“I talked to Maddux, the Brouwer’s pediatrician,” Greg said. “The baby is fine. She happened to be one of the few cases that actually needed an antibiotic, something I wouldn’t have prescribed until the afternoon.” He wadded and tossed the shredded resignation letter in the garbage can. “So, what’s this really about?”
“What if I hurt her? What if I can’t help people anymore? I’ve lost my—”
Greg put his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to hear this! Mrs. Brouwer was worried that you might overreact like this. That’s why she wanted me to talk to you. I was on my way out to your place when I noticed your car already here.”
He stood. “Look, Grace. I don’t know exactly under what auspices you work. You know I don’t go for that faith healer stuff, but you have some special ability in treating patients. I know what happened with the Marshall boy and I’m not kidding myself that there wasn’t something, ah, out of the ordinary that you did to make it heal clean and fast, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Tony Vander Groot is a little demon and I’m certain that he jerked or did something to hurt himself during that accident last summer and I simply don’t care about the rest.”
Greg folded his arms and stared at her. “Now with this—well, you’ve never been a coward.”
She shook her head, drained.
“I think you’ve been coddled, admired, even worshiped, for what you can do for people and haven’t run into much opposition before,” he said mercilessly.
His sharp darts thrust into the fabric of her pride. Grace jumped out of the chair and stalked to the door.
Greg stepped in front of her, and held out his hand, palm facing her. “Now, wait. Isn’t that just a little bit true?”
She halted and nodded reluctantly, not meeting his question.
“So, a little character definition doesn’t hurt.”
Closing her eyes, Grace crossed her arms and turned her cheek. “I want to be someplace where hard things don’t happen all of the time. Why can’t I just work, eat, sleep, and be happy?”
Greg wandered over to his louvered window and looked out. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his feet. After a few minutes he said, “I think that’s a rhetorical question. At least I hope it is.”
He jingled the loose coins in his pocket and then turned to face her. “But in case it isn’t, my answer is, sometimes you can just work, eat, sleep, and be happy. And you have to keep those moments close, so when you can’t please everybody all the time, you haul out those happy moments and relive them until the unhappy people crawl back into their own little lives and leave yours alone. And, of course, you chose one of the worst careers to meet those conditions,” he concluded. “Now. I have you scheduled—”
“I’m not kidding, Greg. I can’t work here anymore.”
He sighed and sat in his chair behind the desk, looking much like the first day Grace met him when he was weary and ill with flu. He leaned back and closed his eyes briefly before opening them and leaning across his desk. “I think I can only remember one time when you ever took a vacation, which was in July, right?”
Grace saw the direction of the discussion and began to shake her head.
Greg reached across the desk and grabbed her hand. “Listen to me,” he said in his no-nonsense voice. “I want you to take some time off. There are extenuating circumstances”—
Ted
—“that necessitate your care being given elsewhere for the time being.”
He cocked his head and squeezed her knuckles painfully. “Two months’ leave for now. Middle of December I’ll expect you back here, bright and eager.”
Conveniently after Randy and Kaye’s wedding.
“I’ll keep in touch,” he promised.
Or threatened.
She understood that was all the time he was giving Ted Marshall to live.
Grace walked aimlessly toward the few scraggly apple trees behind her house. Hurting her best friend’s baby was horrifying, but having a date stamp on Ted’s life gutted her. For the first time she knew for sure he was going to die and nothing she did could make any difference. God wasn’t going to give her the chance to try. How could he do this? He had left her gaping and wounded, bereft.
Wasps buzzed lazily around the late summer fruit, its fermenting juice filling her nostrils. Tall grasses waved in the breeze and she stopped to watch a blackbird land nearby and tilt its shiny head at her. A wasp landed on her jacket sleeve and she wondered if she should shake it off. She put one foot in front of the other until she walked right up the cement steps leading to the Marshalls’ stoop. Ted stood braced against the door, waiting, arms open and shoulder available. It was the first time Grace had gone to him. She felt his chest heave even as she fitted so smoothly into his arms it was as if the two of them were two halves of the same mold.
Sharing her grief made it only a little less frightening.
* * * *
Ted breathed in her scent, the familiar aloe mingled with the freshness of outdoors. Grace’s nose felt like ice buried in the side of his neck. She trembled. He jiggled her shoulders a little when he knew he could no longer stand comfortably.
“Hey.” He held her away. “I need to sit. Come.” Ted turned and led her into the house.
The ticking of the grandfather clock tried to drown out his worried thoughts. Ted smoothed her hair and cheek, running his finger around the rim of her ear while they sat on the couch. He whispered, “Grace. Look at me.” Her eyes were blank, shocked, as if she were just waking up in a strange bed. She looked around and slowly settled her gaze on his face.
“Shelby called here. She’s so worried.” He gave Grace another little shake. “You’re not supposed to be the one to make people worry.”
She didn’t respond.
“People talk, you know—it’s not mean or anything, or accusing, or strange. You have a special talent—the ability to make people better.” He babbled to fill the silence. “But sometimes things happen. Not even a doctor can save his patient every time. Germs find their way in. Shelby and Davy understand. It’s okay with me. You can’t always simply fix everyone…”
He was stunned at her reaction. She thrust herself away from him, getting to her wobbly feet. Two spots burned on her cheeks and her eyes shone unnaturally bright.
“Like I can’t fix you, you mean? It’s supposed to work. That’s why I have it, that’s why I was called to be a healer.” She paced strangely off-course as a blind woman might have been. She put out a hand as if to fend off the wall at the far end of the room. Ted wondered for a moment if she had taken something or had a drink. He wrinkled his eyebrows and sniffed. No booze on her breath.
What to do next. She had come to him—for what? He went carefully over the sketchy information he knew. Shelby had asked Grace to come and check out Alyssa but later took the baby to the hospital. Alyssa was sick but not that sick and recovering nicely. Grace wanted to quit her job but instead was on leave.
Why was Grace so upset? She had not reacted this strongly back when everyone was talking about her last summer.
Ted thought back to their conversation of the previous afternoon.
“Death is temporary,” she had told him. She was so sure of herself that he had no choice but to consider over and over what she said. He thought of her until he saw her through the window as if he had wished her to appear.
She stood before him, agitated. “Randy said…Randy told me…” She stopped, looking as confused as he was at the words coming out of her mouth. He watched her crinkle her forehead, before swiveling to face the window. She started pacing again. “Randy asked me to help you. But I can’t,” she whispered.
Ted stared, fascinated at the tears rolling down her face. She couldn’t be going through all this for him, could she?
“He knows. He found out when he went there. They told him…he knew that I couldn’t then, and I can’t now.” She shuddered.
He had no idea what she was talking about. He wondered if she were in the midst of a mental breakdown. What should he do? “What does Randy have to do with anything?” Ted asked. “You’re talking about last spring when he went to Woodside? I realize he had no business checking out your credentials and background but it’s not like you have anything to hide, is it? Your husband died of cancer. Your child was in a car accident far away from you. People die all the time. You didn’t want to stay in that place and came here to start new. Believe me, if I could I would have left, too—just taken Eddy and gone somewhere else.”
She wandered away from him, shaking her head. “No, no, no.” She slumped on the sofa.
He followed her. “Grace.”
“I’m so tired, Ted. I just need to lie down, okay? A little nap.”
“Grace!” He shook her shoulders. “Wait! You didn’t, um, take anything did you? Some aspirin, or…” He tried to think. “Or anything from the clinic, did you?”
Grace looked at him, smiling dreamily. “Of course not.” She patted the seat beside her. “Come, be here with me. It won’t be always, you know.” Her smile turned sweetly nostalgic. “We were talking about something important this afternoon. Before Shelby and Greg. It was important,” she said. “Ah, yes, about it not being always.” She frowned. A woozy, bemused little line appeared between her brows. “Some things are temporary, though, aren’t they?”
Ted sat beside Grace and pulled her close again, smoothing her hair and rocking her gently.
“But some things are always.”
And it occurred to him that it was true.
* * * *
Eddy told his dad he thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have Grace sleeping over on his couch. Eds anxiously waited for her to wake up in the morning and kept going to check, tiptoeing with exaggerated care. He sounded like a herd of elephants. Ted was surprised she slept through it. He caught his son breathing practically into her ear at one point and made him stay in the kitchen to give her some privacy.
* * * *
Grace woke all at once right before ten o’clock. What she was doing on Ted’s couch? And why was he standing there?
“What happened?” She felt sick to her stomach and combed her hair with shaky fingers.
“We talked. Then you fell asleep, nothing more. Let me get you something to eat.”
Ted fixed her tea and Eddy brought her toast, walking carefully still on tiptoes with his precious burden. The child tipped the plate at the last minute and a few crumbs landed in her lap along with the plate.
“Whoops!” Eddy opened his eyes wide and dropped his chin.
“My lap isn’t that hungry,” Grace told him. He giggled. She looked closely into his eyes to see that all the sadness of the last week and the anxiety of who would sign his reading paper had gone.
When Eddy was satisfied that she had eaten every crumb of toast, the little guy went off to dress. Ted joined her, lowering himself stiffly in a nearby rocker with the aid of his crutch. Grace watched.
“I don’t remember anything from the time I left the clinic until this morning. The last time that happened was when I first came here to East Bay. I woke up in the motel with a paper that said I checked in two days earlier and I had no recollection of it. Or of much of the trip before.”
She put the empty plate and mug on the coffee table, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
“I think you were really stressed out.”
“How’s the baby?”
“Alyssa went home with her parents about a half an hour ago. Davy called. She’ll be fine. I could hear her cooing in the background on their car phone when they called. They tried here when you didn’t answer. Shelby was worried.”
Grace squeezed her eyes shut in relief. She opened them and sat forward, thinking it was time she left. She glanced around, trying to pick out any of her belongings. Shoes would be good. She put them on and stood up.
Ted awkwardly pulled himself out of the rocker.
“I guess I’d better go. Thanks for the couch. And the shoulder.” She followed his slow walk.
At the kitchen door, Ted stopped her. “You came to me, Grace. I’d like to think that means you trust me.”
“I always have. Somehow I’ve always felt that way, that I could trust you even when we both know… Well, anyway, I’ll be going now.” She couldn’t look at him, embarrassed in her vulnerability. “Thanks for breakfast, too. Say so long to Eddy, okay? And thanks for making me toast just the way I like it.” She twitched her shoulders and slipped out before he could touch her.
* * * *
Grace opened her door to Shelby later that afternoon. “Davy’s staying with the baby,” Shelby answered her friend’s voiceless question. “I needed to come over and talk to you, see if you were all right.”
“Me?” Grace pushed the front door back tight against the frame after Shelby walked right in and plopped herself down on the sofa.
“It’s not that I didn’t trust your medical expertise at the hospital, Grace. I trust you with the life of my child above my own,” she said. “You know that.”
Grace was still silent. She slowly closed the door and turned around, leaning her back against it. She knew nothing, nothing. Why would Shelby come to torment her like this?
“I don’t know how I can say this right. You showed me the face of Christ. And honestly, every time I see you in action I see that look you have, the face of God imposed on you.”
Shelby jumped up and grabbed her hand. “Oh, please don’t doubt that. I don’t know why things happen.”
Grace allowed Shelby to tug her toward the sofa. “Here, sit down. You look awful. This is not coming out right. I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, because I am—truly. And you can’t leave us. You just can’t.”
Grace shook her head. A headache started to pound behind her eyeballs. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids. “I don’t know what to say. It’s not quite the same as a year ago when I was terrified—overwhelmed—and had to leave Woodside. Well, maybe I’m overwhelmed, yes, but not frightened. Even after what happened last summer. I’m worried that I’ve lost my…my faith, my ability to help people.”
She searched for answers in Shelby, who had only sympathy to give. “I guess it’s safe to say now I really have lost it. What if I’d hurt Alyssa more than I did? How could we ever forgive each other?”