eighty-six

A wave of relief swept over Merrit as Dr. Murphy excused himself from the room. “You’re cancer-free. I can’t believe it.”

Liam sat in the second visitor’s chair with a smug expression plastered all over his face. “I told you we didn’t need a second opinion.”

Merrit had insisted they visit a practitioner in private practice rather than return to the oncologist assigned to them by the public health care system. Dr. Murphy had come recommended by Mrs. O’Brien. Merrit had figured that begging for Mrs. O’Brien’s superior knowledge on the topic would lessen the ongoing sting of Merrit’s blunder about the showiness of the festival. Might be it helped, but Merrit questioned for how long. In any case, Merrit had been correct in her assumption that the O’Brien family used the private sector for their medical care.

“You were sick,” she said. “That wasn’t nothing.”

“I was sick. Now I’m not.”

Dr. Murphy stepped back into the room carrying the images from several MRIs. He snapped one of them into a light box alongside an older image of Liam’s lungs. In the older image, he pointed to a black smudgy area in Liam’s left lung—the cancerous area—and pointed to the same spot in the latest MRI.

Nothing. Wiped clean, as if by a magical eraser.

“I don’t understand,” Merrit said.

“You don’t want to understand,” Liam said.

Dr. Murphy, a short man with a full head of silver hair, looked like everyone’s favorite uncle, and the indulgent smile he aimed at them solidified him in Merrit’s eye. “There’s a story here.” He snapped a third MRI up on the light box. “This is Liam’s left femur. I decided on an image after I examined his leg.”

“I have arthritis in my left hip, I know that much,” Liam said.

“The arthritis hasn’t changed. You’ll continue to have problems with your hip.” Dr. Murphy sat down. “Has the leg been worse in the last six months?”

“Yes,” Merrit interjected. “Definitely. Last fall into winter.”

“That makes sense. You never got tested for cancer again, you said.”

“Why bother?” Liam pointed to the image of his lung. “The MRI tells the story. That’s how the cancer appeared the first time, before they cut out part of my right lung. As soon as I saw a repeat in my left lung, I said no more chemo, no more anything. It looks like I don’t need it anyhow.”

“You’re correct about that.” Dr. Murphy swiveled his chair to study the images on the lighted wall again. “It’s good you opted out of chemo. My theory is that you never had cancer the second time. Granted, this is only a theory. We’ll run more tests—”

“No more tests,” Liam said. “I don’t need tests.”

“What’s your theory?” Merrit said.

“Pulmonary embolism.”

“What’s that?” she said.

“It starts as a blood clot in a limb, such as your leg, called a deep vein thrombosis. When the clot dislodges and settles in the lung, it becomes a pulmonary embolism. Your symptoms do correlate.”

“He could have died,” Merrit said.

“Yes, PEs are serious.”

Liam’s gloating smile returned. “So, you’d say it’s miraculous that I recovered from it, if an embolism is what I had. We still don’t know; it could have been cancer.”

Dr. Murphy negated that with a brusque head shake. “Cancer doesn’t disappear—not in your case, with your history—which is why we’re here, correct? For a second opinion. You now have my opinion.”

“But it’s a miracle,” Liam insisted. “Do these pulmonary embolisms just go away?”

“Yes, they can dissolve after some months, but until that point they can cause pulmonary infarction, cardiac arrest, death. You were lucky, Mr. Donellan, very lucky, indeed. We should put you on a blood thinner to help prevent future clots.”

“No medications,” Liam said. “I’m fine.”

Dr. Murphy looked dubious. Merrit could tell that Liam’s attitude confused him. No, she wanted to say, he’s not senile. It’s worse than that; he’s under the spell of a murderous, self-proclaimed healer.

“He still coughs,” Merrit said.

“He’s still healing,” Dr. Murphy said. “If Liam experiences the same series of symptoms again—leg pain and tenderness, shortness of breath, fever, back pain—bring him back to me. PEs can recur.”

“But it won’t,” Liam said.

Dr. Murphy raised his eyebrows as if to say, We’ll see. I’m the expert here. He rose and shook their hands.

Back in her car, Merrit beamed her own gloating smile toward Liam. “Thank goodness, a logical explanation. You can’t really think Zoe healed you.”

“You’re not the one in my body, missy. I can tell the difference between a sudden turnaround and a slow improvement.”

Merrit started to argue with him but stopped herself. It was no use. Liam believed what he wanted, like most people did, logic be damned. He must have been feeling better anyhow but didn’t realize it until Zoe came along and gave him permission to be better.

She started the engine. To the north of them, a grey mass of clouds spat down rain. Between the rain and her car rose yet another Irish rainbow. She laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of life sometimes.

“What now?” Liam said.

“Nothing and everything. Life. We all make-believe our lives in an attempt to achieve happiness.”

“Or to remain sane,” Liam said.

She sobered up. “That’s the same goal.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Liam said. “If you’re fighting for sanity or to keep a grip on what you think is sane, happiness is the least of your concerns.”

Merrit thought of Zoe, the happy girl. “About Zoe—what did she want from you in exchange for playing the healer? She wanted something, right?”

“Oh yes. She wanted me to never match Nathan to another woman.” Liam’s voice grew lighter, trying to distract her, Merrit knew. “Speaking of matchmaking, you’re not off the hook because I’ve received a clean bill of health. I plan to use you. Maybe I’ll work half-time at the festival this year.”

To Merrit’s surprise, she found she didn’t mind, after all. She thought about Nathan, gaunt and haunted, and the insight that had glimmered through the drugs and mental disturbance. When it came to matchmaking, all she had to do was be herself. That would have to be enough. No more performing. No more comparing herself to Liam and finding herself wanting.

She needed her own friends, she realized, apart from Liam’s inner circle. Liam wouldn’t be here forever, and whether or not she stayed in Ireland, she knew that for now, she needed to build a whole life here. A full life here wouldn’t stop her from returning to California if that was what her heart mandated. That was a possibility for later, but her moments were now, in Ireland.

“Hung for a sheep as a lamb,” she said.

“How’s that?”

“Nothing but a new mantra I’m trying on for size.” Her mobile dinged and displayed Simon’s name. She let the call go to voicemail but looked forward to a quiet moment to return his call.

“You’re smiling,” Liam said. “You don’t fool me.”

“I’ll call him back later.” She leaned her head against the headrest, remembering a question Simon had asked her. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“Not really, no. Do you suppose that’s why I’m having a hard time with the notion of being matchmaker?”

“Perhaps, but you’ll figure it out.”

“The other day I had an epiphany—about Nathan. I don’t know his whole story, yet I knew what he needed. The words he needed to say out loud. To heal. I had a glimmer of what you must experience all the time. Intuition, yes?”

“Which you’ve always had.”

“Yes, but I felt it this time. Not as an educated guess or a theory or an assumption. I knew what I knew.”

Liam clapped his hands once, hard. “Halle-bloody-lujah!”

“Very funny.”

“By the way,” Liam said, “Danny tells me Marcus is taking Edna Dooley out to dinner this weekend. Was that you?”

“Nah, that was them.” A wave of quiet contentment made Merrit smile. “But I helped out.”

She may not have all the answers about her life, but for the first time in eighteen months she was okay with that. She pulled out of the parking lot in front of Dr. Murphy’s office and turned south, away from the rainbow but also away from the storm cloud.