Peyton was sitting beside the hospital bed while his mother went to the lobby to meet a courier delivering money from his father’s law office. He heard footsteps in the corridor outside and looked up to see her come through the door with the girl who occupied most of his waking thoughts and all of his best dreams.
Lisa wore a white dress with a full skirt and a wide belt with little clusters of strawberries all around it. He remembered it from their last date. Her dark red hair fell onto her shoulders in a cascade of waves and soft curls.
“Son, there’s someone here to see you,” his mother was saying.
“Hi, Lisa.” He finally managed to speak as he stood up.
She gave him an encouraging smile. “Hi.”
He couldn’t seem to find his voice, not with both of his parents in the room, and was grateful when his mother gave him an out. “Peyton, why don’t you take Lisa to the waiting room where you can visit?”
He held the door open, then escorted her to the empty waiting room just down the hall, where they sat next to each other on the rock-hard sofa Peyton had napped on the night before.
“Sure is good to see you,” he said. “Sorry I haven’t been around much.”
“You don’t need to apologize for taking care of your family. How’s your daddy?”
“Not so good. He needs surgery, and that’s what we’re trying to work out. Say, how’d you get out o’ school to come here?”
Lisa gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. “It’s Saturday, silly.”
“Man,” he said. “I don’t even know what day it is. We’ve only been here a week, but it seems like forever.”
The clock on the wall ticked off seconds that felt like minutes as they sat together, with Peyton searching for something—anything—to say. Alone with Lisa on a moonlit night in Savannah, he would’ve had so much to tell her—and so much he wanted to hear her say. But not in this place. Here, the words wouldn’t come. Hospitals held such suffering that it seemed any flashes of joy inside their walls might somehow be tainted.
Finally, Lisa broke the silence. “My sister and I could run some sandwiches over for y’all. Can’t imagine eating hospital food as long as you have.”
“That’s mighty sweet of you, but we won’t be here after today. There’s a doctor in from California—an old friend of Mama’s. He says Daddy needs surgery and we have to get him to Atlanta right away. That’s what we’re doing this afternoon, before my Uncle Julian finds out. He wants to get Daddy sent to Milledgeville.”
Lisa frowned. “But isn’t that . . .”
“Yeah. It’s where the asylum is. My uncle’s not a very nice man. We don’t have much time to get Daddy out o’ here.”
“Listen, I’m sorry I barged in like this. I shouldn’t have come.” Lisa stood up to leave, but he followed her to the door and took her by the hand.
“Please don’t go,” he said. “I’m just—I’m just so glad to see you. I really miss you, Lisa.” They stood close together in the empty waiting room. Kissing a beautiful girl in such a sterile place, with his father lying unconscious down the hall and his mother hanging by a thread, would be all kinds of wrong. Even so, that’s exactly what he wanted to do. But nurses kept walking by, some glancing, some glaring.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on out there?” he asked Lisa, nodding toward a window and taking a few steps back to get them out of the doorway.
“The usual, I guess,” she said with a shrug. “Everybody goes from the lake or the beach to the movie theater and back again. Typical spring around here, from what everybody says. I imagine summer will bring more of the same.”
“You been going to the movies a lot?”
“A few times.”
“With your girlfriends?” Afraid of the answer, he stared at the floor as he waited for it.
“If there’s something on your mind, you should tell me.”
He looked up at her. Man, those eyes. “I was wondering . . . I mean . . . not that I’d blame you with me cooped up in here for so long . . . wouldn’t expect you to just sit at home . . .”
“Are you trying to ask me if I’ve been going out with other boys?”
He took a deep breath for courage. “Yes.”
“A couple of times,” she said. “But only because Mama insisted. Why?”
“Why? Well . . . because . . .”
Now she was smiling at him. “Because why?”
Because I’m crazy about you. Because I think about you day and night. Because the sight of you makes me go weak at the knees.
Peyton could’ve said all of that—or any of it—and it would’ve been true. But instead he blurted out the one thing that wasn’t. “Because, well . . . I mean, I can’t ask you to sit at home and wait for me . . . It’s fine with me if you want to . . . you know, go to the movies with somebody else.”
“Oh, it’s fine? With you?”
Immediately, he saw his mistake. Lisa’s smile vanished, she pulled her hand away, and her voice trembled.
“Lisa, I didn’t mean—”
“I’m yours to give away? And you’re all too happy to do it?”
“No! That’s not what I said.”
She started for the door.
“Lisa, wait!”
“Shhhh!” Nurse Buck was passing by, holding her finger over her lips.
“Sorry,” Peyton said to her before he turned back to Lisa and put his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve gotta believe me, Lisa—I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” he pleaded as quietly as he could. “I’m just in over my head here. I don’t know what’s about to happen, and I don’t know when we’ll be back. I have no idea if Daddy’ll live through this. And my crazy uncle is driving Mama up the wall. The summer I see coming isn’t exactly the one I was hoping for. I was hoping to spend it with you. Picnics on the river and afternoons at the beach and movie nights and dancing and—just—just you, Lisa. That’s what I was hoping for. That’s what I want more than anything. Instead . . . Please come back inside?”
She let him hold her hand and lead her back into the waiting room. “I know this is really hard for you,” she said, looking up at him as he laid his free hand against her face. “Mama says . . . she says a break might be good for us.”
He let his hand glide down to her neck. “What do you say?”
She looked straight at him, shaking her head and biting her lip. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I wish I did because then everything wouldn’t be such a muddle.”
Lisa always told the truth. Her honesty was one of many things that had drawn Peyton to her from the beginning. And honesty took courage. But Lisa didn’t seem so brave just now. Her eyes were welling and she looked cornered.
Peyton, who suddenly felt very selfish, bent down and softly kissed her. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his arms around her. “Last thing I’d ever want to do is make you cry.”
She tightened her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. “I know that.”
An image of his parents’ library kiss flashed into Peyton’s memory. He laid it next to another, of a boy and a girl just finding their way to each other—at least, that’s what he fervently hoped he and Lisa were doing. It was a picture of loving and longing, of almost touching, soul to soul, but not quite. And sometimes it hurt like all get-out.
“Can you—can you call me whenever you get settled in Atlanta?” Lisa asked, looking up at him. “Let me know how you are—how your daddy’s doing?”
He brushed a tear from her cheek and nodded.
Lisa slowly pulled away from him. “I guess I’d better go. Judy’s waiting.”
“Your sister drove you over?”
“Yes. Are you sure you’ll be alright?”
“Yeah. I’ll be okay.” He walked her into the hospital corridor, where he had to stand and watch the girl of his dreams disappear into a tunnel of white tile, gray walls, and cold fluorescent light.