The FBI agent vacated her domain in Lounge C later that afternoon, and I went in to close my eyes against everything, including a headache that threatened behind my brain. When I opened them, Chip was there.
“Hey, babe,” he said. He put a bulging white trash bag in my lap. “I brought you some of your own clothes. Not that you don’t look fabulous in those scrubs.” He attempted a smile, which I didn’t return. “See if those are okay.”
I pulled the bag open and peered inside. Nothing in there went with anything else, and I hadn’t been able to get into any of it in weeks.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I found your purse and got the car to the house,” he said. “And I watered your plants. You have enough to handle here. I thought I’d take care of things at home.”
I couldn’t help staring at him. When had Dr. Chip Coffey ever done a domestic chore in his life?
“You’re scaring me, Lucia,” he said. “Talk to me.” He pulled the sack from my lap and pawed for my hand. “Tell me about Sonia.” “The FBI is going to question you,” I said.
“Special Agent Deidre Schmacker. She got to you too.”
“She already saw you?”
“They probably contacted me before anybody. She showed up at the house.” He waved off my sudden tautness. “Relax, babe. Schmacker came alone. If I were a suspect she would have brought a partner.” His smile was grim. “It was a refreshing change, actually. She didn’t try to make me hang myself.”
My insides shook. “Did you help her?”
“Probably not.” He sat up again and took both of my hands. “Look, I don’t know what Agent Schmuck told you, but nobody is out to get Sonia. All I’ve seen the last three months is complete idolatry. People worship her. It gets a little sickening, actually.”
“Is that why you quit?”
It was out now, stirring Chip’s faded-denim gaze. He didn’t release my hands, though, and I didn’t pull away. If I moved, it would all go.
“So you know,” he said. “I was going to tell you. I never had the chance.”
“Did you just decide on the plane on the way up here?” I said.
“No.”
“Never mind.” I floundered against the onslaught of openness. It was too much. “It doesn’t matter right now.”
Chip swore softly, around the edges of his sandpaper voice. “That FBI agent shook you up, didn’t she? Lucia, listen to me. They have to do an investigation any time there’s an explosion on an airplane, so they can rule out terrorism.”
“Terrorism!”
He put his finger to my lips. “It’s protocol. Nobody thinks the plane was sabotaged. They know there was structural damage, but they just aren’t saying it. That combined with whatever happened with Otto—she told you that part, right?”
“He didn’t have heart trouble or anything before.”
“Not that anybody knew about.”
“Did you?”
Chip stiffened. “I didn’t practice medicine down at Sonia’s, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t do much of anything except drive her around and run errands. That’s why I quit. And because I missed you too much.” His eyes softened. “I miss your cooking, babe. And your nagging—and the way you dance in the kitchen when you’re making ravioli.”
He lifted my chin—all my chins—with the tips of his fingers. It was a moment like so many I’d had with Chip, when I knew he didn’t see my fatness and didn’t care if he did.
Or at least I’d thought so.
I let the moment pass into one of the real ones, when I knew he couldn’t stand the sight of this bloated version of his size 6 bride. When I knew the inevitable had happened, and I had been traded in for a size 2.
“I don’t dance anymore,” I said.
“I would guess not—you look exhausted. I wish you’d come home and get some decent rest.”
“I can’t.”
“Why? Sonia’s getting round-the-clock care right now. This is the perfect time for you to take care of yourself.” He touched my chin again. “Or let me take care of you.”
“Since when have you ever taken care of me?”
Dear God, why did You let me say that?
I groped to get the words back, saying, “Never mind, never mind,” but the space they left gave me room to breathe. I got up and stood beneath a cooling vent and gulped in air.
“Since never,” Chip said behind me. “I have never taken care of you. But I’m going to start now.”
I felt him come to me, but he didn’t touch me. “I said I didn’t do much at Sonia’s, but that’s not completely true. I thought, babe, and I searched my soul, and I realized I could never have gotten through these last three years without you being who you are and standing by me. Now it’s time for me to do that for you.”
I felt his hands take my shoulders as if they were too hot to touch.
“Please come home with me and let me try.”
I wanted to. I wanted to as much as I’d once wanted to believe he was innocent. And then later that he was at least remorseful. And then that he wanted a family as much as I did—children to focus on, a reason to start over. I always wanted to believe, and I had, over and over, because I somehow knew I was his only one. For once in my life, I was someone’s only one.
Until now. Now he thought I was stupid enough not to know it. I was tired of being stupid.
“Babe, you’re shaking.”
“I’m fine,” I said. But the bursting apart of pride and pain and panic was imminent if I didn’t get it under control, here in the strange comfort of ICU where I knew what I was doing. Where I wasn’t just a fat idiot. Maybe after that I could tell him what I knew. Maybe after that I could handle what he might say.
“I can’t come home right now,” I said. “Later, when Sonia’s doing better.”
He tried to turn me to face him, but I dug in. His hands slipped off my shoulders.
“You do what you have to do,” he said. “I’ll take care of things at home. I’ll see about getting another job.”
I nodded.
“I’m not giving up on us.”
I let him get all the way to the door before I said, “I’m fine here by myself.”
Chip put his hand on the doorjamb and squeezed until I could see his skin go white, but his face showed me nothing. There was a time, far back, when I could watch all his possible responses flip through his face like cards in a Rolodex before he landed on one. Now he could make his face as impassive as a tombstone. My only clue was the strained up-and-down bob of his Adam’s apple.
“Call me when you need me,” he said.
When he was gone, I went to the vending machines and filled the pockets of my pink smock. Later, in the lounge after everyone else had left, I had a supper of cheese crackers and Snickers and didn’t think about Marnie perhaps slipping to my home to be with my husband, to whom I’d just given the perfect opportunity to have his affair.
Anything not to feel.
“No wonder we can’t pry you out of here, Sully. This place is amazing.”
Sully handed Rusty Huff a glass of iced tea and leaned with him on the railing of Porphyria’s wraparound veranda. Below them a thick field of ragwort and bee balm tumbled toward the woods in happy abandon. Beyond, the Smokies seemed to drift in a bluegray mist.
“Porphyria admits God doesn’t live here,” Sully said, “but she swears this is where He spends most of His time.”
“It was the perfect place for you to heal.” Rusty took a sip from the glass and looked at it reverently. “Did God make this too?”
“Close.” Sully grinned. “Porphyria’s trying to teach me, but I’m pretty much hopeless.”
“Yeah, we all give anything you cook a wide margin.”
Rusty furrowed his forehead, and Sully knew he was about to say something that made a huge amount of sense. It was the reason Sully had chosen him as acting head of Healing Choice Ministries in his absence.
“So—you planning to bring everybody up here for healing?” Rusty said.
“Who?”
“You haven’t given me anything for the DVD. I thought maybe you were planning a retreat for all the hurting people who need what you’ve learned.” Rusty looked into the glass as he swirled the ice. “I think you’ve got the lamp-under-a-bushel thing going on.”
Sully left the railing and dropped into a padded wicker chair. “I don’t think the DVD idea is going to work. I looked at what I’ve filmed so far, and I come across more like a prisoner of war than a spiritual-health guru.”
“Yeah, you’re pretty scrawny-looking right now, but we can doctor that up.”
Sully shook his head. “I just can’t get it all to come together yet.”
“So maybe a full-blown DVD isn’t what you need to do right now. Maybe it’s more about the process. What about a series of podcasts?”
Sully picked up his glass. “You mean like for the HCM Web site?”
“Right. Like an audio magazine subscription. People can receive them however often you upload them and listen to them at their leisure—on their iPods or whatever. You can do one a week, more if you want.”
“It’s not a matter of want. It’s a matter of can.”
“Oh, come off it, Sully.” Rusty narrowed his gold-flecked brown eyes. “So you’re not the all-knowing Dr. Sullivan Crisp anymore. Personally, I like you better this way—a little more scarred, a little less I-got-it-all-under-control.”
“You got that right.”
“Then let people see that they don’t have to be at the top of their form all the time—that you struggle too.” He bounced his fist lightly off Sully’s shoulder. “That’s what you would tell anybody who came to a Healing Choice clinic.”
“I hate it when you throw my own words up in my face.”
“Yeah, it stinks.”
“Podcasts,” Sully said. “What else ya got?”
“Nothin’.”
“Is that an ultimatum?”
“I wasn’t going to call it that.”
Sully turned at the weight in Rusty’s voice. He studied his sweet tea. “What?” he said.
“KIHS in Burbank has taken you off the air. They said as soon as you have something fresh they’ll be all over it. And they’re not the only ones making noises.”
Sully shook his head. “Then it’s not an ultimatum, Rus. It’s a perfectly reasonable request. It’s definitely quiet enough up here to do it.”
“We were thinking you might want to record them a little closer to Nashville.”
Sully’s chin snapped up. “Why there?”
Rusty refilled his glass from the pitcher on the table. “This isn’t just your average iced tea.”
“It’s sweet tea,” Sully said. “It’s a Southern thing. Why Nashville?” “You remember Dr. Ukwu?”
“Our psychiatrist from Nigeria.”
“He wants to open a Healing Choice clinic in Franklin, just outside Nashville. We’ve got him all set to get started, but it wouldn’t hurt if you were around to consult.”
Sully grinned. “You’re throwing me some bones here, Rusty.”
Rusty didn’t smile back. “All I’m trying to do is get you out there where you can do some good. People’s suffering goes on, Sully. You’re the only one who can get through to some of them.”
“I’d just like to get to myself a little more first.”
“For the love of the Lord.” Rusty chunked his empty glass onto the table and brought his face close. “This isn’t just about you, dude.”
Sully blinked.
“You’ve never been anything but a vessel for God anyway—none of us is. You can keep wallowing in this if you want to, but in the meantime, at least let Him use you.” Rusty pulled his car keys out of his pocket. “Call me tomorrow and let me know if you’re going to shut up and get out of His way.”
He backed away, hand up to stop Sully from following him.
“Dang,” Sully said softly.
He was going to have to get out the shovel.