by Harry Kraus
“Do you believe her?”
“I’m not sure. They seem sincere. But something’s bothering that woman big time. She feels guilty about something. I’ve got a few more leads to check. Maybe I will talk to someone in the church, just to make sure his alibi checks out.” He paused. Claire heard more crunching before he continued. “But I’ve got to tell you, I have a feeling that all of this is going nowhere. I think your brother just ran off the road. Maybe a bee stung him or something. Maybe he was lost and was looking for a map in the glove box. There are a hundred reasons why he could have been momentarily distracted.”
“I guess so.”
“Try not to worry.”
His voice became muffled again, before he came back. “Listen, I’ve got to run. I have your cell phone number. I’ll call you if I get anywhere.”
Claire hung up the phone and stretched. The detective’s work hadn’t solved the questions that she feared would remain unanswered forever. She drummed her fingers on the kitchen counter.
It was time to do a little snooping of her own.
The clerk in medical records pushed the patient record across the counter. “This can’t leave the department. It hasn’t been completely coded yet, and that means there’s a lot of money outstanding.”
“Sure.” Claire smiled sweetly and carried the record to the physician dictating area.
She opened to the history and physical exam, reading the details of Clay’s resuscitation and the frantic efforts to keep him alive. She saw a handwritten noteby the paramedics which documented their failed efforts to secure an appropriate airway, and the emergency cricothyroidotomy performed by Dr. Daniels at the crash scene. Her skin bristled as she visualized the drama unfolding.
She turned to the next section, consultation notes, to read reports from the neurosurgeons and the orthopedic surgeons who assisted in Clay’s care. She read through Beatrice Hayes’ dictation, which detailed Clay’s family history of Huntington’s disease and alcoholism. Claire felt her blood begin to boil. Beatrice had asked her all those questions in front of Dr. Rogers, all the while knowing the answers! Claire hadn’t given her any satisfaction, except to report that the family history was noncontributory, but Bea’s report was full of the details that Claire had declined to give her. Bea just wanted to make sure Dr. Rogers found out about her father’s HD.
She looked carefully at the lab data, noting the absence of any alcohol or drugs on the screening test. There went her theory about Clay overdosing on the medication Dr. Jenkins gave. Unless the Zoloft wouldn’t be detected on the routine screen.
She turned the pages, flipping through the transfusion records, with a slip completed for each of the multiple units of packed red blood cells that Clay received. Each slip recorded signatures of the transfusionist, start and stop times, and his blood type. Everything was documented carefully to avoid a transfusion mismatch catastrophe. Wow. They must have gone through his entire blood volume three or four times.
She turned to look at his X-ray reports when the information she’d just read began to claw its way back into consciousness. Something didn’t feel right. Her gut tightened. Her palms began to sweat. Dread had crept upon her, and she sensed a rising tide of panic.
Wait a minute! She flipped back to the transfusion slips. They had given Clay type-A blood.
Claire closed her eyes, attempting to remember. She was type O, the same as her mother. Wally was type B. She was almost certain. She’d done the blood-typing herself for a college project. No, it couldn’t be. She needed to look at her genetics project again.
Clay couldn’t be type A if Daddy was B and Mom was O. They gave Clay the wrong type of blood! That could have caused a problem with clotting, leading to the bleeding that he experienced and, in turn, his death.
She flipped the pages looking at each transfusion slip. Each one was the same. Type A. Clay was a victim of a fatal transfusion reaction.
Who was responsible?
She read through the progress notes documenting the nursing notes chronicling Clay’s last hours. Yes, all of these things could have been the result ofa blood-bank mistake.
Unless … A thought struck her head-on, derailing her initial assessment.
She stood, shoved the chart back across the counter at the records clerk, and stumbled from the room in a daze. It couldn’t be.
She jogged across the parking lot to Brett’s Mercedes and completed the trip to her rented brownstone, trying desperately to quell the terror rising within her. I must have remembered wrong. Or could I have made a mistake when I typed Daddy’s blood in my old genetics class?
She jumped from the car and ran into her house and up the stairs to the bedroom closet where she dropped to her knees to pull out the old genetics project. Wally was type B. Della was type O.
Her hand went to her mouth as the realization struck.
Her mind raced with thoughts of betrayal, deception, lies, and cover up.
Was someone trying to cover the truth?
Slowly she stood and went to the phone to dial her mother. After six rings, Claire was about to hang up.
After eight rings, she heard a voice. “Hello.”
For a moment, she thought she’d dialed the wrong number. “Uh … hello.”
“Claire!”
When he spoke her name, she recognized her father’s voice. She hadn’t known him to answer the phone in months. “Daddy?” She hesitated. “Is Mom there?”
“Sssheese at the ssstore.”
Claire could hear a bump, bump, bump. Is he having trouble holding the phone still? Or striking it against his head?
“Could you have her call me? It’s important.”
“Sssure.”
“As soon as she gets in.” Will you remember?
“Okay.”
She was about to say good-bye when she heard him begin to speak again. He spoke mechanically, and Claire could imagine his face twitching, refusing to obey, not allowing him to express his emotions through a normal smile or frown.
“Cllaaire,” he started. “I llove yyyou.”
The message caught her off guard. It had been years since she’d heard him say it.
“Daddy, I—”
It sounded like Wally was crying. His words were normally slurred, but his voice had thickened to the point where Claire had to concentrate to understand. But after a moment, she understood. He hadn’t told Clay. Told him what?
He was upset about something.
Because he didn’t have a chance to tell Clay he loved him.
The realization pierced her heart. He didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Wally cried, and the sound began to break her heart.
“Don’t cry, Daddy,” she pleaded. “I understand. I do.” She wiped away her own tears, weighing her reply. She didn’t speak until she knew it was true. She searched her heart, and in amazement the perception grew. She’d forgiven him! Somehow in the hearing of those three little words, her heart had melted. The icy bitterness was gone.
“I love you too, Daddy. I love you too.”
She said good-bye and laid down the phone.
As she walked to the bedroom, she felt her heart would burst. Her body retched with sobs, a release of emotion she could not and would not control. Oh, how she wondered at the impact of those three little words, the words she was certain her father would never speak again! She looked at the blood-typing poster on the floor. The message which had seemed so important a moment ago, now was almost forgotten, lost in the wake of the gift from Wally.
She studied the poster for a moment before gazing at her own reflection in the mirror. She lifted her index finger and traced the outline of her face upon the glass surface.
She’d gone to the hospital to see if she could discover the reason for Clay’s crash. But in the process, she had uncovered something more disturbing than a reason for his death: she didn’t know the reason for his life. His blood type revealed that Wally couldn’t be his father. And if Wally hadn’t fathered Cl
ay, then who had fathered Clay’s twin sister?
“Who am I?” she whispered to herself.
On the day her father had finally said “I love you,” she’d discovered he may not be her father at all.
Chapter Forty-Five
Delia arrived hugging an armload of groceries, to find Wally on the couch staring at the TV screen, with the phone on the floor beside him. His cheeks were moist. Perhaps something on the TV had upset him.
Della heaved the groceries onto the kitchen counter. “I’m home, Wally.”
Wally didn’t answer right away. Della didn’t expect him to. Speech initiation was often a problem in HD.
Life had changed so much for them, since the mystery had been solved. Finally there was an explanation for his altered speech, his apathy, poor impulse control, his irritability, the emotional roller coaster that took him from high to low within a moment’s time. Finally there was an explanation for his difficulty with making choices, even obvious ones like when to urinate or what to eat. Finally, there was a reason for the constant movements he couldn’t control.
But Wally didn’t often cry. This had been a recent development. Della had seen it when he watched Clay in the ICU, then later when he talked with Pastor Phil about Clay, eternity, and God’s forgiveness.
Maybe it was a new stage, a loss of impulse control, just like his anger and frustration. She walked to his side and dried his face with a kitchen towel. “What’s wrong, honey?”
He paused, his head in constant motion, unable to lock onto her face for more than a few seconds.
She’d learned to be patient. He would tell her if she waited.
“Cccla—Claire called.”
Della sat beside him on the couch and waited as he jerked his story out. It seemed as though his breathing could not be coordinated with his mouth and lips. The message that he wanted to speak didn’t arrive at his mouth and his lungs at the same time. But she waited, and eventually understood, through the jumble of starts and stops, and the slurred speech, what Wally had done.
Della understood. The tears were not an impulse problem. The tears were joy, and God’s Spirit was the fountain from which they flowed.
She kissed his cheek, but not before their foreheads collided. Della knew that embracing a patient with HD carried this risk, but this opportunity was not to be neglected. Hazards to the wind. She needed to kiss her husband.
She stabilized his face in her hands and kissed him again. “Wally, you old softy.” She tussled his hair into disarray and stood. “I’ll fix you some lunch. I bought the Pringles you like so much.”
After lunch, and cleaning up Wally, the floor, and the table, Della helped him into the bathroom, and then into his wheelchair before pushing him into the afternoon sun on the back porch facing the Blue Ridge. She sat on the porch swing and called Claire, nestling the phone against her shoulder and watching Wally.
Claire picked up after one ring. “Hello.”
“Claire, it’s Mom.”
Della heard her sigh, a sure sign that Claire was worried. What’s up now, little girl? You’re always stressed lately. “How was your flight?”
“Mom, who is my father?”
The question blindsided her. What? Where did that come from? Della grabbed the phone and jumped off the swing. Then, with one glance at her husband, she slipped into the house. “Claire, what on earth—”
“Mom, I know. Don’t play games with me.”
Now Della was the one in need of a deep breath. But somehow, it wouldn’t come. Her chest felt tight, constricted by a band of fear that wouldn’t let her inhale. She stared at the phone. This was so like Claire. Direct. Straight to the bottom line. She’d never been the child to skirt around an important issue. “H—how?”
“I went over Clay’s medical record. I saw his blood type, Mom. Clay is type A. He can’t be Daddy’s son.”
Della stumbled into the bedroom and closed the door. The moment she’d feared for nearly three decades had come.
“I—I hardly know what to say.”
“How about the truth?” Claire started to cry. “You deceived me, Mom.”
“No, Claire. I was never sure myself.” She halted, unsure how to proceed. Oh, God, help me. “Claire, honey, believe me. I only did what I thought was best. I made some bad choices a long time ago. And I never really thought it would make a difference if you knew.”
“A difference? I don’t even know—”
“Let me speak, Claire,” she interrupted. “As a mother, I only wanted what was best for you and Clay. I didn’t think it would be fair for you to grow up under the shadow of my sin. It was my cross, not yours.” Della massaged her fingers against her forehead.
“Does Daddy know?”
She hesitated. “Yes. He knew of my affair. But he never seemed to question if our children were his. If he did, he never let on.”
“But why keep it from us?”
“By the time you were old enough to understand, you and Wally were having a bad time communicating. I couldn’t see throwing in another question that would threaten your relationship.” She clutched the collar of her blouse. “Claire, I did the best I knew how. I’m so sorry.”
“And what about now? Why not tell me so I wouldn’t have spent months worrying about coming down with Huntington’s disease?”
“Because I was never sure. I suspected, but I never really knew for a fact that Clay wasn’t Wally’s.” She paused. Her breath was coming easier now. “So I guess you don’t need to worry about HD. Margo’s negative. It looks like HD will stop in the McCall family with Wally.”
“Is this why you wanted me to talk Clay into being tested? You suspected he was negative all along?”
“I wanted him to stop all of his risk-taking.”
“And you didn’t worry about me? Didn’t you want to relieve me too?”
“It seemed different with you. You were always stronger than Clay. I could see that you could handle it, but Clay … I was afraid he would … die.” The words lodged in her throat, as she understood the irony. “Oh, Claire, do you think if I’d have told him the truth, that he’d be alive today? Did the threat of HD push Clay into the circumstances which killed him?”
“No, Mom. You can’t allow yourself to think that way. You did the best you knew how. You didn’t will for this to happen.”
Della paced the little bedroom, not knowing what to say or what to think. A sin long buried was back in her face, tearing at her soul again.
“Mom? Momma?”
Della took a deep breath. “I’m here.”
“I need to know something else.” She was reluctant to continue.
“What is it Claire?”
“Could I be Wally’s?”
“Claire, you’re Clay’s twin. You couldn’t be.”
“But we’re fraternal. That means that we could have different fathers.” She stopped. “If you were … with two different men … within a short time.”
‘A short time?” Jimmy made the house call a day before Wally returned from sea. She hesitated to confess. “I guess … it’s possible.”
“Then I could be Daddy’s girl?”
“You’re the doctor, Claire. I didn’t know such things were possible.”
There was silence on the phone for a moment. “Mom, I’m blood type O, just like you.” More silence, and a tapping noise.
Della looked at her nails. Claire drummed her fingernails just like her.
“Wally is type B. I need to know the blood type of the other man.”
More tapping noise.
“Who was he, Mom? Is he still alive?”
“He’s alive.”
“Mom, I need to know.”
“I promised him I’d never tell another soul.”
“This is different, Mom. It’s my future.”
Della closed her eyes tightly and let the name escape before she could retrieve it. “Jimmy Jenkins.”
There was no audible response. She supposed Claire hadn’t heard
or was just being polite by not gasping.
After a moment, Della spoke. “Claire?”
“I heard you, Mom.” She paused. “I’ll need to ask him a few questions.”
Della lifted the bedroom curtain and looked out at Wally. “Do what you have to do, honey,” she spoke softly. “I’m so tired of keeping this secret.”
Chapter Forty-Six
By the next evening, Claire was still brooding over the news of her mother’s deception. She thought twice about canceling her date with Brett, then decided that having a friend to share the load might be just what she needed. Claire arrived at Brett’s to find preparations in full swing for a romantic evening. He had set a table on his back deck, hors d’oeuvres were arranged on a clear plate shaped like a sea scallop, there were pink roses on the counter, and a bottle of wine was chilling.
She inspected the scene. “Brett!” she scolded, looking at the bottle of wine.
He pointed a finger in her face, gently tapping her nose. “You only get one glass. I know how you get when you drink.”
“Where did you learn to do this?”
He shrugged. “My mother.”
“I’d like to meet her. She must be a wonderful woman to put up with more than one surgeon in the house.”
He poured the wine and handed her a glass.
She accepted with a twinge of hesitation. She took a small sip and set the glass on the counter. “Let’s walk on the beach before dinner.”
They crossed the road, hand in hand, and slipped off their shoes. The sand was cool between her toes. Brett dropped her hand and took long, leaping steps, making footprints in the sand. Claire followed, and tried to land in the impressions he made.
Brett frowned. “What’s wrong? You are way too quiet.”
“I talked to my mom last night.”
They walked slowly, as Claire shared her new discovery about Clay’s paternity, her mother’s affair with the town doctor, and how Wally had said the words which broke her heart. “It’s weird, Brett. Just hearing him say ‘I love you’ seemed to change something inside me.”
His expression told her he didn’t understand.