Between Friends (27 page)

Within a few moments I recalled where I was and made an effort to focus my eyes. Two nurses were standing by the bed, both of them talking, one over the other.

“Hi, Cora, everything is okay.”

“You’re all right, Cora, everything went just fine.”

“Can you look at me, Cora?”

“Can you squeeze my hand?”

I did have a moment in which I was frightened. I remembered the last second of consciousness, realizing that they were shoving a tube down my throat, and then I was out, and now this. The humming faded away, and I was filled with gratefulness to these wonderful women who were standing by me, as if I were the only patient they had, reassuring me, so well, so quickly. I tried to speak, to tell them,
Thank you, thank you so much, what wonderful, nurturing women you are, what angels
.

The drugs were doing their job very, very well.

But of course my voice didn’t work just yet, and as I came more fully out from under the anesthesia my angels drifted away and were not at my bedside by the time I could say
thank you
. A different nurse smiled kindly at me and took my vital signs.

Ali was waiting in my room when they wheeled me in, and she just winked at me as they got me situated, staying well out of the way until the nurses decided everything was just right and left the room. Then she leaned over the silver railing and kissed me on the forehead with a loud smack. If I could have laughed, I would have.

“How you feeling?” she asked, pulling a chair up and holding my hand under the rail.

“All right,” I croaked. “Doesn’t hurt.”

She grinned at me, and we both said, “Yet,” at the same time.

“You want the TV on?”

“No. Drew?”

She held up her cell phone. “Called and left a message that it went fine, and I said I’d call again as soon as you were coherent. Are you coherent?”

“Not really. Give . . . a minute.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice growing softer. “Relax. You can close your eyes if you want to.”

That sounded good. So I did. Just as I shut them, the first twinges in my arm made themselves known.

When I woke again, Ali was still sitting in the chair, but her eyes were closed and she was breathing evenly enough that I didn’t think she was just resting. We both jumped when her cell phone rang, and she scrambled to get it, casting a quick glance at me and grimacing.

“Hello?”

I wasn’t particularly interested in who was on the phone. I was, however, very interested in the water on the nightstand and figured out the buttons to push to raise my bed and leaned over toward it.

Ali waved at me to stop and leaped up to help, putting her hand over the mouthpiece.

“You up to talking?” she asked. “It’s Drew.”

I held my hand out eagerly, croaking, “Hey,” into the phone, waiting to hear his voice, surprised by my need.

“How you doing?” he asked, his voice filled with worry.

“I’m okay,” I said. “A little sore.”

“Know where I’m at?”

“Where?”

“Atlanta. I’ll be there in a few hours, assuming we get out in time.”

“Really? Are you crazy?”

“Just about you,” he said.

“Goofball.”

“Should I rent a car or take a taxi?”

“Take a taxi,” I said, but Ali held her hand out for the phone, and I handed it over.

“What time are you getting in?” she asked him, writing it down on the notepad on the nightstand. “The airport’s only twenty minutes from here. I’ll have just enough time to get you before I have to pick Letty up at school.”

She handed the phone back to me just as the nurse and the vascular surgeon entered. We said our good-byes, and I suffered through an exam. The surgeon was pleased.

“You’ll be ready to go in the morning,” he assured me. “I’ll stop to check on you, but everything looks good. The things we talked about stand; no pressure on it, keep it clean, et cetera. I’ll want to see you in the office in a few days.”

I thanked him, and Ali followed them out, to talk about me in the hall, I imagined. It made me smile. How wonderful to be taken care of, how lovely to have people who cared about you so much, who hopped planes to fly across the country, who closed their business in order to attend to you.

My smile slowly faded. It was lovely, wasn’t it? It was lovely when you had the flu. Lovely when you were having a baby, though of course I wouldn’t know about that. Lovely, right this second, trying to believe that this was it, just this one little, easy surgery. It’s my
arm
, for heaven’s sake, just a couple little slices and a tube in my arm.

But what is this little surgery for? What does it usher in?

That wasn’t so lovely. It wasn’t so lovely to think about other people taking care of you when you weren’t going to recover. It wasn’t so lovely when you realized that those same people might be doing it for years. That this was just the beginning of a life like this. Sitting here, unable to go anywhere.

Waiting for health.

And it would never come.

Drew was nothing like what I’d expected, and yet he was clearly perfect for Cora. As hippie as she was, he was straitlaced, and older than I’d anticipated. He arrived in a blue oxford button-down, navy blazer, and khakis, rimless glasses resting on small ears, and closely cropped hair, silvering nicely on the sides. He could have been anyone, any trim executive on a business trip.

But there were clues to his life in academia, a looseness in the way he moved, a round metal pendant on a leather cord around his neck, and a ready smile despite the underlying reason for his trip. We held each other longer than most people who’d never met would have, two people who shared a common love and worry for another.

He grabbed his bag and squinted as we walked out to the car. I had a spare pair of Benny’s sunglasses in the car, and I handed them to him as we sped along the long curve of the airport exit.

He laughed apologetically as he took them. “Thank you,” he said, settling them over his own glasses. “So? How is she?”

“She’s good, you know, physically,” I said, turning onto the back road to I-75. “It’s all so scary.” I glanced at him quickly. “God, that sounded narcissistic, didn’t it? I imagine it’s a lot scarier for her than it is for me. I just—Cora’s never made me worry before, you know? I guess I’m not used to it.”

“I understand. She always took care of me, too,” he said. “I never realized how skewed our relationship was on that front until this. I admit it was frustrating at first.”

I laughed. “I know. Isn’t that strange? It’s like when your mother was sick when you were a kid. You just wanted her to get up and make you dinner, right? How dare she feel bad when you’re hungry?”

He laughed, too, but it was subdued. “Well, you’d think I’d have gotten on the bandwagon a little faster. I’m still ashamed of that. Not that I ignored it, but I think it was just too much to take in. It was diagnosed so quickly. She was tired; her back and her sides hurt; she was bloated. She went in because she thought maybe she was starting perimenopause. She wasn’t even going to go, but I finally convinced her that there were things that could be done, hormone replacements, supplements to make her feel better. Who knew she’d come back with this?”

His head swiveled as we passed a panther crossing sign, and he looked at me in astonishment. “Are you serious?” he asked, as if I’d personally planted the signs.

“Yep,” I said. “Although I have to admit that I’ve lived here my entire life and never caught sight of one in the wild.”

Despite that, he watched the sides of the road carefully even after we merged onto I-75.

“She tells me you want to donate,” he said, his voice barely audible over the noise of the road.

“Of course I do,” I said. “But did she tell you . . . everything else?”

I had no idea what Cora had told him. I assumed she’d been honest about Letty, I assumed she was as open about our situation as I was, but over the years I’d stopped asking when she mentioned a new boyfriend. It had started to feel uncomfortably selfish somehow, to follow every announcement of a new relationship with questions about how much she’d mentioned me and Letty.

He smiled at me. “I don’t know,” he said, catching me by surprise with the clear tease in his voice. “Why don’t you tell me everything, and I’ll let you know?”

I laughed. “Forget it. Some things have to stay just between friends. We keep each other’s secrets, always have.”

“Well, she told me about Letty, that she donated eggs to you and your husband so you could have her. And that she loves you all very much.”

I wanted to say that we loved her, too, so much, but I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

“And yes, she told me about it being hereditary. I understand that you can’t do it. It must have been an agonizing decision.”

“I am not positive that I can’t do it,” I said. “My husband and I have an appointment with a genetic counselor next week. We’re thinking about having Letty tested to see if she has the gene or not. If she doesn’t, I could do it, I would do it . . .”

“Ah,” he said, and I shot him another glance.

“What? I mean, I know there are considerations; we don’t even know if we’re a match, lots of stuff to think about.”

I swerved down our exit too quickly, making Drew grip the handle on the door a little more tightly.

“She said you couldn’t donate,” I said, probing cautiously.

“Well, we’re not a match. I got tested immediately. But even if we were, there would be some things to consider. I’m a hemophiliac,” he said matter-of-factly, and I immediately slowed down.

Just what I needed. A car wreck in which Drew’s kneecap split open and he bled to death. It felt as if everyone around me were fragile as sea foam, breaking apart at the slightest breeze, tatters across the sand.

Only Benny remained as solid in real life as I had always believed he was, though I was beginning to grow uneasy about the possibility of little time bombs within any of us, waiting for the moment that their ticking would grow loud enough to hear. I didn’t say a word, but at the stoplight at the base of the exit I sighed and lowered my forehead to the top of the steering wheel for a moment.

“I know,” he said quietly.

“There’s nobody else?” I asked. “Nobody close enough to offer, to ask?”

“She has students who love her, but she says they’re too young to understand the ramifications.”

Something started to gnaw at me, something in between all the information, a sinuous suspicion, threading its way through my mind. As the light turned green I said, “Why is she coming up with all these excuses?”

“What do you mean?”

“The first thing she said when I told her I wanted to donate was that I couldn’t because of Letty. You can’t . . . I know that’s not something you can help, but now students, she says they’re too young. What’s she waiting for? Who would be a perfect candidate for her?”

He bit his lower lip. “I can see what you’re getting at, but I don’t know how it changes anything. She doesn’t want to die, I’m certain of that. And her students—it’s not as if any have come forward specifically and offered. There’s been talk, rumors, but what is she supposed to do? Ask directly?”

“Why not?” I asked. “Or you could.”

He leaned his head against the window and stared out at the old cemetery flashing by us, overhung with oaks dripping moss, only turning back to me once it had been replaced with a view of the neighboring trailer park.

“I have. The ones I thought might be serious. None of them were willing to take it to the next stage. Don’t tell her. She expressly forbade me to approach anyone.”

“Is there any way I could help?” I asked, visions of healthy young college students in my head: quick smiles, able bodies, extra-plump pink kidneys.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s one girl. She’s still a possibility. I’m keeping in touch with her by e-mail. I’m trying to be careful, not push her too much.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead, as if holding back more pain than his head could possibly contain.

“Well, keep on her,” I said, “and if you think it might help, I’ll talk to her.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, his voice hoarse. “I think she just needs some time. Most people are on dialysis for years before there’s even the possibility of a kidney. It seems like Cora’s kind of flighty, impulsive, but she’s really quite methodical. I think she’s just trying to get through one stage at a time. It’s easy for us to jump ahead when we’re not the one going through it.”

“I suppose,” I said, knowing he was right.

“We’re going straight there?” Drew asked.

“If you want,” I said.

“Please.”

We didn’t speak the rest of the drive to the hospital. When I walked him to the door of Cora’s room, I hung back, allowing him to go in alone. The door closed slowly, and I heard Cora cry out in pleasure just before it shut completely. I waited for a moment, but then made my way down the hall to the small waiting area outside the elevators and pulled my cell phone out of my purse.