“Here we are. Doesn’t it feel good to be home?” Amid the impatient blare of horns from cars behind them on the street, Stacy slowly turned her car into Jacquelyn’s driveway.
“Stacy, you don’t have to drive like a grandma. I’m not a china doll—I won’t break,” Jacquelyn fussed as she glanced at her house. She had expected to see newspapers piled on the front porch and mail bulging from the box, but the house seemed as tidy and neat as she’d left it.
“Did you come and pick up my mail?” Jacquelyn asked as Stacy cut the motor. “You didn’t have to do that. I just left my key with you in case of emergency—I didn’t expect you to come over here and house-sit.”
“Maybe the mail fairy moved in.” Stacy got out of the car and hurried to the passenger’s side, but Jacquelyn had already opened the door and swung her feet to the ground.
“I don’t think so, but somebody took care of things,” Jacquelyn pointed out, slowly standing as Stacy pulled Bailey’s now-faded bouquet from the backseat. “Either that, or my newspaper boy and mail carrier have decided to go on strike.”
“I think you worry too much.” Stacy held her arm out like a waiter and Jacquelyn playfully pushed her arm away as they made their way to the porch.
“I’m not an invalid, I’m quite able to walk. My nurse was a Nurse Rachet clone, and she wasn’t about to let me loll around in bed. So who’s been in my house?”
As if in answer, the front door opened and a cheery voice sang out, “Welcome home!” Jacquelyn stared in surprise. A tall, thin woman stood in the doorway, a brightly patterned scarf tied around her head and Bailey’s leash looped over her slender wrist. For a moment Jacquelyn couldn’t place the woman’s face, then the features came together in a rush of memory.
“Daphne Redfield?” At the sound of her voice, Bailey howled and strained at the leash. Jacquelyn looked at Stacy, dumbfounded. “You enlisted one of the patients to help me out?”
Stacy lowered her voice to a discreet whisper. “Daphne knew about your surgery and asked if she could do anything to help. And don’t say anything about the scarf—she shaved off all her thinning hair a couple of days ago, and I think she might be a little sensitive.”
Jacquelyn cut a quick look from her friend to the woman on the porch. “I don’t get it. Daphne asked you if she could help me?”
“She asked Dr. Martin,” Stacy explained. “And he knew I had a key to your house, so he arranged everything. Daphne has been stopping by every morning to take care of your house and the dog.”
“But Bailey was in the kennel!”
“Dr. Martin knew you wouldn’t want him to be crated there for five long days. So he signed your dog out of the kennel and brought him home to wait for you.”
“Down, Bailey!” Daphne cried, struggling to hold the leash.
Jacquelyn glanced up. The one-hundred-and-seventy-pound puppy was no match for Daphne. The huge dog, eager to greet his long-lost mistress, lunged forward. The leash flew from Daphne’s hands, and Bailey broke into a gallop down the walk.
Daphne clapped her cheeks. “Oh, I’m sorry. I—oh, no!”
Jacquelyn closed her eyes, bracing herself for a ferocious embrace that might knock her flat, but the dog only circled her in a wriggling exhibition of love, then sat at her feet, his chocolate-brown eyes snapping with joy.
“Bailey!” Jacquelyn bent to croon into the dog’s soft ears, her own heart welling with affection. “I’m so glad to see you! And I’m so glad you’re home!”
The gigantic tail thumped in mute appreciation, and Jacquelyn breathed in his warm, doggy scent and smiled. She couldn’t be angry with Daphne and Stacy, no matter how much she wanted to be. They had no business going into her house and taking responsibility for her, but they’d done it anyway—and she was grateful. But for Jonah Martin, M.D., she reserved the right to be angry…maybe even furious. In her meeting with Dr. Wilder this morning, when he’d removed one of the drains and okayed her release from the hospital, he’d told her that Dr. Martin had cast the deciding vote and approved the mastectomy.
“Come, Bailey,” she said, slowly straightening. The dog seemed to sense her physical discomfort, and he slowed his step to match hers as they climbed the front porch stairs and entered the house.
“Daphne, you don’t have to stay with me.” From the center of her makeshift bed on the living room sofa, Jacquelyn lifted her voice and peered out into the foyer for some sign of the woman. “After all, you’re a chemo patient. Someone should be taking care of you.”
“Nonsense.” Daphne bustled in from the kitchen, a tray laded with cookies, teacups and a teapot in her hands. “I’m in between treatments and I feel fine, even though I look a little—how do my boys put it?—funky without my hair.” She lowered the tray to the coffee table and paused to scrub the scarf on her head with her knuckles. “It was falling out so fast I had one of the boys give me a buzz cut with an electric razor—but they didn’t tell me it would itch!”
Jacquelyn stared at the scarf in horrified fascination. Would she be wearing one of those things some day?
Daphne smiled and inclined her head. “Would you like sugar, cream, or both in your tea? I made us a pot of Earl Grey, which should put a wee bit of zip back into your smile.”
“Thanks,” Jacquelyn answered, admitting that the idea of tea did appeal to her. “But after we have tea, I’ll let you get home. I know your sons and your husband need you.”
“Nonsense. I left them a casserole in the refrigerator, and both my boys know how to use a microwave. My family knows how debilitating surgery can be.” Daphne perched on the edge of a chair and poured with the grace of an accomplished hostess. “Now was that cream, sugar, or both?”
“Both, I think.” Jacquelyn folded her hands. She had to admit that Daphne’s help was a luxury she hadn’t expected. Without Daphne, poor Bailey would still be in the kennel, because Jacquelyn wasn’t able to restrain him on the leash or lift his heavy bags of dog food. She wasn’t sure where frail Daphne found the strength. “Thank you,” Jacquelyn said as the woman handed her a steaming cup of tea. “I appreciate this more than you will ever know.”
Daphne gave her a smile of pure sweetness. “It’s no more than sisters in Christ should do for each other. You would have done the same for me.”
Would I? Jacquelyn felt the tea burn her tongue. This was exactly the kind of personal involvement she would never allow herself. This was the sort of thing Dr. Martin instigated regularly—the meddling, supervisory caring that a professional simply could not manage for a large number of patients. It was one thing for family members and church people to look after their own, but doctors and nurses had no time for this sort of thing.
An idea slowly germinated within her as Jacquelyn sipped her tea, then she cast the older woman a conspiratorial smile. “Time to confess, Daphne. You sent me flowers and signed Bailey’s name, didn’t you?”
One of Daphne’s carefully penciled brows lifted. “I’m sorry, dear, but I didn’t send flowers. I thought about it, but decided I could be more helpful here.”
Jacquelyn leaned back on the mound of pillows, perplexed. There had been no messages from Craig on the answering machine and in the mail she found only a small “thinking of you” card from Helen and Dad—probably sent by Helen alone. But hadn’t Craig come to see her in the hospital? She thought she remembered a man at her bedside and a hand around hers, but in the past few days the memory had faded like a shadow at dusk. Perhaps she had dreamed it all.
She sipped her tea. Whoever had sent the flowers obviously had no intention of stepping forward to receive her gratitude. “Well,” she murmured, dropping her hand to scratch Bailey’s ears, “maybe my dog did send flowers. I once read in the newspaper about a choking cat who called 911 for help.”
Daphne’s blue eyes twinkled as she raised her teacup in salute. “Anything is possible.”
“Is it?” Jacquelyn lifted her gaze, her heart brimming with a thousand questions and troubling thoughts. Her feelings about the mastectomy, the cancer and Dr. Wilder’s comment that she just might beat it were still raw, and other disturbing thoughts had crept into her consciousness during her hospital stay.
“I’m not talking about cats and dogs now.” She paused as the gold in Daphne’s eyes flickered with interest. “I need to know if anything really is…possible. If I can be cured. Dr. Wilder said my lymph nodes were just beginning to be involved, and he assured me he got all the cancer. I know that if the margins around the tumor were clear, then the cancer is supposed to be gone, but I don’t know if I can ever be at peace again.” Frowning, she looked out the window next to the couch. “I mean, how do you live with not knowing? I have another breast that could develop cancer next year. And there may be other malignant cells hiding out somewhere, slipping through my bloodstream.”
“You can’t know.” Daphne spoke with quiet emphasis and her words sent prickles of cold dread along Jacquelyn’s back. “They told me they got it all after my mastectomy. And after my first chemo. But even if the cancer comes back, you don’t give up, Jacquelyn. You keep living—every day as if it were your last.”
“But I-I’m not like you,” Jacquelyn stammered, not able to meet Daphne’s eyes. “You’re such a religious person, you talk to God as easily as I talk to Bailey. I’m a medical professional—I know what this disease can do. I know it will be ten years—I’ll be thirty-eight—before I can even begin to consider myself cured.” She shivered through fleeting nausea. “I don’t see how you can know that you might have more yesterdays than tomorrows and still be so golly-gee happy all the time. Doesn’t denial have its limits?”
Jacquelyn propped her good arm on the back of the couch and stared out the window, almost afraid to look at Daphne. Through her outburst she felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from her heart, but perhaps she’d been wrong to poke pins in Daphne’s religious bubble. The woman had been the embodiment of kindness, offering to help a nurse she barely knew outside the confines of the clinic, and Jacquelyn had just selfishly reminded Daphne that she was losing the battle. The compassionate-to-everyone-but-his-nurses Dr. Martin certainly wouldn’t have laid this burden on one of his patients.
“You think I’m in denial?” A tinge of wonder laced Daphne’s voice.
Jacquelyn looked over to see the woman grimace in good humor. “Denial,” she said, looking at Jacquelyn with a secretive smile, “would be nice.”
Jacquelyn’s blood ran thick with guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Do you ever go outside to look at the clouds?” Daphne interrupted, stirring her tea.
“Sure.” Baffled by the shift in the conversation, Jacquelyn shrugged with her good shoulder. “When I was a kid, I’d imagine all sorts of things in the sky.”
“You should keep looking up.” Daphne set her teacup and saucer on the table next to her chair. “And I don’t mean that as only a figurative expression. The Bible has a lot to say about clouds. A cloud covered the holy mountain where Moses spoke with God, and the Lord often appeared to the Israelites in a pillar of cloud. God told Moses that He would come in a cloud so the people would hear and see and put their trust in the Almighty. Clouds are a sign that God is near.”
Jacquelyn frowned. “Those were Old Testament times. Now we know that the noise we hear booming from clouds isn’t God, it’s thunder.”
“That’s only one perspective.” Daphne smiled and locked her hands around her knee as she leaned forward. “I like to think of clouds as the suffering in my life. We naturally think of clouds as dark, gloomy and oppressive, and yet when they darken the sky, I know God is near. If there were no clouds in my life, I would have little need for God. As it is, I depend upon Him utterly.”
Jacquelyn let her gaze drift to the lace-covered window. Outside, beyond the ligustrum hedge and the colorful crotons, white, fluffy shapes blew across an azure sky.
“I guess I tend to think of clouds more as shade,” she said, turning back to Daphne. “You know, a convenience. Something to keep the hot sun off my face for a few hours.”
“That’s a good analogy. God can bring shade, too. But I’m not talking about those scribbles of cotton clouds that fly by. I’m talking about those days when your life is covered by dark, boiling masses, when gray clouds swirl over your head like angry, vengeful dragons.” She tilted her head. “Have you known days like that, Jackie?”
“Sure,” Jacquelyn answered dully. “More than I care to remember.”
Daphne nodded. “So have I. And when the clouds come, I am glad to know that God has drawn near, too. In every cloud, He is there.”
“Waiting to teach me a lesson, right?” Jacquelyn gulped the last of her tea and slammed the cup down to the saucer. “He’s out to punish us when we stray. Well, I know I haven’t been the perfect Christian. I stopped going to church after my mother died, and then my Dad remarried and—well, I just haven’t felt it necessary. Sometimes I watch church services on television, and I pray…when something comes up.”
Daphne said nothing, so Jacquelyn leaned her head on her hand and sighed. “I suppose this little brush with cancer is God’s way of whipping me back into spiritual shape. I’ve already decided to go back to church. Maybe this was a wakeup call, something to teach me a lesson.”
“I don’t think so.”
Jacquelyn looked up, caught off guard by the sudden vibrancy of the woman’s tone.
“I have found—always,” Daphne said, her voice warming as she spoke, “that through every cloud God wants me to unlearn something. He wants me to simplify things, to put other things and other people aside until it is just me and Him. He doesn’t want me to do anything more, He wants me to sit at His feet and listen to His voice. When once again He is the Father and I am the child, our relationship is restored.”
Jacquelyn stared, intrigued by Daphne’s suggestion. “So you’re saying I should—what?”
“Rest, Jackie. You need to rest.” Daphne stood and took Jacquelyn’s cup and saucer from her hand. “You should turn your thoughts toward your loving Father. After all, He’s the one who sustains your life—not the hospital, the lab, or your doctors.”
Jacquelyn sank back to her pillows and watched the graceful woman retreat into the kitchen. With stage IV cancer inexorably eating away at her one hundred and two pounds, how could Daphne Redfield rest? The enemy still raged in her body, her battle had not yet been won.
And neither had Jacquelyn’s. She still had to confront Jonah Martin about his decision to leave her permanently scarred. He’d approved her mastectomy, a treatment far too radical for her situation, and last night she’d even dreamed of gleefully filing a lawsuit against him.
If Craig had run at only the thought of cancer, what would any other man do at the sight of her misshapen torso? Jonah Martin was a male; he would never understand a woman’s feelings about her breasts or her body. And Jacquelyn had never even known the pleasures of intimacy in marriage, of giving herself fully to the man she loved…
Now she never would. Jonah Martin, in one passing moment, had practically guaranteed that no man would ever look upon Jacquelyn with desire in his eyes. Oh, sure, she’d heard women at the clinic talk about how their husbands loved them no less than before their mastectomies, but they were married when the cancer attacked, their husbands had already fallen in love with them.
Everyone from Stacy to Ivana Trump knew that today’s single men looked on the outside first. What man would stick around long enough to get to know Jacquelyn? Oh, she might be able to fool new acquaintances for a short period of time, but she wasn’t the type to hide significant details. She’d be up-front and honest with anyone she dated, and what man would want damaged goods when he could have a healthy, unmarred woman?
She closed her eyes, and a series of images from the “Know Your Prostheses Options” pamphlet danced across the back of her eyelids. In the months ahead, while Stacy and her friends went out to parties and trolled for young doctors, Jacquelyn would be dating a fake breast: getting to know it, trying it on for size, finding the right one for her lifestyle. What filling should she choose—water? Air? Gel? Foam rubber? Maybe, she thought, she should make her own beanbag breast, which would probably be more realistic looking than some of the sorry things she’d seen her patients wearing. The shape that looked good standing up wouldn’t look natural if she lay down, and she could never, ever wear anything that showed even the tiniest bit of cleavage.
“Where do they sell those long-sleeved swimsuits from the roaring Twenties?” she whispered, scratching Bailey’s head again. The dog rolled his dark eyes toward her and thumped his tail in answer.
Jacquelyn heard footsteps and knew Daphne would soon be coming back either to talk or to remind her to do her arm and shoulder exercises. Not in the mood for either, Jacquelyn gingerly folded her hands over her chest and pretended to sleep.
Two weeks after her surgery, Jacquelyn stiffly lowered herself into a chair in Dr. Martin’s office. Her chart, she noticed, was spread on the desk even though Jonah was nowhere in sight. She was glad she could steal a moment to orient herself and harness her emotions in a tight rein. She had worn her uniform to the office, hoping to assume as many of her duties as possible, but before she could return to work, she needed to win Dr. Martin’s approval…and vent her repressed feelings.
She had not seen Dr. Martin since before her surgery. He had called the house two or three times and checked on her progress through Daphne. The few times Stacy dropped over she had brought greetings from all the people at the office, including, Jacquelyn supposed, Jonah Martin. This morning, Lauren, Stacy and Gaynel had welcomed her in the hallway with bright smiles and cautious, light embraces, then Jacquelyn’s eyes darted toward Jonah’s office. The light was on, the door open.
“He stepped out to get his coffee,” Lauren said, noticing the direction of Jacquelyn’s glance. Her lips curved in a slow, secret smile. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and go straight in?”
“What do you mean, do you a favor?” Jacquelyn asked, her heart skipping a beat.
“Never mind.” Lauren gave her a playful nudge on the shoulder. “Just go in and keep the good doctor happy. He’s been as grim as a hangman since you’ve been gone, even with his patients. He keeps running more behind than usual, and of course he blames Stacy and me. Apparently you’re the only nurse who can keep him on schedule.”
Jacquelyn squared her shoulders as she walked toward his office. He may have been unhappy with her absence from the clinic, but his feelings certainly couldn’t compare with hers. And she wasn’t helping by letting her resentment build and grow. She needed to confront Jonah Martin right away. She’d let him do his routine exam and discuss her prognosis, and then she’d let him have it with both barrels. For days she’d been thinking about his actions—good and bad—on her behalf, and with every hour his decision to order her mastectomy seemed more reprehensible and illogical. Was he an absolute schizophrenic? How could the man who had arranged for someone to take care of her house and her dog also have maimed her for life?
Now she sat before his desk, clenching her hand until her nails entered her palm. Only the sound of Jonah’s athletic step in the hall kept her from breaking the skin.
“Jacquelyn!”
Startled at the sound of his voice, she glanced up and heard his quick intake of breath. A strange and unexpected warmth surged through her when surprise and delight blossomed on his face. “Nurse Wilkes! You’re looking—” He paused and bit his lip, then moved behind the safety of his desk. “What I meant to say,” he said, carefully setting his coffee mug on the desk, “is that you’re looking well. Dr. Wilder said you’d made remarkable progress.”
“Not as remarkable as I’d hoped,” she said, finding his nearness both disturbing and somehow exciting. “I would have been back at work last week if I’d had only a lumpectomy.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that,” he said, sinking into his chair. “But let’s review your case.” He looked up, and she saw a gleam of some deep emotion in his blue eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose.”
“Good.” Jonah shifted the pages of the pathology report. “The margins around the tumor were clear. And the lymph nodes hadn’t yet attached to one another or to adjacent blood vessels. Of course we had hoped they’d be clear, too, but—”
Jacquelyn sighed. “I know the details, Doc, just pronounce me fit, please. I’m going bonkers from boredom at home.”
Jonah lifted his gaze to hers. “Any pain at the site of the surgery?”
“None, only a little tightness. But that’s normal.”
“Any numbness?”
“No.”
“Any edema? Any swelling of the left arm whatsoever?”
“None. I’m fine, I promise. No phlebitis, no edema, no pain. I’ve been doing my exercises faithfully and I’m ready to go back to work.”
“Not yet.” Jonah dropped her chart and folded his hands, studying her thoughtfully. “I want to know what you’re feeling about the mastectomy. Given the size and rapid growth of your tumor, Dr. Wilder and I thought it best to go ahead and remove the entire breast.”
Her irritation veered sharply to anger. “How can you blame Dr. Wilder? I know what happened in that operating room. You decided to remove my breast, Doctor, after you’d told me that I wouldn’t need a mastectomy!”
He lifted his hands, his eyes glittering with repudiation. “That’s not fair. You and I discussed the possibility of a mastectomy. You signed the consent forms. You’re an oncology nurse, you know how dangerous these infiltrating cancers can be—”
“But I wasn’t prepared!” Her accusing voice stabbed the air. For an instant she considered lowering her voice, then rejected the idea. Let Lauren and Stacy and Dr. Kastner hear. She didn’t care if even the patients knew what their sainted Dr. Martin had done to her. “You didn’t tell me I’d lose my breast.”
“I said you might.” His voice simmered with some barely checked passion, but Jacquelyn didn’t care to stop and analyze it.
“You should have warned me!”
“I did.” His voice, without rising at all, had taken on a subtle urgency. “I showed you the statistics, I warned you about the risk, I demonstrated the long-term prognosis. What more could I have done?”
The question caught her unprepared. What else, indeed, could he have done? He had warned her thoroughly, and technically he didn’t even need to. She was a nurse, she knew all about cancer. Why, then, was she so angry? Was she as deeply in denial as her father?
All too quickly, she ran out of diversions. The truth was, she hadn’t wanted a mastectomy, hadn’t wanted to lose any part of her life or her body to cancer. Her anger had turned toward Jonah because he had been the one to authorize her loss, but more than that, he was the only one…around.
She balled her hands into hard fists, fighting back the tears that swelled hot and heavy in her chest. There was no escaping the undeniable and dreadful truth. She was alone, and she had no one to blame for her situation but herself. She should have gone to the doctor sooner, she shouldn’t have trusted in her own silly self-diagnosis.
“Jacquelyn.” The sound of mingled pity and compassion in his voice compelled her to look away. Behind her she heard a definite click and knew that Stacy or Lauren had mercifully closed the door.
“Just tell me why you did it, I want to understand,” she said, her tears choking her. “Why did you elect such a radical approach? It was only a stage II tumor. You could just have easily elected lumpectomy and radiation. And then I wouldn’t be scarred. I’d be whole.”
He did not answer for a long moment, and when she lifted her tear-blurred eyes, she saw an almost imperceptible note of pleading in his face.
“You don’t know how I agonized over that decision, how I still agonize over it,” he said, one hand clutching the edge of his desk, the other mindlessly tapping a pencil on her chart. “Dr. Wilder could have gone either way, even though he was surprised by the tumor’s rapid growth and he knew about your family history. But he left the decision up to me. And though I knew you really didn’t believe a mastectomy would be necessary, I told him to go ahead and take the breast.” A glaze seemed to come down over his swimming eyes. “Because I’d rather have you alive than not have you at all.”
The tenderness in his words amazed her, and for a moment she could not speak or move. Her breath caught in her lungs, and she stared, speechless, at the pencil he tapped as steadily as a metronome.
What in the world had he meant? Did he realize he had just admitted that he cared for her…or had he?
There was a flash, like light caught in water, when she looked up and her gaze crossed his. “Jonah, I—”
He held up a quieting hand. “Let’s not talk right now. I think we’re both a little agitated. Cancer is serious business, and as you’ve often told me, I tend to become too involved in the lives of my patients.”
Jacquelyn listened with rising dismay. His patients? Was that the only reason he cared—because she was one of his blessed patients?
Suddenly she was humiliatingly conscious of his scrutiny. He was weighing the effect of his words and she couldn’t let him see that for a moment. A thrill had shivered through her senses at the thought that he might feel more for her than for any other cancer patient.
“I understand, Dr. Martin,” she said, feeling her face flush. She clenched her jaw to kill the sob in her throat. “I know you’d hate to lose an excellent nurse.”
There. Meet arrogance with arrogance.
“Quite right.” His concerned expression relaxed into a tight smile. “And if you don’t mind, let’s continue this discussion later this afternoon. I have a nine o’clock appointment with a new prostate patient, and I need a few moments to look over his chart.”
“No problem.” In one swift movement, Jacquelyn rose and moved toward the door.