Luanne Rice

by Summer's Child

  The Nanouk Girls had disembarked, trying to convince her to let them go with her. The Tecumseh II sat at the strange dock, with Jude and his crew on deck, gravely gazing up at the sky, where the helicopter was now no more than a dot.

  “I have to get a car,” Lily said to Anne.

  “Liam’s on it,” she said. “He knows the Coast Guard commander, from sharing technology or some crap like that, and he’s arranging for someone to take you to Hertz. Want me to drive with you?”

  Lily shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” She just wanted to get on the road now. Every second was a second she wasn’t with Rose.

  The Nanouks huddled around her in one huge hug—as if they knew she didn’t have time for individual goodbyes or kisses. But she felt the weight of her best friends and their daughters crushing against her, as if they could carry her themselves, on their shoulders, down to Melbourne.

  “We love you, Lil.”

  “We’ll be with you both.”

  “Call us, sweetheart.”

  “We’ll send you anything you need.”

  “Let us know the minute you hear anything.”

  “I will,” she promised, dry-eyed and resolute, fortified by their strength and love. Pulling away, she walked to the top of the dock. The Coast Guard station, white with its red roof, attached to the conical white brick lighthouse, stood nestled in short, wind-scrubbed pines at the top of a small hill.

  Lily felt almost breathless, climbing the stairs. She had a long journey ahead of her—the drive would be the easy part. There was Liam, talking to the commander, in his white uniform. A younger Coast Guard member had been dispatched to get a car, and he was pulling it round, into the semicircular gravel drive.

  Now Lily began to run—the car was here—all she had to do was jump in, and the young man would drive her to Hertz. She passed Liam, knowing she owed him thanks, but not able to take the time right now. Hand on the passenger door, she was dismayed to see the young Coast Guard man turn off the ignition and get out of the driver’s side.

  “No,” she said, the panic rising. “Please—we have to go now. Get in, drive me, please—”

  The young man looked sheepish, a little embarrassed. “Ma’am,” he began.

  “Now, oh, please—you’re kind to drive me, but I’m late, I have to get to my daughter!”

  “Get in, Lily,” Liam said, opening the door for her.

  “Oh, thank you, Liam,” she said, all in a rush. Wow, she’d really owe him some thanks. “Tell them he has to take me right now, fast, okay?”

  Liam didn’t reply. He closed the door behind her. Now he was talking to the two Coast Guard men, just standing there—taking up the driver’s time with who knows what. Lily watched the three of them talking, keys being handed off, words exchanged—for the love of God! She wanted to scream.

  When Liam opened the driver’s door, the look in her eyes was daggers and solid ice. Tears had formed—angry, furious, rageful tears—for the three men whose chatting meant she’d be that much later to the Hertz office, and for the fact Rose’s birthday had been ruined, and for the fact that Rose’s heart was giving out.

  “Jesus, Liam,” she said. “I’ve got to go!”

  “I know, Lily,” he said, climbing into the car, reaching across his body to close the door behind him with his good arm. Now he turned the key, starting the car.

  “You’re taking me to the car place?” she asked, not understanding.

  “To the hospital,” he said.

  “But it’s in Melbourne,” she said, still not getting it, still envisioning the time it would take to rent a car, wondering why Liam didn’t understand that she had one more step in the process of driving south to Rose.

  “I know.”

  “Liam—”

  “The commander is a friend of mine,” Liam said. “This is his personal car—he’s loaning it to us so I can drive you to the hospital.”

  Lily was too numb to argue, but it did begin to sink in as he pulled out onto the lighthouse road, accelerated as soon as he could, sped to the main highway that led south to Melbourne. The car was sporty, with four-wheel drive and roof racks, and the back seat was filled with buoys, nylon line encrusted with dried seaweed and mussel colonies, and an enormous flashlight.

  “What will the commander do without his car?” Lily asked.

  “He said he’ll use the truck.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Lily asked.

  “Because you need to get to Melbourne.”

  “I know, but I could have driven myself.”

  “You need to get to Melbourne fast. And honestly—I wasn’t sure you were in any shape to drive.”

  “It’s not your responsibility,” Lily said.

  Liam was quiet, pushing the pedal down. She cringed, hoping that she hadn’t just sounded as ungrateful as she felt. Miles sped by—roadway lined with pines and oaks on one side, open water on the other. Even from shore, whale spouts were visible in the bay. Lily thought of Rose’s face, the look in her green eyes when she had first spotted Nanny. Lily squeezed her eyes shut to preserve the moment of amazement.

  When she opened them again, she glanced across the seat at Liam.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You’re forgiven,” he said. He looked intent on the road, as if he barely cared about conversation at all. His eyes were totally focused, dark gray-blue. Patches of sunlight came through boughs overhanging the road, flashes of light making his eyes look bright, then dark, then bright again.

  “Seriously,” she said. “I was wrong to say it. I didn’t mean to be mean.”

  “Haven’t we been down this road before?” he asked.

  She knew he didn’t mean the highway.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I’ve been sorry ever since.”

  He threw her a look across the seat.

  “Not for the reasons you think,” she said. “But because I don’t like to be beholden to you. Or anyone.”

  “You’re not beholden to me,” he said. “In any way.”

  Lily stared out at the bay as they flew down the coast road. She knew he was telling her the truth. He had never expected anything from her—never, not once. But after what Lily had been through, before Rose was born, before arriving in Cape Hawk, she had lost the power to trust. She had once believed that people were good at heart, that they meant to help each other. That was how she had been raised.

  But by the time she arrived in Cape Hawk, those beliefs had been shattered. It was Liam’s misfortune, she thought, that he had been one of the first people she’d encountered after arriving in the small fishing village at the back-of-beyond on Nova Scotia’s northernmost coastline.

  She closed her eyes, went inward, back nine years. So pregnant she could hardly move. Just out to there—in a new place, in a house she was sure she couldn’t afford, with a rattletrap car that needed a tune-up and four new tires after her long drive north, with not even enough money for an oil change. As she sat beside Liam in the commander’s car now, she let her hands drift to her belly. She could remember carrying Rose as if it were yesterday.

  “There’s another reason, okay?” she asked, opening her eyes to look at him.

  “Another reason for what?”

  “That I’ve felt sorry ever since.” She stopped herself, to think of how to phrase it. “Ever since we first met, and you did what you did.”

  “And why would that be? You feeling sorry?”

  “It’s just that I don’t …” she said, no longer looking at him, but out the window instead—at the wide expanse of blue ocean, and the wheeling and circling white seabirds, and the occasional ripple that might or might not be the back of a whale. “I don’t treat you very well. Not well enough, anyway.”

  “You treat me fine,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I know I don’t.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes. She was glad that he didn’t try to contradict her. One thing she could count on about Liam was that he was v
ery true to situations. He didn’t sugarcoat things. He wouldn’t try to make her feel better about something if it meant telling her a lie.

  She glanced over at him. Why was she so tongue-tied today? What she wanted to say was, I might treat you “fine,” but it’s not what you deserve. You’ve been nothing but wonderful since the day you met me, met us. Rose loves you. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t, say such things.

  So instead, she said, “Thanks for driving me, Liam.”

  And he didn’t reply, but she saw him smile.

  As he drove ever faster.

  Chapter 11

  The old brick hospital was on the crest of a hill overlooking Melbourne Harbor. The World War I memorial rose beside it, a single block of granite, quarried from Queensport. Liam and his brother had both been born here; so had most of their cousins. Liam remembered coming here to pick up Connor when he was three days old, the day they brought him home.

  While waiting for his mother and the baby to be ready, his father had taken him to the reflecting pool, under the tall monument, and told him that his great-grandfather had fought in World War I. Liam still remembered holding his father’s hand, listening to the story. His great-grandfather had been badly wounded in battle, and seen many soldiers killed.

  The idea of his great-grandfather being so injured in a war made the three-year-old Liam cry—in spite of the happy fact that he had a new brother and his mother was coming home.

  “Some things are worth fighting for,” his father had told him, picking him up.

  Liam remembered that now, parking the car and walking with Lily into the building. He had been here for many other reasons over the years. The first surgery on his arm had been done here; this was where they had brought Connor’s body. He had also been here to visit Rose more than once. Both he and Lily were old hands at Melbourne General, so they bypassed the front desk and went straight up to the third-floor Pediatric ICU.

  Lily seemed to be tightly wound, in control. He watched as she pushed the elevator button—purposeful yet calm. Doctors and visitors came on, pushing Lily and Liam to the back. She was just about five foot one. Maybe five one and a half in her sneakers. She wore jeans, a yellow T-shirt, and a dark blue Cape Hawk Elementary sweatshirt that zipped up the front and had a hood in back. Liam towered over her. He tried not to look down at her silky dark hair.

  When the doors opened, she jostled through the crowd, with Liam right behind her. He registered people on the elevator looking at them with pity—getting off at Pediatric ICU. Lily didn’t even notice. She went straight to the speaker box, mounted on the wall beside the locked ICU doors, and announced herself.

  “I’m here to see my daughter, Rose Malone,” she said.

  “Someone will be right out to get you,” the disembodied voice crackled.

  The waiting room had one single window, facing the monument and reflecting pool. Several green chairs facing a television set, tuned to a talk show. Whatever was happening must have been hilarious, because the laugh track was deafening. Liam turned it down.

  Lily remained standing right in front of the ICU doors, waiting for them to swing open.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” he asked.

  “That’s okay,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Do you think she’s up here yet? I just realized, they probably brought her in through the ER. Maybe we should have stopped there first.”

  “The nurse probably would have told you when you buzzed just now,” Liam said. She was still looking at him—hadn’t turned back to the door yet. Her eyes were somewhere between gray-green and gray-blue. Their color made him think of the great blue heron that lived in his pond. He watched the bird every morning, from the minute the sun rose. Lily’s eyes were as still and grave and calm as the blue heron, and as beautiful, and he tried to smile with confident reassurance because they also looked so worried.

  “You don’t have to wait,” she said. “I mean, I know you want to make sure she’s okay. But after that. You have to get the commander’s car back to him.”

  “I know,” he said. “I do. But I’ll wait for now. Just to see how she is.”

  “Okay. Right,” Lily said. “Why aren’t they coming to the door?”

  “It’s just been a minute.”

  “A minute’s too long!”

  It was the first sign that she wasn’t as calm as she looked. Her voice rose, and she grimaced.

  Liam went to the wall and pressed the buzzer.

  “Yes?” came the voice.

  “We’re here to see Rose Malone.”

  “Yes, I know. Someone will be right—”

  “Look,” he said, using his shark researcher voice, the one that scared people, the one he used to get classified data out of Ottawa and Washington, and to get Harvard and Woods Hole to give him access to their mainframes. “We need someone right now. Rose’s mother is out here, and Rose was airlifted out of her ninth birthday party, and her mother needs to see her now—okay?”

  When he turned to Lily, he saw her chin wobbling, and her blue-heron eyes were creased with even more worry, and he just stood there instead of pulling her against his chest, the way he wanted to.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  Two seconds later the door opened. A tall, young nurse stood there with a clipboard. She smiled gently, as if completely unperturbed by Liam’s shark voice.

  “Mrs. Malone?” she asked.

  “I have to see Rose,” Lily said.

  “Come with me,” the nurse said.

  Lily rushed past her, through the doors, which closed behind them. Liam stood in the green waiting room, his heart in his throat. He hadn’t actually expected to go inside. That’s what he told himself.

  He went to stand by the window, gazing out at the monument. It was tall and narrow, elliptical, carved with deep grooves and topped with a peak. When he was three, it had seemed massive and austere. It still did. A monument to those who had served and those who had died. He could almost see himself and his father standing in its shadow; he could almost feel his three-year-old sorrow, for a great-grandfather he’d never known.

  Two doctors stepped out of the elevator, both wearing white coats over green scrubs. They pressed the buzzer and were admitted to the ICU. Liam’s stomach flipped, wondering whether they were here to see Rose, to talk to Lily.

  When he turned back to the window, he noticed leaves on the trees, a bed of marigolds planted at the base of the monument. It was summertime. The monument’s shadow was lengthening, like the day. He checked his watch—it was already seven o’clock—and as he did, he remembered another part of his great-grandfather’s story, the part that involved the family left at home. The part about them waiting, about his great-grandmother not knowing whether he would ever come home again.

  He thought of Lily inside the Pediatric ICU, waiting to learn what would come next for Rose. Sometimes waiting was the hardest thing of all.

  The nurse, whose name was Bonnie McBeth, led Lily through the unit. There were infants and children hooked up to all kinds of machines, but Lily had eyes for no one but the girl in the second bed on the left: Rose.

  The sight of her caught Lily’s heart like a fishhook. Before she even saw her face, she knew it was Rose in that bed: the size of her body under the white honeycomb blanket, the funny way she always liked to hold on to the guardrail with her right hand. There were her small fingers now, holding the stainless steel rail. Lily came around the curtain and held that hand and leaned down to kiss Rose’s face.

  “Mommy,” Rose said.

  “Hi, sweetheart.”

  Her green eyes looked sharp at first as they looked Lily up and down, drinking her in, making sure she was really there. But then the lids flickered, up-down, and her eyes rolled back, and then focused again, and then closed. Lily knew then they were giving her morphine. She held Rose’s hand a little tighter.

  The machines clicked reassuringly. The IV was set. Lily examined Rose’s arm, to ma
ke sure they hadn’t bruised her inserting the needle. Her veins were sometimes thin and brittle, but since it had been a long time since her last IV, they were quite healthy. There were no bruises, no signs of false insertions. Lily had once gone nuts, truly insane, watching an IV technician stick Rose four times in a row without getting a vein.

  While Rose slept and Lily held her hand, Bonnie McBeth stood close by. Lily glanced over at her. She had seen Bonnie on other visits, but she’d never been Rose’s nurse before. Rose’s main cardiologist was in Boston, so Melbourne was really only for emergencies—which, thankfully, Rose hadn’t had many of recently.

  “She’s resting comfortably,” Bonnie said in a low voice. “We gave her morphine to keep her calm. She was very agitated when she first arrived.”

  “Thank you,” Lily said. “She had to fly by helicopter.”

  “That would agitate anyone,” Bonnie said, smiling.

  Lily nodded, still holding Rose’s hand.

  “Would you like to step over here, to the desk, where we can talk? I know she seems to be asleep, but …”

  Lily hesitated. She didn’t want to let go of Rose’s hand. In fact, she couldn’t. “It’s okay,” Lily said, but she was nearly whispering. “Rose is the captain of her own ship. She knows what’s going on. You can tell me here.”

  Bonnie didn’t really seem surprised. Mothers of cardiac peds patients were a tough bunch—but only half as tough as the patients themselves. Still, she pivoted away, and so did Lily, still holding Rose’s hand.

  “There’s a note in her chart, that she’s going to Boston for VSD surgery.”

  “Yes, she’s scheduled for next week. The old patch is weakening.”

  “It is. We ran tests as soon as she arrived, of course. Her heart is enlarged, and her lungs are under pressure, which is why she’s been cyanotic. She was able to tell us she’s had some blue spells lately, and this is why.”

  Just then, two doctors walked over to say hello. Paul Colvin, whom Lily knew, and John Cyr, whom she didn’t, explained that they were just doing rounds, and would Lily mind stepping outside the curtain.