Loreena's Gift

by Colleen M. Story

  “I told him what was possible. When he was in so much pain, I told him God worked in unique ways through you, my niece. That when it was time, we could make it easier for him.”

  Loreena nodded. “Then it’s true. Dominic came because he wanted me to help him die, before the cancer took him.” She fingered what remained of the burger, unsure if she wanted to finish it, and then took another bite. “He never told me, until now.”

  Uncle Don crumpled up the fry sack and placed it in the larger bag. “Of course he didn’t. How was he to know if you would help him or not? Or even if you could?”

  “Since when are you on his side?”

  He got up and threw the bags in the trashcan in the corner. “Can you even imagine asking someone to do that? He didn’t know you. Of course he had to come up with something. I can’t blame a dying man for that.”

  “But later? He could have said something.”

  “When, while he was driving you to another city to track down your brother? What did you expect him to say? ‘Oh, hey, by the way, what I really wanted to talk to you about is my imminent demise, and I heard you offer these far-out assisted suicides.’”

  Loreena couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing, some of the chewed meat escaping her lips. Her uncle laughed too. Her roommate stirred and groaned and she slapped her hand over her mouth, though it still took her a few minutes to calm down.

  Her body warm and her hunger satisfied, she wiped her mouth and pushed her tray away. Her uncle sat back down and leaned forward. “Look, I’m not on his side. Dominic was the one who drove you away. It’s likely none of this would have happened if he hadn’t come by. But all you have to do is look at him to see he’s been through hell, and all he cares about now is how you’re doing.”

  Loreena turned toward him. “Did he say something to you?”

  Uncle Don scuffed his boots on the floor, as if his legs were restless. “I thought you were mad at him.”

  “Uncle!”

  “All right. He told me, well, he told me he cares a lot about you, and he’s sorry for taking you away that day.”

  “Anyone would say that.”

  “Maybe, but he apologized about a hundred times, which is good, because if he hadn’t been lying in a hospital bed, I might have put him in one.”

  Loreena smiled. It felt good to have him protecting her again.

  “I don’t think he intends to go anywhere.”

  “When we go back home, though.” She drew the blanket up over her chest and sighed. “He’ll leave.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Loreena frowned.

  “I think he really cares about you, and not just as a fellow survivor. I think the only way he’d leave for good is if you wanted him to.”

  No. She didn’t want that. The certainty of the thought surprised her.

  Uncle Don stood up and moved to the window. Rocking back and forth from his toes to his heels, he slid his hands into his pockets. “Do you think by taking him halfway,” he said, speaking softly as if putting together the pieces of a puzzle, “somehow you healed him?”

  She shook her head. “There are other cases of people going into spontaneous remission. I’ve heard the stories. Maybe it was just the circumstances, the stress. His body could have responded in a miraculous way.” Even while she spoke, she felt wheels turning in her mind. Could it be possible? Was there something more in her hands than the touch of death?

  Uncle Don came back to the bedside. “I hope, when you get to feeling better, you’ll want to come home. The church isn’t the same without you. Even Mrs. Enger says so.”

  Home. Just the word filled her with longing. Her own bed was there, her clothes, the brush her mother had used on her hair, her cello, the piano. It had been so long since she’d played the piano.

  “I know you have a lot to sort out,” Uncle Don said. “All this that you went through. I just want you to know you won’t be alone. Unless you want to be.”

  She wiped her cheeks and reached for him. When he embraced her, she said, “The whole time I was gone, home was all I could think about.” Closing her eyes, she inhaled the light scent of his cologne and the clean smell of his shirt. When he let go, she lifted her head and turned her gaze up to his face. “Is Saul home now, too?”

  “Saul?” He stood up, his arms gone stiff.

  “Shawn brought him back, didn’t he?”

  Silence.

  Loreena sat forward. “Uncle?”

  “I thought they told you.”

  The room seemed to darken. Loreena grabbed her uncle’s arm. “Told me what?”

  He took a deep breath.

  The radiator clicked and whistled a high-pitched squee, the clock ticking in between. “Saul was…shot. That night in Garfield City.” Drawing in a shaky breath, he placed one hand on her knee. “The bullet hit an artery. He lost a lot of blood. He’s here, in the hospital.”

  Somewhere outside the window, an ambulance siren wailed. A nurse in the hallway called for assistance in room one-twelve.

  “Saul?” The name came out in a whisper. All this time, she’d pictured him safe, that Shawn had watched over him. “But he tried to stop Frank. He rode his bike up to the van.”

  Uncle Don said nothing.

  “Uncle, is he going to be okay?”

  “He, uh…” His voice cracked. He turned away from her.

  Loreena felt her eyes widen and then start to shift back and forth. She squeezed them shut and threw the blankets off her. “I have to see him.” She slid her feet into the slippers and snatched her coat off the chair.

  “Before you go.” Uncle Don cleared his throat. “He’s not doing very well. They did surgery yesterday, when they first got him here. He’s, they don’t know, he’s…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Loreena held onto the bed frame. “I need to see him. Now.”

  Saul was in a room on the third floor. On the way up in the elevator, Uncle Don managed to tell her that because of the blood loss, her brother had slipped into a coma. At this point, the doctors had done all they could. Shawn had been there, and some of the other FBI agents. They had hoped to get more information from Saul, but he hadn’t woken up since the surgery, so they’d left, promising to return again tomorrow.

  Loreena listened to him much as she did during a sermon, his words registering in her mind while she ran her own internal dialogue. When she saw Saul, it would be okay. She would talk to him, find out what happened, and straighten this all out. When Shawn returned the next day, she would talk to him too, get him to go easy on her brother. Hadn’t Saul been instrumental in bringing everything to a head? Hadn’t he tried to stop Frank from getting away? She would tell Shawn everything, make it so that Saul could go home, too, as soon as he got better.

  They turned right and walked twelve steps down the hall. Uncle Don slowed and opened a door. They turned right again, entering another room. He closed the door behind them and then guided her in, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Everything was quiet, almost too quiet, even for someone who was sleeping. Loreena walked forward until she touched the metal frame of the bed. Someone else was in the room, a roommate, also asleep, his breath more audible through what sounded like large nostrils. That wasn’t Saul. Hand on the first bed, she moved up toward the person’s head.

  Something dangled in front of her. Cautious, she reached out and found the IV stand, the thin tube hanging down like an overgrowth of vine. She jerked her hand back and waited, gaze turned toward where the person must be lying. This couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be him. He was supposed to be safe. But when she touched him, her fingers came upon his upper arm, the shape as familiar to her as her own. She moved up to feel his head and found his soft hair, the cowlick on his crown squashed by the pillow. With the back of her hand she explored the shape of his brow bone, the eyelashes, the slender nose, the firm chin. The goatee was gone, his skin shaved clean. Trembling, drawing her hand away, she realized what her uncle had told her was
true.

  Her brother was here, unmoving, still as death.

  She stood there barely breathing, unsure what to do next. Her thoughts turned to Russell and that day she had stood by his bed, in much the same way, nervous about what was to come, waiting for her uncle to tell her what to do. The thought frightened her, and she took hold of Saul’s arm, its warmth reassuring.

  He was alive. He would recover.

  “Uncle?”

  He came up beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.

  They stayed until close to eight o’clock, when the nurses would be announcing the end of visiting hours. Uncle Don left to see if he could get them some more time. Loreena let him go and remained in the chair by the bed, resting her head on the railing. Both patients remained asleep, Saul’s roommate calling out once, a word Loreena didn’t recognize. She whirled around, ready to come to his aid, but he only murmured and eventually relaxed again, his noisy breathing returning. She wished her brother, too, would say something, but he lay quiet, terribly quiet, only the soft sound of his breath betraying his presence.

  When Uncle Don came back into the room, Loreena sat holding Saul’s arm.

  “We have to go soon,” he said.

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “There’s another patient, an older man.”

  “I won’t bother him.”

  “I know. But the nurses…” He paused. “You should get some rest, too. They’ll tell us if anything changes.”

  “Nothing’s going to change.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  But Loreena knew. There was no God to fix this. Her brother may as well have died in the muddy streets of Garfield City. What lay here in the bed seemed with every passing minute more like a shadow, an impression left behind on the sheets. If she walked away, she feared there would be nothing here when she returned.

  Uncle Don waited a bit longer, and then turned and slipped out, closing the door softly behind him. He would try to take care of it, she was sure, but with the other patient there, the nurses would be strict about the hours. Her knees pulled up to her chest, arms folded across them, she laid her head back on the chair. With one hand she touched her other wrist, remembering the way Saul’s fingers had done the same, how his voice had been the one calling her back from the endless pool of blood. The image of his dark body astride the motorcycle burned in her mind, and she wondered what he was doing that night, what he thought he could do to stop Frank from getting away with her. The gunshot had to have come afterward, when Frank stomped on the gas and the FBI unleashed the stream of bullets in pursuit. Or was it after that, after Frank had knocked her out? Had Saul joined the others trying to stop their escape, or had he been hit when she heard that awful bump and jolt, after she’d pulled on the steering wheel?

  Round and round the events played in her mind, but there were no answers. Eventually she closed her eyes, her thoughts straying back to the days when they used to pass the time together after Saul got back from school. Long before gloves had become a part of her daily wardrobe, Saul had led her running along the sidewalk, and she’d moved as freely with him guiding her as she once had with her own sight. He’d give her directions when they needed to turn or step down or step up, his hand on hers like a rudder steering her movements. They frequented the Stillwater Café and the movie theater and the comic book store, always the comic book store, and Loreena would complain because it was the most boring place. But Saul would linger, flipping through the colored pages, until she finally grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down the street to play croquet at the park. It wasn’t so much hitting the ball she enjoyed, but the funny sounds Saul made to give her a chance at a score, crouching by the wicket, alerting her with a click or a whistle or a bark or a squeak as to where she needed to aim.

  Stillwater High School didn’t have the resources to teach a blind student, the principal had told her uncle. They would have to move her to a school that did, or make arrangements for her to study with a tutor. Her uncle had chosen a tutor. Loreena studied at home while her brother went off to school, leaving her always eager to hear his stories of navigating the real world. The principal still welcomed her at school events, and when she was a sophomore and Saul a senior, he promised to take her to the homecoming dance. Her uncle even bought her a new dress, one that twirled about her knees and hugged her torso, the sleeves poofed out like peony blooms. It took her two hours to get ready, and when she came downstairs her uncle insisted on pictures—ten of them.

  Loreena waited at the table, listening to the clock tick-tock on the wall above the stove. She waited for fifteen minutes, and then thirty, at which point she knocked on the door of her uncle’s study. “Do you think something happened?”

  “He had a date. He probably lost track of time.”

  She waited another thirty minutes. The clock chimed out the hour. When Uncle Don came to check on her, she was fighting back tears.

  “Come on.” He pulled his jacket from the back of the chair. “I’ll take you.”

  She didn’t get up. “It won’t be the same.”

  “Sure it will. I’ll go in with you. We’ll dance.” He shuffled to the side. “Your old uncle used to really cut a rug.”

  He wanted her to smile, but she couldn’t. “He’s on a date. He doesn’t want his little sister along.” Reaching behind her to unzip the dress, she started up the staircase, but had reached only number five when she heard the unmistakable chink-a-chug-chug motor of the old Dodge truck.

  “Is that him?”

  Uncle Don went to the window. “Come on.”

  Hesitating, zipping the dress back up, Loreena said, “Are you sure he still wants to take me?”

  Saul burst in through the door, the fall wind blowing old leaves in behind him, his dress shoes clicking on the wood floor. “Sorry! I’m sorry.” His breath came in bursts. “We got stuck at Julie’s house. Her mother had to take pictures and then they wanted me to meet her brother and her father and so I did that and then we finally got out, but just as we pulled onto the road we hit a cat.” He paused, hands on the dining room table.

  Loreena hurried across the room. “A cat?”

  “I know. I hit her cat! Christ!”

  Uncle Don grunted.

  “Is the cat all right?”

  Saul sucked in a painful breath. “It’s dead, totally dead. And it was their old cat, too, the family favorite of course, a big calico, so everyone was crying, Julie was crying, the brother was crying, and her mom was crying too but she was trying to make me feel better at the same time. Oh my God, it was a disaster.”

  “Language, son,” Uncle Don said.

  “Sounds awful,” Loreena said.

  “I hate cats.” Saul turned toward her. “You still want to go?”

  Loreena pulled at the elastic pinching her arm. “What about Julie?”

  “She’s in the car. Her mother insisted she go. Said she couldn’t do anything for Hilton now, anyway, so she shouldn’t miss the homecoming, too.”

  “Hilton?”

  “The cat’s name. Like the hotel.”

  “Hilton?” Uncle Don echoed.

  Saul grabbed her arm. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “The poor cat.” Loreena stumbled after him.

  “So much for your free night’s stay,” Uncle Don called.

  Saul shook his head and led Loreena down the three steps to the stone walk. “She’s a basket case. You gotta cheer her up for me, Lor. She’s all whimpering and oozing bodily fluids. I don’t know what to do with her.”

  The night air pinched at her cheeks. “You could give her a hug.”

  “I tried that. All I got was makeup on my suit.”

  Loreena smiled. “Poor baby.”

  The hospital room door squeaked open, jerking her back to the present.

  “Loreena?”

  She turned, startled. Dominic stood in the doorway.

  20

  She was supposed to be mad at him, she remembered that, bu
t at the sound of his voice she felt only relief. Padding across the room, arms out, she didn’t stop until she was in Dominic’s embrace.

  He folded her in and held her close, his face pressed against hers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Loreena closed her eyes and let herself get lost in the feel of him, the material of the hospital gown nearly as thin as the shirt he’d worn in the cabin, though his arms felt a little stronger now. Her cheek pressed against his chest, she could hear his heart beating and smell the clean scent of his skin. They stood there for several minutes, Dominic holding her tight and stroking her back, and then she withdrew, still clinging to him with one arm. “How does he look?”

  Dominic walked forward, taking her with him. For the longest time, he said nothing. “Your uncle said he lost a lot of blood.”

  “How does he look?” she repeated.

  “Normal, mostly,” Dominic said. “He’s pale. His eyes, a little sunken in. But…”

  Her legs were already buckling. Dominic helped her back to the chair. “They won’t let us stay. We have to leave.” He stroked her hair, his fingers pressing into her scalp, and she closed her eyes.

  When the nurse entered the room a few moments later, Loreena jumped, nearly lulled into a trance by Dominic’s touch. “I’m sorry. Visiting hours are over.”

  “Be right there,” Dominic said.

  The nurse left, closing the door behind her.

  Dominic knelt down beside the chair. “We can come back tomorrow morning.”

  Loreena took hold of his arm and shook her head.

  “Come on.” He lifted her to her feet.

  “What if something happens?” she said.

  “They’re watching him. They’ll let us know.”

  Loreena wasn’t so sure of that, but she let him guide her slowly away. As they passed through the door together, she paused. A crazy impulse took hold of her, the desire to go back and seize her brother’s hand before another minute had passed. Dominic could pull them apart. He could separate them before they reached Saul’s Heaven. There was a chance that what he had told her was true, and she could heal her brother.