Life After Perfect

by Nancy Naigle

  “Thank you.”

  “Any other complaints today?”

  She sucked in a long breath. “Wouldn’t do to complain.” She laughed, but it lacked joy. He recognized the look of exhaustion. “I know your wife had cancer.”

  He tried to recover from the stab those words had delivered.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she added.

  “Thank you.” He didn’t even recognize his own voice when he uttered the words.

  “I’m done with the treatments. I’m just coasting. It’s not better, but it’s not worse, and for a while . . . every day was worse than the last.”

  “I understand.” He already knew the details from the chart. And he did understand, more than she could ever imagine, but damn if that didn’t make it only harder to talk about. “Only you can make the right decisions for yourself,” he said, as if that might somehow comfort her. “We have a lot of new things we can prescribe to help make you more comfortable. If something’s not working, we can try something new. I see you’ve refused hospice help so far—if you want to talk about that . . . let me know.”

  “I’m not ready for people hovering. I just want to be alone.” She laced her fingers. “Quite honestly, I keep praying I won’t wake up.”

  He’d heard Laney say the same thing. Seen the look of disappointment in her face when she opened her eyes and saw him looking at her. Sometimes the most helpful thing to say was nothing.

  She swallowed, and then said, “Thank you for not pushing. I was worried when I realized Dr. Hansen, your dad, wasn’t in today.” She paused, catching her breath. “He’s been so understanding.”

  “No problem. You change your mind anytime about anything, you know how to get us.” Derek wrote out her prescriptions and handed them to her. “Here you go.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  She looked relieved that he hadn’t pressed her for more details. “You take care,” he said, and left the room, taking her chart and the prescriptions to Wendy at the front desk, and then retreating to his office.

  Behind that closed door, he pulled off his jacket and loosened his tie.

  His skin prickled as if he was under a Jamaican sun, but he knew the air was working. Sweeping a hand across his sweaty brow, he picked up the picture of Laney from his credenza, one from before she got sick, before treatments. He wanted so badly to remember her like this. Beautiful. Healthy. Instead all he remembered were her last days, when she looked not so unlike Kelly Jo just now.

  No color. No energy. Not much life left in the container God had lent her. The one that cancer had sucked the beauty from so heartlessly.

  It took him a few minutes to pull himself together; then he went back out and continued from room to room, handling the patients until there weren’t any left to be seen.

  “That’s it?” he asked as he approached the front desk.

  “Yes. Nothing else on the books.” Wendy smiled. “Our lucky day.”

  “I’m going to run over to the diner and grab something to eat. Text me if you need me.” He patted his hand on the counter and headed down the long corridor.

  Derek made one last stop in his office to hang his white coat back on the rack.

  He glanced at his degrees on the wall. He was going through the motions, keeping his medical license intact. For now. Until he figured out what the rest of his life would be. There’d been lots of days since Laney had died that he’d considered chucking it all. He’d spent the six months after her death hopping from conference to conference and class to class, trying to stay as busy as he possibly could getting his general practitioner CMEs up to date.

  His future had once been all laid out. Not so anymore. Not since the day Laney died. He was only certain of one thing: he couldn’t work in oncology.

  Balancing the wins and losses had become impossible, and the losses were sucking him under like quicksand. He knew that it was the time to switch gears, and leave that area of medicine to others.

  There was a time when he’d have pushed his opinion on Kelly Jo. Touted the help she’d receive at highly acclaimed facilities like his. And for a moment those thoughts flew through his mind, but they didn’t emerge from his lips. He didn’t have it in his heart anymore. There were a few drugs they could use to slow things down a little, but from the look of Kelly Jo’s last scans, there wasn’t much hope for any relief that would improve her quality of life in those additional days.

  “Are you clear on all of your options?” he’d asked.

  She’d held up a hand. “Completely. Please don’t—”

  “That’s fine. I understand.”

  She’d breathed a noticeable sigh of relief. She was so tired. It was as if Laney were sitting in front of him. The life no longer danced in her eyes. The rounded slope of her shoulders evidence it was too much to hold a straight line anymore.

  No. Cancer wasn’t for sissies. This gal was no sissy. She’d fought her battle, and she’d chosen what she was willing to give. It was okay. It wasn’t easy. Not for the patients. Not for their families and the physicians and nurses who kept an eye on “quality of life” even when the end was near.

  When Laney got worse, he’d shifted most of his patients to the care of one of his partners, keeping only a handful who were so far along in their treatments that it seemed unfair to ask them to trust someone new.

  By the time Laney died, all of his other patients had too, and so had a big part of him.

  Mentally exhausted, he walked over to the Blue Skies Cafe. It was a straight shot, back door to back door, between the medical center and the diner. He’d walked it so many times that he knew where all the potholes and divots were in the gravel parking lot.

  The oppressive heat made his shirt stick to his body, though it wasn’t even a fifty-yard walk.

  In the diner, the sizzle on the flattop grill softened the conversations between the people already starting to fill the booths for supper. Ol’ Man Johnson gave Derek a wave and a nod.

  “I’ll get my own drink,” Derek said grabbing a glass at the beverage station.

  “Doggone right you will.” The hefty man toddled off toward the grill, his laugh like the howl of a beagle on the scent of a white tail. Nearly as wide as he was tall, he blocked almost the entire view of the long cooktop, though the smell of herbs and onions wafted up around him.

  Without one complaint from the cafe’s owner, Derek could tell the poor guy’s gout was flaring up again. “If you’d stay away from that shellfish like I told you, you wouldn’t be hobbling around like you are.”

  “Shrimp scampi. Worth every bite. It’s the special. There’s more. Want some?”

  “Sounds perfect. Got any of those cheese grits?”

  “You know it.”

  And that was just about how ordering at the Blue Skies Cafe went for Derek every time. He rarely had to choose his order, just let Ol’ Man Johnson tell him what was cooking, or let Angie decide. His best friend from high school knew his likes and dislikes as well as he did.

  Still, those shrimp and grits were hard to pass up. Derek figured Johnson had probably had a double helping to cause that gout flare-up, but Derek had to admit the guy was in good shape for someone easily ninety pounds overweight. Even his cholesterol was better than most of his patients who were on a prescription for it. Just goes to show you that you can’t always tell what’s going on internally from the outside of a person.

  This diner was no different. From the tired turn-of-the-century storefront, you might expect a typical greasy spoon.

  Not the case.

  Ol’ Man Johnson’s daughter had gone to some fancy interior design school up in New York City, and he’d let her practice on his restaurant to help build her portfolio.

  Over one summer, the Blue Skies Cafe had gone from leave-no-impression to y’all-come-on-back-now-and-set-a-spell. It proved that a little thin
g like ambiance could change the clientele. The light that streamed in the windows used to about blind the customers. His daughter solved that by contracting an artist out near Blowing Rock to do stained glass panels. As dividers between the booths, the panels diffused the rays through the colorful glass images like a church on Sunday. Almost heavenly, and that was exactly what a Food Network star had said about the food when he came in and sampled the Blue Skies Cafe’s signature dish—Carolina Beefalo and Browns.

  No dish screamed Southern more than Ol’ Man Johnson’s CB&B. It included a small medallion of fresh beefalo cooked just to your liking. Yes, beefalo—a cross between a domestic cow and an American bison—grown right up the road on Criss Cross Farm, served with hand-sliced fingerling hash browns, and then married up with whatever fresh local vegetables were available that week. A picture next to the register flaunted the cafe’s Food Network episode and bragging rights.

  Derek watched Angie serve supper like she had a hive of bees behind her. Her dark hair shone, and he knew she was flustered when she shoved it behind her ear. A tell. They’d been friends so long sometimes he thought he knew her better than he knew himself.

  She whisked down the aisle toward the drink station, her expression transforming, her real smile appearing, as soon as she saw him.

  “Good day?” he asked.

  “Busy.” She set a water pitcher down on his table just long enough to push her dark hair back over her ear again, and nodded toward a booth at the front. “Cranky travelers.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. “On top of everything, I had to walk to work this morning. My car took its last breath last night. I swear I can’t catch a break.”

  “Why didn’t you call? I’d have given you a lift.”

  “The walk was fine. That wasn’t the point. I’m just tired of everything always being a struggle.”

  “What’s wrong with your car this time?”

  She seemed to deflate before his eyes. “Who knows? I only just had the oil changed and the engine all checked out.” She let out a groan. “Let me get this lady’s Arnold Palmer before she has a fit. Seriously. If you can drink an Arnold Palmer, you can drink sweet tea. What is it with people?”

  She rushed off, and it was only a couple minutes later when Angie slid Derek’s dinner in front of him. “Heard you saw Kelly Jo Keefer today.”

  “I did. How’d you know?”

  “I was over at Naomi’s this morning,” Angie said. “Kelly Jo is married to Todd Keefer.”

  “Todd? I hadn’t made the connection.” The distance Derek had been trying to force between him and her case suddenly got harder. “Man, I haven’t seen Todd since we watched him play ball in the minors. It’s been a while. So they’re back in town?”

  “He’s not. They were living in Tennessee when Kelly Jo got the news that her cancer had metastasized to the liver. She came to live with Naomi so Todd wouldn’t watch her die. She thinks she’s doing him some kind of favor.” Angie folded her arms. “I’m not sure if that’s the craziest or the most unselfish thing I’ve ever heard somebody do.”

  Derek remembered the day that Laney took his hand. Her words had barely been more than a whisper when she’d said, “Seeing the anguish in your eyes every time you look at me is worse than the pain of dying.” That had just about killed him. Even the memory weighed heavy on his chest.

  Kelly Jo hadn’t been looking for any miracles or promises of hope today. She’d accepted what was in her future, but still, hours after she’d left, he couldn’t forget her. He knew from experience what was ahead of her. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “She might be doing Todd a favor.” He suddenly wasn’t very hungry. “Watching Laney’s decline was the worst part of all. It gives you such a helpless feeling.”

  She sat down and reached across the table and took his hand. “I know you still miss her.”

  “Every day.” He held her gaze. She’d been a great friend through Laney’s illness. “There’s nothing Todd can do to change it. If it’s what Kelly Jo wants, who are we to say it’s not the right thing.”

  “It just seems so unfair.”

  “Cancer doesn’t fight fair, Angie. You know, when Laney turned that last corner, there was nothing else that could be done. I knew it. She did too. It was a damned death sentence, yet even with the combined experience of all of my colleagues, we had no way of knowing just how long she’d have. There’s nothing you can do but wait, and sadly no way to make the days good enough to matter.”

  “Can’t you help Kelly Jo?” Emotion and hope hung on her expression. “Somehow?”

  He cast his glance toward the front door. “Kelly Jo is in that stage now, Angie. She’s dying, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. All we can do is buy her calendar time, not quality time. She’s already figured that out for herself.”

  “But what about Todd? It’s unfair that she’s shut him out of her life. I told her that just because she left, it doesn’t mean a switch turned off for him. He’s still suffering. Missing her.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s in a living hell right now.” But Derek knew Todd would be in a living hell either way. There were lots of days that Derek wished he had the memories of the Laney who was all beauty and confidence. Instead, the images of her dying right before his eyes remained at the fore . . . blocking the beautiful memories. You just can’t erase those. But then he couldn’t have left her side. Didn’t until her last breath. Wouldn’t have for all the money in the world.

  “She doesn’t let anyone come visit her.” She grabbed his hand and held it. “Maybe you can share something with her that will make her realize it’s okay for Todd to be a part of it. Or something. I don’t know. I just want something good for her. And him. I want him to be okay.”

  “Your heart knows no boundaries. I love that about you.” But he knew there was no making things okay for Kelly Jo or for Todd. He knew exactly what Todd was feeling.

  “But . . .”

  “But this is a personal decision for them. What we think is right may not be right for them. We have to respect that.”

  “I hate it when you’re practical.” She looked out the window. “I just feel so helpless.” She turned and looked at him. “And Derek, I feel helpless for you, too. I hate seeing you so sad. Your life didn’t end.”

  “I know.” He cleared his throat. “I’m okay, Angie.”

  “Okay is just okay, and that’s not good. I just want to help,” she said. “You and Kelly Jo. It shouldn’t be so hard to help people you care for. Kelly Jo used to love my chicken salad, but she couldn’t even eat it last time.”

  He leaned forward. “Taste buds change,” he said.

  She turned and looked at him. “Is that code for something?”

  “No. You said you wanted to help Kelly Jo. When the cancer is that far along, with all the treatments she’s been through, her taste buds have changed. Things she never much liked might suddenly taste good. A lot of my patients say things like tomato soup and sauces are very palatable. You might try something like that. Couldn’t hurt.”

  “I would have thought that tomato soup would be way too harsh on her stomach.” She smiled. “Tomato soup. I’ll try it. Thank you.”

  “It’s not going to change the end game, Angie.” He tilted his head to the left and then to the right. Every muscle in his neck crimped and pulled. “She’s dying.” It sounded crass. He knew it, but it needed to be said.

  Angie threw a towel over her shoulder. Her eyes glassy, she touched her nose with her other hand, like that would somehow stop the tears. “That’s what she said to me, too.”

  “Say it,” he said.

  “She’s dying.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she choked against them.

  “It’s okay. Tears are okay, Angie. It’s sad as hell.”

  She tore the ticket off of her pad and slid it under his plate, then g
ot up to go back to work. “I hate it when you’re right.”

  Derek pushed the shrimp around his plate. They were good, but the last one he’d eaten seemed to be still sitting in the middle of his chest.

  He tossed his payment and tip on the table and walked out.

  What were the odds that two guys who played high school ball together in the same small town would lose the loves of their lives to the same cancer? It wasn’t geographical. Neither Laney nor Kelly Jo was from Boot Creek, but it had happened and there wasn’t a thing he could do to change the outcome.

  Chapter Three

  When Katherine opened her front door, the last person she expected to see in the middle of a Thursday afternoon was Peggy Allen. Unlike the others in the neighborhood, Peggy was a housewife, but between her volunteer work, time at the club, and social calendar, she worked harder at not working than any of them. Too bad it didn’t pay a salary.

  “Hey, Peggy.” Katherine stepped back from the door, but Peggy’s normal beauty queen smile was missing. “Everything okay?”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “Come in.” Katherine motioned Peggy inside. “Coffee?”

  “If you have some already made, and it isn’t any trouble.”

  “I’m working from home today,” Katherine said. “Just made another fresh pot.” She motioned Peggy inside, but the woman who was usually as effervescent as the fizziest champagne wasn’t sparkling and that made Katherine nervous. After spending the week with Bertie, the last thing she wanted to hear was more bad news.