Authors: Ray Garton
She squeezed her dying sister’s hand a little harder . . .
10
Lynda had drifted off during the first half of an old Barbara Stanwyck tear-jerker, which was now swelling with music in its final scene. Before that, they’d watched part of the news, then the shopping channel for a while, making fun of the merchandise as well as the bloated prices. Lying on her side, Lynda’s limp hands were clutched firmly in Margaret’s. They’d only let go so Lynda could change positions on the bed and change channels with the remote, and to occasionally scratch her head through the bandana; in fact, she’d clawed at it furiously every few minutes. Otherwise, their hands had been locked together ever since they’d left the mirror over the sink.
And still, Mrs. Watkiss’s nose continued to whistle steadily beyond the drape.
The Barbara Stanwyck movie was followed by Love Connection, but Margaret wasn’t paying much attention. Her hands had fallen asleep long ago, but she ignored that. She could live with numb hands . . . if only Lynda could live. But now, she was beginning to doze off herself, her head nodding forward, breath rattling through her pinched throat.
She was awakened suddenly by the footsteps of a tall, slender, handsome young man — thirty-five at the oldest — who entered the room wearing a white coat, with part of a stethoscope dangling from the right pocket, and holding a clipboard in his right hand. He had thick, curly, dark brown hair, lovely brown eyes with long, thick lashes and a healthy tan.
“Oh,” he said, his eyebrows shooting up high. “I didn’t realize Lynda had a visitor.”
Sitting up straight, but still holding Lynda’s hands, Margaret said, “I’m her sister. Margaret.”
He smiled and nodded. “Nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Plummer.”
“Really? So, which are you? A doctor or a plumber?”
He chuckled and looked away with an almost boyish bashfulness. “I came to see how she was doing,” he said, looking at the clipboard.
They spoke quietly to one another.
“She’s asleep,” Margaret said.
“Yes, I see. That’s to be expected.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why is that to be expected?”
“Um . . . how much do you know about her condition?”
“I know she has cancer, and that she’s, you know . . . dying.” Her voice dropped to a broken whisper on the last word.
“Well, yes, that’s a fairly accurate, if abrupt, description of her condition. Her sleeping is a reaction to the chemotherapy, and the — ”
“Dr. Plummer!” Lynda said happily, raising her head from the pillow with a smile. She pulled her hands away from Margaret’s and sat up energetically, curling her feet beneath her in the Indian-style position she’d taken earlier that day. Reaching up to scratch her head through the bandana, she said, “This is my sister Margaret. Margaret, this is my doctor, Dr. Plummer.”
Dr. Plummer’s lips twitched and his chin dropped as he stared at Lynda. His dark brown eyes were wide as he said, “Yes, uh . . . we met.”
“Oh, good,” Lynda said. “Sorry I was asleep. We were watching a movie I’d seen before, and I just drifted off.” This time she took both hands to her head, digging her nails into each side furiously.
Blinking rapidly, Dr. Plummer asked, “So, Lynda, how do you . . . feel?”
“Pretty good. In fact, believe it or not, I’m feeling kind of hungry. I was feeling hungry earlier, and I thought it was just a false alarm, but I really think I could use some Jell-O, or maybe some soup.” Scratch, scratch, scratch. “In fact, soup sounds good. Something hot.”
“You’re . . . hungry.” He was not asking a question.
Lynda nodded, smiling.
Dr. Plummer walked around the bed and sat on the side opposite Margaret. “Okay, let’s have a look.” He pressed his fingertips under her jaw, then asked her to lift her arms and felt her armpits. His eyes widened as his brow lowered, and his jaw dropped slowly, opening his mouth behind closed lips. Then he touched her face here and there, as if he were fascinated with it, as if it were a completely foreign object, something he’d never seen before.
Lynda reached up with both hands again to scratch her head, squinting as she did so.
“You’re scratching a lot,” Dr. Plummer said. “Do you have a rash?”
“I don’t think so. My head’s just itching. It’s been driving me crazy.”
“It’s probably the hair,” Margaret said casually.
Dr. Plummer turned to her. “Hair? What hair? She’s on chemo.”
“Well, she’s got some peach fuzz under that bandana,” Margaret said with a gesture of her hand. “It’s probably making her head itch.”
“Oh, no. That can’t be.” He looked at Lynda again, his lips parted. He reached up, removed the bandana and dropped it into Lynda’s lap.
Her head was covered with a thin layer of salt and pepper down.
Dr. Plummer muttered something to himself that was unintelligible, but which had the sound of a very soft curse. He lifted a hand and ran it over her head slowly, his jaw hanging low once again.
“Your hair’s growing back,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Really?” Lynda asked, reaching up to feel for herself. “Is that bad?”
Ignoring her question, Dr. Plummer began to page through her chart his eyes scanning the pages carefully. He frowned down at the chart for a long time, chewing a lip, then: “You’re still on chemotherapy.”
“Yes, I am,” Lynda said.
He looked at her again, reached up and touched her scalp again. “And your hair’s growing back.”
“Is that bad, Dr. Plummer?”
“Well, it’s-it’s-it’s not bad, really, just . . . unusual.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . it’s just thuh- that . . . you lost your hair due to a reaction from the chemotherapy, which affected your follicles. The hair doesn’t grow back until weeks after the chemo has been discontinued. But . . . you-you-you have hair.”
“Really? So, what do you think? Should I go to the beauty parlor? Have it styled?” She laughed.
Dr. Plummer did not. He leaned away from her and stared at her as sternly as a teacher sizing up a troublesome student. He licked his lips, then plucked a pen from a pocket and made a note on the chart.
“I’m scheduling you for a test,” he said. “Tomorrow. Nothing painful, don’t worry. Just . . . a test.”
Lynda’s smile disappeared. “Is something wrong, Dr. Plummer?”
“Uh, no. No, you have nothing to worry about. It’s just that your body is behaving in, uh . . . a rather uh-unorthodox manner.” He lifted his eyes from the chart and stared at her rather suspiciously. “How do you feel? Physically?”
“Well, I feel good. In fact, I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time. Maybe because I’m so happy that Margaret showed up, I don’t know. But I feel really good.” Her smile returned, then became a big grin.
Dr. Plummer smiled as well, but his was forced and stiff. “I’m glad. You’ll be having this test tomorrow morning, first thing. I’ll be in to see you as soon as I get the results.”
“You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”
Not that I can see. Not at all.” He stood. “You were serious about that soup?”
“Oh, yes. It sounds delicious.”
“I’ll see that you get it.” He walked around the bed toward the door, then stopped and turned to Margaret. Speaking distractedly, as if his mind were elsewhere, he said, “Nice to meet you. I’d like to get together for a talk tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”
“That’ll be fine,” Margaret said.
He left smiling, but with a puzzled frown.
“Well, I wonder what that was all about,” Lynda said, rubbing her palms together absently, energetically.
“Maybe it’s something good,” Margaret said, feeling that swelling in her chest again.
“Maybe, who knows? So, anymore good movies on?”
“I’ll make you a deal.”
“What’s that?”
Margaret looked out the window to see that the sky was darkening, the day ending.
“We’ll find a good movie,” Margaret said, “then we’ll hold hands some more.”
Lynda frowned at her. “What is it with you and holding — ”
“I told you. No questions. Agreed?”
Lynda sighed and shook her head, smiling. “Agreed.”
They found a movie. And then they held hands . . .
11
The next morning, Margaret took an invigorating and tinglingly hot shower in her motel room, then scrubbed herself dry with the motel’s cheap, thin towel. Standing naked before the fogged mirror over the sink, Margaret leaned forward and wiped her hand back and forth over the glass, wiping away the moisture. She glanced at her reflection . . . and then she froze. Her hand was frozen halfway to her toothbrush, her head down, her back suddenly rigid.
Margaret’s head turned slowly back to the mirror, to her reflection. She squinted at her face, leaning forward.
“Holy shit,” she muttered as she picked up her towel and swept it back and forth over the whole mirror, trying to clear it up. Bits of lint clung to the glass, but the reflection was much clearer than before.
She dropped the towel to the floor and slapped her palms onto the Formica on each side of the sink, leaning close to the mirror so she could inspect her face.
It was not her face. At least, that was how she felt initially. It might have been her face way back when . . . back when she was fat, if, of course, she hadn’t been fat. But it couldn’t possibly be her face now, could it? Today? At the age of forty-two? After regular trips to the plastic surgeon? After developing wrinkles and baggy patches before her time because of all those little operations meant to maintain her youth and beauty? She hadn’t looked this good yesterday evening in Lynda’s mirror . . . and she thought she’d looked pretty damned good then!
She began to laugh. She didn’t mean to, but the laughter came out of her independently. She was unable to control it. She laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks.
Lynda had been right.
Margaret would knock them dead at the reunion . . .
12
Margaret took three steps into Lynda’s hospital room with a paper bag clutched in her right hand before she stumbled to a clumsy halt.
Lynda’s bed was empty. It had been made neatly, as if the maid had just left . . . but it was empty.
“Oh, my God,” Margaret groaned. She rushed forward and tossed the bag onto the chair. “Lynda, oh my God!”
An ugly, phlegmy cough came from behind Mrs. Watkiss’s drape.
“She’s gone,” the old woman rasped.
Margaret went to the drape and pulled it back.
“Not dead, just gone,” Mrs. Watkiss said. “For tests, I heard ’em say. You should know better than anyone that she ain’t dead.”
Margaret stepped to the side of the bed and put her hands on the side rail.
Mrs. Watkiss was smiling up at her, and her bleary eyes looked happy.
“She’s better, ain’t she? A lot better, I bet.”
“Well,” Margaret said, “her doctor seemed surprised last night when she asked for soup.”
“Yeah, ’course. And I bet that’s why she’s out for tests. They’re confused. They’re gonna stay confused, too, I promise you. You’re gonna give ’em the puzzle of their lives.”
Margaret leaned forward. “Mrs. Watkiss, what you told me yesterday . . . well, um, do you remember talking to me yesterday?”
“Honey, if my body was a building, they’d take a wreckin’ ball to it. But I still got my mind. ’Course I remember.”
“Well, you were talking about this . . . gift that I’ve been given.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you tell me anymore about it?”
“Mm. Must’ve happened recently. I can understand your confusion. When I first saw ’em coming out of the sky, I was terrified. I bet you were, too, huh?”
Margaret nodded.
“Took some time for the memory of it all to gel, you know? Even the memory was scary at first. Maybe that’s your problem. Too recent. You’re still afraid. Is that it?”
“Well, yes . . . I’m a little afraid. The memories . . . well, they keep coming to me in these horrible . . . they’re like nightmares.”
The old woman closed her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, I know. But you have an advantage. The memories might still be comin’, but you know you got the gift. I didn’t have someone to talk to about it like you do. I’m glad we found each other. And look at your pretty face, Margaret. You look much younger than you did yesterday, and so pretty.” She smiled, but her eyes were only half open, as if she were very tired and about to fall asleep. “And I bet you’re knowin’ your sister’s better. Ain’t that right?”
“Yes,” Margaret said, nodding. “But . . . what about you?”
“What about me, honey?”
Margaret reached down and took Mrs. Watkiss’s knobby, veined hand between hers, smiling.
“Oh, that’s sweet of ya. But you don’t understand my problem. I ain’t just sick, I’m . . . well, I went bad and soured the gift I don’t know if even you could help me now, havin’ the gift yourself. You don’t worry about me.” She patted Margaret’s wrist with her other hand. “You just concentrate on your sister. She’s the one you should be helping. And you keep thinkin’ ’bout what I’ve told ya. Use that gift the way it’s supposed to be used. For good. For your sister. And other folks like her.”