Song of Renewal (34 page)

Dr. Blair, the silent female, looked at her for long moments before she followed her associate from the room, something at once sad and speculative in her gaze, as though she felt torn about something. Angel watched her go, fighting anger and, worse, desperation.

Mama and Daddy came in a few minutes later, scattering the smog of desolation with their affectionate, upbeat banter. Daddy dress-rehearsed her home-going by doing the dove flight, his final choice of words to label the chair-to-bed-andback transport.

“We’re going to go grab a bite of dinner in the hospital cafeteria,” Mama said, winking. “I need a break from kitchenduty. We’ve been busy in the upstairs – ” At Daddy’s loud throat clearing, she stopped and waved a hand. “Never mind.”

“Mama!” Angel whined. “What aren’t you telling me? You know I …h-hate surprises.”

Liza reached out her finger to tap Angel’s nose. “Little snoop. You hate
not knowing
what the surprises are. Too bad, kiddo.” Then she dropped a kiss on Angel’s wheat-streaked crown. “We’ll be back in a few minutes. Need anything?”

Angel shook her head and watched them go, feeling their warmth leave with them. She despised that hateful little dark cloud that hovered overhead, stalking, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce and swallow her up.

She looked out the window for a while, letting the peace of white frothy clouds and infinite blue soak into her. Still – it wasn’t enough. Uneasiness oozed through her, puzzling and alarming her.

“Angel?” She was surprised to see Dr. Blair, the pretty psychologist who’d earlier assisted Dr. Carlsbad, appear suddenly inside her door

“Nobody is to know I’m talking to you,” the doctor said quietly. Then, rather furtively, she looked outside the door both ways before approaching Angel’s chair and pulling up and taking a seat to face her.

Resolutely, she began speaking. “Three years ago, I had a stroke. I lay exactly where you are and was told by the ‘specialists’ that I would never walk, much less practice medicine again.”

Her smile was quick and rueful. “I listened to Dr. Carlsbad earlier – tamping down your hope. He means well and thinks he’s doing the right thing. That’s what we’re taught about dealing with cases such as yours. I know all the lectures against offering false hope.”

She took Angel’s hand in hers. “But I’ve been on the side you’re on and I know how devastating it is for you to hear that you must accept never getting better.” She huffed and shook her head. “Imagine. One has not a clue unless they sit where you sit. Because I’ve been there, I understand your anger and frustration. I just want you to take a good look at me and know that
there is hope
. It took a lot of determination and guts to stare down and defy the naysayers hovering about me when I lay so helpless and desperate. But I did it.”

Angel felt tears pushing behind her eyes and her throat tightening. Excitement, so alien to her in recent days, trickled through her as the words and their implications connected. “You mean – ?” Angel’s gaze probed the kind features, feeling
herself wondrously tethered to support and empathy. From someone who’d actually overcome all odds to reclaim all she’d lost.

A medical person, no less.

Hot dog
!

Dr. Blair’s lovely full lips slid into a smile and her hazel, compassion-pooled eyes glowed. “I mean you can do it, too. At least give it all you’ve got. You told Dr. Carlsbad you feel a tingling at times? Then go with it. Where there’s life, there’s hope. That’s not just a cliché.”

She stood. “And Angel – there
are
miracles.”

Her hand reached to take Angel’s cold fingers, gently squeezing them. “Remember, we never had this conversation.”

Angel nodded and swiped away a tear.

With that, Dr. Blair turned and walked purposely away. Angel watched her dark cloud of curly, bobbed hair above a white lab coat vanish through the doorway. In her wake sizzled a brand-spanking-new
expectancy.

Angel gazed out the window into the clear blue sky, whose frothy clouds reached out and reminded her of something. She closed her eyes, her mind reaching back in time…for something profound. Then, in a heartbeat, the scene from her coma-vision swooped in. From above, she looked upon the operating room – sawAngel lying there, not breathing. Then she saw the medical mask removed from the provocative, involved staff member – who turned out to be Angel.

There was a profound Presence with her, giving her strength. That same Presence gave Angel the power to revive herself.
She did it.

And Troy –

The tears welled again.
Dear God, Troy’s gone.

That gutting emptiness flooded her again, relentless, ripping and tearing at her.

Angel wept turbulently, off and on for hours after Mama and Daddy left but she did not fight it, knowing this grief must come before healing. She would survive her loss and heal – in time. She breathed a prayer of thanks.

And she knew. From all the heartache and pain would emerge the real Angel.

chapter eighteen

Angel dreamed of sitting on top of the snowy mist, legs dangling…it was a brilliant morning and she rode a cloud that reacted to her head’s slightest tilt, taking her in any direction she wanted to go. It was a panoramic, eagle’s-eye tour of her home and the forest oasis. Familiar places. She was absolutely intoxicated with the joy of being.

But then uneasiness began to intrude upon the euphoria, diluting…scattering…. Below, in the meadow leading into the green forest, stood Daddy smiling up at her with Mama by his side, wearing a long flowing skirt of blue chiffon. They watched her with intense pride radiating from their faces, one that smote her in a strange, perplexing way.

She inclined her head in another direction. The cloud veered to move placidly above the Bailey Dairy Farm, where Rocky Bailey sat astride his John Deere tractor, wiping sweat from his brow with his arm, overseeing grazing cows. When he looked up and saw Angel, he frowned for a long moment before sadness settled over his rugged features. Then June Bailey joined him. When he pointed, his wife spotted Angel and began to weep, turning her head away and pressing her face into her husband’s overalled chest.

Quickly, Angel navigated the tour-cloud toward the forest, rocking back and forth to expedite the movement…getting few results. Slowly, impatiently she approached the clearing above the lily pond. There the cloud upon which she sat stopped, hovering above the Love Tree with its etched names limned so clearly she could read every letter. A far shore, way beyond the lily pond yet clearly visible, caught Angel’s attention. It rose up into the sky, like the ocean from a distance, and the rise of it was laid with wildflowers of every color and description. The beauty and fragrance was like nothing she’d ever experienced and it pulled at her.

Then she saw him.

Troy.

Angel could hardly hold back a shriek of sheer joy. But somehow she knew that to do so would shatter the moment. In spite of that, she rocked and lurched to thrust the cloud forward…to Troy. She moved closer.

He stood tall and straight, wearing jeans and a hunter green Adidas knit pullover, his features more mature than she remembered. He stooped suddenly to ruffle Scrounger’s fur and was rewarded by a sound licking over his entire face.

A laugh of sheer ebullience spilled from Angel and she felt tears flood her eyes.

She renewed her efforts to thrust her cloud forward – “I’m coming, Troy!” – but all her lurching wouldn’t budge it this time.

“No, Angel!” He straightened to full height as his thoughts floated to her, soundless. “Stop. You don’t belong here.”

“Yes, Troy! I want to come!”

“You cannot come here.” The reprimand was soft. Kind. “It’s not meant to be. Don’t you see?”

“I’ve
got to
come, Troy. Don’t you understand? I
have to. It’s not fair!
” Her heart was thumping like a bass drum and her cottony tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Go back, Angel, and think about what you just said.”

Then the cloud began to disintegrate and the gray cocoon that had trussed her all those recent weeks began to move in and wrap around her, only now it was icy and wet and suffocating.

Angel began to struggle and flail and gasp for air.

She woke up fighting for her next breath, her face wet with tears. She sucked in a deep gulp of air and raised up on her elbows in bed, peering around the hospital room, now dark at her request. Still not proficient with changing positions, she lay back down and took deep breaths until her hammering pulse began to even out and her trembling body stilled.

Her eyes slowly acclimated to the darkness and she began to see the first silvery light of dawn filtering around the edging of her drapes. Still several hours before sunrise. Those were the hardest to deal with.

What had she said just before that?

She closed her eyes and tried to remember. The harder her effort, the more jumbled her thoughts grew. Try as she may, she could not relax back into slumber after the dream.

She tried to think of something good. Positive.

She thought of Penny. Her friend.

Angel had once enjoyed Penny’s company. But now, her desire to be alone superseded that.
Is that not totally catawampus?
She huffed in exasperation. From a gal who was supposed to love people. At least that’s what her parents had always called her: a real
people person.

Not now. She could spend the rest of her life alone. A genuine
Aye vant to be ah-lone
character. And no, it was so not funny.

Then suddenly, like a lighting flash, it came to her.

“
I’ve got to come, Troy. Don’t you understand? I have to. It’s not fair!”

When she realized what she’d said, she turned icy cold. The import of those words shook her to the bone.

She had a death wish
.

Angel did not talk about it, figuring her folks had enough to contend with these days. And the psychologists would think she was going off her rocker for sure if she really opened up to them.

She could not put it into words. It was too horrific.

Penny was the first to notice the change in Angel.

“Why are you so quiet?” she asked one day. “You seem so… distant.”

Angel cut her a so-what-else-is-new look?

“I mean, more than usual, Angel. You’re so
down.
Especially on yourself. I can’t believe you’re beatin’ yourself up this way – like not thinking you’re making enough progress.”

When Angel did not respond, she went on. “And it’s so not like you to stay in bed.”

“I’m tired,” Angel mumbled.

Angel had asked to be put back in bed today, saying she was worn-out. Which was absolutely true. She didn’t have the strength to breathe, much less to do agonizing exercises that were getting her absolutely nowhere.

Besides, she didn’t care anymore. She didn’t care about anything.

Outside her window, angry clouds wept while thunder growled and roared, a definite negative on this particular day. Storms had lately set loose some wild thing inside her, one that
jerked her around in some inexplicable way. The rain itself pushed some vile button inside her.

But it went beyond weather, this distraught feeling tugging and knotting her insides. Ravaging her mind. She couldn’t even joke that the lower half of her was spared the discomfort. Humor was playing hide-and-seek with her.

No. It was not exactly a physical thing. It
was
physical in that sound sleep had begun to evade her. More and more. And loss of appetite. But it encompassed more than flesh and blood and nerves and tendons and food and
blah blah blah
.

“You okay?” Penny persisted, sparking through Angel tiny fissures of annoyance at the intrusiveness.

“I’m good,” she muttered to Penny, then closed her eyes. “I really don’t need you to stay.”

A long moment of silence stretched. “You don’t want me here?” Penny sounded hurt.

“It’s not that,” Angel murmured listlessly – flat, like she felt. “I’m just not great to be a-around…right now.” How she hated her halting, pathetic speech. “Don’t really feel…like talking. Y’know? Sorta…need to be alone.”

How her emotions shrieked and screamed for solitude.

Penny stood abruptly. “I’ll leave,” she said rather sharply, snatching up her purse.

“Please don’t…be mad.” Angel spoke to Penny’s stiff, retreating back, yet she knew her words carried no conviction. No remorse for offending her.

Penny swiveled to face her, eyes over-bright, wounded. “No problem,” her voice quavered, broke. “Just call me when you need me.” With that she turned and fled.

Angel covered her face for long moments, hating herself, wishing she could cry, wishing she could feel
something
but for some reason, the flatness in her lay like cement, drying and
soaking up any kind of emotional release from the wretchedness that was
her
.