Perfect Piece

by Rebeca Seitz

  “Mr. Fawcett?”

  He turned back to the receptionist. “Yes?”

  “They’re going to take her to room 2210. You can go on there now if you’d like and wait on her.”

  “Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The rest of the family stood as well.

  “Oh, is there a waiting room on that floor for my family?”

  “Yes. The nurse up there will direct y’all.”

  He smiled. That band around his heart loosened just a bit. In a few minutes he’d get to see her beautiful blue eyes and hear her voice. They would make it through this, they would.

  The alternative simply couldn’t exist.

  * * *

  THE SHEETS SCRATCHED her skin. Wait, they scratched her arms and one leg. Her other leg felt like it was asleep.

  Meg pushed through the dense fog and reached for reality. Somewhere her leg lay sleeping and sheets that had never seen fabric softener had been put on her bed. Things were wrong. All wrong.

  Experimenting, she lifted one eyelid. When the only light seemed dim and unobtrusive, she chanced opening the other eye.

  Jamison sat on a couch against the wall, a magazine in his hand. Unlike her, his eyes were closed, dark lashes resting across his cheeks. Meg worked to figure out where they could be. A television hung from the wall. Steel bars were on either side of her bed.

  She sniffed, but the smells weren’t quite right for a hospital.

  Think, Meg. You were at the ballpark.

  She’d been cheering despite a raging headache and then … nothing.

  Her head felt like someone had rolled it in duct tape. Reaching up, she felt layers of a soft material and guessed it to be gauze. So … something had happened to her head. Something bad enough to land her in the hospital. Because, even though the smells weren’t right, this had to be a hospital.

  She fought a wave of panic. No sense in getting all riled up. Think. But her brain didn’t feel like it could. Like something had been stuffed in the spaces of her brain and was blocking all the signals. She closed her eyes.

  Think, Megan.

  A button at her fingertips would call a nurse, but that would wake Jamison. Should she wake him? How long had he been asleep? Surely things couldn’t be too wrong with her if he was calm enough to be sleeping. There, that’s a nice, rational thought. See? Your brain is fine.

  Unless more time had elapsed than she realized. What day was it? What time? She could hear the hum of a clock over her head and strained to see it, but there was too much gauze on her head. What idiot had put a clock where the patient couldn’t see it? There had to be a reason, but her mind couldn’t conjure one.

  Taking a deep breath, Meg forced herself to try and calm down. If one of the sisters was lying in a hospital bed, she’d tell them to—shoot, what was the word?—chill. There, see? Nothing wrong with her mind. The fact that it took her a few seconds to come up with a word meant nothing other than she was getting old.

  Anger crawled through her, but she couldn’t figure out why. Maybe—she grit her teeth—because she was sitting in a hospital bed and had no idea how she’d gotten there or what was wrong with her.

  As another wave of panic began building, Meg made a decision. “Jamison?”

  He stirred but didn’t wake.

  “Jamison? Hon?” This time he opened his eyes and looked around the room, seeming as disoriented as she felt. “What happened? Are we in the hospital?”

  Recognition and awareness dawned on his face and he rose from the couch, came to her, and took her hand. “Hi, sweetie. How do you feel?”

  She batted his hand away from the gauze. “Confused. What happened?”

  The look on his face gave her pause. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss. Truth lay in those words.

  But you couldn’t face what you didn’t know, so she took another deep breath and watched Jamison struggle to find words. Good, at least she wasn’t the only one.

  Her relief died the instant he spoke.

  “Meg, honey, you had a brain tumor.”

  She blinked. His lips kept moving. She knew words kept coming, but nothing made it to her ears past that first sentence. The stuffing in her brain swelled and filled her ears, blocking her from anymore words.

  And, just like that, her whole life changed.

  Forever.

  Five

  Tandy set her glue runner on the table and grabbed her bottle of Diet Mt. Dew. Time to jump on the big white elephant in the room. “Y’all think she’s ever going to be the Meg we knew before?”

  “I don’t know. It’s only been a week since she got home from surgery. That’s two whole weeks since somebody sliced into her brain. We should give her time.” Kendra pulled her hair back and tied it with a bright red ribbon.

  “That Justice woman and the stuff I’ve been reading on the Internet says we should expect permanent personality changes and learn to love the person she is now.”

  “But I loved the person she was before.” Tandy tried not to pout.

  Joy looked toward the scrapping room window, where raindrops slid down the glass like lonely tears. “I did, too. But we can love her no matter what happens, right?”

  A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. Tandy waited for Kendra’s voice. Finally, she looked up. Kendra had frozen midway through applying a length of ribbon to her layout. She looked like a beautiful African mannequin in a high-end department store.

  “Kendra?”

  Kendra blinked and met Tandy’s eyes. “I want to say I love her enough to keep on loving whoever she becomes. I really want to say that and mean it. I should be able to say it and mean it. She’s my sister. But y’all have spent as much time with her this week as I have. Our sweet, mild sister has developed a mean streak.”

  “She’s simply frustrated, Kendra,” Joy admonished. “Wouldn’t you be if you were put in her shoes?”

  Kendra’s spiral curls swayed as she shook her head. “I can’t imagine being in her shoes and, like I said, I want to be supportive and loving no matter what the future holds. But when that mean part of her comes out, I worry about her kids. I worry about Jamison. I don’t know if I should accept that part of her or talk about it with her or just hope it goes away over time.”

  Joy folded her hands atop her layout. “Well, I think we should give her some time. It has only been a week since she came home, and I’d guess at least a month needs to pass before we start worrying about permanent personality changes. Some of those Web sites said she may continue to change for up to a year.”

  “A year?” Tandy thought of the long days before them. Before Jamison. “Surely not. Meg is healthy. I mean, except for this stupid tumor, she’s always been healthy. She’ll bounce back from this.”

  Lightning cracked beyond the window, thunder tumbling upon it before the burn had gone from her retina. Sheets of rain pounded the pane, desperately seeking escape from the howling wind. Tandy shivered and rubbed the goosebumps from her arms. “I think we better get downstairs. That storm isn’t letting up and the top floor of this house is the worst place we could be if a twister comes through.”

  The high-pitched beeping of their weather radio sounded from the hallway below.

  “I’ll bet we’re under a tornado watch now.” Kendra scooped up her supplies and carried them to her spot on the wall shelf. “I need to call Darin and tell him we’re all fine.”

  Joy and Tandy put their paper, inks, and tools away as well. Tandy glanced outside and saw dark clouds roiling in different directions. “That doesn’t look good.”

  Kendra and Joy followed her gaze.

  “Come on, let’s see what the weather radio has to say. I’ll bet Daddy’s already got the popcorn in the microwave.”

  Tandy led the way down the stairs, her mouth watering when the scent of butter wafted up the staircase. “Ooh, I smell it.”

  “Me, too.”

  The drone of the emergency management bulletin sounded
from the weather radio as they filed through the hallway and down the last flight of steps to the main floor of the old farmhouse.

  “Daddy?”

  “In here, honey girls.”

  They trooped into the kitchen. Daddy stood at the counter dumping the contents of a popcorn bag into the big multi-striped glass bowl that Momma had used to make countless cake and cookie batters. He nodded toward the porch. “The lightning’s still far enough off. We can go watch the storm from the porch.”

  Kendra shook her head. “I will never figure out this family’s fascination with storms.”

  Joy picked up the now full bowl. “Oh, Kendra, you should be ashamed.”

  “Why in the world should I be ashamed?”

  “You’re an artist. Don’t you want to see the beauty of a stormy sky and experience the power of the thunder and lightning?”

  “All things I can see from inside where sane people stay in the middle of a storm.”

  “Since when do we prize being sane?” Tandy snagged cans of soda from the refrigerator.

  Kendra rolled her eyes. “Of all the families in the world, I had to be adopted into a bunch of loony storm lovers.”

  Daddy chuckled. “I think God knew exactly what He was doing.”

  Tandy led them toward the front door. “Yeah, who else would put up with your weird artist side?”

  They settled into chairs on the porch as the wind kicked up bits of cut grass in the yard.

  Kendra reached into the popcorn bowl. “Wow, it’s dark out here.”

  “Always darkest before the dawn,” Daddy comforted.

  Tandy eyed the growing storm cloud bank and watched the distant tree line dance with the wind. A few birds still flew, so no tornado yet. Streak lightning split the sky, shooting horizontally across the dark expanse. The rain came sporadically. Small drops diving under the porch roof’s edge, then fat drops splatting the ground. Cooper was probably whining his heart out at home.

  “I should’ve brought Cooper with me.”

  “Clay will check on him.” Kendra tucked her feet under her.

  “Yeah, but he’ll worry about me.”

  “Clay?”

  Tandy wrinkled her nose. “Cooper. Clay knows I can take care of myself.”

  The disquiet of the surroundings crawled beneath Tandy’s skin. With the uncertainty of the past week, she wished the storm would just blow itself out and let the sunshine come back. They needed a few blissful days. Meg needed the bright light during the day. Maybe it would shake her from the funk of her post-surgery self.

  “Joy, in all that stuff you read on the Internet, was there anything we should be doing to help Meg? Did her counselor have any suggestions?”

  A stiff wind scattered tiny drops of moisture across their faces and legs. Joy hugged her arms to her chest. “Not really. Ms. Justice said to be patient, to let Meg heal on her own time. The Web sites echoed that and admonished family members to be as understanding as possible, and to not expect her to be the person she was before.”

  Daddy’s hand paused in the popcorn bowl. “What?”

  “What what?”

  “What was that part about her not being the person she was before?”

  “Oh. Well, they were in her brain, Daddy. There’s been a lot of research in the past few years, but we still have no idea what all the different parts of the brain control. They may have touched something that alters her personality or her sense of taste or even how she views the world.”

  Daddy shook his head. “Our Meggy will be just fine. All she needs is time.”

  “She probably will be fine. But maybe not the fine she was before.”

  Daddy’s lips tightened into a thin line, but he said nothing.

  Kendra slapped her hands onto her lap. “I think we should hope for the best. It sounds like nobody really knows what to expect, so let’s choose to expect something good.”

  Tandy nodded, though uneasiness still gripped her heart like iron bands. “I agree. And I think we ought to figure out a schedule for going over there to take care of the kids so Jamison doesn’t go nuts.”

  Joy looked out across the yard. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I’ll be up to my elbows in hair color all day. But I can do tomorrow night if one of you can take the day.”

  “I’ll do during the day. The diner doesn’t get crazy until nighttime on Saturdays anyway, so Clay won’t need me.”

  “Then I’ll do after church on Sunday.”

  Daddy still sat with his brow furrowed.

  “Daddy? You think Zelda would want in on this?”

  Daddy blinked. “Um … sure. I’ll talk to her about it when she gets back tonight.”

  “I hope she didn’t get caught in this storm up in Nashville. What was she doing up there anyway?”

  “Just shopping. I don’t expect her back until an hour after the mall closes.”

  The girls chuckled.

  “Maybe she had the right idea. Being in a mall where you aren’t aware of this weather would be a good place to be right about now.”

  Tandy set her soda can on the table at her side. “I’m with Ken on that one.”

  Distant thunder rumbled. Tandy looked up and saw the break of the front. “Looks like the storm is moving on.”

  Kendra and Joy followed her gaze.

  “Thank goodness. We live through another one despite sitting in the middle of it.”

  “Oh, Kendra. You’re so dramatic.”

  Kendra stuck her tongue out at Joy.

  “Very mature.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tandy noticed Daddy still stared at nothing, worry creasing his brow. “Daddy? You okay?”

  He didn’t look up.

  “Daddy?”

  His head turned. “What?”

  “I asked if you were okay. You’re sure quiet.”

  “Got a lot on my mind, honey girl.”

  “Something we can help with?”

  He stood and gathered up the popcorn bowl and soda cans. “I’ll let you know.”

  They watched him walk back inside, the screen door popping closed behind him.

  “What was that about?” Kendra brushed popcorn kernels from her broom skirt.

  Tandy shook her head. “I think that bit about Meg changing rocked him.”

  “Well, it’s the truth,” Joy defended. “Ms. Justice said it’s rare for a brain surgery patient to not be altered in some way.”

  “Calm down, baby sister. I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t have said it.”

  “Stop calling me baby. I’m a grown woman with a child of my own.”

  “Speaking of which, I should go check on Clayton. He’s been asleep long enough.”

  Joy sighed. “And Scott’s probably wondering what’s taking me so long.”

  “Boy, am I glad Darin and I decided to wait on the kid thing for a while.”

  “Don’t mock. It’s not like Clay and I planned to have a baby in our first year of marriage. Those honeymoons have a way of blindsiding you.”

  Kendra shook her head. “TMI, Taz.”

  “Oh, please. We’re all married here. It’s not like we don’t know what happens on a honeymoon.”

  Joy stood and held out a hand. “I beg of you, stop there.”

  “Okay, okay. I wasn’t planning on going any further anyway.”

  “And we thank the Lord above for that.” Kendra rose and untied her hair. She shook it out and stuffed the ribbon into her skirt pocket.

  Tandy followed as the sisters walked back into the house. She walked through the living room and back up the stairs toward the bedroom where Clayton lay sleeping. Something niggled at her. Something off-kilter in her conversation with the sisters. Something not quite right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. As she gathered Clayton’s things and then scooped him from the crib, it hit her.

  Meg. They didn’t talk the same without Meg around.

  Six

  Meg sat down at her breakfast table and tried to be happy that another day had d
awned. She’d never been an unhappy person before this thing came into her life. Moments of unhappiness, sure, but nothing she couldn’t overcome. Nothing that didn’t go away.

  She eyed the plate of blueberry muffins at the center of the table. Her sweet husband had gotten up early to make breakfast and get the kids out of the house so she could have some peace and quiet.

  The house sat in depressing silence. She wished he hadn’t taken the kids to the park. The sound of their laughter bouncing off the walls, their feet pounding the hardwood as they ran from room to room, would be nice right about now.

  But it wouldn’t help the pounding in her head. She touched the bandage on her head. Ironic that the surgery to remove the cause of her headache caused a headache. Her doctors assured her this pain would go away as she healed, but she couldn’t remember a time anymore when her head didn’t hurt.

  I’m with you, Garth. I’m much too young to feel this old. The country tune wound its way through her brain, the pounding giving a perfect beat backdrop. Great, now my headaches are keeping time to country music. I think we’re close to rock bottom around here. At least I can still remember lyrics.

  Lately the struggle for words had taxed her patience. Words—always her friends before—now hid around shadowy corners of her mind. The sisters kept up their banter, but she didn’t contribute. Their words simply came too fast for her to keep up.

  Why couldn’t she feel hopeful? Positive? Happy? The tumor was gone. And benign. It wasn’t coming back. Why couldn’t she feel good about that? Forget good, ecstatic ought to be in play by now.

  But the surgery had messed up everything else. She plucked a muffin from the plate and bit into it. As she’d come to expect, it tasted like plastic. Everything tasted like plastic. She hadn’t tasted a single food since the surgery.

  “Which could be a great way to lose weight.”

  Great, now I’m talking to myself. She had to find a positive side somewhere. Get a grip on this negativity washing over her like a tidal wave. A good mom knew how to point out the good things in life. She’d been a good mom before.

  “I will be a good mom again.”

  She prayed speaking the words would make it true.