“Me too, son.” He frowned as one possibility struck him. He didn’t have to transport Fern to the school. He could bring the play to Fern. “Hey, do you think your friends would come over to our house and do the show all over again?”
Nelson brightened. “Really? That’d be great.”
“Why don’t we ask your teacher? See what she thinks.”
Mrs. Murphy, who had dark, wildly curly hair, didn’t look much older than her students, several of whom were inches taller than her. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement and her hazel eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. No wonder the kids loved her.
James introduced himself. “Congratulations for putting on a great show.”
“Oh, the credit goes to the students. They all worked hard and were wonderful. Our young Puck did a great job.”
“Does that mean I get an A in English?”
She tilted her head. “Let’s see how well you do on next week’s punctuation and grammar test.”
Nelson groaned and made a face.
“I’m sorry my wife couldn’t be here,” James said. “She’s been looking forward to the play for weeks, but she wasn’t feeling up to coming tonight.”
“She’s got MS,” Nelson added.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Murphy said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Nelson and I were wondering, would it be possible for the cast to come to our house and do the play again? My wife would love that.”
Taken aback, Mrs. Murphy blinked and glanced around the room. Most of the students and parents had already left. “I’m not sure…”
“You could ask them in class tomorrow, Mrs. Murphy,” Nelson suggested. “Even if everybody couldn’t come, we could have someone else read the lines for them.”
“It would be an act of kindness my wife would very much appreciate,” James added.
“When did you want to—”
“How about tomorrow night?” Nelson glanced up at James. “If we don’t do it right away, Dad, everybody will forget their lines.”
James couldn’t think of a reason tomorrow wouldn’t work. On Saturday morning, he and Nelson were going on their scouting trip, so the weekend was out. And Fern did need an emotional lift.
“Tomorrow night would be fine with me,” he said.
“All right, Nelson. Remind me to ask the class tomorrow. We’ll see how many can make it for tomorrow night.”
The next morning, James woke up to good news.
Still in her nightgown, Fern sat on the edge of the bed. “I almost hate to say anything for fear I’ll jinx myself, but I slept much better last night than I have in a long while. I feel almost human.”
Relief and hope combined into a heady sensation that made James want to cheer. “Your color’s better and so is your speech.”
She looked as pleased as James felt. “Looks like doubling up on the new meds was the right thing to do.”
He helped her downstairs for breakfast with a lighter heart than he’d had in weeks. He told her about Nelson’s class possibly performing in their own living room, and she was thrilled.
He was still feeling ebullient a half hour later when he arrived at the hospital. In the staff lounge, someone had posted the article Valera Kincaid had written in the Deerford Dispatch about the demonstration. James had been quoted at length.
He got a lot of attaboys and pats on the back from his fellow employees.
He’d barely settled into the morning routine of checking on his patients, when he had a phone call at the nurses’ station. A reporter for the Springfield newspaper wanted to know more about Wednesday’s event. He wanted to interview James over the phone. James promised to call him back during his lunch hour.
He didn’t dare spend any more time away from his patients or he’d risk losing more than 10 percent of his salary.
He’d risk losing his job too.
Chapter Nineteen
CANDACE LEFT WORK ON TIME AND DROVE TO Deerford Middle School. Although they lived only a couple of blocks from the school, she preferred to pick up Brooke when she could, or asked Janet to. Call her paranoid, but she’d already lost one person she loved. She didn’t want to risk losing her child to an accident or worse.
Candace parked her Honda CR-V behind a long line of other parents waiting for their children.
The dismissal bell sounded. Within seconds, children exploded out of the school’s main door and flew down the walkway or across the snow-covered lawn as though a mass escape from prison had been orchestrated by the teachers inside.
Candace spotted her daughter at the same time Brooke broke off from a gaggle of her friends and headed for the car. She opened the car door, tossed her backpack inside and jumped into the backseat after it.
“Hi, honey. You have a good day?”
“MaryBeth’s mom saw you on TV last night.”
Candace turned to face her daughter. “She saw me?”
“Yeah, when you were marching at the hospital. It was on the news. Everyone’s talking about it.”
There’d been a lot of talk around the hospital about the TV and newspaper coverage. But she hadn’t realized she’d been identifiable on TV and hadn’t watched television last night. She didn’t like making a spectacle of herself.
With any luck, most of the focus had been on James and Mr. Varner, not her.
“So everybody says no way will the hospital cut your pay now.” Brooke leaned forward and put her arms on the back of the front seat. “So do you think we could go shopping again? All my clothes are old. I promise I’ll still turn off the lights when we don’t need them, and make Howie do it too.”
Candace laughed out loud. She couldn’t help herself.
It appeared her daughter was back to normal.
She could only pray that her salary would remain normal as well.
When Anabelle returned home from work that afternoon, she received an exuberant welcome from Sarge.
She knelt and he jumped up to lick her face.
“Hello, sweetie, did you miss me?”
“Tell him to sit, Annie,” Cam said in a resolute voice. “We have to be consistent with our discipline. We don’t want him jumping on people when he gets bigger.”
She looked up at her husband, who looked very much at home wearing khaki pants and a flannel shirt. “So now you’re the expert on training dogs?”
Sarge continued to jump, his tail whisking wildly through the air.
“Sarge, sit,” Cam ordered in a normal voice.
Sarge sat and looked up at Cam expectantly.
Cam made the dog hold his position for a couple of seconds before offering him a treat. Sarge gobbled the nibbly down in one swallow. “Good boy,” Cam said.
“I can see I have some catching up to do in the doggie training business. I think I’ll take Sarge for a walk before it gets dark.”
Her announcement sent Sarge into a whirling dervish of jumping and dancing around the kitchen.
“I’d suggest when you want to take Sarge for a w-a-l-k that you spell it,” Cam said. “He’s one smart dog.”
Slightly peeved at Cam’s fast mastery of training the dog, she said, “Sarge, sit.”
The puppy cocked his head to the side, looked at her with curious brown eyes and did nothing.
“Sit,” she repeated.
“Push his rear end down. And here,” Cam handed her a treat, “give him this when he complies.”
She tried again, doing as Cam had suggested. This time Sarge complied and got his treat.
“I’m going to take Sarge for a l-o-n-g w-a-l-k. We’ll be back.”
She retrieved the puppy’s harness and leash from the mudroom, hooked up Sarge and went out the back door. It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t been able to spend much time training the puppy. She worked full-time while Cameron was home to do all the training. She just had to remember Sarge would eventually listen to her like he listened to Cam.
The temperature was above freezing, the sun still shining, so the street wa
s clear of snow. She didn’t really plan to go far. Mostly, she wanted a little fresh air and some time spent with Sarge.
Sarge, however, appeared interested in everything but her. He dashed back and forth at the end of the leash, sniffing and poking his nose into every crevice he could find. Every time he reached the end of the leash, he yanked her arm, and she half stumbled after him. For a little puppy, he was amazingly strong. And determined.
“Ouch!” she cried when he yanked harder than usual. “Sarge, sit!”
He did no such thing. He continued to sweep back and forth like a radar gun in search of the enemy. Or a friend.
She’d barely gone as far as the neighbor’s house when Ethel Dickson waved from her front porch.
“Hello, Anabelle, lovely day isn’t it?” A lively eighty-year-old, Ethel came down off the porch, the broom she’d been using in her hand. As usual when she did housework, she wore a frilly apron over her dress. “I see it’s your turn to walk that sweet little puppy of Cam’s.”
Sarge raced to the end of his leash to greet Ethel.
“Actually, I was the one who—”
“Your Cameron is such a dear man. He does love his puppy. Walks him two or three times a day. He’s taught him to sit and heel. He’s quite devoted, you know.”
“Actually, no. I didn’t know—”
“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his dog. Yes, indeed. I remember when Sam had that old hound dog of his. Rufus, he called him. They were inseparable, those two. Wherever Sam went, Rufus went along too. Just like your Cameron and that puppy.”
Cameron hadn’t let on he was spending so much time with Sarge. She’d still thought he wasn’t happy about having a dog while all the while he’d been doing exactly what she had hoped for—bonding with Sarge.
That evening, Gideon and Nelson helped James rearrange the furniture in the living room to clear space in front of the window to serve as a stage. In addition to most of the cast members, a few parents were expected to come, those who hadn’t been able to attend the performance the prior evening because of work or other commitments.
Fern’d had a reasonably good day, though she looked tired now. But her spirits were high.
Some of the weight of worry James had been carrying in his chest lifted with her improved health. If only the improvement continued…
Carloads of kids began to arrive along with a few parents. Sapphire, never comfortable in a crowd, lit out for upstairs to hide under the bed. Her safe place.
Nelson began organizing the cast.
“Okay, guys. Over here by the bookcase is stage left. Lynette, that means you and your attendants enter from there.”
“There isn’t enough room for everybody,” she complained.
“Just squeeze together,” Nelson said. “Jason, you enter from stage right.” He indicated the general area of the entryway.
“Got it!” The kid in the too large suit lumbered across the room to take his proper place.
James noticed Fern’s smile and the amused twinkle in her eyes. When she glanced in his direction, he winked at her and they shared a moment of joy.
Moments like this had been too rare in recent weeks, and James prayed this was the first of many more to come.
“Joy Ellen couldn’t come,” Nelson said, “so Alice, you read Hermia’s lines, okay?”
The petite dark-haired girl wrinkled her nose. “That means I’m supposed to be in love with Lysander. Yuck.”
“Hey, I’m not too happy about that either,” announced the boy who was playing Lysander.
James swallowed a laugh.
Eventually, Nelson had everyone sorted out and Duke Theseus stepped to the center of the living room. “‘Now fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace…’”
To say that the performance progressed somewhat differently than it had the prior evening was an understatement.
James lost count of how many lines were forgotten. Alice had trouble remembering she was playing Hermia, complaining that her supposed true love Lysander had cooties.
In turn, the boy playing Demetrius, who apparently really liked Alice, kept defending her and overacting his role as Hermia’s suitor.
By the time Nelson spoke his final lines of the play, all of the adults and many of the youngsters were laughing so hard they could barely speak.
James’s sides ached from laughing, and there were tears in his eyes. If given a chance, he knew William Shakespeare would deny he had ever written such a slapstick comedy.
In Deerford, this version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a hit show that would be remembered by every performer long into their waning years. James’s chest filled with pride for his son and the other students who had given this gift of laughter to him. And to Fern.
As the cast took their final bow, the audience all stood to applaud. James hooked his hand under Fern’s elbow to steady her. She looked up at him and whispered, “Thank you. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
James would have willingly climbed the highest mountain or swum the widest ocean if it meant her eyes would glow with this much happiness and vitality every day for the rest of her life.
Surely the downward spiral of her MS had bottomed out now, and she was on the path to improved health once again.
Thank You, Lord!
Before going home, the cast took time to help put away the folding chairs and put the living room back in order. Then they enjoyed some cookies and apple cider Fern’s mother had been kind enough to drop by earlier in the day.
When everyone left, the boys went up to their rooms.
Sitting on the couch, Fern yawned and shook her head. “I think I’m done for the day. I’m ready for bed.”
“You’ve put in a long day,” James agreed.
“And enjoyed a fun evening,” she added with a satisfied smile.
“Okay, let me help you—”
“For a change, I think I can make it without you carrying me.” Using her walker, she pulled herself upright.
“Now, don’t overdo,” James warned.
“I’m feeling so much better today…” She took a few steps toward the stairs. “But you might want to stand by ready to catch me.”
“I’m right here, sweetheart.” The last thing Fern needed was to fall and injure herself. James intended to stay as close as possible.
At the foot of the stairs, she set aside the walker and grabbed the banister for support. Slowly, she went up one step, two steps…
James folded the walker and carried it up behind her. On about the sixth step, she wobbled and locked two hands around the banister.
“Uh-oh, that was close,” she said.
“Let’s do it the fun way.” Setting aside the walker, James scooped her into his arms, carrying her the rest of the way up the stairs.
“Well, I tried,” she said with a discouraged sigh.
“Tomorrow you’ll be better,” he said, though he knew there was no guarantee that came with his promise.
The next morning, James found himself in the staff lounge being lauded once again for organizing the campaign.
“My mom’s neighbors saw you on TV,” one of the orderlies said. “They’re going to write to the governor about our pay. You did great, man.”
James smiled and nodded. He really needed to get changed into his scrubs and get to work.
“Good job!” A night-shift nurse high-fived him as she passed by.
He mumbled his thanks.
This was far more attention than he’d intended to generate for himself. He wanted everyone—including possible funding sources—to focus on the hospital staff as a whole and what good work they all did.
He finally disengaged himself from his co-workers, changed clothes and hurried down to the second floor. His unit had had two admissions overnight—a raging case of flu that looked like it might morph into pneumonia, and an emergency appendicitis who’d had surgery earlier that morning.
James made sure he took extra precau
tions with the flu patient. He gloved up and wore a mask and a covering over his scrubs. One of his greatest fears was that he’d bring home a contagious disease, and Fern, with her lowered resistance, would catch an illness she wasn’t equipped to fight.
At about midmorning, he was logging the meds he’d delivered when the elevator door hummed open. A young man in a wheelchair rolled out and headed toward the nurses’ station. It took James a moment to recognize Ted Townsend. The boy had been discharged more than two weeks ago.
James stepped out from behind the counter. “Hey, Ted, how’s it going?”
The kid gave him a full-blown smile. “Not so bad. I just came from physical therapy across the street.”
“Right.” The outfit that provided physical therapy was housed in the Deerford Medical Services Building opposite Hope Haven. “They getting you up on your feet?”
“More than that. They’re making me work harder than Coach Everett ever did in soccer. I’m doing one-legged jumping jacks and I can bench-press a hundred twenty pounds.”
“Wow, that’s impressive. You’re holding up okay?”
“Oh yeah. A little thing like an amputated leg isn’t going to stop me. Besides, I’m getting my prosthesis in a week or two. Then there’ll be no stopping me.”
James marveled at the change in attitude Ted had undergone. “That’s great. I knew you’d be okay.”
The laundry cart picking up dirty linens rumbled by.
“Yeah, well…” The boy glanced at the passing cart, then back to James. “I wanted to apologize and thank you.”
Leaning back on the edge of the counter, James crossed his arms. “I don’t need any apology or thanks, Ted. I just did my job. Now you’re doing yours.”
“No, it’s more than that. It’s the Paralympics. I’ve been talking a lot the past couple of weeks to Marvin Bloom, the guy who came up from Chicago with his buddies.”
James acknowledged that he recalled the three men Kirstie Scott had contacted.
“Well, anyway,” Ted continued, “turns out the Paralympics has a college scholarship fund for athletes who excel in the program. Marvin thinks I’d have a pretty good shot at doing well in track. I mean, I ran track at Lincoln High when it wasn’t soccer season, so I could probably be pretty competitive once I get used to the leg they’re gonna give me.”
Strength in Numbers Page 16
