Song of Renewal (27 page)

“Not today,” Angel whispered, squatting down to reach out and gently touch the straggly brow.

“Don’t,” Troy cautioned. Angel jerked her hand back. She’d never been particularly attracted to the dark-haired, muscular Troy, who lived on the dairy farm bordering their land. He’d always tended farm animals.
Goes with the territory
, she figured.

But today, armed with a near hypnotic intensity as his dark eyes surveyed the canine patient, he seemed more – provocative. From the black tangle of mangy hair heaped on the concrete floor, equally obsidian, glazed eyes seemed to plead in some way. In pain, the animal looked vulnerable. Terrified.

“He’s already gnawed my arms to smithereens after I loosened the blanket,” muttered Troy. “Just instinct.”

Angel gasped at the multiple bite wounds scattered over Troy’s sun-bronzed hands and arms. “He probably won’t bite you. He’s too weak now to lash out,” he added sympathetically.

Angel dashed for the first aid kit in the storage room and cared for Troy’s wounds, disinfecting and wrapping them with a gauze dressing. But he grew anxious to get back to tending the animal. Something in the way his hands moved over the dog to check injuries, gentle...kind…twanged a chord inside Angel, one that bonded them in mutual love for helpless creatures.

She looked more closely at the dog. “That’s the mutt who scrounges in our garbage,” she said softly, almost reverently, because suddenly, the dog was something besides a pest. He seemed, in his dying condition, to have a soul behind those pitiful dark eyes. Pain rendered him somehow – dignified.

In the next breath, the dog rolled over and struggled to pull his useless legs behind him toward the lily pond. “He’s thirsty,” they said in unison. Angel rushed to get a bowl from the storage room and dashed to fill it with clear, cool water. She set it before the animal and murmured, “Here, Scrounger. Here’s some water, boy.”

Troy chuckled and cocked his eyebrow. “Scrounger?”

She grinned. “Yeah. It suits him, don’t you think?”

Troy’s head rolled back in laughter. “Yeah. It does.”

Later, Mama and Daddy came down to view the injured, failing Scrounger. Mama was sympathetic, but her distaste was evident. “He can’t come to the house,” she said apologetically. Angel couldn’t blame Mama, because Scrounger did smell to high heaven.

So the two teens kept watch there beside the lily pond. Scrounger made two more attempts to pull himself to the pond while the two of them rooted him on, praying for him to rally. Angel’s breath would heave as he struggled, his courage astounding her. But exhaustion and pain aborted his feeble, valiant attempts and they brought the water bowl to his mouth and lifted his head for him to lap the liquid.

The last time, he refused to drink.

Angel and Troy combined efforts to make the dog comfortable and be there in his final moments. In the wee hours, lying on each side of Scrounger’s blanket, the teens dozed. Angel was the first to awaken as dawn scattered the night. “He’s gone,” she whispered. Together, they mourned the dog that never had anything going for him. That nobody wanted. Yet – they’d both seen something redeemable behind those brave eyes and their hearts broke that, in life, he didn’t ever get a helping hand.

“I’ve always wanted to be a veterinarian,” Troy said in a choked voice. “I want to help animals like Scrounger.”

“Please, Troy,” she said, touching his arm, “carve ‘Scrounger’ on the Love Tree…so his courage will be remembered.” Then shyly she added, “You can add your name, too, if you like.”

A mist dropped over the scene. Darkness encroached as Angel reached out and they embraced in mutual grief.

Blackness swallowed her again. She floated and swirled through what felt like a tunnel.

The cocoon was no longer welcome and she willed the movement to continue…she didn’t want to connect with the cocoon.

Darkness scattered and daylight filtered through a window…in Troy’s den, she saw a ceramic figure in a pet catalogue. “It’s Scrounger!” she said to Troy. “Only prettier. I want it.” she sighed wistfully. “To remember him by. I don’t ever want to forget Scrounger. I want to remember his courage.”

Grayness…another night flashed past…in the car, on the way to the concert…Troy held Angel’s hand as they drove through the evening rain.

“I’ve got you a present,” he announced proudly.

She squealed. “Where is it?”

“No, no,” he said. “You’ll get it in a day or two. Patience, my darlin’.”

Darkness swallowed Angel again…then she began to float…sunlight glimmered through for a moment before it dimmed and shadows began to fall all about her.

Nonono
. She tried to speak but felt herself lifted higher and higher from being. Blackness began to wrap around her again, tightening, the cocoon growing firm and familiar….

The decision was a difficult one.

Charlcy was the first to remember, when she saw the date on her cell phone screen. “Oh my gawd, today’s Pops’ birthday.”

She, Liza, Garrison, and faithful Penny held vigil at Angel’s bedside on that beautiful August day. The sun outside was mercilessly cheerful in the face of the invisible, encroaching darkness that hovered, at times so closely that Liza felt she would suffocate.

Angel’s condition hung in peril. Dr. Abrams, by now on quite familiar terms with the Wakefields, knew that they felt torn about leaving their daughter during daylight. Especially now in this time of critical wait and see.

“This is a special occasion for you folks. It will mean a lot to your father to have you there. And it won’t hurt for you to be away for a couple of hours. Angel is closely monitored around the clock, so she’s in good hands.” Dr. Abrams smiled, a rare thing. “Please? It will refresh you for the hours to come. Doctor’s orders.”

“Go ahead,” Penny urged them. “I’m already here, and if anything changes in the next couple of hours, I’ll call you. I promise. Scout’s honor.” She raised a militant hand, cracking everybody up, albeit it tight laughter, expunging a bit of the understandable strain. “You need some time to chill out, folks.”

“Yeah,” Charlcy agreed with Penny and the doctor. “We’re no help to Angel like this, tied up in knots like a lassoed steer.”

So, feeling ganged up on, Liza and Garrison consented.

On the drive over, Charlcy asked, “Can you tell a difference in Pops lately?”

Liza replied, “I’ve seen a marked improvement in him since Dr. Jones switched him from Razadyne to Aricept.”

“How long will it be effective?” Charlcy asked from the backseat. “I’ve not had a chance to speak with the good doctor.”

“Well, I asked Dr. Jones about the best case scenario. He said that it postpones the worsening of symptoms in about half the cases for perhaps a year.”

“I’m knocking on wood that Pops is among that fifty percent.”

“We need to attach some prayers to the wood-banging,” Liza added.

“So he’s responded well so far?” Garrison asked, slamming on his brakes to avoid a too-close-for-comfort cut-in
motorcyclist. “Road hog,” he muttered. “His coffin’s already been made. He’s not even wearing a danged helmet.”

Liza ignored the Hells Angels wannabe. She was loathe to desecrate this time by fretting or fuming over trivia. It was a sacrifice leaving Angel, but she knew in her heart it was the right thing to do in this instance. “So far, so good. The staff members say he’s had fewer wild-blue-yonder episodes. Says he’s more often – you know – the old Charlie.”

“Good for Pops,” Garrison murmured huskily.

They stopped off at a Publix bakery and got lucky. A double-sheet birthday cake sat in the glass case unclaimed. An ocean of white buttercream frosting swathed and oozed from it. “Can we buy that?” Liza asked hopefully.

“Sure can. The lady who ordered it called before I finished decorating and said an emergency came up and to sell it if we needed to. What do you want added?”

From two tubes, the baker quickly squeezed perfectly round blue and yellow icing balloons across each fluffy white corner. Then he meticulously added streamers and, in the very center, bold red letters proclaiming “Happy Birthday Pops!”

“We need seventy-five candles.” Charlcy took off to the appropriate shelf and grabbed several boxes. “
Holy Toledo
, we’re gonna cause a bonfire when these are lit.” She grinned like a mad scientist. “That’ll be the day’s highlight, won’t it?”

She tossed them in the shopping cart then paused, fingers pressed to her lips. “Let’s see – we need something to torch these with.” She jogged back and grabbed a box of matches and added it to the cart.

They all congratulated the baker on his superb, swift artistic adornment, paid at the register, loaded it all into the Jag’s trunk and headed for Concord Place Assisted Living Facility.

There, Charlcy sneaked the cake into the kitchen staff’s care with instructions for later festivities to which all residents were invited.

Liza intercepted a newer staff member and looked at her name tag. “We’d like to see Charlie. He’s probably at recreation right now. Would you bring him out to the sunroom, please?”

“Sure thing.”

Liza, Garrison, and Charlcy breathed a collective sigh of relief that they’d accomplished setting a special event in place to honor Pops. In less than an hour. And Liza was amazed that she’d not had the time to dwell on Angel’s precarious hold on life for that span.

One minute at a time.
She reminded herself that this sentiment had gotten her through hell and back.

They waited on the near-deserted, parquet-floored sunporch, a beautiful window-enclosed wing with wall-to-wall rocking chairs. In each corner, live, riotous-colored basketed flowers draped from the ceiling. Central air conditioning hummed and spread the entire sunlit area with comfortable coolness.

Awed by the gorgeous, unexpected burst of nature, Liza left her chair and moved to one trailing bloom, reaching out to touch a dewy petal.

“
Ah ah
!” piped a strident, piercing voice.

Startled by the sharp, reverberating reprimand, Liza spun around to see a dried up female-gnome, sans false teeth, perched militantly on the edge of her frozen rocker in a far corner.

Attack mode
. Liza could almost hear battle trumpets blaring.

Deep-set black, accusing eyes blazed at her as the woman’s entire persona drew up into a knot of righteous indignation. “Don’t touch ‘em. You do not touch the flowers again! Ever.”

All three of them stared unbelievingly at the dried-apple, rage-contorted features. A white knitted cap stretched over a small skull and a mismatched shawl tightly trussed humped,
emaciated shoulders. Stick legs poked from beneath wrinkled, nondescript clothing, disappearing into fuzzy pink mules. Liza, Garrison, and Charlcy gazed at each other with raised brows then, as one, shrugged.

“Sure thing, sweetie.” Charlcy smiled placatingly until the ancient sentinel folded back into herself and commenced rocking again.

Liza let out a breath of respite and sank into the nearest cushioned seat. Liza noted that the trio’s earlier levity at the Publix bakery had taken flight, extinguished by the patient’s bizarre departure from conventional behavior. It was a grim reminder of reality. One that jolted and jarred loose fears tucked and hidden away.

And unevoked, Angel’s presence hung in the air like a cathedral bell’s toll. It mingled with the uncertainty of what Liza would find here today. She forced her mind in more positive directions.
Dad is alive.
That was something to be thankful for.

Liza lolled her head back against the chair’s padded headrest. She inhaled deeply, thankful for the cleanness of the facility. No cloying chemical fumes to cover urine/fecal odors assailed visitors here. The setting was in a quiet country atmosphere. They even let her dad use his own furniture.

“We need to change Pops’ dried flower arrangement in his room,” Charlcy said, as though reading Liza’s thoughts. “It’s been there since the
Mayflower
.”

“Yes,” Liza replied. “I’m glad they allow us to furnish his room. It lets Dad be surrounded by the familiar.”

“That’s important to a man,” Garrison agreed, folding and laying the
Spartanburg Herald
aside. Clasping hands across his abdomen, he began to rock serenely.

“To everybody, actually,” Liza added. “It’s essential to hang on to a bit of one’s self in these situations. Dad always loved his
flowers and these beautifully landscaped grounds would have to be a gift to him on his good days.”

Their dad’s facility unit housed residents more dependent upon assistance, who could not do certain things for themselves, such as bathing, dressing, toilet, and even feeding in many cases. Strategic entries and exits remained locked for patients’ safety.

So far, Charlie could tend to himself on most critical levels, but there were times when his lapses to
otherness
sabotaged his autonomy. He’d only recently been demoted to the current unit, where freedom of behavior shrank.