A Sundog Moment

by Sharon Baldacci

  Thank God, Carol was there with Gordon. Her cousin would understand. She would realize how incredulous, how unbelievable it was that people kept saying this one stupid comment, gushing about how healthy she looked, over and over again.

  It was a lie that was driving Elizabeth crazy: Couldn’t these people see what was as plain as the nose on their face? She, Elizabeth Whittaker, was exhausted.

  After the comments began piling up like compost, she was ready to scream, but of course she was far too well mannered for such a display of honesty.

  She hooked arms with Carol, who was sipping a glass of red wine, showing off for a small audience. Elizabeth confiscated her easily by saying, “Excuse us.”

  “What do you need, Elizabeth?” Carol put the nearly full glass of cabernet on a marble-topped table in the hall. “This is a great party. You’ve done the old man proud; he should be pleased.” The small talk was annoying, and Elizabeth pulled her closer and began whispering.

  “If I hear one more time about how wonderfully healthy I look, I’m going to puke!”

  Carol started to laugh, then had a fit of coughing, trying to curtail any amusement, when she saw Elizabeth’s glare. She finally calmed down and cleared her throat.

  “But you do!” Elizabeth rolled her eyes at Carol’s surprise.

  “I’m so tired I feel sick. I have never been so exhausted in my entire life. How on earth could they say such a thing?”

  Carol, trying to say the right thing, of course said it precisely wrong. “Aren’t you glad it’s not the other way around?”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. She looked at Carol through dimmed eyes. “You mean . . . ?”

  “What if you looked the way you felt?”

  Elizabeth just couldn’t have cared less. She felt like she was holding on by her fingertips to the window ledge of a very high building. At any moment she would slip off the edge and disappear.

  Watching closely, Carol straightened with real concern. Elizabeth was very, very pale. “Do you want me to get Michael? Or Gordon? I’m sorry, Elizabeth, what can I do?”

  Elizabeth was absolutely sure she didn’t want them to know. That was something she knew she couldn’t handle on top of everything else. Their worry would just be too heavy.

  She forced herself to push away from the wall and paste a smile back on. “Please, forget I said anything, I’m sorry, too, for whining.” She managed a small shrug. “So I’m a little tired, big deal. That’s what I get for doing too much. Tell you what, could you get me a cup of tea? Something hot might perk me up a bit.”

  Elizabeth slowly followed her into the small hallway adjoining the dining room and nearly slipped. It was doing it again!

  It had started a few hours ago, while she was rising from her chair after eating a few bites Michael had gotten for her. Odd little stabs of pain exploded at the back of her neck, rushed down her back like a jolt of electricity, and jumped out of her left foot.

  The sensation kept repeating itself like a merry-go-round. She suddenly realized it kept happening each time she turned her head a certain way. The rush, the pain, the explosion, and then nothing. It was annoying.

  What Elizabeth didn’t know then, she would find out several weeks later. On this night she did the only thing she could. She ignored it and was very careful about the way she moved her head.

  The moment the last guests left and the front doors were closed, Elizabeth turned and went to the bedroom. She was beyond numb. She was so tired she felt physically ill. She was too tired to even think beyond the moments of getting her clothes off, putting on a gown, and then sliding into bed. Her eyes were barely closed before she was asleep.

  The next morning she was still tired, but nothing compared to the way she had felt the previous night.

  She had wrongly assumed, however, that the servers had cleaned the kitchen; it simply never occurred to her she had not included that as part of the job. She had other things to think about.

  “Mr. Whittaker, your mother-in-law has been waiting for you,” his secretary said in a low, warning voice as soon as he got back from lunch. Alarmed because Virginia Mae never came here, his heart started beating faster as he walked quickly to his office.

  “Virginia Mae, is everything all right? Has something happened to Elizabeth?” She was sitting there on the black leather love seat, a scathingly disapproving look on her face. He rushed in and went quickly to sit in the seat opposite her. “What is it?”

  She clasped heavily jeweled hands together. “My daughter has lost her mind, and she’s making me lose mine.” She spoke these words slowly and succinctly, high irritation underlining each one.

  Michael was almost ragged with relief. Obviously, nothing awful had happened to his wife, but she sure as hell had riled her mother. He took a deep breath and tried not to smile. “Okay, what’s going on?”

  “I’ve spent the morning out shopping with her. Every ten steps she lost her balance and began to fall, then caught herself on something or someone, laughed like it was the best joke in the world and then walked another ten or twelve steps and repeated the whole process. I am a nervous wreck. I was desperately afraid she was finally going to fall and break something.” She stared at him with cold fury. “There is only one thing I want to know: What do you intend to do about it?”

  She expected an instant answer and was unwavering in her belief that Michael should fix it. It was his duty, his responsibility to keep his wife from self-destructing.

  He closed his eyes briefly; he would have sworn under his breath if he’d thought that would help. He looked directly at his agitated mother-in-law. “What would you have me do?”

  Virginia Mae glared. “How do I know? She’s your wife.”

  “Virginia Mae, you are really upset, aren’t you?”

  She ignored that. “You have to do something; she shouldn’t be allowed out in public when she is tripping over nonexistent things. She’s going to hurt herself.”

  He had not seen evidence lately of anything like what Virginia Mae was talking about. And he didn’t feel inclined to have a deep discussion with her about this. He repeated, “What do you want me to do?”

  Virginia Mae threw up her hands, utterly disgusted. “If I knew the answer to that, do you think I’d be here? She’s your wife; she always listens to you. Tell her to—” She stopped, blinked her eyes several times, and took several deep breaths before whispering, “Start using something. I don’t know, she needs, well, I don’t know what she needs, but you’ve got to find out what’s going on. And fix it.”

  It had been a difficult morning with her daughter. Elizabeth was in a mood to flitter here and yonder, window-shopping and not paying the least attention to how she looked. In Virginia Mae’s eyes, her daughter looked like a drunk weaving up and down the wide corridors of the mall; it was embarrassing.

  Yet Elizabeth kept insisting everything was fine, just as vehemently as her mother kept pointing out it was not.

  Michael stood up and walked her to the door. “I’ll talk to her tonight, okay? But I haven’t noticed anything like that at the house.”

  “Then go shopping with her,” Virginia Mae snapped.

  Kellan was not having a very good day. When all this disease mess with her mother had started, her friends were really supportive. They were constantly bringing her optimistic news clippings, or telling her of friends who knew other people with the illness who were doing great, all following certain but different regimens.

  Then those friends enlisted the help of other friends, and she still thought it was dear of them to care. When had enough become too much? She looked at her desk in dismay then at the e-mail messages winking at her, many redundant. Obviously, some buddies had discovered the same Web sites and wanted to make sure she had seen them: Cures for MS! Alternative treatments guaranteed . . . What the Doctors Don’t Want You to Know!!! and on and on.

  She had started keeping a file of all the printed materials that had been given to her, mailed to her, or
left at the small house she rented with her roommates. It was bulging now, and the school year was only beginning its second semester.

  She shook her head, wondering if anyone had actually read these before sending them her way. If they had, would they have picked up on the fact that several of these so-called sure cures contradicted themselves?

  No-fat, low-fat, high-fat—each diet was proclaimed to be the absolute best for people like her mother. But you had to follow a specific diet regimen that could be individualized for you by paying just $29.95, plus shipping.

  How naive would a person have to be to buy into this crap? Kellan wondered.

  And what about those testimonials! All from people who had only initials for names. And then there were the prayer chains that had been constantly coming her way on the Internet: Read this and send it to ten of your friends and then back to the person who sent it, and you will be assured of having your prayers answered. Always at the end was a vague warning against not doing as instructed. Electronic chain letters! She could not believe it. Since when did God start reading e-mail?

  She quickly read through a professional-looking booklet that touted the healing promises of a patch developed by a medical professional with MS. This medicine could be obtained only through an apothecary shop and then only with a doctor’s prescription, even though no one knew what was in it. Actually, Kellan read this one with interest. It helped with fatigue and though her mother didn’t speak of it, Kellan had heard about how tired her mother was—from her grandmother, her father, Carol . . .

  A small bud of hope started opening as she read intently. Then she read the smaller print on the very back.

  Possible side effects: Stroke? Heart attack? Death? They had to be kidding! Did they expect people to hand out money for the hint of a promise of healing that was tied directly to such horrible possibilities?

  If you were desperate enough . . . A memory pushed through all the clutter. It was about that girl she’d met, the one whose mother had MS for twenty-five years, the one who had refused the feeding tubes, deliberately ending her life.

  Kellan’s reaction had been instant: The woman had given up. How could anyone choose death over life?

  Looking over the piles of papers littering her desk and the blinking lights on her computer, she suddenly realized with startling clarity that the woman had not given up.

  She had simply let go.

  With sudden decisiveness, Kellan pulled the wastebasket over and swiped clean her desktop, throwing out the bulging file as well. She was letting go, too.

  Michael walked through the back door into the kitchen that evening and was stopped by an aroma that started his mouth watering. It was a roast, with fresh spices, new potatoes, carrots . . . He breathed deeply. The table was set with china and crystal, linen napkins, and there was a favorite merlot breathing on the table.

  Elizabeth entered just then, wearing something that floated. Before he could say a word, her smile made his heart skip. Flashes of memories popped up—it had been a long time since she had surprised him like this. All memory of Virginia Mae’s visit that day vanished.

  She took his briefcase and gave him a kiss. “Go freshen up and then come have a glass of wine before we eat. Dinner is everything you like.”

  It was indeed. He finished the last bit of food and sat back in contentment. “You’ve outdone yourself. What made you decide on all this?”

  She shrugged lightly. “Just because.”

  His smile met hers and he enjoyed the intense attraction that had only grown stronger since the first time they laid eyes on each other. “What did you do today?”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Went shopping with Mother. She’s getting so paranoid. Every time I turned around, there she was, grabbing my arm or acting like she was going to catch me. It was very annoying.”

  She picked up a piece of bread and nibbled it delicately. “So I came back here, rested for a bit, and a cooking spell came over me and—voilà!” She gestured toward the table. “So do you like?” Her eyes and voice made the simple question an erotic exercise.

  Michael let his eyes roam over the table and then to his wife, looking her over in great, intimate detail.

  “I like, no, I love,” he said, his voice husky, and this time when their eyes met, the feelings that swept over them began heating.

  They stood up at the same time, napkins cascading to the floor. It was crazy, she thought as her hands drifted up to cradle his dear head, pulling him close, loving the feel of his hands on her body, touching and exploring and giving. After all these years of loving each other, the passion never dimmed; it just flamed hotter . . . better.

  By the time they got to the bedroom, clothes littered the hallway. They stood naked next to the bed. He held her away just to look at her, the sight he’d seen hundreds of times in hundreds of ways still new. With a groan made husky with desire, he pulled her back into his arms. They slowly tumbled onto the bed, kissing and exploring each other with all the intensity of newlyweds.

  Much later, her head nestled in the crook of his arm, Michael finally mentioned his unexpected visitor. “Your mother came to the office today.”

  Elizabeth leaned on one elbow and looked at him in surprise. “You’re kidding! What did she want?”

  He cleared his throat, feeling warm at the touch of her hand on his face. Then he grabbed it. “You’re making me lose my concentration.” A kiss was in order and it was long, hard, and made both of them a little breathless. Then she nestled down next to him again.

  “So? What did she want?”

  “She was worried—about you . . . said you were stumbling and laughing and making her lose her mind. Those were her words, but not exactly in that order.”

  “Hmm.” Elizabeth thought of this morning and didn’t remember it like that. “What I recall is that I was tired, but since you wore me out last night, I thought I should keep those details to myself and not explain it to her.” She poked a finger in his side hard and made him laugh.

  “I didn’t think I’d tired you out that much,” he teased. Then he tickled her back.

  “Stop!” She laughed breathlessly, grabbing his hand and holding it.

  “You promise you were just tired? There wasn’t anything else going on?”

  “Would I lie to you?” she murmured, suddenly sliding on top of him and kissing his neck. He breathed deeply, surprised to feel himself responding again.

  “You’re making me lose my concentration again,” he murmured, and then suddenly he pulled her close and rolled over, determined to make her lose all concentration. This is what love will do to you, he thought briefly, before he lost himself completely. He no longer knew where he ended and she began because they were one in the truest, most honorable sense of the word.

  What started on New Year’s Eve kept shifting and changing until it was something Elizabeth could no longer ignore. She had indeed started stumbling, even with the tennis shoes Michael insisted she wear. Something . . . odd was happening, but Elizabeth couldn’t explain it because she didn’t have the words. Michael had asked over and over again what was going on, and she couldn’t tell him.

  “Do you think it’s the MS?” Worry, not anger, made his voice tight and stern, a frown of concern darkening his face; she couldn’t discern the difference.

  She bristled. “No! It’s nothing like what happened before. No. Maybe I pulled something.”

  She had made the appointment to see Gordon, finally, after small things started adding up and her comfort level was dropping lower and lower. Now she was in discomfort (pain sounded like much too harsh a word), but it was constant and it was wearing. Elizabeth never thought about seeing the specialist; it never occurred to her that this had anything to do with the MS.

  “It’s on the lower part, on both legs.” Elizabeth pointed to the places that had begun to throb several days ago. She wore very loose pants, no socks, and tennis shoes to visit him in his medical office adjacent to the hospital.


  She was upset and baffled. “It’s driving me crazy, Gordon. I have no idea what could be wrong. It feels like it’s scorched, but see, it looks perfectly normal.”

  “What does this feel like?” He felt her wince as he ran his hand over the portion of seemingly healthy skin.

  “It hurts. Well, I don’t know how to describe it; I’ve never had a feeling, a pain like this before. Like a toothache.” She frowned. “No, that’s not any good.”

  “Does it feel as if your leg has been asleep, those pins and needles that shimmer all over as the nerves start to wake up?”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes, sort of. But it hurts so much more.” She looked at him, wondering. “What made you think of that?”

  Before he could answer, she suddenly winced and clapped a hand to the back of her neck as her left foot shook.

  “What happened?” Gordon’s face was as professionally blank as a white sheet of paper. He was now very concerned.

  “Something that’s been happening off and on. By the time I think I should come and tell you about it, it goes away. It’s very, very strange. It hurts for just a moment and then it’s over.”

  Gordon sat back, his face grim. “Let me guess. At times when you turn your head a certain way, or even if you don’t, something like an electric jolt sweeps down your spinal column and out your foot.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth fell open. “How on earth?”

  He smiled without any pleasure at her amazement. “It’s called Lhermitte’s sign, so named for the French doctor who diagnosed this as being a symptom of your disease.”

  Now this was really too much, Elizabeth decided furiously. “You’ve got to be kidding! How could it be? It’s nothing like the problems I had last year.” She knew he was wrong, absolutely, but then a thought stopped her cold: How had he known?

  He remained silent and reached into one of the cabinets and took out a reflex hammer. Holding her left foot up, he raked the sole in different places, looking for corresponding movement in her toes. He didn’t see everything he was looking for. Holding it at a right angle, he instructed her to bend the left foot away from him.