BY THE TIME I DASHED THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR OF Beaufort Memorial Hospital, I’d worked myself into such a state of near hysteria that I could barely force my father’s name through lips dry and tight with fear. The placid older woman at the main desk, no doubt used to dealing with frantic relatives, smiled kindly and directed me to cardiac intensive care.
When the elevator doors slid open, I nearly ran headlong into Lavinia, who had been pacing in the hallway.
“Thank God!” she said and gripped my arm. “I told them they can’t do anything without your permission.”
I stopped dead and jerked out of her grasp. “What do they want to do? Where’s Daddy?”
“Hush, child. Over here.”
Lavinia led me to a small waiting area. A television, tuned to Fox News, flashed pictures of devastation, probably from a bombing, probably in the Middle East, but without sound it was hard to tell. She pulled me down onto a narrow sofa.
“Harley thinks your father’s heart is weakening. The beat’s irregular, and he’s having trouble breathing. They have him hooked up to monitors and oxygen.” I could feel her body trembling. “The specialist, the heart man, wants to operate. I told them they can’t do that without your permission. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I told him it should be you. Does he even have a medical power of attorney?” Then it struck me. “Wait! Why can’t he tell them himself? Those things are only necessary if the patient isn’t able—”
“He’s conscious some of the time, honey, but he’s not makin’ a whole lot of sense. Harley thinks maybe he’s had another . . . incident.”
“Another stroke?”
I half rose, but Lavinia’s strong brown hand on my arm pulled me back down.
“Maybe.” She swallowed hard and stared off into the distance. “He doesn’t seem to know who I am.”
I felt her pain like a physical blow.
“They weren’t going to let me go in at first. Only family, they said. But Harley made them.”
“Bastards!” I said between clenched teeth, and for once she didn’t scold me for the profanity.
Family, I thought. This kind, prickly woman loved both of us, my father and me, like her own.
“I want to see him.”
This time she didn’t try to stop me as I jumped from the sofa and marched toward the nurses’ station. I found it deserted, but a moment later Harley Coffin, nearly as old and white-haired as the Judge, stepped from the doorway of a glassed-in room.
“Bay, honey, I’m glad you’re here.” He gripped both my arms and stared directly into my face, his faded eyes warm with compassion. “You calm down now, hear me? It’s not as bad as it looks.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and I followed his gaze. The Judge lay surrounded by tubes and machines, his snowy hair nearly invisible against the stark white of the hospital linen. His eyes were closed, but even from a distance I could make out the rise and fall of his chest beneath the sheet. I felt some of the fear ease a bit.
We moved over to lean against the counter of the nurses’ station.
“The heart specialist—that’s Dr. Tom Utley—he thinks there’s a blockage. He wants to go in and see if he can clear it.”
I stared at this man who had taken care of our family for almost as long as I could remember. “For God’s sake, Harley, he’s eighty years old! And already frail. Isn’t there something else to try first?”
“We’re doin’ what we can, Bay, but there’s no guarantee it’ll work. Remember, there’s been a lot of strain on Tally’s heart with all these strokes. And that business with the kidnapping a couple of years ago sure didn’t help any.”
I shook off the wave of guilt. “You think this is a good idea? This operation?”
He sighed and shrugged his stooped shoulders. “I’m not a heart man, honey. I’m just an old country M.D.”
“But you’ve kept him alive all these years, even after the strokes and . . . everything. Tell me what to do.”
My gaze flashed again to the glass wall, and I gasped. My father’s piercing gray eyes were locked on mine.
“He’s awake,” I said and darted around Harley and into the room. “Daddy?”
I crouched next to the bed and reached for his hand. The firmness of his grip sent hope surging through me.
“Can you hear me?”
He nodded, just slightly. I heard Harley Coffin step in behind me.
“Tally?” he said. “You back with us then?”
Again my father nodded.
“Do you know where you are?” Harley asked.
“Hospital.”
“Good. And who am I?”
“Old fool,” my father mumbled, and his lifelong friend laughed.
“He’s coming around. I’ll tell Mrs. Smalls and see if I can round up Tom Utley.” The doctor turned and shuffled from the room.
I stood and pulled up a straight chair set next to the machinery, which beeped and hummed beside the bed. “Don’t try to talk,” I said, the cold knot of fear slowly dissolving from my chest. “They say you probably have an artery blocked. They want to go in and clean it out.”
My father frowned, and the shake of his head was as emphatic as his weakness and the paraphernalia strapped to him would allow. “Thirsty,” he said, trying to wet his lips.
I poured water from a carafe and stuck one of the bendable straws into it. “Here.”
I held it, and he sipped, that small effort seeming to exhaust him. He closed his eyes.
“Daddy, don’t fall asleep. I need to know where the papers are. Do you have a medical power of attorney? If you don’t want them to operate, I need some ammunition in case . . .” I stumbled over the words. “If you’re not able to tell them, I have to be able to make them do what you want.”
“Chest. My room.” His voice sounded stronger after the water. “No operation. Hear? No operation.”
“I hear you. If that’s what you want.”
His eyes fluttered closed once more, and I set the glass back on the rolling table. I felt again for his hand beneath the crisp sheets, and suddenly he was staring at me.
“Vinnie?” he whispered, and I squeezed his fingers.
“She’s coming,” I said.
“Good girl,” he mumbled, “good girl.”
A moment before he drifted off, I thought I heard him say something that sounded like “Get Julia,” but of course that made no sense.
Red and I nearly collided at the front door of the hospital.
“Bay! What’s happening? I was out on a call, but Erik tracked me down. How is he?”
Before I could answer, he engulfed me in an embrace that nearly took my breath away.
“Not here,” I said, easing out of his arms. “Let’s go outside.”
The air had cooled a little in the late-afternoon breeze off the Beaufort River, but the sun offered some residual warmth. Red, still in his crisp khaki uniform, held my hand as we seated ourselves on one of the benches beneath the portico.
“Lavinia’s with him. The heart specialist just left. He still thinks they should operate, but the Judge is adamant. He’ll be here overnight at least, but he’s already demanding to go home.”
Red smiled, and I joined him. “He may be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s a tough old guy. You’ve got to give him that.”
“I need to run over to Presqu’isle and pick up some things for him. Lavinia gave me a list.”
“Leave your car here. I’ll drive you.”
We made our way to the cruiser pulled up in a No Parking zone. I cocked an eyebrow at Red, and he laughed.
“Perks of the job. Damned few of them these days,” he added, sobering.
Red had been passed over for promotion, and it had rankled. I’d wondered aloud if his old nemesis, Detective Lisa Pedrovsky, had had any hand in it, but he’d told me not to be ridiculous. Red’s anger had been riding pretty close to the surface of late, and he’d begun making noises about resigning from the sheriff’s department. I didn’t take it seriously.
He avoided the late-afternoon downtown traffic by taking the fixed bridge to Lady’s Island, then turning right toward St. Helena. We pulled into the semicircular driveway of the antebellum mansion as the sun began its slow slide into evening. The waters of St. Helena Sound, just behind the peninsula that gave the massive house its name, were tinged with the pinks and oranges of sunset in the Lowcountry. Together we mounted the sixteen steps of the split staircase, crossed the wide verandah, and stepped into the cool hallway.
“Would you mind hunting up a bag of some kind?” I asked, tossing my purse onto the console table next to the grandfather clock that had been keeping time in the old mansion for generations. “Probably in the hall closet. It doesn’t have to be anything big.”
The Judge and Lavinia never traveled, especially after the strokes had confined my father to a wheelchair. I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for a proper suitcase.
In the room that had been the Judge’s study before his infirmities had forced us to convert it to a handicapped-accessible bedroom suite, I moved to the cherry highboy in the far corner. It felt strange rummaging through my father’s personal belongings, although I had often lifted his pile of pajamas to retrieve one of his illegal Cuban cigars. But my father insisted that these and his nightly intake of Kentucky bourbon and lemon were the only things that made life worth living. Lavinia and I both fussed at him, but he was a stubborn, cantankerous old man.
I laid the few items on his bed and gathered toiletries from the adjacent bathroom.
“Any luck?” I called to Red, but the thickness of the old walls kept my voice from carrying down the hallway.
I moved to the low mahogany chest that sat next to the window seat where I had often sought refuge as a child when bad weather forced me to stay indoors. Sometimes the Judge would be working at his desk, and I’d sit quietly, watching him from my perch, glancing occasionally at the boats gliding by on the Sound and the constant parade of herons and pelicans swooping by on the wind.
Blinking back tears, I lifted the lid.
I found the medical power of attorney where Lavinia had guessed it would be, in the file marked LEGAL. As I had suspected, my father had named me. It made sense, I supposed. As his only living relative, I should be the one to make life-and-death decisions, but the idea of it filled me with dread. It was cowardly, and I knew it, but I couldn’t help how I felt.
There were two more envelopes in the file, one clearly labeled LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT. It was sealed and felt surprisingly light in my hand. The return address was that of Lawton Merriweather, Attorney-at-Law. Though he’d been dead for several years, I could still remember Law’s kind face as we’d sat around the poker table on Thursday nights right here in this room. So many of my father’s friends had died recently. I wondered if he felt the weight of his own mortality, especially . . .
The second envelope was unsealed and had my name printed in a bold, but shaky hand beneath the word OBITUARY. My father was nothing if not meticulous. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d already taken care of writing his own notice for the newspapers.
I glanced over my shoulder, but Red still hadn’t appeared. My fingers trembled only a little as I slipped out the single typed sheet and sat back on my haunches. A few last orange rays of the sinking sun flickered through the glass above the window seat and cast a glow over the simple words:
Former attorney, criminal courts judge, and longtime Beaufort resident Edward Talbot Simpson died _____ at _____. He was _____. Born January 29, 1929, in Ridgeland, he was the son of the late Edward and Anna Hancock Simpson. He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife, Emmaline Baynard Simpson; and an infant brother, Hancock Tyler Simpson.
A graduate of the Citadel and the University of South Carolina School of Law, Simpson lived briefly on Edisto Island before moving his offices to Beaufort where he practiced for more than thirty years. In 1982 he was elected to the bench where he served until his retirement. He was active in local Republican politics and held several positions within the party, declining to run for higher office despite the urging of his colleagues.
He was a member of the Beaufort County Historical Society, the Beaufort Chamber of Commerce, the Beaufort County and SC Bar Associations, the American Society of Trial Lawyers, and St. Helena Episcopal Church.
Judge Simpson is survived by his daughters, Lydia “Bay” Tanner of Hilton Head Island and Julia Simpson.
Funeral services will be private. Memorial donations may be made to the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross, or the St. Helena Episcopal Church Building Restoration Fund.
Attached to the bottom was a yellow sticky note, again in that same careful printing: I’M SORRY, HONEY.
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed six, but I barely registered its deep bass notes. Faintly, I heard Red calling my name, but everything around me had faded into a mist. I felt suspended, unable to take in enough air to make my lungs function, my eyes fastened on one word: daughters. Plural. And the name: Julia Simpson.
“Get Julia”?
I had a sister.