gave you away?”

“Yes.” Frankly, she did.

“The big purse. All the lady reporters carry ’em.”

“Is that so?” She would have to remember that in case she wanted to go somewhere incognito.

“That’s so. I notice things,” she said. “There’s nothing else to do around here. I refuse to watch a soap opera, and I hate game shows, and like I said, Delaphine’s out with the flu.”

Annie grinned. She liked Eugenia. Very much. But she had come here for a purpose. She set down her empty coffee cup with a sigh.

Eugenia set down her cup, as well. “Want to see her room?” she asked, apparently resigned to losing her coffee companion.

“If you don’t mind showing me.” She had no idea what she would do once she got there.

“Follow me,” Eugenia said, and Annie walked along beside her down three more hallways until she stopped in front of a half-closed door. “There it is,” she said. “Don’t let Nurse Ratchet see you.” She cocked her head toward the nurse’s station where a thin woman with dyed coal black hair was talking on the telephone.

“Thank you,” Annie said, and Eugenia waved and was on her way.

Annie hesitated for a moment before tapping gently on the door. No one was in the room except the patient, a still form in the bed. Annie looked, but she did not enter. She had no business violating Kelly’s privacy. There were some places she would not go for a story. Some standards she would not violate. She watched for a second. Saw the pale face, the eyes open but not seeing. She closed the door gently. She shook her head and backed away from the door, and it was a good thing because the black-haired nurse was coming her way. She ducked out of the nearest doorway and found herself in an outdoor courtyard. There was no exit without going back through the building, and she did not want to encounter the authorities just yet. She sat down on the concrete bench asking herself the obvious question. Why had she come here, after all?

A woman who was sitting across from her looked up briefly and gave Annie a slight nod of acknowledgment. She was smoking, taking deep draughts of the cigarette, flicking the ashes off onto the ground with practiced movements. Annie guessed her age at forty-five or so. She had blond hair with brown roots. She had been pretty once.

“Hey,” she said to Annie with a lift of her chin.

“Hello,” Annie answered back. She took deep breaths and tried not to mind the cigarette smoke. She was the intruder here.

Neither one of them spoke, and that was fine with Annie. She leaned her head back against the hard back of the bench. It had been a long day already. She felt as if she had taken in too much information, much more than she could absorb. She was exhausted, and except for the brownie and coffee, she couldn’t remember eating anything that day. It was nearly four o’clock.

“Are there any good barbecue places around here?” she asked the woman. “I could go for a barbecue sandwich right about now with slaw and some French fries.”

“I hear you,” the woman said. “There’s a Burger King up the road and a Hardees. No barbecue, though.”

Annie shrugged. It had been a thought.

“I haven’t seen you around,” the woman said. “I think I’d remember that hair.”

Annie smiled. “It’s unforgettable. That’s for sure. I was just having coffee with Eugenia,” she said. Not a lie but not really the truth, either.

“She’s a character.” Another stream of smoke.

“How about you?” Annie asked. “Are you visiting someone, or do you work here?”

“I’m visiting. You could say that.” She twisted her mouth into an ironic smile. “I’ve just about lived here for the last five years.”

And suddenly Annie knew who she was.

“My daughter’s here,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder toward the room Annie had just looked into.

Annie kept silent. Now that she had the opportunity to ask a question, they all seemed crass and pointless.

“I don’t stay here all day because of my other kids,” the woman volunteered. “I got a boy and another girl. Both younger.” Her look asked Annie to say she understood. “But I come for a little while every afternoon.”

“I imagine they want to go places and do things. To have a life,” Annie said. “You’ve got to do for them, too.”

“That’s it
exactly,
” the woman said, and something in her face looked deeply satisfied at Annie’s answer. “My name’s Rosalie,” she said. “Rosalie Cubbins.”

“I’m Annie,” she answered back. “Annie Dalton.”

“How about you?” Rosalie asked her. “Do you have any children?”

“I did have,” she said, and she felt that Rosalie Cubbins deserved a truthful answer from her. “I had a little girl, but she died. Five years ago.”

“That’s how long Kelly’s been sick,” Rosalie said, and it struck Annie odd that she would use such a euphemistic phrase. Shorthand for the pain and damage, and understandable, she supposed.

She nodded. She knew how long Kelly Bright had been here. She knew exactly.

“What happened to your daughter?” Rosalie asked without apparent embarrassment.

Annie supposed it was natural, considering what she had lived with herself. Unbearable facts had become a part of her everyday life. “She drowned. She was four years old. Her name was Margaret.”

“Sorry.” Eyes that understood even if the words were short.

Annie nodded. “She was a sweet child. She could be a little headstrong sometimes. My papa said she got that from her mother.” She gave Rosalie a rueful smile. “She loved to play outside, no matter what the weather, and I tell myself I should have told my mother-in-law to watch her. She’d been getting up from her nap and slipping off to play, and I should have known that she would do that. And them having the creek so close. But I didn’t know my husband was going to take her to his mother’s house, or I would have warned her.”

“What happened?” Rosalie ground out her cigarette and lit another.

“He got called in to work,” Annie said. “And he dropped her off at his mother’s.”

Rosalie nodded. “This was my husband’s fault, too,” she said.

Her words shocked Annie numb. She would never have said it so baldly, but it was what she thought, wasn’t it? This woman had only heard what she hadn’t said and put it into words for her.

“He was driving, and he blew a red light. Got T-boned by a city bus. Kelly’s chest was all torn up.” She thumped her own chest. “Then the doctor screwed up when he tried to fix it. Screw-ups every whichaway.” She took in another breath of smoke.

“So what do you do here?” Annie asked. “When you come to see her.”

Rosalie shrugged. “I talk to her. I tell her how her brother and sister are doing. I used to braid her hair before we cut it off. We watch the stories together.
General Hospital
and
Guiding Light
. Her father doesn’t come anymore. Can’t stand it. But I’ve got to take care of her. I mean, she’s my daughter. What am I supposed to do?”

“You’ve got to take care of her. Of course,” Annie said simply.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then though she doubted it would ever find its way into print, she did what she had come here for. “What was she like?” she asked Rosalie, turning to her with a half smile, and Rosalie’s eyes lit, as Annie had known they would. “What were her dreams and ambitions? What did she like to do better than anything in the world?”

“I’ll tell you, it’s the silliest thing,” Rosalie said, her face shining at the recollection, “but that kid liked watermelon rind better than ice cream.” And while Annie sat and listened, Rosalie Cubbins talked about her daughter.

Thirty-seven

It was two o’clock Tuesday morning, and Sam was up, reading. He had gone straight from church on Sunday back to his and Annie’s house and had found his Bible where he had left it, at the bottom of the pile of things to be taken to the Goodwill. That night, after his mother was asleep and the light in Elijah’s cottage had gone out, he had sat and read, devoured the words, searched them intently, like a scientist set on proving or disproving a hypothesis.

He had worked all day Monday, then had come home, and now he was doing the same thing again. He was reading and thinking, and gradually truth was becoming clear, like a figure coming toward him in the fog. He had begun well. He saw that now, for his faith had been real. He had felt gifted—no, the truth was more than that. He had
been
gifted, and he had used his gift for God. But then he had forgotten about God and had started feeling the weight of that responsibility on his own shoulders. Had begun to feel that it was
his
job to alleviate the suffering of the world.

And he had forgotten something else. He had forgotten that he had an enemy who wanted to destroy him. That was the huge awareness that had come to him Sunday morning in church as Elijah had spoken. He began looking at the events of his life as strategic movements of an enemy commander, and he could see how he had walked into every trap, completely unsuspecting.

The biggest mistake, of course, was that he had forgotten who was Sovereign God and who was not. He had begun imagining that he, himself, could control things. Then he had made the mistakes. Those missteps had disabused him of that notion. It had become very apparent that he was not who he had thought he was, for his mistakes were so huge they could not be covered or recovered from. And then he had begun to imagine that they had been retribution, punishments for wrongs unknown and unseen. He had become bitter then and had turned his heart away. He did not want to serve a God who treated His children like that. But he had forgotten all about the Spoiler, the Destroyer, the one who mars and hurts. He cast his mind back now over the past and tried to see where misfortune and pride left off and evil began, tried to tease apart sin from error, humanity from hubris. He shook his head with frustration, for even if he had been able to do that, was not God still above all? Could He not have overruled? Why had He not done so?

A slight tapping came from the door, and Sam startled. He glanced at his mother’s mantel clock. It was half past two.

“Everything all right? I saw the light and was worried.”

“Come in,” Sam said to Elijah.

He shook his head. “I thought it might be you,” he said, and his eyes were wise. “Come on over to my place if you want. I’ve got some coffee made.”

Sam nodded, stepped onto the porch, and gently closed the front door. He followed Elijah across the lawn and went inside the guesthouse. The smell of coffee greeted him. The lights burned cheerfully, and Elijah motioned him toward the couch. He sat down, and his host handed him a cup of steaming coffee. “Cream?” he asked.

“It’s fine black,” Sam said. Mostly he wanted something warm. “What were you doing up?” he asked Elijah, curious.

“Praying,” he said. “For you.” A bold look.

Sam nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and for a minute he thought of all the people who had told him that, beginning with the old woman in the restaurant. Over and over they had murmured and whispered it to him. “We’re praying for you.” Now he saw beyond those banal words, and he imagined the reality behind them. He could almost see the heavens vibrating as those prayers began to move and resonate, their motions orchestrated. For the first time he thought of them as supernatural fuel poured on a small flame, as currents of air upon which mighty warrior angels traveled. Were they rising together and gathering force? Is that why he felt this sense of movement, of things long hazy becoming clearer? Of questions being asked rather than buried under anger and grief?

“Why, Elijah?” he asked bluntly. “Why did it all happen? Does God hate me?”

Elijah shook his head and took a sip of his own coffee. “He doesn’t hate you. I read something in a book one time, and I’ve never forgotten it. That God forever settled the question of His love for you at the Cross. The whys I can’t answer. The rest I don’t know. But that’s one thing I’m sure of. He loves you with an everlasting love.”

Sam shook his head. The answer wasn’t satisfactory. And he realized then that it wasn’t an explanation he wanted from God as much as an apology.

Elijah fixed him with a level gaze. “Here’s another
why
question for you,” he said. “Ponder this one for a while. Jesus never did anything wrong.
Ever
. He was the perfect, sinless lamb of God. He never hurt anyone, never made a poor decision, never lost His temper, or lashed out in selfish anger. He was the precious, loved son of God, and the Father looked on while they drove spikes into His hands and feet.
Why?
Answer me that.”

Sam thought about that, his feelings jumbled, swinging between humble emotion and defiance. His suffering on one side. The suffering of the Son of God on the other.

“What would you say I should do?” he finally asked, and he waited for Elijah to say receive God’s love, receive God’s healing, cry and weep and let Him mend your broken heart, but when Elijah spoke, the one word he uttered was the last thing Sam had expected to come from his mouth.

“Repent,” Elijah said bluntly.

Sam’s mouth was surprised shut. He stared, not sure if he felt anger or something else, but his insides were stirred up in turmoil.

“Bitterness toward God is a sin,” Elijah said, “and as long as you cherish it, you’ll have no peace.”

Sam went back to his mother’s house and sat and read until the morning came, gray and dry. He read Job. From beginning to end. Slowly. He read Job’s complaint and God’s answer.
Where were you,
the Almighty One asked His creature,
when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
He saw it then. He saw how offended and cold he had been and still was.

Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him! Who has a claim against Me that I must pay?

He read Job’s answer to God.
I put my hand over my mouth. . . . Surely I spoke of things I did not understand. . . . My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes
.

He sat and stared at the words before him, and he thought about what they meant. But he did not pray.