The Healing Quilt

by Lauraine Snelling

  “I'll be eight in October.”

  “Oh, that explains it.” She kept the smile inside.

  “ ‘Splains what?”

  “How come you learn so fast.”

  He shrugged. “I'm smart, too.” No hint of bragging, just a fact.

  “How do you know that?”

  “My dad says so.”

  Ah, good for your dad. “You think if I invited your family for dinner one night, he would come?”

  “If he got home from work in time.”

  “How about Friday?”

  “We can ask him.”

  “Good, I'll call him tonight.”

  Thomas frowned. “Maybe I better tell him to call you.”

  “Okay.” She held her dripping hands over the edge of the bowl. Cutting up apricots was not a job for one who wanted to keep her hands clean.

  “Thanks for all your help.” She would put all the apricots in plastic bags in the freezer for now, then bake a pie when Ryan came home, but turn most of them into jam when she had more time during the winter.

  “What time is it?”

  She checked her watch. “Almost one.”

  “I better go home.”

  “Are you late?”

  “Not much.” He picked up the bowl of pits. “In the trash?”

  “No, over in the compost heap. The middle one of those three wooden bins down the bank there.” She pointed to the wooden structures.

  “What's compost?”

  “New soil for the garden.”

  “And you make it?” His eyes grew round. “I didn't know anyone could make dirt.”

  “You just dump the pits down there, and I'll explain how it works some other time.” She watched him trot dutifully down the slope, Missy right beside him. She picked up the fiill bowls of golden fruit and, stacking one in the empty crisper drawer, took them into the kitchen. While this wasn't what she had planned on for the moment, at least the apricots were ready to bag.

  Thomas stuck his head in the back door. “I washed my hands at the hose. Did you know Missy likes to drink out of the hose? Bye.”

  “Thanks for helping me,” she repeated.

  “Welcome.” His voice came from beyond the deck.

  She went to the door and watched as he carefully made Missy stay inside the yard and then locked the gate behind him.

  “I think he's an old man in a boys body.”

  The doorbell rang as she poured the last of the fruit into gallon-size freezer bags and sealed them. “Coming.” Wiping her hands on a dish-towel, she opened the front door. “Come on in, Beth. I have to put these apricots in the freezer, so you go on up. I cleared off the Singer for you.”

  “Do you need some help?”

  “No thanks. I'll bring up iced tea, too.” Kit motioned her guest toward the stairs and continued on her way to the kitchen.

  She could hear the machine already purring away when she mounted the stairs, taking two glasses of tea along with sugar and sweetener on a tray. “You picked that up fast.”

  “It's just like my machine, only a bit older. My mother gave me hers when she bought a new one. When it wouldn't run, I about panicked.” Beth laid her hands in her lap. “Not knowing where to go for anything in town can be so frustrating.”

  “I really admire people like you who can move to a new town and settle right in. I've lived in this house ever since Mark and I married.”

  “Did you grow up here too?”

  “Yes, never have done much seeing the world.” Kit held out the tray. “I wasn't sure what, if any, you used for sweetener.”

  Beth took the glass and waved away the sugar. “Hard to believe there really are people who've lived in one house all their life.”

  “Other than college, I'd never lived in more than one house before either.” Kit sipped her tea and set it on a coaster on a cabinet beside her machine. “The iron is on. If you need anything, I'm sure its here.” She moved the ironing board so Beth could use it more easily too and began cutting her pieces apart and pressing the seams flat. As she finished each one, she set it on the growing stack at the end of the ironing board.

  Two hours later, they'd sewn, pressed, and chatted more like longtime friends than just acquaintances when Beth asked, “Kit, how do you deal with missing Amber?”

  “I don't.” Kit stopped. “No, I'd better rephrase that. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and go on. Keeping on keeping on, I guess.”

  “Do you get angry sometimes?”

  “Oh yeah.” More than I could tell you.

  “I don't know which would be worse. Never knowing your baby or having her taken from you older.”

  “I don't either, but I suspect the gaping wound is always there.” Kit stopped stitching and turned to look at her young friend.

  Beth used a corner of a growing quilt block to wipe her eyes. “I want a baby so bad.”

  The despair in those words brought Kit up out of her chair and across the short space separating them. She knelt in front of Beth and took her shaking hands. “Ah, my dear, when you are ready, there'll be a baby. You re young yet”

  “I'm so afraid there won't be.” She raised tear-washed eyes to look Kit in the face. “I… I think sometimes I am losing my mind. Garth is making me see a psychiatrist.”

  “For depression?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Someone once suggested I do the same.”

  “So did you?”

  “No, but I haven't closed the door on the idea yet. I don't see anything wrong with getting help. Grief takes a real toll.” Kit sniffed and dug in her pocket for a tissue. Finding none, she stood and grabbed the box sitting on the shelf and held it out for Beth, too. “No sense drowning these pieces before they get to their right place.”

  Beth dabbed her eyes and smiled in spite of her sniffing. “Sometimes I'm so afraid I'm going to cry forever.”

  “I know. A friend of mine wrote me and said that God keeps our tears in a bottle. “ Where did that come from? I hadnt thought ofthat since I put the card away.

  “Really? Where did she read that?”

  “Not sure. In the Psalms somewhere.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You are most welcome.”

  They both returned to their sewing with only the machines murmuring for a gentle time—until the phone rang close to four. Kit thought about letting the machine pick it up but dug under some fabric for the phone in her sewing room and answered it.

  “Hello, this is Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle calling. We have a cancellation for tomorrow at ten if you could bring Mrs. Dennison up then.”

  “Oh my. Let me call her and call you right back. Wait a minute, how long will you be there? I might have to go out to her place to ask her.”

  “I'm here until five.”

  “Good, don't give it to someone else. I'm sure we can get there.” She hung up and turned to Beth. “That was the hospital in Seattle. I've got to find Teza.” She dialed Tezas number. The phone rang until the machine picked it up. “Teza, if youre anywhere near, pick up the phone.”

  When nothing happened, Kit left a brief message and, grabbing her purse, headed out the door. “Make yourself at home. Ill be back in a few minutes.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “I wish I spent more time in here.” Elaine looked around her workroom, enjoying the rich colors and designs of tapestries and velvets, velours and silk brocades flowing from tubes in a corner bin, draped over quilt stands, or folded in stacks. Her sewing machines, both an industrial and a top-of-the-line Viking, serger and embroidery machine all sat ready with true lighting and banks of glorious threads and trims. Shelves with doors, drawers, and pullout baskets lined one entire wall. Her cutting table had collapsible additions on all four sides so she could lay out fabrics and projects of nearly any dimension. Doodlebugs basket sat near a sunny window, his favorite place other than her lap. Bookshelves surrounded the windows above, beneath, and even between them.

  Someone ha
d told her this was a sewer's dream room. She believed that easily, having dreamed of something like this long before it came into being.

  When George told her to do whatever she wanted, his only stipulation had been that she get top-of-the-line tools, which she'd done. A screen saver on the computer in the corner changed embroidery designs continually.

  She picked up her bags of quilt pieces and sat down at her regular machine next to the ironing board that pulled down from the wall. One of the perks of sewing quilt blocks was the freewheeling flow of ideas that went on in her head at the same time. She checked to make sure her digital tape recorder was at the ready so she could record them and began threading her machine, humming under her breath. After pinning the pattern to the cork board above her machine, she took pieces one and two from the Ziplocs to begin her sewing chain.

  Her mind roamed back to Ramsey's visit. Short though it was and uptight as she'd been beforehand about meeting the young woman he was bringing home, still things went well as far as she could tell. George took the weekend off and didn't even go in for rounds, an unprecedented act of self-restraint for him.

  “Mother, Father, I'd like you to meet Jessica Freewater.” Ramsey, too, had obviously been feeling the pressure, but why, she didn't know. After all, what did he expect? That they would be rude and insufferable? Surely he knew their good manners would never allow that.

  “I'm pleased to meet you.” Jessicas voice had been pleasing and her handshake warm. She flashed Ramsey a look that told his mother the two were more than just acquaintances or a date for the weekend. “You have no idea how I've been looking forward to meeting you and yet scared to death at the same time.” Her cheeks flared from pink to red, but her smile and light laugh said she didn't take herself too seriously.

  Where did Ramsey find this treasure? She had shoulder-length light brown hair with the kiss of auburn highlights, a heart-shaped face and green eyes that sparkled like a marquis-cut emerald in the sun. She stood nearly as tall as Ramsey, who at five ten had always wished for more height. The two were a perfect foil for each other, he with his father's formerly dark hair and flashing Italian eyes, and she so fair and sparkling.

  Her son, who easily could have become an internationally known soccer player, had followed both his own and his father's dreams into medicine. He appeared to be doing everything right, even down to looking for a wife in the same profession.

  Juanita liked her too. And already I'm dreaming of finally having a daughter in my life.

  Elaine turned her chair to the ironing board to clip and press.

  Jessica had surely charmed George with her questions of a practice in a small town like Jefferson City.

  “You don't get to specialize as much as in a city like, say, Tacoma or Seattle, but we don't have the pressures either,” George answered.

  Elaine tried to think back to when he hadn't had so much pressure. “At least not until you end up in charge like I did,” George added. Both Ramsey and Jessica chuckled at that, and George nodded to her.

  “So, you think there is room here for another oncologist, especially relating to women's issues?” Jessica asked.

  Elaine looked from Ramsey to Jessica and on to George. She had yet to tell him of her dream for a cancer center. Could this young woman possibly be a piece in the puzzle?

  “I don't see why not,” Elaine answered with a slight smile.

  She let her mind wander the corridors of her dream, only keeping superficial track of the animated conversation regarding night duty and cases that called for extra study or research, whether the patient lived and thrived or withered and died.

  One of these days she'd take Ramsey aside and confide her vision, but not yet. Not until she'd begun to figure out the funding.

  Elaine turned to Jessica. “Are you aware of the high incidence of cancer in our area, especially breast cancer?”

  “No, no one's mentioned that.” Like lasers, her green eyes focused on Elaine. “What kind of studies are being done?”

  “One entails the electrical transmission lines that run from the dam to Olympia and the surrounding area.” She glanced up to see George give a slight shake of his head. Why did he not want them discussing this? She raised an eyebrow his way, and he shook his head again, a barely perceptible movement that she'd learned to read long ago.

  She acquiesced and reached for the silver coffeepot at her side. “Would anyone like more coffee before Juanita brings the dessert? It's your favorite, Ramsey. I got apricots from Teza, and we made pie.” On that she wasn't stretching the truth. Her apricot pies were renowned, and baking them herself had become a point of pride.

  “I told you my mother would have something special for us. Nothing like hospital food to make you appreciate real home cooking.”

  The only awkward moment occurred when Jessica mentioned she would like to work on the Mercy Ship for a year or two, and Ramsey agreed with her. The thought of her son putting himself in danger made Elaine's stomach clench. Who knew what all they might contact in those third-world countries.

  “I believe that is what God is calling me to do.” Jessica had said it with such a lovely smile that Elaine swallowed a comment and knew George was biting his tongue also. It wasn't as though they didn't go to church. Of course they did, but Ramsey was their only son.

  After the young people left, George had scraped his hands over his balding head. “So are we going to have a Christian fanatic in our family?”

  “Now, who knows if this is really the woman for him.” But Elaine knew she was. She'd recognized the look of love in her son's eyes. “We didn't raise him that way. I mean we took him to church and taught him morals and ethics and the proper way to behave without going overboard.”

  “We shall see.” George didn't lose the worry crease between his eyebrows until he buried himself in a Dean Koontz novel he'd been reading.

  Juanita appeared in the doorway, interrupting Elaine's thoughts. “You want lunch?”

  “Is it that time already?” Elaine checked her chain of growing blocks. “Give me half an hour, okay? I should be done with this by then.”

  “There are phone calls too.”

  “Anything critical?” At Juanita's head shake, Elaine added, “I can do them later. Gracias.”

  She finished ironing the last seam and stacked the blocks one on top of another. She'd deliver them tomorrow on her way to the hospital guild meeting. One more thing off her mind. She'd done her part.

  Juanita appeared in the doorway again, this time with a vase of cream rose buds, their petals peach on the inside. “These came for you.”

  Elaine stood so she could inhale the fragrance of the very long-stemmed beauties. “Aren't they gorgeous. Whoever…” She reached for the card on the plastic three-pronged stick.

  “He love you very much.”

  “What makes you think that? You know who sent them?” While she watched Juanita shake her head, Elaine slit the envelope open and pulled out the card. In small precise letters, George had written, Please do not go through with the face-lift. There can be irreparable complications. Love George.

  She stared at the rose buds a moment before looking back at Juanita and handing her the card.

  “I told you so.”

  “Don't you know it's not polite to say that?”

  Juanita widened her dark eyes. “So fire me.”

  Elaine took back the card and read it again. With a sigh she tucked it back in the envelope.

  “So?”

  “So I don't do the surgery. At least not right now.” She half closed her eyes and stared at her friend. “You didn't tell him, did you?”

  Juanita shook her head. “No, but I thought about it.”

  “I wonder…?” Elaine shrugged one shoulder with her head slightly to the side.

  “I bring food out now.”

  After lunch on the deck, where she watched an eagle rise on the thermals over the fir-covered hills between her and Mount Rainier, she felt ready to attack the grant pro
posal she wanted in rough form before tomorrows meeting. There was matching money out there or even straight-out grants if one did her research properly and wrote a dynamite proposal.

  She'd done her research all right—in books, online, magazines, telephone—and even pulled out all the stops on this one. Back in the office she retrieved her files from the drawer in the credenza behind the desk and spread them out on the cherry surface. Now, how to put her dream into words, words that would convey both need and scope.

  She followed a form outline she'd used before and began typing. Screen after screen filled with information as she continued writing, compiling information from all her sources into one document.

  “You like iced tea?” Juanita set a tray down on the only space of wood showing on the desk.

  “Yes, thank you.” Elaine leaned back in her chair and blinked to clear eyes and mind. “What time is it?”

  “Almost five. Barbecuing chicken for dinner. Doctor say he be here about six.”

  Elaine glanced at the desk calendar where she and George both wrote their schedules. No meetings tonight. If there were no emergencies, they would have a quiet evening—wasn't that a novel idea?

  “Don't be snippy,” she reminded herself. She'd known what she was getting into by marrying a doctor. At least she'd been warned by another woman who'd been married to a doctor who'd been married to the hospital.

  And now her son was following in his father's footsteps, only marrying a woman who walked the same track. More power to them, but how Jessica was going to manage it all was beyond her.

  “You've already got them married, and there has not been one word of upcoming nuptials.”

  Doodlebug put his paws up on her knee, so she leaned over and scooped him up. “Where you been all afternoon, Bug? Sleeping in the sun?” She sorted her work into the proper folders and returned all the files to the cabinet. With the desk back to its normal neatness, she left the room, the dog under her arm.

  “We have time for a swim before dinner, what do you think?” Doodlebug kissed her chin with a lightning tongue, his tail beating a tattoo against her rib cage.