Gifts and Consequences (22 page)

“I never thought I could actually do it,” he said.  Most of the sound was covered by the noise of passing cars. 

It was insanity to set off on a trek at which he never thought he’d succeed, but how could he have lived with himself if he didn’t at least try.

He pushed the
Call
button.

A woman answered on the second ring, but Allen couldn’t hear what she said. 

“This is Allen Joiner.  Yvonne’s husband?”  He walked even further away from the highway, careful not to cross the line. 

“…for a moment,” heard Allen, and elevator music started playing.  By the time someone picked up the line again he was far enough away from the road.  “Mr. Joiner?”

“Yeah,” said Allen.

“This is Cynthia.”  They’d talked briefly once or twice.

“How’s she doing, Cynthia?”

“Slightly improved,” said Cynthia.  “She has waking and sleeping moments, but we still can’t be sure the therapy is working.”

“Would it be possible to try talking to her?”  Allen felt like he was setting himself up for failure.

“Hold on.”  Cynthia sounded annoyed.  In a more hollow voice, she said, “You’re on speaker.”

“Yvonne?  Can you hear me?”

No answer.

“I, I made it, Yvonne.  I’m about to cross the city limits.  Ready?  Here I go.” 

Allen took a few steps.  There was no sound on the line.

The final steps somehow failed to transform him.  Other than a deep breath of air and a dot on a map, nothing changed.

A moan came from the phone, followed by some unintelligible sounds. 

“Yvonne?  Is that you?”

More moaning, then a slurred but unmistakable word.  “Allen.”

“I made it, Yvonne.  I made it!” 

He listened but didn’t hear anything. 

“Yvonne, are you there?”

“She’s gone back to sleep,” said Cynthia. 

“Did you—”  Allen couldn’t be sure he’d actually heard it.  “She said—” but of course Cynthia had heard.  Yvonne said it.  She said his name.

“I heard it, Allen.”  There was tenderness in the nurse’s voice that Allen hadn’t heard before.

“I’m coming, Yvonne.  I’m on my way.”

Allen hung up and walked toward home at full speed, pulled forward by Yvonne’s utterance.

Somehow he’d made it over the hump.  And he’d done it all on his own.

“No, not alone,” he said and stopped walking.  He slid his cell phone back into his pocket and without bothering to look around for observers he fell to his knees.  The final steps hadn’t changed anything, but during the millions of steps leading up to them God had given him strength. 

Allen poured out his soul in thanks and pled for strength, stamina and safety to reach home.  He asked for a blessing on Yvonne then stood and walked northeast whistling
Onward, Christian Soldiers.

A buzz in his pocket woke Jonathan.  He opened his eyes in an unfamiliar setting and shot up to a sitting position.  His legs and neck ached and he realized he had stretched out in Susan’s La-Z-Boy.  The vibration repeated and he took out his phone.  The caller ID read
Marcus Jefferson
.

“Not today,” he said quietly when he answered the phone.

“Everything okay?” asked Marcus.

“Yes,” Jonathan answered.  “I’m going to spend some time with Susan today.”

Marcus acknowledged and hung up.  The last time Jonathan took an unscheduled day off was over a year ago.

There was enough light in the room to see Susan’s face clearly.  He’d never known anyone with such beauty matched with a kind and giving heart.  While other people were burdened with guilt, shame, and worry, Susan’s life had been one of giving and service.  She didn’t carry the negative experiences that clung like plaque to most people as they went through life.

A small photo album lay on Susan’s nightstand next to her service scrapbook.  He picked it up quietly and perused it as Susan slept.  There were more pictures from the two years prior to their wedding than the twenty-plus years since.  He felt like a living cliché—the financially successful man looking back regretfully on his life.

Though he traveled frequently in his real estate investing, it was never for pleasure.  If he was going to be gone for more than a couple days he and Susan always tried to schedule the trip so she could go along, but the trips were for business.  Spending time together only happened when it could be worked around his schedule.

His phone vibrated again in his pocket.  A text message from Marcus. 

Enjoy your day Jonathan. God bless that precious wife of yours.

“Where’s God when we really need him?” muttered Jonathan.  If there was one person in the world who didn’t deserve this, it was Susan.

Marcus had met Susan when he started working for Jonathan.  All of his employees met her within the first few weeks.  They hit it off from their first meeting, as Jonathan knew they would. 

Susan and Marcus shared one quality, more than any other—interest in the lives of other people.  Each one could carry on a conversation with another person and spend eighty percent of the time delving into the person’s past, their feelings, and their thoughts.  It was fascinating watching them converse, jockeying for position to switch the focus of the conversation back to the other.  They had a way of making anyone feel interesting and important, no matter who it was. 

Not long after meeting Susan, Marcus asked Jonathan why he did the projects.

“To honor Susan,” Jonathan answered.

“You could easily pay someone to run it.  You don’t have to be involved in every step.”

“What else am I going to do?  Do you have any idea how painful it is to watch what’s happening to Susan?”  He didn’t want to tell him specifics about Susan’s request.  “I have to put the pain somewhere, so I try to turn my pain into someone else’s joy.  Like recycling bad feelings for good ones.”

Marcus was still a new employee at that point, too green to challenge Jonathan as he had over the last couple months. 

It was also before Lisa Knapp and Allen Joiner,
he chided himself.  He didn’t even need Marcus to hassle him anymore.

An almost inaudible knock at the door brought Jonathan back to the present.  Tamika, the nurse, cracked the door and peeked in.  Jonathan put his finger to his lips then gave her a thumbs up.  She closed the door without a sound. 

The clock on the wall read 9:30.  Susan had never been one to sleep in, a further sign of her progressing disease.  He remained in the chair, rocking silently in beat with his wife’s breathing.  She occasionally grunted or mumbled incoherently, something she did only in times of extreme stress when she was healthy.

An hour after Tamika checked on her, Susan woke up.  “Where’s Mary?” she asked before even looking around to see who was in the room. 

“She’s not here,” answered Jonathan, standing and approaching the bedside.  “But she’s just fine.  I spoke with her a while ago.”  The worry about her dead sister was a bit of relief.  The aphasia had passed.

Susan was startled by him approaching her bed, but wasn’t ready to forget about her sister.  “No, I can’t remember where she went.”

“She’s sleeping,” Jonathan assured her. 

“But I, I—”  As she sat up in bed the sleeve of her nightgown slipped off her shoulder, revealing most of her right breast.  She didn’t cover herself.

Jonathan reached for her hand but as soon as he touched her she pulled it away and said, “Don’t do that!  I’m trying to find Mary.  Where’s Mary?”  She scooted toward the far side of the bed and stared at him with wide eyes.

Jonathan backed away slowly, trying to calm her down, but Susan was too upset to hear anything he said.  Jonathan crossed the room, opened the door and motioned for Tamika.  She was by Susan’s side in a matter of seconds.

“It’s okay, Dear,” she told Susan.  “I’m right here.”

Susan stilled slightly.  “I can’t remember where Mary went,” she pleaded with the nurse.

“Mary’s just sleeping, Child.  She’s fine, just fine.”

Susan relaxed significantly under the nurse’s soothing voice.  For the last six months, men had made her increasingly nervous, but Jonathan only for the previous three weeks.  He faded to the far wall and she didn’t even notice him. 

Jonathan saw that she still made no move to cover herself and checked off
Lack of Modesty
from the mental list he kept of her descent into Alzheimer’s.

Her youthful body betrayed her aging face.  Though the means were available she never had a single cosmetic surgery.  Her high-society acquaintances all had puffier lips, firmer breasts, and fewer wrinkles.  Yet despite all their efforts they were physically inferior and seemed to know it. 

They didn’t know how to deal with a woman who refused to follow the unwritten rules of vanity.  To them, the more sculpted your body and face were, the more successful you were and higher on the social ladder.  Susan refused to even acknowledge the ladder.

Jonathan had saved more than a few lives since his wife’s diagnosis, but he could not save her, the only person he truly cared about.  He had always been told that money couldn’t buy happiness but didn’t believe it.  Until Susan’s disease he firmly believed that wealth equaled health.  That lesson had been a hard one to accept.

“I’m going back to work,” he said to no one.  “I’ve got to put the pain somewhere.”

Susan didn’t appear to notice him leave.

Porter already had a sheen of sweat on his brow.  He sat around the patio table with Angela, Molly, and Mack.  Angela and Porter each had one foot on the edge of the table, tying the shoelaces of their walking shoes.  Neither one could reach down to their feet on the ground so they had to bring the foot up. 

“This is stupid,” Angela muttered.  “Totally unrealistic.  They should focus on real life situations.”

“I know,” added Porter.  “When are we ever going to go on all day hikes when we leave here?”

 “Don’t you guys get it?” asked Jolly Molly with wide eyes.  “It’s symbolic.  Getting over the mountain signifies getting over our addiction.  Putting it all behind us.”

Angela had enough of Molly’s enthusiasm.  She got up from the table and walked out into the sun to stand by the edge of the pool.  Porter joined her a minute later, leaving Molly and Mack stretching in the shade.

“I don’t know if I’m gonna do it,” she told him.

“You can do it, Angela.  That’s your addiction talking.”

“I’m not talking about losing weight, dummy.”  She rolled her eyes.  “I mean the stupid mountain.  I just don’t see the point and I hate it when people force me to do things.”

Porter was torn between arguing and agreeing.  He wanted to encourage her and try to help her push forward, but every muscle in his body was screaming at him to give up.  The only thing that gave him hope was that after making it to the top of the trail, it was all downhill. 

Today would be the day when he found out what was inside him, the day that decided the rest of his life.  But he had to admit that he truly did not know how it would end.

It took effort, but he forced out optimism.  “How will you know if you don’t try?” he asked.

Angela stared at him.  “If I wanted to talk to Molly I would have stayed in the shade.”

Before Porter could answer, the trainers arrived and called the group together.

Heather and Amy.  They could pass for twins with their dyed blonde hair, perky fake breasts, sprayed-on tans, and twiggy figures.  Their combined percentage of body fat hovered somewhere between zero and one.  Neither showed the slightest sign of stretch marks or even loose skin where fat had once resided.  It galled Porter to have these toothpicks as trainers; they didn’t understand the first thing about food addiction.

The camp coordinator, Nate, was different.  He showed the telltale signs of having lost large amounts of weight, and proudly admitted it.  Heather and Amy wouldn’t admit to even looking at a donut, much less condescending to eat a dozen in a single sitting.  But Nate only did nutrition and health classes and ran the support group meetings.

Predictably, the Wonder Twins were both workout Nazis who employed the same style.  There was no good cop, bad cop.  It was bad cop, bad cop every minute of workout time.  No one ever got a break.

Before the trainers had a chance to speak, Angela joined the group and said, “I’m not going.”

“Yes you are,” Amy answered in a patronizing voice.  “Why else would you have walking shoes on?’  She picked up a huge Camelbak and handed it to Angela.  “Here, you’ll need this.”

Angela didn’t accept it so Amy set it on the chair next to her.  The other three trekkers put the Camelbaks over one shoulder and squeezed into the other strap.  Molly flexed and went on about how great it felt to be an athlete.

“Alright, did you stretch like we asked you to?”  asked Heather.