by Roger Bruner
Then she added, “Besides that, only one funeral per visit is permitted.”
That comment might have been equally tasteless, but it broke the tension. I cracked up. In my mind’s eye, I saw Aleesha driving home to Baltimore after Mom’s funeral, pulling into the driveway, and then backing out again without going inside. Just so she could return for my funeral in strict adherence to some silly rule about only one funeral per visit.
She winked at me. Something about the way she’d told those two jokes made me realize she’d probably been testing my emotional reflexes rather than trying to be funny. I doubted that she’d found them anywhere close to normal.
“As Mr. Scott pointed out, your only detectable symptom was sleep far too deep to be normal. You obviously heard us shouting at you. But it’s like you were fighting to remain asleep. I don’t know what’s normal for you at home, but you never slept that way in Santa María. So we left you alone and waited for you to wake up on your own.”
I crooked one eyebrow as I searched her face for further clues. What was she trying to say?
“I wish you could talk to my papa,” she said. “I’ll bet he could figure this out.”
Your papa the psychiatrist? So now you think I’m nuts?
She must have seen my grimace. “No, Kim, you’re as sane as I am.”
I really cracked up then—I’d never known anyone who acted crazier than Aleesha—but she couldn’t have remained more completely straight-faced. Okay, girl, so that wasn’t supposed to be a joke.
“Kim, I’m no psychologist, but I wonder if your strange little nap was purely physical.”
Maybe her statement should have shocked me. Maybe it should have made me resentful or angry.
But it didn’t.
I’d just started wondering the same thing myself.
chapter twelve
Aleesha, didn’t you say west-to-east jet lag is worse than east-to-west?”
She squinted at me as if trying to figure out the reason for my question. “Uh-huh.”
“And didn’t you say jet lag doesn’t necessarily hit the hardest the day after travel?”
She nodded ever so slightly without releasing her squint.
I hoped my desperation wasn’t showing. “And it can last for days?”
“Go ahead, girl. Spill it.”
“I’m so tired today I can barely wiggle. I don’t feel like getting out of bed. Truth be told, I just want to go back to sleep.” “Mmm.”
“Mmm, what? Is that jet lag or not?”
“Could be. Or the aftershock of Miss Terri’s death. You haven’t had much of a chance to unwind, and things won’t be normal for a while—”
The tears started spilling out. “They’re never going to be normal.”
“You’re right,” she said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “Not like before, anyhow.” She paused and gave me a once-over. “Girl, you’re zoning out again now. Go on back to sleep. I’m going downstairs to do some cleaning, but I’ll be quiet.”
“But I’d planned on doing that. I wanted to show Dad I can do just as good a job as Mom at taking care of him.”
Aleesha looked at me with an expression that said, “Your intentions are good, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. “
That made me even more determined to prove myself to Dad.
“Kim, baby, if you’re suffering jet lag—or any kind of lag—you may not feel much like housecleaning for a few more days. You go back to sleep and let me do it this time. I’ll gladly give the job back to you when you feel better.”
I fell asleep so quickly I thought I was dreaming when she said, “I’m going to keep my eye on you, girlfriend. Whatever this is, it isn’t jet lag.”
chapter thirteen
I refused to acknowledge my fears the next time Aleesha talked to me about my constant fatigue, but I couldn’t ignore Dad. “Kim, more than two weeks have passed since your mom died. Jet lag doesn’t last this long.”
I looked at him through half-closed eyes. He’d waited until early afternoon to come upstairs to talk with me, hoping I’d be awake and alert by then.
But I wasn’t, and the lack of energy was bugging the daylights out of me. I couldn’t keep pretending nothing was wrong.
“Aleesha explained that you’ve wanted to take care of me … to do the housework, the cooking, the laundry.”
“I do, Daddy.” If I sounded as feeble as I felt, I didn’t sound very confident.
“That’s a wonderful, responsible attitude. I didn’t expect you to provide that kind of help, and I’m proud of you. Hopefully you’ll feel up to taking on some of those chores soon. Not all of them, though. A man should help out around the house, too—be he husband or father—and I’ve been irresponsible that way until now.”
Wow! Even middle-aged adults were capable of making major changes.
“But you’re not up to it now. That’s why Aleesha has stayed longer than she originally intended. She didn’t want to desert us when we needed her help.”
Unable to sort out or verbalize my jumble of emotions, I smiled to acknowledge my appreciation.
Dad looked uncertain about how to proceed.
“She’s enrolling at Dogwood University here instead of carrying through with her plans to attend Howard University. She’ll stay here for at least this semester. I pulled a few strings to get her in at this late date.”
No matter how dragged out I felt, my heart sparkled at that news. I hoped my face did, too.
“You’re probably wondering why she changed her plans at the last minute …”
“You said … she didn’t want … to desert us.”
“That’s just part of it,” he said. “I asked her to stay. She’ll earn room and board and a little spending money doing chores around here. We needed someone to help, and she was available. You understand, don’t you?”
How could I fail to understand that my new best friend would be living with us for a while? Despite the fact she’d be doing the very things I wanted to do for Dad, why wouldn’t I be thrilled to have her around? Still, a teeny-weeny part of me was jealous that he’d already grown so dependent on Aleesha.
But I didn’t have the energy to dwell on negative feelings.
Or on prayer, either. Maybe I didn’t feel up to talking with God the way I had in Santa María, but I bathed in the belief that He loved me and would take care of me. Even so, on those rare occasions I could pray without falling asleep again, I kept asking Him if this fatigue problem was just another part of that Season of Pebbles Aleesha’s father had told her about—one that had started with Mom’s accident.
“Kim?”
“Huh? Yes, Daddy?”
“I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
“I was actually thinking for a change.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
Although his teasing made me feel loved, no amount of playfulness could hide his concerns. That’s why he’d insisted
on taking me to our family doctor, Dr. Holly.
But I didn’t want to think about that now.
“Daddy, I’m glad you asked Aleesha to stay.”
“And I’m glad you’re glad.” He smiled. “I was afraid you’d be disappointed about having someone else do the things you want to do for me.”
Disappointed? You’ve turned into quite a diplomat, too. You know the right word is jealous.
“Baby girl”—my eyes popped open at hearing him call me by a pet name, probably for the first time ever—”we need to find out what’s wrong with you and get you well again.”
“I told you I probably just picked up some kind of bug in Mexico.” I wasn’t trying to argue, but I didn’t want to admit how worried I was.
“Dr. Holly doesn’t think so, Kim. You took shots for everything before going to Santa María, and she’s tested you for every disease Mexican tourists come home with. Most of the tests are back—all negative. She doesn’t expect the rest to be any different.”
I sighed. I co
uld have told him that, but I didn’t want to believe it.
“You ate packaged foods and drank bottled water. No chance for contagion there. Were any of the villagers sick while you were there?”
I sighed again. He knew the answer without my having to tell him again. We’d had this discussion before. Several times. But I loved him for exerting so much effort to find a solution.
“No.” I didn’t have the strength or the heart to argue. I knew what was coming next, and the thought of it brought bile into my throat. When it went down again this time, I barely noticed the bitter aftertaste.
“Dr. Holly wants you to have more tests. She’ll probably refer you to some specialists, too.”
I groaned. Not because the tests might hurt or be unpleasant, but because I grew hopelessly tired and weak whenever I had to walk farther than the distance from my room to the bathroom. The last time I’d gone anywhere with Dad and Aleesha, they had to lug me home between them just to get me inside. They probably looked like they were carting home a prodigal drunk.
Dad listed some of the tests Dr. Holly had ordered. Most of the names were meaningless to me. But one tickled a few hairs of curiosity.
“Sleep apnea?”
“Yes. Or some other sleep problem. Dr. Holly wonders if sleeping the way you did in Mexico has somehow affected your ability to get the rest you need from your sleep now.”
“Huh? How do they test for that?”
“You go to sleep.”
Hmm. I might be able to handle that one.
chapter fourteen
Jo was sitting on the front porch when Aleesha, Dad, and I got home from Dr. Holly’s office. After several months of nonstop lifelessness, I’d just received the final diagnosis—four separate diagnoses along with Dr. Holly’s, that was—and I wasn’t the least satisfied. Neither were Dad and Aleesha. We learned that the only thing our family doctor and four renowned specialists could agree on was that none of them knew what was causing my fatigue.
One of them had removed my cast, though. My right arm—weak as it was from disuse—might have been the only normal part of me. Or at least the healthiest part.
At least they’d ruled out leukemia and every other life-threatening disease under the sun. They saw eye to eye on the symptoms, but not the cause.
At first, a specialist in teen medicine thought it was mono, but Dr. Holly had already ruled that out. Then the specialist considered fibromyalgia, but I wasn’t suffering muscle aches. So he concluded my problem was anxiety and depression and prescribed adult-strength medication.
Another specialist suggested chronic fatigue syndrome, but he couldn’t be sure until my condition remained unchanged for six months. If that was the problem, it might last the rest of my life. Not what any normally active girl of almost nineteen wants to hear.
The sleep study had been soundly conclusive. That was, I slept soundly through the night with electrodes stuck to various parts of my body while a technician monitored
everything from heart rate to body twitches to eyelid movement on a computer in another room.
In the morning when they woke me up—with great difficulty—I talked with both the technician and the doctor. Not a sign of sleep apnea. In fact, neither one of them had ever seen anyone sleep more soundly. According to the computer, I should have felt wonderful. But I didn’t.
Good thing I didn’t have a recurrence of my nightmare that night.
The fourth and final specialist said what I’d half-expected all of them to say. “It’s in your head. Go see a psychologist or maybe even a psychiatrist.” He probably thought me crazier still for requesting a referral to a Christian, but he did it.
And Dr. Holly admitted she was still as baffled as she’d been when we started. Probably more so.
Dad and I had planned to talk about the referral to the psychiatrist or psychologist—I never could remember which was which—when we got home, but the discussion would have to wait until Jo left. Dad went inside, leaving Aleesha and me to deal with Jo. The autumn temperature was brisk, but refreshing. Jo’s unexpected visit would probably be brisk, too—she never stayed long—but I had little hope that it would prove refreshing.
“Hey, guys!” she said with a smile. She looked me up and down. “You look like you’ve lost your best friend.” She laughed.
You’re referring to yourself, Jo. Or don’t you know that? You’ve known about my fatigue problem all along, but you haven’t shown any concern about it. You may not want to believe this problem is real, but I guarantee you I didn’t dream it up to get attention. If this is the best you can do as a best friend …
Why expect this visit to be any different from the two or three she’d made since fatigue took over my life and squashed
the daylights out of almost everything that made my life enjoyable? Too exhausted to keep making excuses for her, I would have been just as happy if she’d stayed home. She’d perfected the art of doing that.
I remembered too well how her parents—mostly her mama—made her cancel the mission trip at almost the last minute because they were afraid of Mexican drug wars, even though they were nowhere close to Santa María … or to Ciudad de Plata, our original target city. I couldn’t blame Jo for that.
But I couldn’t believe Jo’s mama kept her from visiting me. If she’d thought I was contagious, she wouldn’t have let Jo come at all. And no matter what, she wouldn’t have forbidden Jo from calling, texting, or Tweeting me.
So I accepted Aleesha’s assessment. Only her ongoing presence in our household explained Jo’s ongoing absence. If she allowed prejudice to keep her from supporting an old friend and accepting a new one, that was unfortunate, but I was powerless to change her heart.
Only God could do that, and He wouldn’t do it unless she was willing.
Aleesha had been using my car while I was incapacitated, and I’d begun wondering if Jo checked for its absence before coming over. None of her previous visits had included Aleesha.
Frankly, I hoped Aleesha’s presence would drive Jo away this time, too. I had too much on my mind, and her visits hadn’t been very uplifting, anyhow. As strange as it might sound, she made me think about some of the things I’d heard divorced women say about their ex-spouses. Things like “I grew up, but he didn’t” or “We grew apart” or “We just didn’t have anything in common anymore. “
I couldn’t accuse Jo of failing to grow up any more than I could claim to be completely mature. I wouldn’t achieve that goal until my next birthday.
We had grown apart, though. Maybe because we didn’t have Santa María in common when we should have. We’d done everything together in planning for it. Everything from filling out applications to getting shots to buying those dual-language Bibles that turned out to be Spanish-only.
But when Michelle Snelling made Jo drop out, that left me on my own. Not having my favorite little guardian angel nearby to protect me from myself had seemed disastrous at first, but it turned out to be a good thing. Jo’s absence helped me to integrate into the team better than I would have if she’d been there, and I learned to rely more fully on God.
When I told Jo about my experiences on the trip, she reacted the way I’d expected. Half-fascinated, half-envious. My reaction to the project change made her laugh, but she could barely believe the part about my reading to the villagers in perfect Spanish.
Although she’d expressed some pleasure about Rosa’s conversion, she didn’t act thrilled about it. Maybe I’d been wrong to expect her to care deeply about someone she should have gotten to meet, but didn’t.
On one of Jo’s visits, I was about to ask her to run home and get her Spanish Bible so I could give her a sample of my pronunciation skills.
But Aleesha got home first. “Hey, girl,” I said. “How was—?”
“Whoops!” Jo said as if she didn’t care about interrupting me. “I need to go home.”
What had happened to the old Jo? What besides us growing apart, that was? I could live without any more vis
its like those, and today’s wasn’t likely to be any better despite her cheery greeting.
Cheery? Perhaps stupid would be a more fitting description of joking about losing a best friend. Then again, maybe she didn’t realize how she’d sounded. Oh, great, here I was making excuses for her again.
Yet she did sound different this time.
Jo stood up. “Kim, you look exhausted.” She guided me to the rocking chair she’d just gotten up from. “What did you find out from the doctor today?”
She sounded deeply concerned. Like the Jo I used to know and love. If she kept this up, I might yet enjoy her friendship again, but I wasn’t going to make any quick and easy assumptions about that happening.
“Four doctors—”
“Five,” Aleesha said, keeping an eye on Jo as if watching a mosquito that was hovering too close. “Don’t forget Dr. Holly.”
“My family doctor, four specialists, and a ton of tests have determined that I’m not dying.”
“Praise the Lord!” Her sigh of relief was almost as loud as the sound of cars going by. Her mouth curled into a cautious smile.
“That’s the good news,” I said with a weary grin. The visit to Dr. Holly’s office had worn me out. Then I snorted at the thought of that. I lived worn out.
Jo’s eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted in concern. Yes, maybe the old Jo had returned. “The bad …?” she mouthed.
“The bad news is they don’t agree about anything. One thinks I’m depressed and prescribed some potent medication. Another thinks I may have chronic fatigue syndrome, but he won’t be sure for another six months. The third one says it’s not sleep apnea, and the fourth has referred me to a fifth specialist—a Christian psychiatrist.”
Or was he a psychologist?
“And what do you think it is, Kim?” Hmmm. Not even Aleesha had asked me that.
Did I dare to admit to my two best friends that I knew what it was?
God was using my guilt to punish me for killing my mother.
chapter fifteen
