When Christy left, Annette positioned her chair next to Pender’s bed and set to work on a laptop computer. Pender stirred frequently. Each time, she stopped what she was doing and held his hand.
The doctor came and went in the early afternoon. “Better,” she said, “but no promises.”
In midafternoon, with Pender’s window enveloped in shadows, Annette set aside her work and walked to the vending machines to get a soft drink. She lingered on her way back to look at art hanging on the walls and to peer out the big window at Atikokan, the greatest town on earth. She wondered if Pender could ever love this place like she did, doubting it could possibly compare to Michigan Avenue and traveling to the great capitals of Europe. It didn’t seem possible, except that it was a choice she had made. Years ago. And had never regretted.
She thought he’d recover and he would probably move on before winter. But maybe he would come back after a year of globe-trotting. He seemed to be looking for something, some kind of human connection. Maybe he’d find it in the Maritimes, or maybe in Paris. Or go back to Chicago. Or not. Maybe there was no right answer for him anymore.
When she returned to his room, Pender’s eyes were open. He was blinking and looking about, trying to get his bearings.
“Well, the prodigal awakes! Good afternoon, Gabe Pender. Do you know where you are?”
“A hospital?” his voice was just above a whisper. His words came slowly.
“Very good! You’re in our very own Atikokan General Hospital. We’re quite proud of it.”
“Atikokan . . . a hospital? . . .. Didn’t know that.”
“We have lots of things you don’t know about,” Annette laughed. “How are you feeling?”
He smiled weakly and rasped, “I feel like Mike Tyson just beat the crap out of me.” He coughed painfully, saw the tubes and wires attached to his wrist and hands. “What day is it?”
Annette thought for a moment. “I think it’s Tuesday.”
Pender coughed, winced, and tried to remember when he was last aware of the days of the week. He couldn’t remember. “How long have I been here?”
“We got you here last night, around six. It’s about three in the afternoon right now. Do you remember anything about yesterday?”
He thought for a moment. “I remember that portage . . . getting people on that floatplane.” He thought some more. “I remember those khaki people capsizing . . . dumb bastards . . . jumping in the water to get them out.” He paused, smiled weakly. “Boy, that was a cold motherfucker . . . nasty bitch fought me.”
“Do you remember me telling you not to jump in after them?”
Pender closed his eyes and seemed to gather his strength to answer. “Yeah . . . should have listened.”
It was quiet. Pender coughed weakly, closed his eyes and grimaced, fighting off pain. “Chaos . . . did he make it back? . . . I miss him.”
“He made it. He came back to the canoe just in time. You pulled him in.”
He couldn’t recall it. “How about that . . . just remember getting back in . . . so cold . . . so cold . . . couldn’t stop shivering . . . thought . . . going to die . . . forty years . . . world just went black.”
“You don’t remember meeting my daughter?”
He closed his eyes in thought. “Christy?”
Annette nodded. “You told her she looked just like me.”
“I said that?”
“Yes. And we’re both offended. You told a young woman she looks like her old mother. Good work, Pender.”
“Shit.” He groaned and closed his eyes.
“I was just kidding.” She held his unwired hand in both of hers. The warmth felt good. He kept his eyes closed and smiled, focusing his senses on her touch.
“Christy thinks you’re handsome.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
“Okay, she didn’t say that. But it’s what I think, and I raised her. She knows what a good-looking man looks like.”
The silence was longer this time. “Am I going to make it?”
“The doctor said you’re doing better. You have pneumonia. They aren’t making any promises, but no one told me to try to get into your will either. And your buddy Gus has already said you’re too mean to die.”
“Gus? . . .. Wouldn’t know squat about pneumonia . . . he’s a brain surgeon.” He coughed and blanched in pain. Annette bent over and kissed him softly on the cheek. His pain hurt her.
“By the way,” he whispered, “you’re in my will.”
Annette scoffed.
“Really . . . just before the animal shelter . . . maybe just after.”
“We hadn’t even met. What if you hated me?”
A long silence, so long Annette thought he had passed out. He licked his lips, swallowed, whispered, “Not my problem . . . if I’m dead . . .” His voice trailed off. His eyes closed. He was as still and pale as death, his skin lined and sagging. This man so vibrant in her memories all these years now reduced to a gray corpse. Annette reeled. How could he be dead? She checked the monitor. The numbers that rotated through the screen looked similar to the numbers she had seen all afternoon. She called the duty nurse who came running.
She told Annette that Pender had just fallen asleep again. It was a good thing.
This time when the doctor came through on her rounds, Annette insisted on some answers.
“What is your relationship to Mr. Pender?” the doctor asked. It was a new doctor, a woman Annette didn’t know.
“I have no legal standing, if that’s what you mean,” said Annette. “We were college friends, and we had a reunion in the park. He has an ex-wife and a daughter who he says he isn’t close with. I think his parents are dead. I don’t think he has any siblings.”
“It might be time to get in touch with his daughter,” said the doctor. “His pulse is slow, his temperature is high, and the congestion is bad. There’s no guarantee he’ll make it through the night.”
Annette sat heavily. She had expected an all clear. “How can that be?” she asked. “How can that be? We just talked. We had a whole conversation. He was telling jokes.”
“These things can be tricky. Maybe the conversation just tired him out and caused his vitals to dip temporarily. Or . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Or maybe it was his last gasp?”
“Something like that,” said the doctor.
Annette noticed the youth of the doctor for the first time. She was younger than Christy. Maybe just out of med school.
Later, a woman from hospital administration stopped in to speak with Annette, looking for contact information for Pender’s next of kin, insurance, current address, and all the other blanks in his registration paperwork. Annette had no answers.
“Do you know anything about his family?” the woman asked.
Annette shared what little she knew.
“Can you help me reach the ex-wife? Maybe she can help.”
“I think I have her name and the company where she works,” said Annette. “I’ll have to go through e-mails. I’ll get that information to you when I find it.”
When the administration woman left, Annette went through her e-mail history with Pender. She found the mention of Peg and the company she ran. An Internet search turned up the company’s website, which listed Peg McLanahan as president. She dutifully jotted down the contact information. Before she closed her laptop, she clicked on a link that took her to Peg McLanahan’s welcome letter. There was a crisp portrait of her in a dark navy-blue suit, white blouse with a ruffled collar, a beautiful amber pendant slung from a fine gold chain, pearl earrings peeking out from a flawless bob. She was smiling in a way that was both professional and personally engaging, and she was beautiful, as Pender had said. The picture made Annette feel dowdy.
She wondered what Peg McLanahan was like. Was McLanahan her professional name, or had she remarried? From what Pender said, Peg was the type to keep her own identity. Was she cold and cruel or just tired of Pender, or was there something Pender left out about their relationship? Did she hate him, or would she want to know he was fighting for his life?
Annette felt an overwhelming urge to call the woman just to hear how she responded to the news that her ex-husband was lying close to death in a distant place. She knew she shouldn’t call. She had no standing to get involved. That was the hospital’s job. But she might very well save time for the hospital administration people, she rationalized. She could share the news of Pender’s condition and say she was trying to help the hospital locate a next of kin or someone with power of attorney.
She dialed the number. It was 4 PM in Illinois, a good time to catch management types at their desks.
An administrative assistant answered on the second ring. Annette stuttered for a moment. What to say? Where to start? “Oh, hello. May I speak with Ms. McLanahan please?”
“She’s on another line. Can I tell her what it’s about?”
“Yes. I’m calling from northwest Ontario—Canada—and I’m trying to get next of kin information for Gabe Pender, who is, I think, Ms. McLanahan’s ex-husband.”
“Is he dead?”
“He’s ill.”
The assistant put her on hold. Two minutes later, just as Annette was giving up hope, the line clicked and a pleasant, animated voice filled her ear. “Peg McLanahan. What’s going on with Gabe?”
“Good afternoon, Ms. McLanahan. I’m sorry to bother you at work. I’m afraid he’s in serious condition in our local hospital. I’m calling from Atikokan, Ontario, and we’re trying to locate next of kin or anyone with power of attorney for him or anyone who can help the hospital contact his physician or his insurance company.”
“My goodness! Poor Gabe!” There was something about her voice. Annette could feel it more than define it. She was skilled at these things. Sincere but not emotionally involved. It was as if she was hearing that a long-time customer was seriously ill. Interesting.
“What happened?”
“He rescued some people in Quetico Park, but he got hypothermia and developed pneumonia.”
“Good God. I always told him those canoe trips were dangerous. How sad. Now, let me think for a minute. His next of kin would be my daughter, Margaret. His parents are dead, and he doesn’t have any sibs. But he and Margaret aren’t close. I would guess his financial advisor either has power of attorney or knows who does. If you hold for a moment, I’ll get phone numbers for both of them.”
Annette thanked her and waited, wondering who has the phone number of their ex-spouse’s financial manager at their fingertips?
Seconds later, Peg clicked back on the line with phone numbers and e-mail addresses for Margaret and the financial manager. “We have the same financial manager,” she explained. “He’s fantastic, and it’s not like we fought over money.”
“Margaret might like to know that Gabe was keeping a journal for her,” Annette said. “It was lost in a storm, but it might mean something to her that he was reaching out.”
“I’ll tell her,” Peg said, her voice unemotional.
Annette thanked her again and started to say goodbye, but Peg interrupted her.
“So,” she said, “who are you?”
Annette inhaled. Who indeed? “I’m an old friend of Gabe’s. From college. He looked me up on the Internet last winter. I have a business up here. We decided to meet in the park and get caught up on old times. We’ve had some bad storms up here, and when we were coming out, we tried to help some people when their canoe capsized.” Annette felt like she was babbling.
“What’s your name?” Peg asked.
“Annette. Annette Blain.”
“Were you the one who was in the antiwar movement?”
“Yes. He mentioned that?”
“Oh, yes. When we were younger, just starting out, you know, we talked about things like that . . . where we’d been, what had affected us emotionally. You made a big impression. He told me when you broke up, you told him you hoped he went to Vietnam and got killed. He never forgot that. I bet nothing ever touched him like that. Certainly nothing in our marriage.”
Annette caught her breath. It was like a curse, those words said in anger so long ago, words that were the opposite of what she meant, but she said them and that might be the thought he took to the grave. Tears flowed freely.
“Thank you for telling me.” Annette managed not to sob when she said it, then covered the mouthpiece of the phone and doubled over in pain.
“I’ll let Margaret know. Is there a number she can call if she wants?”
Annette gave her the telephone number for the hospital and for her cell phone.
“How are the people he rescued?” asked Peg.
“They’re fine. They left for home this morning.”
“That figures. Poor Gabe. He always did have a misguided sense of social conscience. I hope the people he saved were worth it.”
“I guess they were to him.”
“I meant, like, the prime minister or an ambassador or something.”
“No,” said Annette, tears falling freely now. “Nothing like that.” It wasn’t about the people. It was about Pender. Who he needed to be.
They said goodbye, and Annette sat back, wiped her tears with a tissue, and thought about Peg McLanahan’s calm reaction to the news about Pender. Annette wondered how would she react to the same news about Rob? She’d cry, she thought. She’d cry for him and for their daughters and for the lost possibilities of their lives together. Unless you hated someone, how could you not feel something at their passing?
How could Pender, of all people, end up with a wife like that?
Then again, how could she have ended up with Rob?
An hour later, Pender began groaning and writhing in bed. Annette rang for help. Dr. Bonet and a nurse answered the call.
“How long has this been going on?” Dr. Bonet asked as she checked his vital signs.
“Just the last few minutes.”
“Is Mr. Pender an athlete?”
“Yes,” said Annette. “He is a distance canoe racer, lifts weights, exercises a lot.”
“I think this pulse is in his normal range,” Dr. Bonet said. “I’ll bet his normal resting pulse is around fifty. The congestion is still there, but the antibiotics are working. His lungs are starting to clear.”
Annette exhaled with relief and leaned back in the chair.
“Well, let’s hold the band and the fireworks,” Dr. Bonet said. “We have no history on Mr. Pender, so we have to wait and see. But if I was a betting woman, I’d put my money on him feeling pretty chipper by morning.” She looked at Annette. “Are you okay?”
Annette nodded, swallowed. “Yes. This is great news.”
She began thanking Bonet for coming to see Pender personally. The doctor waved a hand in a dismissive fashion. “It took two minutes to drive here. It was faster than calling. Try that in Toronto, eh?”
Pender woke up an hour later, almost twenty-four hours after he had been admitted. Annette hovered over him, drawn by his indistinct mumbles and movement.
He opened his eyes, blinked, and slowly focused on Annette’s face. He smiled dreamily. “Oh my, what a beautiful sight,” he said. His voice was weak but strong enough for Annette to hear without bending low. He closed his eyes and rested a moment. “You can’t imagine how many nights that face was in my dreams,” he murmured. “Am I alive, or is this heaven?”
Annette kissed him. “Your prospects for heaven aren’t that good,” she said. He smiled languidly.
“How do you feel?” she asked finally.
“Not too bad.” He coughed a shallow cough. “It only hurts when I cough.”
Annette put her hand on his forehead. “You feel cooler.”
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Do they serve food here? Maybe a moose-hump steak? Slow-roasted bear?”
Annette rang for the nurse. An hour later, Pender sat up for the first time and enjoyed a meal of broth, crackers, and dry toast.
“That looks pretty awful compared to the gourmet fare you were serving up in the park,” Annette said.
“I’m so hungry it doesn’t matter.” He took a few more mouthfuls. “I guess my herbs and spices are rolling around the bottom of Pickerel Lake now, eh?”
“You’re talking like a Canadian already, eh? It’s a sign!”
Pender laughed lightly, coughed.
“Yes,” said Annette. “You threw our packs overboard to get the khaki man in the boat. Do you remember that?”
Pender nodded that he did. “How are the khaki people?”
“They’re fine. They left this morning. Not a scratch on them, not even a runny nose.”
“What were their names?”
Annette shrugged. “No one knows. They left without saying a word to anyone.”
“No kidding? They didn’t even thank you?”
Annette shook her head no. “They didn’t even thank you. Or ask if you were living or dead.”
“I guess we were idiots to save them, huh.”
“Like you always say, it wasn’t about them.”
“I guess.”
After a silence, Annette smiled. “Pender?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, it was you who saved them. You jumped in the water. It was you. So according to the old Japanese belief, you’re now responsible for their lives.”
“What a disgusting thought.”
“Why do you suppose the Japanese have that belief?”
“Because you messed with karma. Those people were supposed to die, but you kept them in this world, so the rest of their lives are your responsibility.”
“Oh. I never thought of it that way. So how does it feel having two stepchildren like them?”
“Makes me feel better about my daughter. She’d have said thanks.” Pender thought for a moment. “You know, you’re the one who saved my life.”
“Don’t get maudlin on me.”
“I’m not. I just want you to recognize your responsibilities here.”
“I’m not Japanese. That doesn’t apply to me.”
“It doesn’t matter who said it. It’s a universal truth. You have to change my diapers when I get senile.”