“I’m a little scared. How about you?” said Tiny.
“The same.”
“In case something happens . . . you know . . . tomorrow,” said Tiny, “I want you to understand that I don’t know what I would have done without you all of these years. Even before any of this kidney stuff came up, well, you were the best kind of friend that a person could ever hope to have.”
“What?” Sugar pretended shock. “You mean I didn’t have to give you my kidney for you to consider me a good friend? Shoot! I suppose that now it’s too late to back out.”
Just then, the elevator stopped and the doors opened up to the hospital lobby. A toothless old man in a blue bathrobe got on. He was eating Twinkies from the vending machine. “Excuse me,” the man said to Sugar, holding his wrist near to her face, “but can you read what this bracelet says that they put on my arm? I left my glasses at home, and for the life of me I can’t tell what it says.”
“Sure,” Sugar said. “Turn your wrist over so I can see. Hmm. N–P–O.”
“What’s that mean?” He brushed a crumb from his mouth.
Sugar looked at Tiny. She was trying not to bust with laughter. “Sir,” said Sugar, “I think it means that you best not let the nurses see you eating those Twinkies.”
“Oh! I remember now. When that little nurse put this thing on me, she told me I couldn’t have anything else to eat or drink!”
“Don’t worry,” said Tiny, “we won’t tell.”
“Your secret is safe with us,” agreed Sugar.
When, back in their rooms, they were chastised by harried nurses who had been searching for them, Tiny and Sugar both feigned ignorance. “You mean I wasn’t supposed to leave this floor? I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you only said that I wasn’t to go to any other floor. I didn’t. Promise. I never left the elevator. Not even once.”
Right. Like nurses were born yesterday or something. Not to worry, the score came out even. A little while later, Sugar and Tiny’s compassionate caregivers smilingly administered just revenge in the form of physician-prescribed laxatives designed to preoperatively clean out the most clogged of digestive tracts.
Just before drifting off into drug-induced dreamlands, Sugar and Tiny spoke via their hospital phones.
“See you tomorrow,” whispered Tiny.
“I doubt it,” said Sugar.
“I know. But maybe the day after.”
“Yeah. Probably so.”
Neither one wanted to hang up, but neither one could think of anything to say.
“Sweet dreams,” said Tiny.
“You too. Good night,” Sugar yawned.
“Good night.”
IT’S BEEN A YEAR NOW SINCE Tiny’s successful transplant. For her, the operation wasn’t so bad. She’d been so sick on dialysis that with a functioning kidney, she felt better than she had in a very long time.
Sugar’s recovery was slower. Tiny was awake from surgery before her, out of bed before her, and traipsing up and down the halls before her. An unexpected infection forced Sugar, after she’d been home a week, to go back to the hospital and spend a couple of days hooked up to IVs. Even though the infection cleared up and she was back on her feet within a few weeks, she didn’t get her energy back until a good six months after the surgery. During those months, Millard worried over her and daughter Shonda cooked and cleaned for her.
Tiny called her every day.
Eight months after the surgery, on the night of her birthday, Millard and Sugar lay in the dark, holding hands. “It scared me when I saw you right after the operation—all those tubes and things and them trying to get you to wake up. I was worried that you might die. Then when you got that infection . . . Sugar, I’m not ashamed to say that at the time, I was wishing with all my heart that you hadn’t done this thing.”
“I know,” Sugar said. “It’s been hard. But I’m fine now.”
“Did you ever regret it?”
“No. Not really. But when the pain was so bad, I wished that I hadn’t had to do it.”
“Honey, was it worth it?”
“Yes. Of course. And I’ll tell you exactly when I knew.”
“When?”
“It was when Tiny told me that she wasn’t craving sweets anymore.”
“Get out of here!” Millard laughed. “Really?”
“Really. See Millard, all Tiny needed was a little pinch of Sugar. That’s what I gave her, and when I see her now—all pink and prissy—I’m just so, so glad that a pinch was enough.”
14
SWEET GEORGIA
“DAD’S HERE! Josh—hurry up! He’s here!” twelve-year-old Kevin yelled up the stairs to his twin brother before running out the door.
Josh, duffel bag in hand, bounded down the stairs, taking them two, then three at a time.
“Hey, there. Slow down,” said his mother, Sarah. She was standing at the foot of the staircase, between him and his intended route of exit. “Got your toothbrush?”
“Mom! Dad’s here!”
“How about your library book?”
Josh ducked around his mother. In a flash, he ran the length of the sidewalk and flew into the arms of his father, whose truck was parked on the street. “Dad!”
“Hey, guys! How you been?” He hugged and kissed them, then rubbed their heads and punched them in the arms. The boys loved it. When their mother attempted physical affection with them, however, especially outside or in public, they squirmed away, sometimes even wiped her kisses off.
Sarah, still inside the doorway of the house, felt four-footed Georgia swish past her knees. Tail wagging with the pleasure she got every time she saw Doyle, her old pal and Sarah’s ex-husband, she too joined the welcoming melee, jumping and barking and licking Doyle’s face.
“Georgia!” Sarah yelled.
“Hi, Sarah,” Doyle said when he heard her voice and looked up.
“Hi, Doyle.”
“Come on, Georgia.” Doyle dragged the dog up the walk. If Georgia was in the yard when he left with the boys, in spite of the fact that she was an overweight old dog, she would chase his truck until she wore herself out. She did it every time.
Sarah took hold of the dog’s collar. “Thanks, Doyle. I got her.”
Josh and Kevin threw their bags into the back of Doyle’s truck and climbed into the cab. “Looks like they’re ready. Anything I need to know before we head out?”
“Soccer practice tomorrow at 10:00. Birthday party Sunday at 6:00.”
“No problem. I’ll have ’em home by 5:00. Homework?”
“Not this time. Just library books.”
“Good.” He yelled to the boys, “You men ready? Got your toothbrushes? No? Guys! What are you thinking? Go get ’em.”
“Bye, mom!” Josh and Kevin yelled as they dashed up the stairs and then down again.
“Bye, boys!”
“Thanks, Sarah. Have a good weekend.”
And then they were gone.
Georgia, as she did every time the boys left with their dad, hid behind the couch and howled. Sarah leaned against the front door, inclined to do the same. In the kitchen, she popped the top off a diet Coke and dug in her purse for her keys. When Georgia heard the jingling, she raised her head and whined. “I know. Me too,” said Sarah.
Georgia cocked her head to one side.
“Let’s go to the clinic. You want to? Okay. Come on. In the car.” Even on a Friday evening, Sarah could find something to do—charts to complete, forms to fill out, dictation to catch up on. Something to justify getting out of the house.
The boys spent every weekend with their dad. Usually Saturdays were okay, because she kept herself busy. She went shopping, or worked in her yard, or caught up on her housework. Friday nights were the tough times. She’d tried renting movies, taking hot baths, curling up with a book. Nothing relieved the melancholy that swept over her every time she stood in the doorway of her house and watched Doyle and her boys drive off together, leaving her behind.
IT WAS
N’T SUPPOSED TO turn out like this. Neither one of them ever thought that it would. But by the time Sarah and Doyle got around to seeing the minister, letting him in on the fact that they were not the perfect little family that everyone thought they were, it was already too late.
High school sweethearts, they had married at nineteen. Sarah was in college, studying to be a nurse, and Doyle was in trade school, learning to be an auto mechanic. When Sarah graduated, she began working at the nursing home in Ella Louise. When Doyle finished trade school, he honed his car-repairing skills by working in his uncle’s garage. By their first anniversary, they had saved enough money to make a down payment on a double-wide trailer, which they planted on a pretty little piece of land given to them by Doyle’s dad.
Josh and Kevin, twins born on Sarah and Doyle’s fourth anniversary, were two weeks old when twenty-three-year-old Sarah learned of her unexpected acceptance into medical school. When she opened the acceptance letter, which Doyle had thought was a bill, she screamed so loudly that he was sure something was terribly wrong.
“I got in! I can’t believe it! Doyle—I got in!”
Doyle couldn’t believe it either. Though he knew that Sarah had worked for months on applications, had taken some kind of big test, and had even, while pregnant, driven to Houston for some interviews, she, not wanting to get her hopes up, had totally downplayed her chances of getting in.
Her grades weren’t as high as they needed to be.
She hadn’t done very well on an important interview.
The school had at least a gazillion applicants for every position they needed to fill.
She’d convinced Doyle, and herself too, that she was applying only on a whim. So remote was the possibility of acceptance that not once had Doyle and Sarah talked about what would happen if she did get accepted.
But now? Two little babies? Medical school three hours away? Doyle was proud of Sarah and all, but he didn’t see how they could make it work.
Besides, he thought she liked being a nurse.
But . . . but . . . didn’t he understand? This was the opportunity of a lifetime, the fulfillment of a dream! What was he saying? Sarah didn’t see how they couldn’t make it work.
Yes, she realized that Doyle had just about managed to establish himself in town as a mechanic who could be counted on to fix a person’s car right. And yes, she knew that he had just bought his own little garage, where he’d hung up a sign that said “Strickland and Sons Automotive Repair.” And no, she hadn’t forgotten that he was this close to procuring a contract to maintain all of Ella Louise’s school buses, fire trucks, and police cars.
Sarah and Doyle talked about medical school every night for a week. “It would mean a better life for all of us,” said Sarah.
“What’s wrong with the one we’ve got now?” said Doyle.
“Nothing. I just mean that if I were a doctor, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about bills and stuff.”
“You worry that much?”
“No.” Sarah was quiet for a moment. “It’s really not about money. I’ve always wanted to do more than what a nurse can do. I want to understand what’s wrong with the patients I treat and why some of them get better and some of them don’t. I want to be able to help in more ways than I can as a nurse. I started wanting to be a doctor when I was a little girl. My parents convinced me that being a nurse would be almost the same thing. But it’s not. Doyle, I’m not that smart. I never thought I’d get in. It’s an opportunity that I never dreamed I would have. And it’s something I really, really want to do.”
When she put it that way, there wasn’t much left for Doyle to say. Who was he to say no to Sarah’s dreams? He loved her and had since he was sixteen. She was right. They—rather, he—would find a way to make it work.
“How long will it take? All of it?” asked Doyle.
“Six years. Maybe seven.”
The next day, Doyle started telling folks around town that his new business, Strickland and Sons, was up for sale.
“Any bites?” asked his neighbor.
“No.”
“Sold it yet?” asked his dad.
“No.”
“Don’t worry. Only been a week, hasn’t it, son?”
What Doyle didn’t say was that when he took down his sign that said “Strickland and Sons,” well, he felt like he had already sold out.
Within six months, Sarah and Doyle left Ella Louise, the town where they had both grown up, and moved into a Houston apartment close to the university.
It took not six, not seven, but eight years for Sarah to complete medical school, residency, and her internship. During those years, Doyle worked for the automotive department at Sears so they would have benefits like medical and dental insurance. He wore a uniform with his name on it. Every day he did the same three things: oil changes, brake checks, and the installation of new tires.
When he had been working at Sears for two years, Doyle was offered the assistant manager position, but he had to turn it down. Taking the position meant working evenings and some nights, but someone had to pick up the boys from day care, and since Sarah had to be on call sometimes four or five days at a time, Doyle was that someone. He was also the someone who fixed the boys’ dinners and gave them their baths.
Sarah knew that her going to school and being gone from home so much of the time was difficult on Doyle. She realized that it was not a good thing for her marriage. All she had to do was look around. A big percentage of Sarah’s classmates who were married had gotten divorced along the way.
But she and Doyle were different, and so Sarah remained focused on her goal and the end that was in sight. Soon, very soon, she promised Doyle when they lay together on the nights she was home, it would be over. They would have a normal life, a better one. She would open up a practice in Ella Louise. He could buy himself another garage. They would find themselves a house. It would be good. If he, they, could just hang on.
And he told her that he could.
The May after Josh and Kevin turned eight years old, Sarah finally finished school and Doyle quit his job at Sears. Ella Louise’s only physician had been wanting to retire for a couple of years. He and Sarah worked out a smooth transfer of the Family Medical Clinic as soon as she and Doyle and the boys got settled in.
For a while, all went well. Josh and Kevin, second graders by then, loved their teachers and their school.
Doyle went to work in his uncle’s garage, and while his uncle wasn’t ready to retire, he wanted to take time off for grandkids and fishing. Once Doyle proved that he hadn’t lost his car-repairing skills, his uncle took to taking long weekends and leaving him in charge. He and Doyle began talking of Doyle leasing the place with an option to buy.
Doyle and Sarah found and bought a house. Even though they were deeply in debt, with huge student loans and credit cards charged to the max, Doyle and Sarah, lacking extravagant tastes, lived comfortably without any problem.
So what was the trouble?
What led to their separation and eventual divorce? Why, less than two years after moving back to Ella Louise, did a family such as theirs end up rent in two?
Sarah still isn’t sure.
It wasn’t like anybody got mad.
No one slammed any doors.
No one drove off in a huff.
No one fooled around with anybody else on the side.
But they each found themselves living in a lonely, lonely house.
“Surely you can work it out,” insisted Sarah’s mother. “After all you’ve been through? Why now?”
“Son, do you want these boys raised up in a broken home?” said Doyle’s dad.
“Doyle, Sarah, God hates divorce,” said their minister.
But it didn’t work anymore. For either of them. And divorce seemed the logical thing to do—the rational choice for two people who had grown apart, who had nothing to say to each other, who lay beside each other night after night, careful not to touch.
Doyle and Sarah d
ecided that they would keep it all very civil. Simple. Neither one of them would make it difficult on the other. To make the divorce easy on the boys, she would have them during the week and he would take them on the weekends.
Easy.
And so it had been for the past two years.
WHEN SARAH WAS READY to leave the clinic, she turned off the lights, locked the back door, got into her car, and drove toward home. She was halfway there before she remembered that Georgia had come with her but was not in the car. Georgia? No! How could she have forgotten? That was odd. How had she managed to get out the door without Georgia?
When Sarah got back to the clinic, she expected to see Georgia’s little black nose pressed up against the clear glass door—but she didn’t. Sarah entered the clinic. “Georgia,” she called as she flipped on the lights. “Here, girl!”
No Georgia.
“Georgia, where are you? Are you sleeping somewhere?” The clinic wasn’t that big. Sarah checked both exam rooms, the reception area, and the back office.
No Georgia.
Not in the car. Not in the clinic. Where could she be? Then Sarah remembered that after she’d been at the clinic for half an hour, she’d gone out to the car for the bottle of water and package of crackers that she always kept there. She’d propped the door to the clinic open, rather than taking the time to disengage the inside lock.
Georgia must have gotten out then.
Sarah drove home slowly, her eyes peeled for Georgia as she steered. Where would she have gone? Granted, Ella Louise wasn’t that big, but neither was Georgia, and her eyes weren’t as good as they used to be. Would she have headed home? Would she have been able to find her way? It was late by now. Past 10:00. Sarah drove around a couple of blocks, her eyes scanning the sides of the street. Please God, she prayed, don’t let her have been hit by a car. Please, please, let her be at home when I get there.
But she wasn’t. Not in the driveway. Not in the yard. Not on the porch. Sarah picked up the phone.
Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life Page 14