Jane didn’t say anything as I led her back through the hospital maze to the beast of a parking garage. She slumped in Ruby’s passenger seat and watched the trees go by as I drove through Northwoods and found the house with only a few grunted directions from Jane. I lingered to look around the grounds before walking up to the geometrically carved doors with Jane’s heavy ring of keys. Jane’s fingerprints were all over the house from the sleek roofline to the splashes of chokeberries in the landscaping. I made out the seedpods of poppies amongst the foliage and could picture the big red blossoms nodding beside the walkway. That was what a front walk should look like.
Once inside the house, I found Jane’s cell phone in her bag and left a message for Jane’s son at their office to inform him that I had taken her home. “I’ll wait for your son to get here then go on home.”
“No, please stay for dinner.”
“I couldn’t intrude like that. You’ve just received some awful news. I’m sure Tom will want to talk about it without me being here.”
“Exactly.” Jane left me in the foyer. “Please don’t leave me alone with him.”
“Okay, but just until Tom gets home.” I thought it best that Jane lie down. It seemed like the thing to do in this type of situation. Jane was sick, really sick, far sicker than I was. I followed Jane to a sunken living room at the back of the house and propped her up on the couch. I found some oversized pillows covered in pewter silk to put under her head and pulled a cashmere throw off the back of a side chair to drape over her.
Jane immediately closed her eyes. “Thank you; make yourself at home for a bit,” she whispered dreamily. “I need some time to rest and gather my resolve.”
The entire room was dove grey from the soft carpeting to the low-slung grey linen sofas. A wall of softly pleated drapery was closed against the fading sunlight. As Jane nodded off, my fingers itched to pull back the curtains and see what was outside, until I recalled that first morning in the radiation treatment hallway when I pulled back the curtain and found the impressions of other people’s areas of anguish. The urge passed.
I was thirsty, but I was afraid to move. I didn’t want to disturb Jane’s rest and I didn’t dare leave her side. Not right now. Not today. I was rattled by my diagnosis and the radiation was worse than even I could imagine, but I never really believed I wouldn’t survive. I fantasized about the cancer devouring me from the inside out, yet I always knew, at least on some level, that I was only torturing myself. Both Dr. Lander and Dr. Obatu had been so confident that I would be fine. Had Jane’s doctor been less certain? Had he lied to her? I didn’t think so.
The room slowly darkened as the sun expired behind the drapes. I dozed off thinking about Susan and Mrs. Lee. I hoped they wouldn’t worry too much when I didn’t come in for my dinner.
Sometime later, the garage door rumbled open at the other end of the house. I tiptoed into the kitchen and flicked on the lights. I didn’t want Tom to come in and find a strange woman standing over his sick mother in the dark. I perched uneasily on the counter.
Tom came in casually flipping through the mail. “Mom? Whose car is that in the driveway?” There was mud caked on his work boots and he wore a polo shirt with the company logo embroidered on the chest. He did not look like a company president; he looked like the president’s kid.
“Shush!” I scolded. “She’s sleeping.” He looked up from the envelopes and magazines in his hand and looked at me as if I were a plate of milk and cookies left out for his afternoon snack.
“Who are you?”
“Lara Blaine.”
“Is that your Beetle?” Tom tossed the mail on the high counter and retrieved a beer from the fridge.
“Yes,” I replied in a whisper. “I ran into your mother at the hospital today. I brought her home. You shouldn’t have left her at the hospital all alone like that.”
“She insisted on going alone today and… Wait a minute, you’re the girl I met at the hospital.” Tom chuckled into his beer bottle. “You’re the Lara she snuck out to meet for tea?”
“Yeah, what’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing, I had pictured Mom sipping tea with some little grey haired lady complaining about their wigs, not, well, you.” I felt him appraising me. “You have cancer? You look good, maybe a little skinny but…”
I bounced down from the counter and advanced on him. “You shouldn’t have abandoned her at the hospital today. What if I hadn’t run into her?”
“I’m sure she was glad to see you.” He started taking ingredients out of the refrigerator for dinner. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“You’re supposed to take care of her.” I had an urge to rip the bunch of celery out of his hand and smash it over his head. That would have wiped the smirk off his face. “She shouldn’t have been alone today, of all days.”
“What are you talking about? It was only blood work. And I didn’t abandon her. She got pissed at me and stormed out of the car.”
I had been thinking of Tom as a callous brute who had blithely dumped his sick mother and gone off to work. The young man chopping vegetables didn’t appear as heartless as Jane made him out to be. “You didn’t know she was having a PET scan this morning?”
Tom choked on his beer. “A PET scan? Hell no! I never would have let her go for a PET scan by herself.” He dropped his knife and shouted into the living room, “Mom!” like an indignant seven-year-old.
“Shut up!” I shoved him away from the counter. “She’s resting. She’s had a rough day.”
Tom turned as if registering my presence in his house anew. He blanched so that the sprinkling of freckles across his nose stood out. “Shit! Why are you here? What happened?”
“I think she’s in shock. Essentially, the doctor said—”
“I’ll tell him later, Lara.” Jane’s voice was anemic but categorical. She had quietly come over to the counter from her place on the couch. “I didn’t want to deal with you pacing around like a caged tiger all day.” She laid her hand on my shoulder. It was too light to be comforting. “I was glad that Lara turned up though. She took very good care of me.”
“Mom, you should have told me,” Tom scolded. “I would have cancelled the meeting with Elliot.” A coughing jag kept Jane from responding. She hung onto the counter with one hand and covered her mouth with the other. I still saw the blood spattering her fingers.
“Mom!” Tom gasped. He grabbed a dishtowel and bound over to his mother. While Tom was concentrating on Jane, I picked up my keys and slipped out through the garage. Jane was in her son’s hands now.
I was halfway to the car when Tom ran out. “Wait! Where the hell do you think you’re going? You can’t just leave. What happened at the hospital?” The wind had changed while I had been inside. The low clouds had slid away leaving the evening air biting. I leaned on the car door rubbing the goose bumps from my arms.
“You need to talk to your mother about her appointment.” I turned to get into my car.
“You better come back in,” Tom said plaintively. “She wants you to stay.” Part of me wanted to go back in the house with Tom and stay for dinner, as Jane asked. This place was magical. I had dreamed of eating family dinners at a wide table with matching china and cloth napkins like the ones I saw in the kitchen. But not like this. Tom would understandably be crushed by the news of Jane’s cancer not shrinking. I couldn’t intrude. “Look Tom, I can’t stay.”
“I take it you know what the doctor said? Please tell me. Mom doesn’t seem to be giving me all the info these days, does she?”
I understood how Jane could be keeping her illness primarily to herself but her son seemed to care about her, even if he was a bully. I pulled the notes I took in Dr. Pemachokatha’s office from my bag and handed them to him. “I wrote down everything I could. Her doctor wants her to come back in a few days to talk about her options.” Tom’s lips quivered. He seemed so young although he couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than me. I felt sorry for him having to take on this burden. “Look, essentially, the chemo didn’t work and the tumor is bigger than ever.” Tom took a step back as if I’d shoved him. “Perhaps you should go with her this time and talk to the doctor yourself. He can answer your questions better than I can.” I got in and started Ruby’s engine. Before I closed the door, I stammered, “I’m sorry, Tom.”
***
A new nightmare crept into my head that night. I was tied facedown in burning sand. Blaring sun blinded me as soon as I lifted my head from the sand. The more I struggled, the tighter the knots around my wrists and ankles became. The sand itself seemed to be humming in the heat. A massive bird landed nearby and extended its long wings to cast a shadow over my face. After several moments, my eyes adjusted enough to see more than burning sand and shadow. I strained to see the bird, but I could only make out the edges of its scarlet body against the sun. It hopped around me as the sun moved and perched on a giant rock. Beyond the rock, I sensed movement. A line of people were trudging through the sand, some quickly, some at a snail’s pace. I could see them but they didn’t see me. They were all looking forward toward the end of the trail. I opened my mouth to call out but no sound came out. The more I tried to scream the more the burning air shriveled my lungs. Tears of exertion dripped across the bridge of my nose. Within seconds, sand flies came to lick them up. The bird flapped its wings making the flies float away momentarily, but they came right back. I couldn’t tell if the bird was protecting me or saving me for a snack. I turned my face to the sand.
When I opened my eyes again, the wind had buried my right arm in the sand and the sun was high in the sky. I couldn’t tell if I had been unconscious a few minutes or a few days. I turned my head to look over my blistered shoulder. All around me were brilliant red feathers. In the shadow of the rock, a skeletal person quietly wept. As soon as I moved, the ropes around my wrists broke away. I heard the hunched form gasp and drop to its knees as I freed my legs. Jane crawled out of the shade toward me.
“Lara? Thank God! I thought you were dead. You stopped moving ages ago.” I didn’t have the strength to stand but managed to awkwardly crawl over to Jane. Jane slipped off the white silk robe she wore over satin pajamas and draped it over my shoulders. It was a cool salve on my sunburned skin. “I thought that bird was some kind of vulture the way it was hopping around you on the sand. It kept pecking at the ropes and eating the bugs crawling on your skin. I tried to shoo it off but it was a tough old bird.”
I wanted to ask how long she had been there, but I still couldn’t speak. I clutched at my throat to try to get Jane to understand.
Jane magically pulled cool bottles of water and a pair of sandals from the air. She pressed the water and shoes into my hands. “Take these. You should get going. Quickly, follow the others to the scanner.”
I stepped around the rock and saw that the line of people stretched as far as the horizon and ended at a row of chairs in front of a set of gleaming doors. As I watched, the doors opened, a person in the front row disappeared through the doors, then everyone moved over one chair like cogs in a machine. I felt compelled to join the line despite my burning skin and scorched throat. I held my hand out to help Jane up but she wouldn’t leave her place in the shade.
“I can’t go any further. I kept thinking I was almost there but I never seemed to get any closer. You take the water and go on.” With a superhuman strength that I could only possess in a dream, I picked Jane up. I felt suddenly powerful and Jane was easy to carry. Closer to the chairs, we met little Rory sitting on the side of the path. I stopped and Jane asked, “Where’s your mother, sweetie?”
He pointed to a rock several yards away. “Behind that rock. She has to stop and cry sometimes. We’ll catch up.”
I wanted to take him with us but I couldn’t carry Jane, Rory and his mother. I had to leave him behind. Before we moved on, Rory handed me his backpack and asked, “Could you take my men with you? They’re getting too hard to carry, with my mom on my back.” I took the red backpack and looped it over Jane’s arm.
It was difficult to see the path. I started to run. I passed thousands of other people on the trail but never got any closer to the chairs. Jane begged me to put her down and run ahead. Before I could respond, I awoke in my bed with the alarm blaring in my ear.
I rolled over and swatted the clock to the floor. The sheets were drenched. Sweat plastered my long hair to my neck. The details of the nightmare washed away with a cool shower, but as I buttoned up my plain white blouse, I had an overwhelming urge to call Jane. If I couldn’t do anything to help Rory and his mother, I could certainly make sure Jane was okay.