Reclaiming Lily (35 page)

Sounds of MRA business-as-usual seeped under the door, yet Kai ignored them in her urge to talk to the God she did not understand. “I do not know how to communicate. I do know that I need help. Please continue to smile on the life of my dear Lily.” Would the Christian God mind if she used Fourth Sister’s given name when they talked? “Please be with Gloria. Andrew.” Tears clogged Kai’s mouth and nose, yet if this God was as compassionate as others said, surely He would not mind tears. “Please protect Ling and Mei from PKD.”

As she wiped her eyes, she remembered the way Cheryl and Andrew and the Powells finished their prayers. “Amen.”

24

It’s so hard to hurry up and wait.
Gloria, Andrew, and Joy sat in leather club chairs arranged before historical harbor prints hanging on a wall painted cool blue. A sailboat model rested on a massive oak desk. Built-in bookcases were filled with everything from classics to anatomy texts. Stirring music poured from hidden speakers. The usual diplomas, announcing Dr. David Cabot’s qualifications, hung near the door.

Andrew settled into his chair and sighed contentedly. If he was worried about Joy’s heart, he didn’t show it.

“Wonder what the delay is.”

Gloria squeezed Andrew’s hand, glad he’d filled silence with small talk. As always, Andrew intuited her thoughts. “Even us VIPs have to wait.”

Joy smacked grape gum. “That’s not the point! They got us in for my tests on, like, a few hours’ notice.” A purple bubble burst. “Y’all wouldn’t believe their schedule!” Joy sucked gum into her mouth. “Kai visits Mass Gen twice a day. Last night she even
prayed
with her patients.”

Lightning bolts shot up Gloria’s arms. She opened her mouth to ask questions, but Joy had gone off on a tangent about a boy who’d handed her his Walkman. A boy . . .

“Was his name Johnny?” burst out of Gloria.

Another bubble popped. “How did you know?”

“I prayed for him yesterday at lunch.”

“Hmm.” It was classic Joy, scrutinizing her . . . and her motives. “That’s cool.”

Suddenly prayer’s cool?
Gloria couldn’t help but remember pouty Joy, makeup coarsening her features, filthy words spewing from her mouth at the mention of church.
Though we’re at the doctor’s, waiting for more results, I’m glad we’ve gone through this.

Gloria and Joy traded smiles.
God used Kai to change us. Perhaps God will use us to change Kai.

A man with freckled skin and a reddish-brown mop of hair entered the room. He had a lanky build, like Dr. Duncan, Kai’s associate. Handsome too.

“Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Powell. I’m David Cabot.” He shook hands with Andrew, nodded at Gloria. “Joy, nice to see you again. Sorry to keep you guys waiting.”

“Are you kidding?” Andrew drawled in his easy way. “They even offered us tea.”

“Glad to hear it.” Dr. Cabot smoothed his East Coast accent with soft-toned gentility, then pulled a chair from near the window and moved it next to Andrew’s seat. He handed a file to Gloria before he sat down. “Here’s Joy’s original file. MRA said it was yours.” An easy smile lit up a chiseled face. “It sure helped me get an overview.”

“Kai had me bring it. She’s been amazing.”

The fine cheekbones hollowed, as if her words had pained him. Was it her imagination, or did his mouth droop as well? Gloria studied him curiously as he sat down, paper in hand. Perhaps Kai and this doctor had had a run-in. Gloria tapped her shoe. Waiting had revved her already hyperactive imagination.

Dr. Cabot yanked reading glasses from his coat pocket and jammed them haphazardly onto his nose, giving him a lopsided look. A smile replaced his dazed expression. “Well, young lady. Your blood work came back normal. Ditto the stress test and echocardiogram.” He arched his shoulders and leaned close, like he was sharing a good secret. “I went through Dr. Carlson’s file and noted a fluctuation in your pressures.” The paper was thrust at Joy, who snatched it up as if it were a treasure map.

“As you guys know, this morning her BP was close to normal.” Now Dr. Cabot addressed them all. “With no presenting symptoms, I’m not ready to do a heart cath.” The file shut. “Let’s monitor things. Wait it out. My guess? Joy has a healthy, normal heart.”

Gloria felt her body sag in relief. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Praise the Lord!” came from Andrew. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Dr. Cabot nodded. “All glory to Him.”

Andrew’s face glowed, as it always did when God connected him with Christian brothers in unexpected venues.

Gloria glanced at Joy, who was still poring over her test results, and decided to risk her daughter’s usual reaction. “So you are a believer?”

“Yes.” A pensive look captured gray-blue eyes. “I accepted Christ while at Harvard.”

Joy’s head jerked as if she had been slapped. Her eyes blazed with curiosity and narrowed, surely calibrating and filing this new data. “How do you explain contradictions between science and faith?” Her leg bounced wildly, though her usual eye rolls and snorts had been left at home.

Gloria gulped air. God was at work in Joy, just like Kai.

A gentle smile made Dr. Cabot killer handsome. “Before I believed, God spoke to me through the complexities of the creatures I dissected in biology labs.” He chuckled in a self-deprecating way. “I know, I know. It sounds sick.”

“No!” Joy cried, and then slumped in her chair. “I mean, I get it.”

“So you’re a science geek too!”

“Yeah . . . kinda.” Joy shrugged, as if disinterested. The gleam in her eyes said otherwise.

“It’s not just science where He speaks to me. I hear His rhythms in etudes, nocturnes . . . even jazz.” Dr. Cabot drummed his knee. “As to reconciling science and faith, I leave that to Him. Who can fathom His complexities? Yet I trust Him with them . . . and with my life.”

“How can a loving God allow suffering? Stuff y’all deal with every day?” Yearning to know arched Joy’s back, tremored her mouth.

Gloria and Andrew exchanged glances. Joy had sat through at least a dozen sermons on this very topic.

Dr. Cabot laced his fingers and rested them on his knee. “In this world you will have trouble.” The Yankee voice boomed strong. “It is the path man chose, the path God allowed. It is a mystery, Joy. I understand your questions. But don’t let questions blind you to God’s goodness and mercy. New with every patient who walks in here. New with every experimental drug. New with discoveries on horizons we never imagined.”

Joy sat transfixed, as if she were hearing the words for the first time. Perhaps her heart had been opened to
hear
for the first time.

A pager attached to Dr. Cabot’s belt beeped. After studying it, he got to his feet. “Thanks for the chance to see your daughter.” He shook hands with Andrew and Gloria, stepped close to Joy, and shook her hand. “You’re a carbon copy of Kai.”

Joy beamed and then asked, “You know her?”

Did that jaw again tighten? “Yes” came out husky. “Tell her I said hello, okay?” A tic worked in his cheek.

He knows Kai.
Gloria continued to study the doctor’s face and reconsidered the motive behind their VIP treatment today.
Are they friends? More than friends?

“Keep digging . . . into lab manuals and the Bible. God can use you, Joy.”

Though Joy didn’t nod, a smile crept to the corners of her mouth.

They left the L&A offices and sailed, carefree, into a lovely spring day. Andrew pulled her close, Joy moseyed ahead. As pedestrians veered about them on the busy Boston street, questions flitted though Gloria’s mind. How had Dr. Cabot known that Kai and Joy were sisters? Maybe it was in the referral. Still, something told Gloria those two had more in common than medicine.

It has been a day to forever remember . . . and long to forget
. As Kai prepared to leave the office, her cell phone rang. Sure that it was the Powells, confirming dinner plans, she dug in her handbag, shuffled files on her desk, and finally tracked the ring to her lab-coat pocket. Breathless, she grabbed it and flipped the cover. “Hello. Hello?”

“Kai.” The voice of heart doctor David sent
her
heart into crazy rhythms. “Kai?”

It is about Joy.
Breathing raggedly, Kai backtracked to her chair, all the while listening to the lovely voice saying her name.
If ever I needed a heart doctor, it is now
.

“Yes, David.”

“Are you all right?”

No, I am not all right, David. In a hundred ways, I am not all right
. “I could not find the phone, David. I apologize.”

“No problem. No problem.” Kai fought a desire to tell David everything that was happening, including encounters with PKD . . . and God.

“I . . . I just wanted to let you know. Your sister’s gonna be fine.”

Fine!
Kai’s face crumbled with relief. Of all the doctors in L&A, David had seen Joy. Miracle? She struggled to hold her composure . . . and the phone.
Joy is fine!
Her intuition had whispered such, but intuition didn’t equal squiggly echocardiogram patterns and stress-test results. “Thank you for calling.” Pressure in her chest had returned . . . and strangled more talk. Besides, what could she say? That she missed him? That she faced a devastating diagnosis and needed him more than ever?

“Well . . .” David cleared his throat as he did when he was uncomfortable. This was unfamiliar territory. Fresh tears gathered in her eyes. She hated making him feel like this! “I just wanted to let you know.”

She begged her voice to function. “Thank you, David,” she eked out, “for seeing her on such short notice.”

“Kai?”

Kai tried to say
yes
, but the word garbled.

“She has your eyes. Your inquiring mind. She’s something else. Like you.”

Something else. But not enough for a heart doctor
. Again she thanked David, slammed shut that phone, his first gift, and let it
thunk
onto the floor. She laid her head on her desk and tried to pray to the Christian God.

Sadness and anger thwarted her efforts. Sighing, she rose from her chair, picked up her cell, found her bag, turned off the light, and left the office.

Gentle sniffles. Jowl-rattling snores. The beautiful sleep music of her Joy and Andrew, though how they could manage such slumber on full stomachs was beyond Gloria, who pushed back her covers and tiptoed to the hotel love seat.

Plush fabric cushioned her. She basked in the memory of the four of them, having another celebration, Italian-style. They’d passed steaming platters of fettuccine Alfredo, spaghetti with clam sauce. Andrew had prayed, Joy had laughed, she had snapped pictures, Kai—

Gloria sat up straight. Kai had barely eaten, had managed wan smiles. Having been there, done that, Gloria recognized someone troubled in spirit. With resolve, Gloria found her Bible.

The heater whirred as her family snoozed. Finally her weathered volume closed. Gloria moved to the hotel window and parted thick drapes. Someone walked a dog. Revelers hollered. Taxis honked.
I’m not the only one sleepless in Boston
.

Though she’d read Scripture and prayed, worry about Kai persisted. Perhaps a spiritual battle? A relationship problem? Dr. Cabot? Gloria smothered a yawn. Andrew would say it was her imagination, working on Eastern Standard Time. Andrew was probably right.

Gloria picked up her things and moved them to the hotel desk.

There lay Joy’s file, the report from Dr. Cabot on top. Gloria skimmed the numbers, which meant nothing to her except, “Quit worrying about your daughter’s heart.” She thumbed through Joy’s chart to file Dr. Cabot’s report chronologically.

Two papers stuck together. She pried them loose. Stared at a Radiology report. Kai’s name jumped out . . . as a patient. Gloria blanched. Kept reading.

Radiology Report, 4/20/97

Dr. Paul Duncan, MRA

Patient: Chang Kaiping renal ultrasound exam

History: Family history, suspected PKD. Edema. High blood pressure.