The Stone Necklace

by Carla Damron

  “Sorry. I’m being intrusive.”

  “It’s okay. Yes, I do speak from experience, but that’s not important. What is important is that you take care of yourself during what’s to come.” Sandy almost added, “the hell you’re about to go through” but stopped short of that because Lena would find out soon enough. There would be a day, or even a moment, when the truth would settle over her: this would be her life from then on. This.

  And maybe that was where Sandy was, too. No oxy or valium to soften the jagged edges. Just a calendar of days to muddle through.

  She felt Lena watching her and made herself meet her gaze.

  “I’m scared,” Lena said.

  Sandy took a step closer. “I’m the last person to give you advice, but . . . You have other roles. You have family. Friends. But most important: you’re a mother. Put your energy there. You have the boys and Becca. Don’t center your life around what’s missing.”

  “I’ll try,” Lena answered.

  As Sandy exited Mr. Hastings’s room, she nearly crashed into a man standing outside the door who didn’t look familiar. His skin was tanned the color of bread crust, his eyes a darker brown. A blurry pink stripe accented a high hairline. He lifted his brows at her like he belonged there and she didn’t.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m Phillip Calloway.” He glanced down at an iPhone gripped in his hand.

  “Okay, Mr. Calloway. Can I help you?”

  He scrolled through a few messages, in that oblivious smart phone fog so many people occupied these days.

  “You’ll have to turn that off,” Sandy said. “It causes electromagnetic interference.”

  “Electro what?”

  “Your phone can screw up our equipment.”

  Said phone decided to ring. That his ringtone was “Carolina Girls” made it even more annoying. “This is Calloway,” he said into it.

  Calloway and Hastings, Sandy realized. This man was her patient’s business partner. His name was on the patient’s HIPAA release form. They’d been expecting him to call from somewhere—another country maybe? “Turn it off,” she mouthed.

  “What the hell are you talking about? We had everything sewn up when I left. What the hell happened?” Mr. Calloway said into the phone.

  “Off!” Sandy spoke loud enough that a nursing tech up the hall turned to stare.

  “I have to go. I’ll call you in ten.” With two exaggerated swipes of his finger, he turned off the phone and glared at her. “It was an important call. Important as in make-or-break my business, but hey.”

  “Go down to the lobby and call back.” She started to brush past him, eager to be done with Phillip Calloway and his John Boehner suntan, but he raised a hand to stop her. He smelled spicy sweet, the same cologne her ex-husband used to wear: Bijan, two hundred bucks for a thimbleful.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Sandy Albright.”

  He eyed the door. “You’ve been taking care of my partner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sims told me it was a bad heart attack, but surely something can be done. He’s still with us. That has to be good, right? Mitch is a fighter.”

  Mr. Calloway was new to this drama; it would take a while for it all to sink in. “There was too much damage done.” Sandy used a gentler, softer voice.

  “Who’s his doctor?”

  “Dr. Burnside. But he’s been seen by our cardiac team. A neurologist. An internist.” A half dozen had weighed in, even though his situation had been clear the moment his gurney entered the Emergency Department.

  “We need to get him to Duke. Or hell, the Mayo Clinic. Someone up on all the new treatments.” He looked at the device in his hand like it was the Batphone and he could summon specialists that would fly in through a window. Was there an app for that?

  “There is no specialist who can help him.” She gave him a sad smile, and told him the rest. Mr. Hastings’ EEG revealed minimal functioning. There was a complete absence of brainstem reflexes. He has no capacity to breathe without the ventilator. Kidneys have shut down. There is nothing there for you to save.

  He stared at her, eyes hardened, then closed, then a single tear emerging which he brushed away with the heel of his hand.

  “He’s my best friend.” He cleared his throat. “So what? We just wait for him to—”

  “We’re waiting on the transplant team. His corneas, maybe his liver. It’s good of your partner and his family to allow it. Your friend will be helping other people have another chance at life.” These were rehearsed lines, spoken often in this corridor. She hoped they offered some relief.

  “Mitch is the best man I know. Better than I’ll ever be.” He shook his head. “Guess I better go talk to Lena.”

  “She could use a friend.” She hoped Mr. Calloway could be someone she might lean on.

  He nodded, his face smoothing into an expression of forced calm. He drew a breath and opened the door.

  BECCA SAT IN THE CORNER of the carpeted waiting room—the “family room” it was called—with her fingers wrapped around the cell phone. She had replayed the first message a hundred times already: “Becca? Hey, this is Dylan. Uhh, from school. Hope it’s okay that I called.” He sounded nervous at first, but then said, “I was sorry to hear about your dad. About the accident and all. And, well, I thought I’d give you the number to my cell. In case, you know, you wanted to call or something. Any time. Day or night.” Several other calls had followed; Dylan talking about what happened in school or about Todd, his pet Bearded Dragon. It was nice to hear about a normal day, a normal life. Maybe she could even call him back; she’d programmed Dylan’s number into the phone but had not yet been brave enough to dial. Still, she loved having his voice in her pocket, and that felt right.

  Nothing else did, though. Everything else felt fragile, like if she moved a millimeter, something horrible would happen. She’d felt that way all day, like there was something gelatinous and unstable in her stomach and any movement, any vibration, would make it capsize. She’d felt like this one other time. Eighteen months ago, sitting in her room, as still as a bedpost, listening to drawers opening and shutting, boxes plopped atop each other, suitcase wheels scraping along the hardwood floors.

  “Kitten? Can I come in?” Dad had entered timidly, sitting rigidly beside her on the bed. “You okay?”

  She had not answered, not that she meant to be rude but she had no words for how she felt. The phone rang, Mom answering it in the bedroom, chattering about keys and paperwork that she would sign in that new animated voice that arrived after she started school. “I should be there in an hour,” she said into the phone.

  “It’ll just be you and me, kid.” Dad spoke like a cartoon, trying to be funny when there was nothing funny about this.

  Things had happened so fast. She’d overheard Mom on the phone with Royce, whispering, “It’s the right thing. Right for all of us,” like she cared about anybody but herself. Mom’s talk with Becca came two days later: “I love you more than anything, but things between me and your father have changed. We’re separating. I’m going to move out.” Mom then described the room Becca would have in her apartment, but there was this new look in her eye, like her life would be plenty full enough without a kid.

  “This is not about you, Rebecca.” Dad elbowed her. He used her full name when she was in trouble or he needed to say something serious. “This is about your mother and me. We both love you very much.”

  When his hand reached to squeeze her neck, she could feel it vibrating. “This is new for me. Uncharted territory.”

  Of course it was uncharted. He loved her mom, worshipped her, which blinded him to so many things about her.

  “But listen to me, Bec. I am so grateful that I get to keep you here with me. Of course, you’ll get to visit your mom whenever you like.”

  He had sounded like he was grateful, which was something she clung to. At first Dad just needed her company like she needed his, be
cause the house had grown huge and empty, but after a few days, he started talking to her about things. Not personal stuff, thank God, because she didn’t want to hear how Mom had stomped all over his heart, but about the news and sports, and his gardening. That first Saturday, she helped him plant annuals around the birdfeeder. When he said, “your mom loves these geraniums,” she pondered ripping every plant from the ground.

  Next came his on-line banking experiment, when he needed her help because “you’re so much better with this computer stuff.” She got to see all the bills he paid. Internet and cable cost $120, while Mom’s apartment was thirteen hundred a month. She should have moved into a trailer.

  Even after Mom came back, Dad remained the parent she could count on, through Mom’s sickness and after. He was the one whose love for her never wavered a half-inch and knowing that made her feel—sometimes—worthy of loving.

  That was why right now, Becca couldn’t move from the cold vinyl chair in the corner of the waiting room. The world might shift, might toss her off balance. It could happen in a blink.

  People kept coming in and out of the room. Dad’s partner, Mr. Calloway, back from Bermuda, just left. Sandy was there, but there were new faces now. People dressed in scrubs and speaking in hushed voices to her mother and brothers. Elliott kept peering over at her, flashing a strange, barely-there grin but then looking away.

  Sims coughed, or at least it sounded like that, but then he was sitting in a chair and Mom was beside him, her arm around his shoulders. Elliott shot her another look and the blob in her stomach starting to shift, making her want to bolt out the door; she could run all the way home if she had to.

  The medical people shook Elliott’s hand and left, and it was just her family in the room. The clock over the vinyl couch clicked.

  When the door opened again it was Reverend Bill from the church. Dad loved Reverend Bill. He was an old guy, with white hair and kind eyes, who always limped a little. Reverend Bill went to Lena, his head bowed, his index finger pressed into the space above his lips. Lena whispered something to him. Then all eyes were on Becca.

  “Come over here, sweetie,” Reverend Bill said.

  She took a few steps towards them and halted, unable to get closer. She looked at her family. Tears streamed from Elliott’s eyes. Sims stared at a spot on the carpet. Mom reached out a hand, beckoning her to come, which scared her most of all. Reverend Bill cocked a head towards her and they all approached, making a tiny, imprisoning circle around her.

  “The transplant team is here,” Mom said. “Do you know what that means?”

  Hot. She felt so hot all of a sudden, like someone had lit a fire in the room. Her fingers latched onto a hunk of flesh above her elbow and pinched.

  “They’re going to operate in thirty minutes. So it’s time for us—all of us—to say goodbye.”

  She tried to back away but they were all around her. Reverend Bill reached for her hand. Too hot. The fire swelled. She squeezed her skin harder, needing the pain.

  “Becca, are you all right?” Elliott leaned over to look her dead in the eye.

  No, not all right.

  “Reverend Bill will be with us,” her mom said. “He’ll say a few prayers. If you want some time alone with your dad—”

  The words swirled around in her mind like a horde of bees. She pinched as hard as she could, grateful for the sting.

  Mom’s hand touched Becca’s hair, a soft stroke that skimmed her ear and neck. Becca dug her nail in deeper.

  Her mother turned to Reverend Bill and her sons. “I think we should begin. Becca, come with us. It’s important that we’re—” she hesitated, her voice breaking. “We need to be together.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Tonya Ladson looked at her naked body in the bathroom mirror. The gray bruise began at her left shoulder, passed over her right breast under the nipple like a zebra stripe. Half moons of purple hung under her eyes; pinkish yellow crossed the bridge of her nose. She looked like she’d gone a round with a cage fighter, but better than five days ago.

  Her hand passed to her belly. No bruise there, just that round pooch from when she had Byron. That first year, she tried every exercise she could think of to lose her middle, but the pooch never went away, like her flesh was saving space to get pregnant again. That wasn’t likely to happen, not with things like they were. Money problems plagued them. Byron took up so much of their time and energy, which might be why John hadn’t touched her in months. Weekends, he’d drink too much beer to get things going in the bedroom and weekdays she was asleep hours before he came to bed. Still, if they worked on their sex life, things might improve; they might find the tie that bound them together five years ago.

  “You look like bubblegum.” These had been the first words John said to Tonya the moment they met the summer after eleventh grade.

  “Bubblegum?” Tonya had raised an eyebrow in a way she hoped looked flirtatious. Her first day as a counselor at Camp Riverwild, she tried to appear confident though inside, she quivered like a jellyfish.

  “Your shirt. Could it be any pinker?” John was senior counselor, this being his third tour of duty at the camp. He was wearing his lifeguard shirt, his shoulders bulging like cantaloupes.

  “It’ll scare away the bears,” she answered. It was neon pink, and she hated it, but her little brother had picked it out and presented it to her the morning she was packing to leave. Buddy was a huge pain in her ass, but he had moments of surprising sweetness that made her want to wear a garish pink shirt.

  “You’re seriously worried about bears?”

  “Never know what’s going to happen in the woods.” Tonya had never been the outdoorsy type, and had not camped a single day in her life, but the promise of nine weeks away from her family was all it took for her to mail a counselor application to the YMCA. So here she was with her clothes, bedroll, five cans of bug repellant and six mystery novels, ready to live in the wild. Except she was sort of worried about bears. And snakes.

  “We’ve never had a bear show up,” John said. “Did have a skunk last year. Don’t even think about keeping any food in your tent.”

  This was something she hadn’t thought about. Did bug repellent work on skunks?

  She slept better the third night in the tent. At least it was on a platform, with a wooden floor, and held a small cot with a mattress no thicker than a marshmallow. The eight kids in her care snoozed in a small arc of tents around hers. The occasional giggles and child-snores comforted her, distracting her from the occasional leaf-rustlings that could be a skunk. Or a bear.

  Just as she dozed off, she heard a whisper: “Tonya?”

  She peered out the tent flap at a bright moon: John’s face, encircled by the beam from a flashlight.

  “Tommy Larkin’s crying his eyes out. Homesick. I can’t calm him down.”

  She understood. One of her little campers had sobbed in her arms that first night.

  “Could you come talk to him?” John asked.

  She almost said, “Handle it yourself, senior counselor,” but he looked humbled by the problem. She learned later that he had no younger siblings. Tommy Larkin crawled in her lap and told her he’d never been away from his mama for this long and Tonya listened, stroked his pale blond hair, and asked him about his pets. When she launched into a story about “Scruffy, the wonder terrier,” who performed heroic acts for her best friend Tommy, and John added the character of Gilda, the flying goldfish, Tommy giggled, then sighed, and fell asleep.

  After John carried Tommy back to his bed, Tonya stayed up with him past midnight. They learned that they both loved movies but not romantic comedies and hoped they never turned out like their parents. Soon, they lapsed into silence, the night stretching dark and still around them, except for the call of a distant owl.

  Two nights later, John returned to her tent, unprompted by a Tommy-emergency. Their starlit talks became the favorite part of her day. Week two, John held her hand. Week three, their first French kiss. Week five, Tony
a decided that she and John fit together like a hose to a spigot, and she wanted nothing more than to feel that glorious cool water connecting them.

  Neither dated anyone else, much to the frustration of their parents and step-parents. She married her perfect soul mate when she was twenty-two, bore him the perfect son a year later, and now—now her life was not perfect.

  Byron came too soon. She hadn’t been as diligent with the birth control pills as she should have been, and if she was honest with herself, she’d admit to missing a few doses on purpose. As much as she’d wanted a kid, she hadn’t bargained for how he would change things between them. How much time and energy a little one took. Her grandmother used to say “It’s the smallest ones who take the most room.”

  “Whoa.” John came up behind her, wincing at her reflection. She felt even more naked then, grabbing a towel and tying it around her torso.

  “Does it still hurt?” He touched her shoulder to turn her around.

  “A little.” She swallowed, embarrassed about his inspection.

  “Maybe some Advil or Tylenol would help.” He opened the medicine cabinet and found some Motrin. He put two capsules in her hand.

  “Thanks.” How strange to have him minister to her like this. A glimpse at the old John, the John she missed. Nice to know he was still in there somewhere. She gave him a grateful smile.

  “Mommy!” Byron burst into the tiny bathroom, his good arm outstretched for her. John lifted him, Byron’s diapered buttocks nestled in the crook of his arm.

  “Hey, little man!” She gave him a peck on his cheek. He wrinkled his nose as he touched her face.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  “Easy, partner.” John turned Byron so he faced the mirror and lifted his Elmo tee shirt. Byron’s bruises were red slashes at his collarbone and waist.

  “Oh, peanut,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.

  “We were lucky, weren’t we?” John’s hand flattened on her back. She leaned into it, hungry for this touch.

  “Yeah, we were.” But maybe not Mitch Hastings. Tonya closed her eyes, chasing that thought away. She was fine. Her baby was fine. And John held on like she mattered to him.