She whined, “This is the limit. How long are you going to keep me sitting here? Vonnie, I want to go to my room.”
As I was still standing in the doorway, with only the tree between us, I parted the leaves with my hands so she could see my face. “I’ll be there in a minute, Mother.”
I clumped the tree to its place alongside the wall to join the mini-forest I had accumulated from Wal-Mart.
I rolled my eyes. How in heaven’s name did I let Lisa Leann talk me into picking up more money trees for Michelle’s shower?
“They’re half price today only,” she’d said on our early morning phone call. “If you could pick them up, I’ll drop by later tonight and help you decorate them with lights and clips to hold the money.”
I was always glad to save a buck, so I said, “Sure, but will we have enough?”
“I already have half a dozen in my garage and that in addition to the hotel’s greenery and my fine decorating skills, and I think we’ll be good to go.”
But now that I’d been at this for hours, with several repeat trips, the few bucks we were saving didn’t seem so important. No wonder Mother was cross.
“Vonnie!”
“Mother, I tried to talk you into staying home this last trip. Besides, it’s almost one o’clock and time for your doctor’s appointment.”
“Aren’t we going to have lunch first?”
“We’ll have cream of potato soup when we get home.”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Can’t you go at the doctor’s office?”
“Absolutely not. Help me inside, please.”
I finished pushing the tree into its spot by the doll-adorned fireplace and tried to stand up straight, a process that proved no easy task. I put a hand on my back and arched out the kinks. “Coming, Mother.”
I hurried down to her only to make the trip up the steps once more, but this time as a crutch.
I felt my mother’s grip tighten on my arm as she sucked in her breath.
I looked down on her head of white hair. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Just hurts a bit is all.”
By the time I got her to the bathroom door I was sure I’d have a permanent purple handprint on my upper arm.
I couldn’t wait till the doctor removed that awful cast off Mother’s ankle; then we’d all be a lot happier as Mother would finally go home with Dad.
I couldn’t help but wince.
Poor Dad.
Though it was hard to feel too sorry for him because he was the one who’d dumped Mother on me in the first place.
In truth, I was still angry with her for the distant past. Plus her constant whining and complaining had done nothing to soften my heart. I’d only honored her with my caregiving because I’d felt it was my duty. After all, the Word says we’re supposed to honor our parents, so I was trying, really trying. But knowing the end was in sight made my “trying circumstance” bearable.
I looked at my watch. It was almost one. What was taking so long in there?
I knocked on the door. “Mother? We’re going to be late.”
No answer, though I heard the swoosh of the plumbing. I knocked on the door again. “Mother?”
A faint voice called out from behind the door. “Vonnie?”
I sighed. “What is it, Mother?”
“I can’t get up.”
I felt a wave of exasperation. “What do you mean, you can’t get up?”
“I need help.”
For goodness sake.
I tried the doorknob. Locked. I rapped on the door with my knuckles. “You locked the door.”
Her voice sounded tired. “Don’t you have a key?”
“Yes, Mother. Just a second.”
I rushed to my catchall drawer in the kitchen. I pulled it out and dumped it on the table while pens, pencils, and even an old marble rolled onto the floor. What remained in the large pile were old sugar packets, paperclips, rubber bands, a wad of string, my stapler, a collection of coins, and a hodgepodge of keys.
I picked up the proper key and rushed back to the bathroom door. “I’m back.”
“What took you so long?”
I ignored the question and unlocked the door. It opened into a tiny, yellow-painted room. The sink was backsplashed in yellow tile printed with inky blue designs of flowers. There Mother sat, prim and proper on the white porcelain toilet bowl.
“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.
“I told you, I can’t get up.”
I tried to pull her up by her elbow, but she winced. “That’s not working.”
In the limited space I tried another tactic. I stood in front of her and took her hands in mine and tugged.
“Please stop,” she cried at last. I sat down, exhausted, on the worn, white rug, which covered the hardwood floor. “Your ankle hurts that much?”
She nodded.
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“What do you think? Get me off of this thing.”
I stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“To call the paramedics.”
Mother was aghast. “You can’t do that! They’d see me.”
“Then I’ll call David. He’s a paramedic, he worked last night, and I know he’s off duty this afternoon. He’ll come over.”
“No! I just won’t have it.”
“Mother, I’ll get you a blanket and you can put it over your lap. He won’t see anything. Don’t you think that would work?”
She considered it for a moment. “I guess that would be okay.”
I dialed David’s number and he answered on the first ring. I could tell I’d awakened him. “Hello?”
“David, it’s my mother; I need your help.”
His voice perked. “What’s wrong?”
“I know this sounds silly, but I can’t get her off the toilet. I mean, she can’t stand up.”
“I’ll be right there.” He hung up before I could explain further.
A few minutes later, his black Mazda 3 pulled up, and I hurried to meet him at the front porch.
Though his tennis shoes were untied, he bounded toward me, dressed in a pair of frayed jeans and an old gray sweatshirt. The word Raiders was barely legible beneath his unzipped parka. He was clutching a well-worn paramedic’s kit.
I led the way to the bathroom, where Miss Priss looked as if she had just summoned a gentleman to tea. Her pink blanket covered her lap, making her white top look like the top of a flowing ball gown. “Hello, David.”
“Gram.” He knelt on one knee and reached for her hand to take her pulse. “How are you this afternoon?”
“I’m fine.”
He let go of her hand and asked with gentle intensity, “What seems to be the problem?”
“I can’t get up,” she answered as if she was talking to a thickheaded schoolboy.
David took her grumpiness in stride. “But why, Gram? Why can’t you get up?”
She pointed to the cast on her ankle. “It hurts too much.”
“Where?”
She pointed to her leg, just above the cast. “It won’t take my weight.”
“Can I see?”
She smiled then, like a shy schoolgirl, and shifted the pink blanket off her ankle. David gently touched her leg.
“Ouch.”
He stood up and pulled me into the hallway. “Mom, her leg’s pretty swollen. Has she fallen?”
I shook my head. “No. At least, not that she’s told me.”
“I’m thinking she might have a secondary fracture.”
I think I gasped, but David’s eyes held mine with that same gentleness he’d used with my mother. He was saying, “Now, we can call the fire department or I can help you get her to the car. What do you think?”
“I’m not deaf,” Mother scolded from the bathroom. “And I’ll not sit here while the whole of Summit View comes to gawk.”
David walked back to the bathroom door and told her, “Okay, then do you think you can help me?”
“I can try.”
“I’m going to bend over, and when I do I want you to put your arms around my neck. Then when I stand straight, I’m going to pull you up with me.”
“That won’t work, and I won’t do it.”
“Why not, Mother?” I asked.
She sighed heavily, like she thought I was an idiot. “I’ll be exposed.”
“What if I shut my eyes?” David asked.
“And I pulled up your slacks?” I added.
Mother hesitated. “Don’t announce that out loud. Someone might hear you.”
I put my hand on my hip. “Mother, honestly. No one is here but us.”
Mother sat straighter as if trying to muster every ounce of dignity she possessed. “Well, I suppose we could try.”
We all got into position, with David grasping Mother beneath her armpits. “On the count of three,” David said. “One, two . . . three!”
Like a well-oiled machine, we had Mother standing and dressed in the same moment.
David helped her hobble out of the bathroom, then scooped her in his arms and carried her to my car while I grabbed my purse.
“I’m assuming we’re heading for the hospital?” David said.
I looked at my watch. “No, I was trying to get her to her doctor’s appointment when this happened. She’s an hour late, but we always wait at least that. Go ahead and get her into the truck while I call to see what the doctor wants to do.”
A few minutes later, we were heading for the doctor’s office with David trailing behind us in his car. Both David and I pulled into the circular driveway by the front door, and he jumped out to get Mother’s folding wheelchair out of the back of the pickup. Once we got her seated, he wheeled her into Dr. Galloway’s office.
David moved the vehicles to the parking lot and came back to the waiting room. I’d rolled Mother up to the end of a line of chairs and was sitting beside her. I said to him, “Why don’t you go on home?”
“Nothing doing. I’m in this with you.”
The earnestness in his eyes reminded me so much of his father, Joseph Ray Jewell, my late first husband, that my vision blurred.
He said, “It’s going to be okay.”
I nodded.
The young redheaded receptionist called for my mother, and David pushed her back to one of the exam rooms while I followed behind. As we were positioning her wheelchair in the only open spot in the room, Dr. Galloway joined us. He was a short man wearing an oversized white lab coat that split wide in the middle to reveal his rounded belly. He wore silver bifocals on his turned-up nose. His thinning dark hair was combed over his bald palette, making him look like a man who’d long passed his prime, if he’d ever had one.
Mother took his hand. “It’s so nice to see you, Doctor Galloway. I’ve been having a little trouble with this cast, you see.”
“A little trouble?” I said. “You should have seen how she got stuck—”
“I’m perfectly capable of talking to my own doctor. You and David can go to the waiting room. I’ve got privacy rights, you know.”
David and I looked at each other and then at the doctor. He looked over his bifocals and smiled. “That will be fine,” he said as much to us as to Mother.
Honestly, I felt as if I’d been sent to my room. As I shuffled out the door, David turned back. “Gram, just let me know if you need me.”
“I will.”
A moment later, David sat next to me in one of the navy plastic and chrome chairs. The receptionist must have gone to lunch because the place was deserted. I shook my head. “Mother banished us. How do you like that?”
David patted my hand. “She’s losing her sense of control,” he said. “That’s why she lashes out sometimes.”
I wanted to say, Sometimes? She’s lashed out at me my whole life, and at my first husband and at you. How is it you don’t walk away?
I wanted to say that, but in truth, I couldn’t out of fear that David would walk. I needed him, and in his grief over Harmony’s passing, he needed me too.
I leaned back against the clinic gray wall and closed my eyes. “She’s been a bit difficult.”
David grinned. “I get what you’re going through. I went through much of the same thing when Harmony got sick.”
I looked at him then. I’d never thought about what it was like for him with Harmony’s cancer. Oh, bless him. I looked into his brown eyes, which were looking beyond me and into his past. “That must have been hard for you.”
His eyes focused on mine, and I squeezed his hand. “It was. But I survived it and—”
The front door of the office flew open, and Donna ran in, looking ragged. Had she worked last night too?
Her cheeks were pinked from the chill of the day, and her curls were just long enough to give her a windblown look. It was a nice effect, even though she was dressed in her ratty black sweats.
I stood up. “Donna! What are you doing here?”
She stopped and stared at David and me as if she’d forgotten our names. “Is everything okay? I mean, Fred called and said something had happened to Mrs. Swenson’s leg.”
“How did Fred know?” I asked, amazed.
David looked a bit sheepish. “I called him on my cell, on the way over here.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I’m supposed to call him with a report when we’re done.”
I had to blink back my surprise. David really was becoming part of the family.
David pointed at the empty seat next to him. “We don’t know much of anything yet. Wanna join the wait?”
Donna ignored his gesture and sat down in a chair just opposite of us. “What happened?”
“She got stuck in the bathroom. She couldn’t get off the toilet, and David thinks she may have another fracture.”
“Oh no.”
“David helped us get her here,” I said.
I could tell Donna was impressed, though she tried to hide it. “Oh.”
David grinned. “Long time no see, Donna.”
Donna, so help her, smiled back. “Yeah, right. Seems like we were just working a scene together, when was that? Four days ago?”
Hmm. What is going on here? My heart quickened. I mean, I’d have loved for David to stop dating Velvet, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted him to take Donna away from Wade. But come to think of it, Donna hadn’t had a lot to say about Wade lately. In fact, he barely nodded our way at church. Had something happened?
Nurse Penny, a tall brunette, stood at the entrance to the inner hallway. She looked professional dressed in a blue snap-down cotton shirt, which she wore over white pants. She glanced down at her clipboard. “David, I was wondering if you could help us get Mrs. Swenson on the X-ray table.”
David practically leaped into the air. I stood too.
Penny shifted her weight. “No, just David.”
I sat down and watched as my only son darted out of the room. Donna and I stared into space for a while, each lost in our own thoughts. I slowly looked at her, wishing I could ask her a question that she’d think was none of my business.