"Yes, but given the good decisions you've made now over an almost-five-year period"-John paused-"do you know how much money you've made him?"
`John, I gave him my word."
"I don't think this qualifies as-"
"And second, I don't ever want Bryce to think I want any part of his money. I don't. Not one penny."
"That makes you different from most of the people who've befriended Bryce."
"That makes me me."
"It might also make you poor."
`John?" I knew he meant well, and his intentions were good, but I also knew that wasn't good enough. `Just because it's legal doesn't necessarily make it right."
He started to say something, but I cut him off. "I was maybe ten, standing with my grandfather in the grocery store checkout line, when the lady at the cash register handed him his change. He counted, paused, recounted, and then handed a twenty back to her and said, `This one was stuck to the other one. You gave me one too many.' To say the least, she was pretty relieved when she realized he was right. We got in the truck, and I asked him why he didn't just keep it. She'd never know. You know what he said?"
"I'm listening."
"He said, `I'll know.' He must have seen the confused look on my face, because he said, `Son, I won't sell my word, my integrity, for twenty dollars. Not today. Not ever.' He stuck his face real close to mine and said, `Words are what men live by, and once you sell them, not all the tea in China can ever buy 'em back."'
John chuckled, and I could hear his chair squeak as if he'd just sat back and propped his feet up.
"I would have liked to have met your grandpa."
John was an honest man, and I knew this. Every audit of his firm and, specifically, his firm's work with Bryce's money, had produced nothing but praise from every auditor we'd ever met. Bryce had been good to him, but maybe more important, he'd been good for Bryce.
The problem was not the legality of the action he proposed; of course it was legal. The problem it posed for me was the gray area it presented with respect to my relationship with Bryce and my promise to him.
"I think you two would have gotten along well," I said.
I hung up the phone and leaned against the kitchen sink. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly between my teeth, feeling the pressure in my cheeks, and wondered if my grandfather and I were just plain crazy.
Knowing I needed to quit carrying a loaded shotgun around in the van, I brought it inside, unlocked my writing closet, and slid the gun onto the floor just above our "safe." I locked the doors and walked outside onto the porch. It was close to midnight, but a flicker in the distance caught my eye and told me something about the world was distinctly different.
I stepped off the porch, walked out into the cotton, and ran my fingers along the tops of the white flowers. Beneath the moon, spotlight-bright above me, the cotton field shone with thousands of moon white flowers, waving ever so slightly in the cooling breeze. They had opened in the last few hours and would remain that way for twenty-four more, in which time a single, microscopic grain of pollen, carried on the breeze, would come to rest inside, pollinate the flower, and start once again the mystery that grows inside.
Maybe it was then that it really hit me. The loss reached up out of the earth, and I felt cold and lonely, like low, dark clouds before rain. I squatted in the cotton, eye-level with the blooms, and the tears came in a flood.
All the world had bloomed, and Maggie had not.
I CRACKED MAGGIE'S DOOR AND STUCK MY HEAD IN, and froze. A large, broad-shouldered man stood in the darkness next to her bed. He stood ironing-board straight, towering over her.
But Blue hadn't moved.
The man stood with his hands behind his back, at ease. As I stepped into the room, he turned to face me. He had showered, shaved, cropped his hair higher and tighter, splashed with aftershave-a smell I recognized-and put on clean, starched, and creased BDUs. His boots were polished to a mirror shine. In his right hand he held a black, cylindricallooking thing about fourteen inches long. The end closest to me reflected light and looked like small circles of glass.
I stepped into the dim glow of the fluorescent light coming from the bathroom, and the reflection told me that Bryce had been crying. Tears clung to his drawn cheeks and puddled in the bottoms of the wrinkles around the base of his eyes. He blinked and sent the puddles falling off his face. I stepped up alongside him, and we stood overlooking Maggie, who slept peacefully beneath the covers and whatever medication Dr. Frank had prescribed. I glanced at the machine above her bed and saw that her temperature had climbed to 102 degrees.
Standing next to Bryce, I noticed that the baton in his hand was actually a rifle scope. The bluing had worn in spots, and because of the rings and brackets, it looked as though it was rigged with a quick-release mechanism that would allow it to be quickly attached or detached from the top of a rifle.
In months past, as Amos became proficient with more types of weaponry, he had shown me the SWAT team sniper gear. One thing that struck me was the rifle scope. Most were large, came in adjustable powers, and could deliver a projectile with great accuracy up to eight hundred yards, even farther. Many had two protruding adjustment knobs that allowed the shooter to make last-minute adjustments depending on distance, wind, and various other conditions. They were stateof-the-art.
If Amos's gear was fifth- or even tenth-generation, then Bryce's scope looked like a first generation. It was longer, thinner, probably a fixed power, and didn't have the protruding adjustment knobs. He carried it the way a sailor might carry his spyglass.
Bryce didn't say a word. After a few minutes he knelt next to the bed, stretched his neck, and leaned over Maggie. He lowered his head ever so slightly over her tummy, finally pressing his ear against the blanket as if he were listening to a railroad track. He rested there several seconds, close but not pressing into her. After a minute he rose, kissed her forehead, and tiptoed out of the room.
I sat up the rest of the night, eyeing the temperature reading on the machine above her bed. Twice it bounced up to 103.5 degrees, but it spent most of the night at 102. Somewhere in the middle of the night, Blue hopped off the bed and licked my face. I cradled him in my arms, and I guessed we dozed off there.
At daylight, Dr. Frank walked in and nudged my arm. Blue hopped down, and I stood up, balancing myself with a hand on Maggie's bed.
"When was the last time you slept in a bed?"
I scratched my head, smiled, and shook my head. "Can't recall."
"You need to." He stepped closer to the bed and slid his hand under Maggie's wrist, feeling for her distal pulse. He could read it plainly on the machine on the wall, but he seemed to be in thought, and his measurement of her pulse was more subconscious than conscious.
I whispered, "Most of the night it hung around 102. A couple of times it hit 103."
"I expected that. It'll always rise at night. Her body's doing what it should. Fighting."
I nodded, and a few seconds passed. I tucked one long strand of hair behind Maggie's ear. "She is a fighter."
Maggs stirred, and her eyes blinked open. "Hey, guys." She shivered and pulled the covers up over her shoulders. "You two planning on hanging meat in here?"
I grabbed another blanket while Dr. Frank instinctively felt her forehead with his hand. He pulled his rolling seat up to the side of her bed and said, "Well, you want the good news or the bad news?"
"Good news, and let's just skip the bad. We've had enough of that for a while." Maggie's hand appeared from under the covers and grabbed mine.
When I think about my wife, one word comes to mind. Indomitable.
"The good news is that my son's team won his game last night and put us in the play-offs. The bad news is that I have no idea what's causing your fever. Your blood work will only tell me so much." He eyed the IV hanging above her. "We're throwing some pretty strong stuff at you, and it should have kicked in by now."
Maggs moved slowly and looked tired, as though the fe
ver was really working her over.
"I have an idea," the doctor said, "but I wanted to check with you first, since it's your body."
Her eyes opened slightly, the sleep almost falling off the edges of her face. "I'm game for most anything that allows me to stay in this bed. I'm afraid I'd fall flat on my face if I had to get out of it."
Frank nodded. "It's just the fever. It'll pass as soon as we get on top of the infection." He patted her foot. "Since your first delivery, have you had any pictures taken of your insides? Uterus, ovaries, etc."
"Other than that really kind lady doctor you sent us to, no." Maggie smiled. "I could've spit nails."
"Yeah, sorry about that. I called her this morning, and she doesn't have what I need." He repositioned himself on his chair. "I want to take some pictures, look around a bit. We'll sedate you."
Maggs nodded. "When do you want to do this?"
Amanda rolled in a cart loaded with medicines and needles. She walked up next to the bed, hooked one arm inside mine, and patted Maggie's leg.
Dr. Frank said, "How about now?"
We heard the seriousness in his voice. Maggie turned toward me, took my hand with both of hers, and looked at me. "You'll be here when I wake up?"
I knelt, my eyes level with hers. "Always."
Dr. Frank nodded, Amanda inserted the needle into Maggie's IV, and in five minutes, Maggs was in that sedated place that fell somewhere between partly awake and mostly asleep. Amanda pushed the cart back out into the hall and clickety- clacked down the terrazzo while Dr. Frank escorted another nurse into the room, pushing an entirely different machine complete with an LCD screen.
I helped him turn Maggie onto her side, and then I stepped back while the nurse prepped her. Frank pulled out a long, cylindrical tube that could flex and bend like a joystick, and while I was thinking, You're not sticking that thing in my wife, Amanda walked back in with a hot plate covered with aluminum foil.
"When was the last time you ate?"
I shrugged.
She set it on the countertop behind me, patted me on the shoulder, and checked Maggs's IV. She changed the fluid bags, inserted a catheter, and emptied Maggs's bladder, and then Frank inserted his camera. He turned the screen so that I could watch along with a second doctor I'd never met, who'd appeared just for consultation.
While Frank moved the camera via the joystick, he pointed at the screen with his other finger. "This is Maggie's uterus." He moved the camera. "This is the cervix." He moved it again. "The fallopian tube."
He said something to the other doctor, and while I'm sure he was speaking English, I didn't understand a word. Amanda watched and listened, and the consternation on her face told me that she understood more of that screen than I did.
Maggie's face was pale. When Frank moved the camera, extending it farther into Maggie, she moaned and gripped my hand more tightly. I turned to Amanda and raised an eyebrow. Amanda shook her head and brushed Maggie's forehead with her fingers.
"She's okay. These are pretty good drugs."
Dr. Frank was speaking quietly to the nurse technician who stood alongside him. He nodded at the screen. "That one." He moved the camera slightly. "And that one too."
Twenty minutes later, he pulled the camera out and printed out several pictures from the machine. As the nurse rolled the cart back out into the hall, he called behind her, "Ask the lab to run that to the front of the line."
Then he turned to me and held up the pictures. "Nothing I didn't expect, except maybe this one." He held one up closer to the light. "This is Maggie's fallopian tube, and these are cysts along with some scar tissue from the first delivery." He shrugged. "Many women have them; sometimes they're nothing, sometimes they prevent people from ever getting pregnant, but in this case ..." He turned the picture sideways to get a different look. "We biopsied these two because most cysts don't look like that."
"What should they look like?"
He rolled his shoulders and shrugged. "Not like that. The lab will send results as quick as they can. We'll know more then."
I pressed him again. "What might they tell us?"
He chose his words carefully. "They'll either tell us it's nothing or tell us it's something."
"Frank, define 'something.'"
He took a deep breath, blinked, and folded his arms. "Best case, just an abnormal cyst that I can remove with little problem."
I grabbed his arm. "And worst case?"
He took another breath. "I don't know, Dylan. I just don't know. Let's wait on the lab."
"Frank, you're hiding something."
"Dylan, Maggie's body is hiding something from me, from all of us. And I think that cyst might be a starting point. Let's wait on the lab."
"So if you remove the cyst, will it lower the fever?" I was grasping at straws.
Frank shook his head. "That's the bad news. Normally, a cyst wouldn't cause a fever like that." He looked at my dinner growing cold. "Why don't you try to eat something? I'll check back in a while."
He walked out and left me alone with Amanda, Maggie, and Blue.
After several minutes, Amanda spoke. "When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask God why it's so easy for some and yet so difficult for others."
"What's that?"
She patted her tummy. `Just doing what He made us to do." She placed her palm flat across Maggie's forehead and whispered, "Why, when some want it so bad, and deserve it so much, is it so difficult to get?"
She leaned over, kissed Maggie's temple, and then eyed the call button. "Holler if you need me."
I sat down, rested my chin on Maggie's bedside, my face just inches from hers, and watched her breathe. I could smell the last remaining whispers of her perfume beneath the waves of antiseptic. An hour later, I looked at the wall of lights. Maggie's temperature had risen to 104 degrees.
TRUE TO HIS WORD, DR. FRANK WALKED IN WITH THE LAB results in his hand, but he wasn't alone. He'd brought most of the hospital with him. Five nurses, dressed in various versions of surgical scrubs, immediately walked to the bed and began prepping Maggie. They worked quietly and efficiently.
Frank pulled me aside. "I'm taking Maggie to the OR."
"Right this second? Why?"
"Because Maggie's body needs help getting rid of the baby."
I was confused. "I thought . . . I thought she'd already done that."
Frank nodded. "She had, in part. Problem is, Maggie was having twins. She had a heterotopic pregnancy. In layman's terms, there's one still in there, and she's being poisoned from the inside out. I'll explain after surgery."
He turned and followed the nurses, who pushed a sleeping Maggie out the door on a rolling bed. I stepped forward to kiss her, but she was gone. I watched them roll her down the hall, then turned to look at Amanda, who was shutting down the monitoring machines. The last one she clicked off was the temperature, reading 105.5 degrees.
I sat down in the hospital room and sank my head in my hands. Twins?
Amanda sat down next to me, looped her arm beneath mine, and rested her head on my shoulder. About that time, Amos came running into the room. He was sweating, breathing heavily, and almost slid onto the floor beneath me. "I came as soon as I heard."
I looked up, unable to focus. The world was spinning. "We were having twins."
Amos swore silently. He stood up, wrung his hands together, then finally pulled me up with him and bear-hugged me.
I SAT NEXT TO THE BED, REACHED BENEATH THE covers, and touched Maggs's hand. She was hot to the touch, and her face was flushed. When she opened her eyes, they were glassed over and heavy. The machine on the wall told me her fever was now only 102.5. I rubbed her hand gently and tried to open my mouth, but the words wouldn't come.
She fidgeted, but her ribs were tender, making movement difficult, and her face was still puffy, slow to heal. She saw me struggling and touched my lips with her fingers. "I was having a dream about you."
"Yeah?" I tried to smile.
"You were sitting on the
tractor with our daughter, driving to the river. She was blonde, had your eyes, my toes."
I bit my lip, gritted my teeth, and tried to hold back but could not. I choked and wiped my face with her sheet. Maggie eyed the wall, her temperature, and then me. Her movements were slow. She looked as if she'd just delivered a child and run a marathon.
I tried again. "Dr. Frank had to ... you see ... we were ... you...
She breathed deeply and turned toward me, pressing her forehead to mine. She placed her palm on my cheek and whispered, "Shhh." She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry.
I held the glass of water while she sipped through the straw, then she pulled me close. I held her several moments, her eyes studying mine, mine studying hers.
"I want to grow old with you."
"Maggie," I stuttered, "we were having twins."
Her eyes narrowed, and her head tilted like Blue's when he didn't understand. I could see the pieces falling into place.
"The second baby got caught in your tube, and it was just growing and ..."
Maggie shook her head vehemently, placed a flat palm over her stomach as if it could tell her the truth, and started whispering, "No. No. No!"
I placed my hand on her shoulder. "Honey, Dr. Frank had to remove your ..."
The words I'd spoken registered somewhere in her foggy mind, and she laid her head on the pillow, unable to hold back the sobs. They came loud and in waves. I tried to hold her, to wrap my arms around her, protect her from the world and take away the pain, but I had no defense strong enough. She rolled into a ball and pounded the bed with her fists.
Amanda came running, pulled a syringe from her pocket, and quickly inserted it into Maggie's IV. The medicine hit her veins, and within thirty seconds her eyelids were heavy and her movements slow and incomplete. They'd given her medicine for the pain in her ribs and the stitches in her uterus. But Maggie was teetering on the edge, and only the oblivion of sleep could give Maggie respite from the pain in her heart.
The last words she screamed before the lights went out were unintelligible. Lost in transmission. But while I couldn't understand the words, I understood the emotion.
Down Where My Love Lives Page 36