Healing Waters (16 page)

He glanced up as a couple parked themselves at the corner of the railing and nuzzled each other.

Could God maybe cut him some slack here?

That could have been Lynn and him, back to visit Nashville, where they'd met when he was working on his master's in theological studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, returned to celebrate the city where Hannah was born, there to join friends in a circle and remember how they'd all started out on the “real lives” they'd hoped they were working toward as grad students.

Sully looked away from the couple with plans in their eyes. His “real life” with Lynn had ended right here almost before it began.
What
happened was now in his consciousness where it belonged. But the
why
still refused to come to the surface. It would keep him forever on this bridge if he didn't dive all the way down and bring it up.

He peeled himself off the bench and went to the center of the railing, feeling each step across like the slow turns of a tire. As he pressed his palms on the round steel, flier still in hand, he half expected the metal to give way under him, just as it had for Lynn. When it didn't, he leaned and closed his eyes. He still couldn't look down into the river.

So he turned his head to the east end of the bridge. They'd lived beyond there in the house she'd left that night with the baby, Sully in pursuit. He tried now to see past the stands of silkscreened T-shirts and handmade baskets and the people bridging the gap, to the place where he'd been, in his pickup truck, following Lynn through the rain, thinking like an imbecile that he could stop her.

He'd only been able to watch as the Impala plunged through a railing that had once been here, right here. What was she thinking when the grille he'd shined and polished and put there himself had crashed through? He'd been over that with Porphyria until his throat closed from sobbing.

Lynn had suffered from postpartum depression. She wouldn't take the medication. She listened to a quack counselor named Belinda Cox who called herself a Christian, and the mental anguish pushed her over the edge and out of his life.

Those were the conclusions that had surfaced. If that were all of it, he might be healing by now. He couldn't change the fact that though he had tried, he couldn't help her. He'd grieved. He was grieving still.

But he couldn't get past the thought that grabbed at him every time he attempted to move forward—the relentless idea that there had been more to Lynn's hopelessness than hormones, more than the overwhelming responsibility of raising a child.

Behind him the couple's laughter lifted, and he sensed them moving away. Off to sway together, to nudge each other at the sight of some weirdly dressed teenager or an outlandish tattoo. Off to share a life.

If he just walked off, too, couldn't he live with this uncertainty? He'd coached enough hurting people through their pain to know a person could handle anxiety and be productive at the same time . . .

He'd tried that. Insanity, someone had said, was doing the same thing the same way, and expecting different results.

Still avoiding the sight of the water, Sully looked farther eastward. LP stadium filled the riverfront, the gigantic, red, twistedmetal piece of art in front of it the only reference to the eyesore industrial buildings that once tangled the view. To the west, the flat expanse of vintage buildings had been given a face-lift, and a tiny train depot had sprung up, housing a passenger train unheard-of when Sully and Lynn lived there. All the ugliness had been swept away, except what ran below him.

Sully forced his eyes open until he finally stared down into the river. The green-brown Cumberland was still littered with the detritus of nature. It still ate away at the shore and exposed the naked roots of its trees. No city redevelopment program could remove this ugliness. He loathed it with a hatred that grabbed him and shook him in a long spasm of grief that didn't end.

Maybe it never would. That was enough to push him over the railing himself, down to where her last living thoughts still dwelled at the bottom. It had swallowed up the people he loved—and he wanted them back.

Sully leaned both arms on the railing again, tilting himself over the water, feet on the concrete base. The flier floated away and down, and the bright letters printed across its top shouted at him.
JUMP.

He could. He could hurl himself through the hundred feet of air to that heinous river and sink to where Lynn's thoughts lay at the bottom. JUMP and search through the junk and the silt that had piled on top of those thirteen years.

Sully sagged, head to the railing. Search and find nothing—because Lynn's thoughts were lost to him forever. She and she alone knew why she'd done it. She'd taken that secret with her. It must have been more than she could tell him.

Or perhaps more than he could hear.

Sully froze. Could that be what she'd left in the river—the part of it that had been his fault?

He stepped back from the railing, stumbling on the concrete. That was enough for now. Maybe enough for forever. Because if he himself had pushed Lynn off this bridge—that was a guilt he might never recover from.

Sully glanced at his watch. He could make it back to Porphyria by midnight, before too much darkness led him back to this place alone in his mind. He maneuvered around a knot of people and pointed himself toward the west end of the bridge.

“Excuse me. Aren't you Sullivan Crisp?”

Who around here still knew his name? He was tempted to pretend he didn't hear, but the insistence in the female voice and the turning of every head within three yards of him would have made that pretty conspicuous.

Sully turned to the voice, which oozed from behind a table at a booth. It belonged to a thirty-fiveish woman with hair a shade of red that didn't occur in nature, and eyes a green that didn't either. Everything about her looked enhanced, so that she seemed a hundred watts brighter than her natural self.

“You
are
Sullivan Crisp,” she said, as if she were teasing at him to deny it.

She put out both hands, and Sully had to move toward her and put his hand between them.

“You caught me,” he said.

“I have been wanting to meet you for so long,” she said.

Sully tried to grin. “It should only take you about two minutes to get over that.”

The woman laughed, not surprisingly louder and longer than his comment deserved. Make that a hundred and fifty watts.

“I'm Roxanne Clemm.” She pointed to the banner above the booth. “I'm with WTBG-TV in Mount Juliet. It's our local Christian station.”

“Right. I'm familiar with it. You folks do some good work.”

It was an excellent Christian cable station. They'd interviewed Sully eight years ago, when he first started out. A small tongue of anxiety licked at him. The next thing out of her mouth was probably going to be an invitation.

“Sonia said you were coming—she just didn't know when.”

Sully stopped midway into withdrawing his hand. “Sonia Cabot?” “Abundant Living has some of their offices at the station—but of course our friendship goes deeper than that.” She squeezed his fingers. “From what she's said about you, it's just like you to be here for her homecoming.”

Sully felt his left eyebrow go up. “She's coming back to Nashville already?”

“Tomorrow. You didn't know?”

“I had no idea.” As much as he wanted to pry himself away, Sully leaned on the table with his palms. “I have to say I'm surprised.”

“I'm not. Her faith is remarkable, but then, you know that. Did you want to fill out a card?”

She was talking to a bulky, faded man who'd wandered near Sully's elbow.

“If you have something you would like for us to pray for at WTBG,” she purred to him, “you just fill it in here. Then check whether you want me to pray for you on the air—that way all our viewers can join us.”

It would have been the perfect moment to make tracks for the car, but Sully waited. It wasn't completely out of the question that this Roxanne Clemm would know Sonia, but whether she had the inside scoop on her was something else. There was just no way Sonia could already be out of the hospital, unless everything he'd read about her injuries had been an exaggeration.

“You watch my show tomorrow morning, sir,” Roxanne said to the older guy. “I promise you'll hear me praying for you.”

Sully wondered if the man in the battered dress slacks owned a television, but he nodded soberly and moved off.

Roxanne turned back to Sully. “Well, it is just the work of the Holy Spirit that you're here in Nashville now, Dr. Crisp.”

“What hospital will Sonia be in?”

The red head shook, as did a pair of gold fish with tiny diamond eyes that dangled from Roxanne's earlobes. “She's going home. They've set up a whole rehab situation for her there. I always think people recover faster in their own environment, don't you? And this way, she'll be able to get ready for her next appearance without all those interruptions.”

“Appearance?”

“She was scheduled for a women's event in Indianapolis next month before this happened, and she's still going. Now,
that
is a God-thing.” She pressed her hand on his. “I am loving watching the Lord at work in this. I just wish her board was more supportive.”

She gave his hand a pat before she moved hers. Sully stuck his in his pocket.

“Sonia said you're praying about that,” she said.

“Oh, I'm praying for her.” Praying that she wouldn't lose her mind before he had a chance to talk to her.

“Will you let me tell our production manager you're here in town?” Roxanne said. “I don't want to presume, of course.”

“What time did you say she gets in?”

“Noon. We're all meeting at her place.” Her face lit up another fifty watts. “Won't you come on and be there? That would be a wonderful surprise for Sonia.”

You are not responsible for every human being on the face of this
earth, Dr. Crisp,
Sully could hear Porphyria saying.

“What's her address?” he said.

“Bless your heart.” Roxanne grabbed a pen.

No, he wasn't responsible for Sonia. But he did have an obligation to at least tell her she was making a mistake—the same one he'd made for thirteen years. What she did after that was up to God.

“Where are you staying?” Roxanne said. “I can give you directions.”

“I'll look it up on MapQuest,” Sully said. “Listen, thanks a lot.”

He got away before she could manhandle his hand again. He hoped there were more hotel rooms in Nashville than there were parking places.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

E
arly Saturday morning, while Marnie checked Sonia out, Nurse Kim plowed me into Lounge A.

It was empty again. The flowers and the pinkness and the heaps of fruit and bagels were gone, though I could almost hear the echoes of Southern female voices blessing each other's hearts.

Nurse Kim tucked a slip of paper into my hand. “The name of an excellent physical therapist in Nashville,” she said.

And then she sank into the recliner, the first defeated thing I had ever seen her do.

“I do not like this,” she said.

I sat gingerly on the edge of another chair. “Sonia leaving?”

“Sonia leaving when she has not even begun to deal with the emotional trauma. She will not look at herself in a mirror. She will not talk about her pain.” Kim's almond-eyes narrowed even further. “She will not admit she has pain.”

I nodded. Sonia wouldn't go to physical therapy. She'd barely eat. She'd been occupying herself with plans for her return to Nashville. And, watching Marnie skitter to and fro, phone in her ear, BlackBerry in her hand, two wrinkles resembling an eleven permanently etched between her eyebrows, I was at least glad I didn't have her job.

“And you will not either,” Kim said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You will not look at your own pain.”

“I'm fine.”

“No, you are not. And now you will go far away to take care of her, away from any support you have here.”

She looked around as if she were trying to find it, since it certainly hadn't manifested itself since I'd been there.

“You must find someone you can talk with about this.”

And that would help how? Would whining to somebody change any of the circumstances that had me chasing myself around in a circle?

Nurse Kim gave a sigh that put my mother's legendary martyred breathing to shame. She put a tiny finger to my forehead and closed her eyes. “Take care,” she said. “Take care of what is deep inside.” When she was gone, I was hit with a wave of homesickness I couldn't afford to feel.

The air-conditioning in Porphyria's Buick wasn't fully operational, and Sully was sweating like a prizefighter when he pulled up behind the line of TV station vans. Their occupants, and the clumps of people gathered on the street side of a line of police tape, were all in various states of heat prostration, as far as Sully could tell. Clothes clung to clammy backs, and perspiration flattened hair to foreheads. Nobody, not even the group holding up a banner that read
WE ARE PRAYING FOR AN ABUNDANT MIRACLE
, was without a water bottle.