(2006) When Crickets Cry (28 page)

"Then, just as I was about to call financing and argue the cost of the test to give a little girl one shot in a thousand, I got another rather unusual call. Wonder of wonders, financing called me and told me that Annie's account, which had been a little more than $18,000 in debt, had been paid up. And what's more, whoever called had paid in advance for a TEE. They wanted to know if I had ordered such a test.

`Jowly, you've been gone a while, and there's a few things you might not know. Annie's pretty well-known around here. Makes most of its smile most all the time, and whenever somebody starts tinkering with her file or her care, we get our dander up."

Royer's tone was harsh. I expected nothing less. A bear can be either a teddy or a grizzly, depending on the need.

He took a deep breath and continued. "So, naturally, I faked a page and said I needed five minutes. I checked the file; they were right-as are you-and so I've scheduled Annie. But you know as well as I do that she'll have to be sedated, and she's not going to like that, and Cindy is running the narrow ridge as it is and liable to crack any minute. And when you throw all that together, you've got a pretty good recipe for disaster."

Royer thanked a nurse who had evidently brought him a cup of coffee. He took a long sip while the machine continued to record.

Swallowing hard, he said, "The test is next Friday-that's ten days from now, in case you can't find your calendar. Now, you started this ball rolling, so here's the deal. I'll run the test, but if I don't see you here Friday morning, wheeling that little girl down the hall, I'm spilling the beans. And Jonny, that's not an idle threat."

Another pause, and I could practically hear Royer deliberating.

"Guess that gives you a little time to chew on your dilemma. So while you're chewing-and I got to be honest, I hope you choke on your own self-pity-I just want to ask you one question ..."

I hit the Stop button and walked toward the kitchen, where I found Charlie leaning against the doorframe, Georgia at his feet, both looking in my general direction.

"You don't want to hear the question?" he asked, his palms opened toward the machine like he was inviting someone into his house.

I walked past him out onto the back porch and wondered how far I could get by nightfall if I got in the car and started driving.

"Well, I do." Charlie clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together. "I rather miss that old son of a gun." The sarcasm grew thick. "Gee, I wonder what the old devil might ask you?"

Charlie felt his way along the wall and walked to the machine. He ran his fingers across the buttons and pushed the large one in the middle, and Royer's voice returned. It crawled through the house, over the rafters, through the floorboards, and out the screen onto the back porch. It found me on the landing at the top of the stairs where I stood holding on to the railing, steadying myself before the blow.

`Donny, tell me something, if you don't mind." His voice cracked. "If I could call Emma and tell her about Annie, what do you think she'd say?"

Charlie rewound the machine and then felt his way across the hallway to the kitchen. He rummaged through the coffee mugs, poured two cups, and shuffled his way slowly out of the kitchen and onto the back porch, where he found me weak-kneed and whiteknuckled atop the stairwell. He offered me a mug and I took it.

"Thanks."

We stood in silence a few minutes, letting the smell of coffee beans mix with the smell of lake water and mint.

Finally Charlie nodded his head back toward the machine and spoke. "What was he talking about?"

The taste of fresh beans filtered down my throat and warmed my cold stomach. The lake was starting to turn under a light breeze, and somewhere a boat was approaching at what sounded like half-throttle. Somewhere behind it, several kids were screaming with laughter.

"A TEE is when you insert a probe down the mouth and into the heart of a ... a sedated patient. It uses sound waves to look at the chambers."

I held the cup between both hands, asking myself if Annie's heart could handle the stress and if the risk was worth the information.

I continued, "The heart is divided by a wall in the middle, called the septum. Before we are born, we have an opening called the foramen ovale. Because our moms are doing all our breathing for us, there's no need for our blood to circulate through our lungs. At least not yet. So this opening allows the blood to bypass that step. When we're born, prostaglandins release and the hole closes, forcing our lungs to start working on their own."

The wrinkle above Charlie's eyebrows grew deeper. "And if it doesn't close?"

"The blood jumps straight across the heart rather than through it."

"What's that mean ... for Annie."

"It means that most every day of her life, she feels like she's running the last turn of the quarter mile and never able to catch her breath."

Charlie stood next to me and "looked" out over the lake. "Like my big sister?"

Seconds passed, and I didn't answer. Finally he put his hand on my face and read the wrinkles. Something he had not done since Emma died. He asked again, "Like Emma?"

I nodded.

Charlie pulled his hand off my face. "Can it be fixed?"

"If caught in time. If not, the ripple effects are far-reaching and permanent. My thought was that if Royer saw an opening, he could close the hole with a catheter and a balloon. It'd be a shortterm fix, a Band-Aid, but Annie'd never know it, and that might buy her some more time. And right now ..." I lowered my voice. "Time is the enemy."

"How much has she got?"

The breeze off the lake was cool. A few mallards screamed overhead, circled, and then glided down the water near Charlie's dock where a drake was hiding beneath a rhododendron. Georgia tore down the steps in search of some fun. "Not much."

Charlie shuffled his way through the door and into the house. He was gone several minutes. I heard him in my office rummaging through my closet. Obviously looking for something, but sometimes it's best to just let Charlie do his own thing.

A few minutes later, he returned carrying the transit case. He appeared in the kitchen, holding both handles. He dropped the box in the middle of the floor and pointed at it. "Drink up."

He found his way to the back door and used the railing to guide himself down the steps. Two more minutes and he was midway, following the "dry" guide wires around the back end of the creek.

I walked into the kitchen and sat down next to the dust-covered box. The lid squeaked as I fingered my way through twenty years of history. At some point in our lives, Emma had read every book in here several times, many of them out loud to me.

At noon, my head was splitting. With every page I turned, the picture in my head of her doing the same grew more colorful and detailed. Surrounded by books, I lay down on the kitchen floor and ran my fingernail along the grooves of the wood. Deep inside, caked along the grooves and the cracks between, were small, almost pinhead-sized flecks of red.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

was on the road early Thursday morning, saying good-bye to no one. By daylight I was just a few hours from Hickory, North Carolina. At a quarter to eleven I pulled into the gas station and parked in front of the public phone. Leaving the car running, I rummaged through the rain-swollen phone book and found the number I was looking for.

After three rings, he answered. His voice resonated through the phone, kind and confident, but weaker now. It'd been more than ten years since we'd spoken. The picture in the alumni newspaper showed him and his wife arm in arm in their "getaway" in Hickory. Wearing a plaid vest, his pipe tucked inside his right hand, he looked content, living out what remained of his life with his wife, who, like many doctors' wives, had spent most of her life sharing him, with first the hospital and then the university. Now was her time. He had promised her that.

"Hello?" he said.

"Hello ... um, sir?"

Silence followed. Ten seconds or more. I heard his pipe slide from one side of his mouth to the other, and then the rattle of his teeth as he bit down again.

"I've often thought of you," he said at last. "Wondered how you're getting along. And if."

"Yes, sir, well ... I was in Hickory and wondered if we might have lunch."

The pipe moved again, and his tone of voice told me he was smiling. "You mean you drove all the way over here from wherever you've been living because you wanted to talk with me?"

I smiled. He had weakened, his voice told me that, but a weak body did not equate to a weak mind. "Yes sir."

Fifteen minutes later, I parked in front of his house. One look in the rearview mirror told me that he might not recognize me. In fact, I might scare him. It was a good thing I had called first.

I slipped my sunglasses into my shirt pocket, walked up the lawn, and rang the bell. Soon I heard the shuffling sound associated with old men who wear their slippers until afternoon.

He opened the door and stood a moment while his eyes adjusted to the sunlight. He pulled the pipe from his lips and nodded. "Doctor," he said, extending his hand.

I extended mine. "Sir."

We sat on the back porch, and Mrs. Trainer poured us tea while we watched their cat tear at a ball of red yarn. He stirred, occasionally looking at me, but didn't say a word. I had come to him, so, ever the teacher, he would wait on me.

"Yes sir, well ..." I fumbled with my tea bag and eventually dripped it across my lap and laid it on the saucer. "Um ... sir, like I said, I was just driving through and knew from the alumni bulletin that you had retired here." I sipped, looking for the words. "So how do you like retirement?"

He shook his head. "Hate it." He pointed his pipe end toward the kitchen, where somebody was washing dishes. "We both do."

"How's that?" I asked.

He wrapped his tea bag around his spoon, squeezed the dark juice out using the string, then carefully laid it and the spoon on his saucer. He sat back, sipped, looked out over the backyard, and said, "My whole life, I've been one thing. Doctoring is what I do. It's who I am. Retirement doesn't change that. So now I'm spending three days a week giving physicals down at the indigent clinic."

"So you're staying active?"

He looked at me, and inside his eye I caught sight of a flicker, almost a fire. `Donny, don't talk to me as though I were an old man. My body may be frail, shoulders not as broad. . . " He ran his fingers along his plaid vest. "My coats may not fit as tight as they used to, and I may take more medication than I ever have, but one thing remains ..." He nodded, looking past the backyard over his, and my, past. "You may take me out of doctoring, but never the doctoring out of me."

We sat quietly, sipping, while the cat played. Finally he set down his cup and said, "I followed your story. Read it in all the papers. A few even called to interview me, but. . ." He held up his hand. "I declined." He leaned back, his chair squeaking. "I've often wondered what happened to you, where you went."

He packed his pipe and lit it. The plume of air filtered out of him, surrounding us with the sweet smell. It reminded me of school, of endless days of discovery, of him, and of Emma. I breathed deeply and then held it a long time.

He turned to look at me again, squinting beneath the smoke. He pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket, blew his nose, and then refolded the cloth and returned it to his pocket. "Now, you want to tell me why you're here?"

"Sir," I said, turning my chair at ninety degrees to his, making eye contact easier on us both. "I've got a ... situation."

"Well ..." He raised and lowered his chin and scratched a dayold beard. The cat jumped onto his lap, laid its head on his thigh, and purred. He looked at me, raised both eyebrows, and nodded. I had learned that very trick from him. That nod was how I told a patient to go on, without actually saying it.

"Well ... sir ... ," I stammered.

`Donny," he interrupted, "at my age, I never know how long I have. You better get your story in now, while I can still hear you and can sit up long enough to respond intelligently." He smiled and sat back.

I took a deep breath, scratched my head, and started in. Every word. Beginning from the moment I'd left medical school, on through my residency and specialization in transplantation, through Nashville and then our choice to head to Atlanta. I told him of our practice, of Royer, of Emma's decline, and then of our last weekend at the lake. I also told him the one thing I'd never told anyone.

When I finished, he sat quietly for some time, puffing on a cold pipe. His eyes had narrowed and he wrinkled his forehead. The cat purred, his hands stroked its silky black hair, and his feet sat wrapped in fur-lined slippers. He pointed to an orange tree that hung over his fence.

"I knew a farmer once," he started, staring out over the fence. "Think his name was James. Had an orange tree, a lot like that one. It hadn't bloomed in several years and wasn't looking too good. Still had green on it, but not much. One morning I caught him standing next to it, sizing it up and murmuring to himself. In one hand he held a hammer, and in the other he held three twelveinch spikes. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me to stand back, and then he drove one of the spikes into the trunk, about knee height. That nail split the thin skin on that tree, and the farther in he drove it, the more white ooze seeped out around the head of the nail. He drove a second at waist level and a third about here." He raised his hand level with his collarbone.