Thursday, February 19, 2015
Itasca, Minnesota
Cecily hated being stuck flat out in bed. Hated, hated, hated it. She’d hoped she’d die without this ever happening to her again. That she’d just scurry around keeping busy until the very minute she suddenly keeled over.
Lying flat out in bed, a person had too much time to think.
Though, in truth, any time Cecily opened her eyes, Liz hardly gave her a moment to compose herself. Nope, every single time, Liz was right there, wanting to know if Cecily needed her pillow fluffed, a drink of water, a little something extra from the cafeteria. “You’ve got to eat, Mom,” she’d say.
Cecily would just look at her and blink. She loved the way Liz was wearing her hair these days, in light blond ringlets around her face. The resemblance to a latter-day Meg Ryan was uncanny. And all her pretty turtleneck sweaters and chunky silver jewelry. Jeans and practical snow boots. The exact picture of a devoted daughter, Cecily had to believe.
And Cecily would think, I have to tell her. Because she had never been so vividly aware of “her age” before, nor ever so clearly registered the looming reality of her demise.
She’d swallow, move her lips around to loosen them, working up to a real speech—but her throat always felt so dry. “Maybe a little water,” she’d end up saying. And Liz would hop to, then invariably follow up the water by reading aloud another card that had arrived with another flower arrangement. “Isn’t that nice?” she’d say. “The news has really gotten around town. Everyone’s praying for you.” And Cecily would nod, feeling that the moment for confession—for bringing up such long-ago things—had passed.
Well. Anyway. To whose benefit would the truth be, really?
Wouldn’t it just upend everything?
If Cecily went to the grave with nobody knowing, would anyone truly be worse off?
Cecily hardly thought so. The secret couldn’t bother her anymore if she was dead, and nobody else would ever have to know. That’s what Sam had finally agreed would be best. After so long, he’d said, what would be the point? And wasn’t he usually right about most things? Good old trusted Dr. Larson, yes, indeed. Everyone in this whole town had looked to him for advice on all matters, ranging from health to moral rightness to the cultivation of string beans.
He had told her again and again throughout their life that she had done “far more than enough” good to make up for whatever she’d done that had been questionable. But she never could quite believe him, and, after he was gone, there’d been no one left who knew the truth of her at all.
She was tired, drugged, in and out of dreams. The slight high of the initial shock of injury was gone; now she didn’t have the wherewithal even to read. And this perky little “therapist” kept coming by, wanting her to sit up, and even, once, swing her legs off the bed and attempt to stand. “For heaven’s sake,” Cecily had said, though she’d done her best, after the “therapist” promised that the sooner she started moving, the quicker she’d recover.
This part was very different than the San, where they hadn’t wanted you to get out of bed at all; where they’d said you wouldn’t recover if you did.
Sometimes she thought she heard Sam’s voice. Sometimes he said her name; other times, things like, Turn down the TV, hon. Even if the TV wasn’t on! Maddening, really. She’d tell him—not out loud; she didn’t want the nurses to think she’d lost her mind—Dr. Larson, I don’t want to stay in bed for one more second!
You have to, he would say. Longer hospital stays have been proven, in the event of hip fractures in the elderly, to reduce the chances of death.
She wondered if until Monday qualified as a “longer stay.” She didn’t feel cheerful at the thought of dying. Not much better was the thought of extended weeks of “rehab,” as they called it now.
Any way you cut it, she didn’t have much time left—and she still had so much to do. Yes. So much atoning for her mistakes.
God doesn’t keep a balance sheet, hon, Sam said, but she didn’t think he knew that for a fact, even now.