Sweet Salt Air (43 page)

But that would only defer the inevitable. Her work was part of who she was.

That said, with Nicole gone, she made no pretense of sleeping alone. She stopped at the big white house each day, the caretaker of this, too, and though Leo often went with her, he wasn’t comfortable there. His own home was truly his castle; it was where he felt safe. And he had plenty to do. If he wasn’t studying e-book sales analytics, relaying lawyer-to-publisher new thoughts on the paperback release, or surfing the Web for marketing ops, he was removing summer storm debris from his roof or cleaning the boat. He seemed to have temporarily given up on
Next Book,
though she guessed it was in his mind as he walked around in the night, dressed in those long gym shorts or nothing at all. He got regular deliveries of other authors’ books and read while she slept, leaving whatever novel, memoir, or biography it was open and facedown on the bed. Always, he had breakfast ready when she woke.

Three weeks without Leo, three weeks back in the life she had known before him, three weeks with no guarantee he would want her when she returned—the fear never quite left her. And she
knew
he was feeling it, too. She could see it in his occasional lost look, and that, too, needled its way to her heart.

And then there was Bear, in some regards the more vocal of the two, who growled his way into a blissful purr when she rubbed the lean leg that he favored or stroked the silky spot on his brow. She had no idea how she could have ever thought him vicious. He was a softie, but an old one. She did worry about him—and about Leo come the day Bear died—and about herself if she learned of it after the fact.

Yes, Bear was definitely a player in her desire to stay, but so was the island. Quinnipeague in August was a lush green place where inchworms dangled from trees whose leaves were so full that the eaten parts were barely missed. Mornings meant
thick o’ fog
that caught on rooftops and dripped, blurring weathered gray shingles while barely muting the deep pink of
rosa rugosa
or the hydrangea’s blue. Wood smoke filled the air on rainy days, pine sap on sunny ones, and wafting through it all was the briny smell of the sea.

At Leo’s, still and always, the smell of herbs rose above. She would miss this, too.

No. Time didn’t crawl. It was slipping away with alarming speed.

*   *   *

Slipping away.
Nicole had thought the same words often of late. Memories of her father, communication with her mother, interest in food and clothes and even the cookbook—she was losing a grip on the familiar.

Part of it was leaving Quinnipeague with its link to her past.

Part of it was the silence on her mother’s end.

Part of it was spending hour upon hour at the hospital, where individuality gave way to utilitarian scrubs and sterile gowns.

Mostly, though, it was Julian, whose preoccupation had grown deeper since they landed in Chicago. Time and again, she found him staring blindly at the carpet, the window, or whatever TV was in view. When he opened his iPad, he was more apt to zone out on the home page than read any of the journals he had loaded there. He responded when she spoke, looking at her then, even smiling, but he didn’t initiate conversation on his own.

They offered Nicole a counselor.
Often harder on the family than the patient,
they said. But Nicole doubted that. Julian was suffering emotionally. She didn’t need a counselor to tell her he was terrified, but when she reminded him that he didn’t have to go ahead with this, he insisted he did. In her darkest private moments, she wondered if his slipping away from her was a prelude to what might be.

*   *   *

Friday morning, members of Hammon’s team did scans of Julian’s brain and spinal cord. Both tests were brief and noninvasive. The spinal tap that afternoon was more involved. He tolerated it well right up to the recovery, which required that he remain lying down for ninety minutes in the care of a nurse who was constantly asking—hovering,
nagging
—if he felt a headache or tingling or numbness.
I’m a doctor,
he finally snapped.
I know what to look for, thank you.
Nicole might have reminded him that the woman was only doing her job, that he demanded the same attentiveness from his own team, and that doctor-patients could be pains in the butt, if indulging him hadn’t been more important. Mercifully, there were no headaches, and the only tingling or numbness he felt were the same-old-same-old from his illness.

Saturday, after a morning of blood work, he began to drag—literally, his left foot worse than ever, though whether from MS or simply the enervating effect of giving so many vials of blood, Nicole didn’t know. But she couldn’t complain. Clearly, Mark wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He wanted to be sure that every one of Julian’s vital organs was functioning well before attempting something as risky as this transplant would be.

While the tests were being done, Nicole either sat in a nearby waiting room or stood alone in a corridor just beyond the room where Julian lay. And this waiting wasn’t so bad. Though she knew that each test inched the process forward, she was in a personal holding pattern, wherein Julian was alive as long as the testing went on. Moreover, the fact of others tending to him gave her a break, because if Hammon was the director of the event, she was its facilitator. She had a written schedule, a watch, and a mandate to keep track of where they had to be when and get them there on time. This was no small feat with Julian spacing out.

“Are you okay?” she asked him at first, but after a few days, it was more a statement of affection than a question demanding a response. No, he was not okay. He was on a train that was picking up speed, headed to a place none of them knew. He was physically shaky and increasingly tired. He missed seeing patients, worried about his kids, and couldn’t talk about any of it. She might have asked if
he
wanted to see a counselor, if she hadn’t known the answer. Her Julian prided himself on being self-contained. With Hammon’s team scrutinizing his every bodily function and the dignity he lost in the process, she couldn’t force him on this.

*   *   *

Sunday was a rest day. Hammon ordered it, and Julian was tired enough not to argue, but it did mean that he had idle time in a strange hotel with little to ward off unwelcome thoughts. While on Quinnipeague, he had kept in touch with people at work, albeit with declining frequency. They knew where he was now and why, and sent notes of encouragement. But his passion in life was working with patients. Since the satisfaction of that had been taken from him, contact with colleagues was only a reminder of what he missed.

Had he been stronger, Nicole would have taken him to the Art Institute. She had never seen the Modern Wing, though she had studied much of the art housed there and might have been able to distract them both by playing the docent.

But Hammon had suggested he catch up on sleep, and he seemed exhausted.

So, leaving him with the bedroom drapes drawn, she settled in the living room of the suite to catch up on work, which was a touchy subject itself, now that he was without his. But she did have a deadline, and her work was her joy.

Focusing on immediate experience, she blogged about defying convention by having eggs, sunny-side up, with bacon and wheat toast for dinner at the hotel restaurant the night before. She talked about what made organic eggs organic, how organic bacon differed from regular bacon, and where pork could be found that was antibiotic- and hormone-free.

When Julian continued to sleep, she turned to the cookbook. Charlotte had been sending files, both edited and new, but she hadn’t had the wherewithal to look at them until now. With that deadline only eleven days off, though, she read each file, made counteredits, and sent them back.
These are awesome,
she wrote in the accompanying note. Had she really not written those new chapter introductions herself? Hard to tell.
Did Michaela come through with the recipes we wanted?

She did,
Charlotte replied with barely a moment’s lag.
I sent them on to New York.

Why are you working today?

Same reason you are.

I doubt that. Unless Leo’s sleeping.

She sent off the last, wondering if Charlotte would answer. Leo’s name had been conspicuously absent from their notes, and it wasn’t that Nicole was fishing for information. But Charlotte had been unfailingly solicitous in the last few days, texting to ask about her, Julian, the tests. A small mention of Leo seemed only right.

Not sleeping. Reading Sue Grafton,
Charlotte wrote back as though discussing him was the most natural thing in the world.
He knows I want to get this done. Is Julian sleeping?

Out cold. Two days of tests did him in. At least they’re done. We get the results tomorrow. Hold your breath that Hammon doesn’t see a problem that will nix the trial.
Nix the trial, kill the hope, destroy stem cells that then could not be refrozen.
I lose sleep thinking about this.

Why?
Charlotte wrote back.
His liver was the only question, and those symptoms are gone. Hammon wouldn’t have come this far if he didn’t think Julian could go all the way. He’s still culturing the cells, right?

Right. They could be ready by Thursday. He’ll have to medicate Julian first, but if that goes okay, he’ll do the infusion Friday.
Her stomach turned at the thought. Five days until the reckoning.

Medicate how?

He’ll give him a chemo drug to suppress his immune system and lower the risk of rejection. The cells aren’t a perfect match, only four out of six, which is totally consistent with his being the father,
she added, lest Charlotte think anyone questioned that.
Hammon actually prefers a partial match like this. I’m not sure why. I know that if a baby inherits a genetic condition, his own cells won’t help him because they would carry that condition, so maybe with Julian, it’s the mismatched cells that hold the most hope. Hammon actually thinks T Reg cells may work with no matching at all, but at this stage, the FDA won’t let him use a total mismatch. They want the extra precaution.

She sent the note, thinking how much she knew about this and how little it mattered if the experiment went wrong. She had to be strong for Julian. But those dark private moments kept coming.

Her e-mail dinged again.
Is the Wi-Fi there good enough to handle a super big file?

Absolutely,
she wrote back, suddenly in desperate need of a lift.
E-mail marble macadamias, and I’ll eat every one.
Warm, soft, fragrant brownies would go a long way toward covering up the smell of hospital that had taken over her life.

Of course, Charlotte couldn’t e-mail brownies. Wondering what would be in a super big file that hadn’t already been sent, she waited for the computer to ding again. When it did, she found a photo album waiting. She caught her breath at the title.
Cecily Cole’s Garden.
Inside, one after another, were portraits of plants, some individual, some grouped into thick clusters of herbs and flowers, captioned left to right like guests at a party. Some were tall, some short, some broad of leaf, others narrow, some spiked, some feathered. They covered the spectrum of green, from olive to pea to lime. The flowers were in different states of bloom, but all looked rich, healthy, and so … so
Quinnipeague
that Nicole felt a wave of homesickness that brought tears to her eyes. What a comfort it was to be back there for these few virtual moments!

And oh yes. The pictures would be
amazing
in the cookbook.

Grabbing her phone, she pressed in Charlotte’s number and said a breathless, “He let you do it.”

“I wore him down.”

“And we can use them in the book?”

“Of course. He wouldn’t have let me shoot them if he wasn’t okay with that.”

“Do I have to pay him for the pictures?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Are there any conditions?”

“Only that we not use his name. We can label them as Cecily’s plants, but the implication should be that the pictures were taken all over the island. Obviously, he doesn’t want readers coming to his house—not his readers or ours.”

“I understand,” Nicole said, willing to grant him as simple a request as that. At the start of the summer, she had feared he would sabotage the cookbook, which he could have easily done, since his herbs were at the heart of island cooking. To this day, she believed he might have been the one inhibiting those early contributors. The fact that he was helping them out now spoke either of remorse for that, his feelings for Charlotte, or generosity. If the latter, he was also forgiving. Nicole hadn’t been particularly nice to him.

Admitting that to herself, she was humbled. But the sound of Charlotte’s voice more than compensated. It warmed her, soothed her. She did want Charlotte to be happy. What had happened ten years ago was at this moment very far away, and totally aside from the stem cells, Charlotte had been beyond-belief-helpful this summer. These photographs would make the cookbook special.

“He’s not a bad person,” Charlotte said softly.

Nicole wasn’t ready to fully concede that, but she offered a conciliatory, “Please thank him for me. And Charlotte?”

“Yes?”

She lowered her voice. “Pick another clover for me?”

“I do. Every day.”

*   *   *

Nicole insisted that they have lunch in the lobby restaurant, where she had a grilled salad to Julian’s short rib sliders. She took notes and snapped pictures of both, telling him that this was food for a blog, which was a good excuse for having gotten him up and out for a little while at least, but she didn’t push for more. If Hammon wanted a quiet day, there was nothing more quiet than golf. Julian loved the game, and the PGA Championship was on. So they went back upstairs after lunch to watch in their suite.