Oklahoma Starshine

by Maggie Shayne

  Emily knelt beside the tub and bent over it to lower Tilda gently into the deepening, cool water.

  “Is it too cold?” Joey asked.

  “No. It’s just right, I think.” Em met his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I’m glad I’m here, too,” he told her. He bent over the tub beside her, and started scooping water up over the parts of Tilda that weren’t immersed. He carefully wet down her hair until all the little curls hung more or less straight against her pale skin.

  “I’m cold, Mommy,” she murmured.

  “I know, baby, I know.”

  Sophie said, “Can you get some ibuprofen down her, Em?”

  “Yeah. I know the dose.”

  “I’ll get it,” Joe offered.

  “The little blue makeup bag, Joe. It’s somewhere in our…um…in the other bedroom.”

  He ran to get the medication and returned with both the liquid and the chewables. “Which one?”

  Emily looked at Tilda. Fresh tears spilled. God this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the deadly disease waking up, ready to take her little girl away. It couldn’t be. “She’s barely awake,” she whispered.

  “Em?” Joey prompted. He put a hand on her shoulder, and it infused her with something. Strength. “The liquid. A full dropper,” she said.

  He nodded, opened the bottle, filled the dropper to its top mark, and handed it over. Then he got his arms around Tilda to hold her up, so Emily could try to get the meds into her.

  She managed it lovingly, whispering, “Just swallow, baby. It’ll make you feel better. That’s my girl. That’s my precious girl.”

  Tilda swallowed the stuff and made a face.

  “We need to get her to the ER, Emily,” Sophie said from the phone. “I’ll come over with the EMTs so I can ride in the ambulance with her. That means you’ll have to follow, but she’s safer if I ride with her. Okay?”

  “Okay.” The word was robotic, automatic. Em’s eyes had gone kind of hollow.

  “You sit tight. Keep her cool. You can take her out of the tub if she starts to cool down, but put her right back in if that fever creeps up again. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Joey hung up the phone, then stared at it for a long time. Then he lifted his gaze and looked at Emily. “We need to text our family, Em.”

  Blinking back tears, Emily nodded.

  #

  It was, Emily thought, the longest ride of her life. Tilda and Sophie and some EMTs she didn’t know were just ahead in the ambulance. Tilda was so sick she couldn’t even stay awake for more than a few seconds at a time.

  Joey drove. She didn’t know how he managed it, because he was as terrified as she was.

  “Maybe it was the tree,” Emily said. “Maybe she’s allergic to pine. Lots of people are.”

  He nodded hard. “Kids get sick,” he said. “We don’t know for sure it’s the Sanguine Morbo becoming active.”

  “It could be a cold. The flu,” Emily said.

  “It could be a pine allergy. Like you said. That makes sense. I shouldn’t have given in and got the tree.”

  “Pine trees never bothered her before, though.” She looked at him. The dashboard lights glowed on his face. He looked as frightened as she felt. “You had to get the tree. It’s almost Christmas.” Then she closed her eyes. “It’s almost Christmas.” And then she just lowered her head into her hands and wept.

  Joey reached across the space between them, pulled her closer, and she buried her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Em.”

  “I kept her from you. And I was wrong. I was so wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “What if she doesn’t make it, Joe? What if it is the disease? Once the symptoms hit, it’s fast. Days, Sophie said.”

  He squeezed her tighter. “We can’t think that way.”

  “I can’t do it. I can’t live if she doesn’t.”

  He squeezed her harder. “Don’t give up on her yet, Emily.”

  Then the ambulance turned, driving right up to the ER doors, and he steered the pickup to the nearest parking spot. Em was jumping out almost before he shut off the engine, and together they ran into the hospital.

  #

  “Is it…the SM?” Joey asked two hours later when Sophie finally emerged from the treatment room and joined the family to give them some answers. She stood in the hallway, because the ER waiting room was full to capacity with Joey’s brothers, his father, Vidalia and her daughters, their husbands, their kids. There were more Brands coming and going in groups. Emily had been introduced to more handsome, rugged Texans in the past hour than she’d thought existed, and their wives.

  Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath waiting for Sophie’s answer. And when it came, it didn’t help much.

  “We don’t know what it is yet,” she said. “We have to wait for labs to come back. It’ll be morning before we can tell you anything for sure. What we do know is that she’s a very sick little girl. At the very least, she has pneumonia. But her fever is down now and we have her on IV antibiotics.” She opened her mouth again, then closed it, lowered her head, shook it slowly.

  “What?” Emily asked. “What is it?”

  Sophie sighed but met her eyes. They were wet, and that scared the hell out of her. “The blood tests we ran on the family came back. All of them. No one’s a match. I’m sorry.”

  It hit her like a tidal wave, just sort of knocked her backwards. She crashed into Joey, and his arms snapped tight around her.

  “Run them again. Run mine again,” Joey said. “I’m the best chance. Run mine again. Just in case.”

  “I will. And don’t give up hope, Joe. We have thirty-six new samples to test as of today from Vidalia’s Texans.”

  “I need to go to her,” Emily said. “She’s probably scared.”

  “She’s charming the socks off the nurses. Go ahead, go on back. Just two at a time, though. We have to admit her. We’ll be moving her up to Peds as soon as there’s a room ready.”

  Emily felt another chunk of her heart crack and fall to the ground. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” she whispered. I don’t want her to spend Christmas in the hospital.”

  “I know,” Joey said, hugging her closer. “I know.”

  They followed Sophie down the hall, around a corner and through a curtain to where Tilda was propped up on pillows, awake, but weak.

  “Mommy!”

  “Baby.” Emily wrapped her in a careful hug, avoiding the tubes carrying fluids and medications into her little body. “Poor Tilda. Are you feeling a little better, honey?”

  “A lot,” she said. But she was pale, and her eyes had bruise-like circles under them. Her voice lacked its usual energy and enthusiasm. “Can we go home now?”

  Joey was standing beside the bed, and Em felt his presence like a strong and solid force, and a source of strength. He said, “We’re going to have to spend the night here, honey. But they’re getting us a nice room ready right now.”

  “Are you staying, too?” she asked.

  “Wild horses couldn’t get me to leave, princess.”

  “So…yes?” she asked

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.” And when he said it, he shifted his eyes to Emily’s, and she felt his promise in that look and knew it was for her, too.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They paced. They drank coffee. Joey and Em took shifts in the room with Tilda, because the staff said they were already breaking rules by letting even one of them stay overnight. Not to mention the plethora of Brands and McIntyres in the waiting room.

  Joey was currently on a break in the waiting room. He’d fallen into a pattern. Restroom, bottle of water, something to eat, talk to the family, and then relieve Emily.

  Brands came and went. Two of the Texas clan had come into the wai
ting room and hadn’t budged all night, Wes and Ben. Wes looked like he had Native American blood, long dark hair and the chiseled features of a movie star. Ben was big all over, with dirty blond hair that was bumping up against the border of shaggy. Others drifted in and out. They came and went, that sprawling crew of Texans, maybe going to their assigned beds for a couple hours of sleep before returning.

  Vidalia and Bobby Joe never left the waiting room. Neither had Joey’s brothers.

  Vidalia’s daughters were taking shifts, and whichever of them was on duty made food and beverage runs to keep everyone else going. When they came back after a break, they brought anything they’d thought of in the interim. Blankets, wet wipes, tea bags, airline pillows, you name it.

  Selene was there just then, over on the waiting room sofa talking intently to Wes and Ben Brand. Nodding, she came to where Joey stood, one arm braced against the vending machine.

  “I’d like you to let my cousins see Tilda,” she said softly.

  He looked from Selene to the two men and frowned.

  “Wes is a shaman. Comanche. He’s for real, Joey. He wants to do a healing on her. He can do it while she’s sleeping. It won’t even wake her up.”

  He glanced at the men, sighed. “And what about the other one? Ben?”

  “He does Reiki.”

  He sighed. “What the hell can it hurt? I’ll talk to Emily.”

  “Emily’s all for it,” she said from behind him.

  He turned around. She’d pulled her long sleeved green sweater down over her hands. Sit made her seem small within its softness. Her posture was weak and her eyes were swollen and tired. She sent him a loving look, then went to the waiting room and spoke softly to Wes and Ben. Nodding, they got up.

  Emily said, “It’s this way,” and she took Joey’s hand on the way past. “They can throw us out if they want to. Or try. I’m going to watch. Come with me.”

  He fell into step beside her. They passed Vidalia, who held a tray of mugs, and Joey grabbed a couple on his way by and whispered “thank you.” Everything they said was in whispers. Almost as if they had some irrational fear that speaking too loudly would anger the monster inside their little girl and somehow speed things up.

  Then they stood in the doorway, side by side, watching as Wes and Ben moved silently around sweet, sleeping Tilda. Wes gestured with his hands and whispered in a kind of cadence that matched his movements. Ben sat quietly, holding his two large hands over Tilda, almost but not quite touching her. First her head, and then her face, and then her neck.

  Joe put his arm around Emily and pulled her close. Bending near, he whispered, “I’m not just with you for her sake, you know. For my sake, too. That’s not gonna change, Emily. No matter what.”

  He felt her start to tremble. “I um…I need to…” She turned, and gulped, “Stay with her, okay?” and then she headed down the hall and out through the exit doors.

  #

  Emily burst through the double doors into an area in the back of the hospital, clearly made for vehicles to drop off or pick up patients. She followed a sidewalk until she found a shadowy little bench to sit on.

  And then she just sank down. Her body bent in on itself, and she sobbed.

  Joey, assuring her that he wanted to be with her no matter what, had thrown her over a cliff into despair. Because to her, what he meant was, he would stay with her even if Tilda didn’t make it. Which meant he didn’t think she was going to. Which made her feel hopeless.

  Her sobs came harder and harder. She thought they would rip her chest open.

  And then a strong hand came to her back, and powerful arms pulled her close, and Joey whispered, “I know. I know.” And then he was crying, too. And they just sat there like that, holding each other and sobbing on a dark and lonely bench, beside an overflowing ashtray with its top on crooked, beneath a broken overhead lamp. It was a dark place to cry in private, a place where countless worried parents like the two of them had probably held each other and wept.

  And then a sound came floating around the back of the hospital to that desolate bench. A magical sound that found them, even there in the depths of despair.

  Voices. Voices that were singing. “Silent Night.”

  They pulled apart, frowning and searching each other’s faces. The tears on Joey’s cheeks gleamed back at her. And something in her heart melted into his. “Is she alone?” she asked. “She’s not alone, is she?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t leave her alone. Ben and Wes finished up and Vidalia asked if she could sit with her for a while.” He took her hands, tugged her to her feet. “Let’s see what this is all about, huh?” He held her close to his side as they walked together, farther along the sidewalk, around the side of the hospital in Big Falls’ big sister town of Tucker Lake. As they turned the final corner, they saw a sea of candle flames. It was such an amazing sight, they both stopped moving and just stared.

  Each dancing yellow candle lit the face of the person who held it, making them glow as they sang. It was like walking in on a choir of angels.

  Joey squeezed Emily’s shoulder, and they moved further around until they stood at the hospital’s main entrance, where the crowd seemed to be focused. People saw them, recognized them, nodded, raised candles toward them. The singing grew louder.

  Emily felt herself filing up to bursting with something as warm and alive as the golden glow of all those candles. Her tears flowed silently, tears of gratitude, and of hope, washing away her worry and grief, if only for a moment.

  Joey tipped his head until it touched hers, and said, “Look, there’s Vidalia’s prayer group, over by the fountain.”

  She looked up at his face, his beautiful face, and then followed his gaze out to where the pastor and a lot of his flock, including many people she had met in Big Falls, stood in a little huddle, singing their hearts out. She recognized Ida Mae and her friend Betty Lou, and Rosie from the diner.

  Then she swept her gaze out over the crowd and said, “Those must be Selene’s Wiccans,” nodding toward a group of girls all decked out in goth in the middle of an open patch of lawn.

  “Nope,” he said, and he pointed elsewhere. “Her girls are over there by the aspens.”

  She followed his gaze. Ordinary looking women, holding their candles and singing like the rest. Maybe they wore a little more jewelry than the others.

  “There are the Texans,” he said, nodding again.

  That group was bigger than all the rest. She’d met most of them by now, but couldn’t remember most of their names. Ben and Wes had rejoined the rest of their family, and they held candles, too. They were all there, even the children, holding those candles up and singing their hearts out.

  All told, there must have been a couple of hundred people gathered in that parking lot, and all for their little girl.

  Just then a clock somewhere began striking. She turned and looked up at its old-fashioned dial. Its arms both pointed straight up. Midnight.

  “It’s officially Christmas Eve,” Joey whispered.

  She leaned against him, closed her eyes and, for the first time in a long time, she prayed, “God, whoever and wherever you are, please, please, please…” Her throat closed off, and she tried to think the rest loudly enough for any higher power to hear. Please don’t take my baby from me.

  Joey’s eyes were closed too, and she was pretty sure he was uttering a prayer of his own. And eventually he opened them again and said, “We should get back inside.” Then he looked out at the sea of family, friends and neighbors and waved.

  Emily had been wondering what one was supposed to do in the face of such overwhelming love and support. So she followed his lead and waved, too. It didn’t seem like nearly enough. She didn’t think all those people out there would ever know just how much their presence meant to her, just then.

  “Thank you,” Joey said loudly. “Thank you all so much. This is just…” He choked up.

  Emily saw him struggling. “It’s amazing,” she said, a
nd saw the gratitude in his eyes before focusing on the crowd again. “You’re amazing, all of you. Thank you.”

  People smiled, a few clapped, several shouted.

  “We love you.”

  “God Bless You.”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  Then the two of them turned to go back inside but were stopped when a white-coated woman with a clipboard and beautiful dark brown eyes came out, almost bumping into them. She looked at her clipboard, then in a loud voice, told the crowd, “We can take last names that begin with L through O now. L through O, come on down.”

  The crowd started morphing its shape as individuals made their way to the front.

  Emily touched the woman’s shoulder. “Excuse me, what are they—”

  “You’re Matilda Louise’s parents,” she said, apparently recognizing them.

  Em nodded. “What’s this list for?”

  “We have almost three hundred people here, waiting for us to test them for compatibility with your little girl.”

  Emily blinked in shock and looked back out over that crowd. They’d restarted “Silent Night” on the third verse.

  “Three hundred….?” She looked at Joey, her eyes wide.

  “That’s Big Falls,” he said. “I know, it’s surreal. I’ve been there two years now, and I’m still getting used to it. It’s a special town, Emily. Selene says it’s located on some kind of energy center. Vidalia says it’s blessed by angels. Different people have different theories, but everyone pretty much agrees there’s something magical about the place.”

  She nodded, looking one last time at the individuals who were lining up in front of the lab tech. Strangers. Young, old, teenagers, skin tones ranging the full spectrum of humanity. All of them smiling at her, touching her shoulder or Joey’s as they passed. Giving them encouraging nods and telling them to hold on, hang in there, keep the faith.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life.”

  He held her hand a little tighter. “I don’t think there is anything like this.” Then he walked her back inside.

  #

  6 :00 a.m.

  When Emily came out of the restroom, Joey was waiting outside the door. He leaned back against the wall, one leg crossed over the other. He had a funny look on his face.