“Forever only starts when our life on earth is over.”
“Maybe.” Ted rolled onto his back, keeping her hand close to his chest, so that she had to lean across him to talk. It put her in a vulnerable position, and maybe Ted needed her to feel that way.
She wouldn’t let him stop her. “Remember when we talked at the beach at Petoskey? You’ve been running away from this conversation. Maybe it’s time to stop running.”
“Okay. Tell me.”
“We each have something we’re born with that makes us unique beings. We all bring something special into the mix of humanity, and when it’s gone, there’s a gap.”
“You mean, when I’m gone, someone might notice.”
“Death is temporary. Your soul, Ted, is what goes on, not your beat-up body. You have the head-knowledge of faith as so many people do, but the hardest thing now is letting go of your misconceptions. To believe the impossible—that there is an afterlife, heaven, is—well, difficult.”
Ted jerked her closer.
Grace resisted him for one last try at his soul. “Our miserable little lives are such a flash in the pan compared to what’s real.”
“What’s real?”
“None of this means anything compared to the promise of heaven, of having all our tears wiped away. That’s a sure thing.”
“How can you know that? And heaven always sounds boring.” He tugged her the rest of the way so that she flopped across his torso. He put a hand behind her neck and pressed his lips against hers ungently, nipping. “Does heaven have that?”
“Something better.”
“Really?” His eyes lit up and he squeezed her shoulder.
“Better than that, too.”
He let his head fall back. “Hmm. Do you really believe this stuff? I mean, I’m not sure even Righteous Randy has that part down—about knowing for sure.”
“I do know it. And I believe it with all my heart. I’d like to be with you again in heaven.”
“What about Jonathan? Will he be there?”
“I’m pretty sure he will.”
“Then what about us?”
Grace twisted her lips. “What about Jilly?”
“I’m pretty sure she won’t be there,” Ted said, tongue in cheek.
“Ted!”
He laughed and fended off her smack at his chest.
“I can tell you there’s no more tears, no jealousy, no pain in heaven,” she said.
“I’d like to spend eternity with you, Grace. And with Eddy, and Randy, and Mom and Dad, and Sean…but I’ll have to think about Jonathan.”
He was back in playful mode. He sat up. Grace pushed him over again. “You!”
He closed his eyes against the sun. “It would be nice. I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think too long. Promise,” she demanded, leaning across his face so that her head shielded his eyes.
“Cross my heart,” Ted said, feebly attempting the gesture.
Grace caught his hand and held it tight.
“And hope to live,” they said in tandem.
Shelby called Grace at suppertime—from Bay Bridge Hospital.
“Honestly, everything was fine until she woke up from a nap this afternoon. I was going to call you,” she said miserably, “but I was so tired, too, and I fell asleep when she did. Her cries were different when she woke up and I just panicked.”
“Oh, Shelby. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sure it’s not your fault, or anything,” Shelby whispered into the phone.
Grace pressed the instrument closer to her head in order to hear.
“I hesitated to call even now. I knew you’d feel bad and there isn’t anything we can do. Her fever went high and they have… they have…” Shelby’s voice faltered. “They’re giving her IV antibiotics. She’s strapped d-down.”
“Oh, honey. Did you get hold of Davy?”
“Yes. He’s on his way back now.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“No, Grace, please. Don’t come, okay? I’ll call you later.”
Grace pressed the button that terminated the connection, more stunned that Shelby did not want her company until Davy arrived, than hurt that her friend thought she might have hurt Alyssa the night before.
She brushed at her face, surprised her cheeks were damp. This episode was the last straw. Her career in medicine was definitely over. There was only one more thing to do. She grabbed her handbag and car keys and drove over to the clinic.
Grace ignored the four patients in the waiting room and Nancy at reception and marched past them all down the hallway into Greg’s office. She slammed the door and sat down blindly in front of the computer terminal at his desk. Setting her purse on the floor, she gave the mouse a little shake to bring the screen back up from Greg’s screensaver of Jamaican beaches. Hesitating only a moment, she rapidly clicked out a terse resignation letter, double checked for embarrassing typos, printed it off, and signed it with a flourish. She tossed it toward Greg’s desk where it breezed back and forth on its way down to the red blotter. As she watched it flutter, the doctor strode into the room. He snatched the paper up just before it settled, barely giving it a glance before tearing it to shreds.
Grace watched him, thoroughly irked. “That doesn’t change anything. I should have resigned months ago when…when the garbage talk started,” she hissed.
Greg’s face remained impassive. He said nothing. For whatever reason, his silence made her more upset. He sat on the edge of his desk, swinging his foot, and calmly watched her composure unravel. He smiled a little, which threw her into a fury. She raised her purse over her head and dashed it to the floor and began looking around for something else to throw.
Greg handed her his Gray’s Anatomy. She had to take it in both hands as the volume was so large. By the time she recovered from its weight, her anger changed to frustration. She hefted the familiar book. Pages of illustrations flashed behind her eyes, memories crept out of her determination to learn all she could before even graduating from high school.
She plopped into Greg’s guest chair with the book on her lap and let her head fall forward.
“I talked to Maddux, the Brouwer’s pediatrician,” Greg said. “The baby is fine. She happened to be one of the few cases that actually needed an antibiotic, something I wouldn’t have prescribed until the afternoon.” He wadded and tossed the shredded resignation letter in the garbage can. “So, what’s this really about?”
“What if I hurt her? What if I can’t help people anymore? I’ve lost my—”
Greg put his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to hear this! Mrs. Brouwer was worried that you might overreact like this. That’s why she wanted me to talk to you. I was on my way out to your place when I noticed your car already here.”
He stood. “Look, Grace. I don’t know exactly under what auspices you work. You know I don’t go for that faith healer stuff, but you have some special ability in treating patients. I know what happened with the Marshall boy and I’m not kidding myself that there wasn’t something, ah, out of the ordinary that you did to make it heal clean and fast, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Tony Vander Groot is a little demon and I’m certain that he jerked or did something to hurt himself during that accident last summer and I simply don’t care about the rest.”
Greg folded his arms and stared at her. “Now with this—well, you’ve never been a coward.”
She shook her head, drained.
“I think you’ve been coddled, admired, even worshiped, for what you can do for people and haven’t run into much opposition before,” he said mercilessly.
His sharp darts thrust into the fabric of her pride. Grace jumped out of the chair and stalked to the door.
Greg stepped in front of her, and held out his hand, palm facing her. “Now, wait. Isn’t that just a little bit true?”
She halted and nodded reluctantly, not meeting his question.
“So, a little character defin
ition doesn’t hurt.”
Closing her eyes, Grace crossed her arms and turned her cheek. “I want to be someplace where hard things don’t happen all of the time. Why can’t I just work, eat, sleep, and be happy?”
Greg wandered over to his louvered window and looked out. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his feet. After a few minutes he said, “I think that’s a rhetorical question. At least I hope it is.”
He jingled the loose coins in his pocket and then turned to face her. “But in case it isn’t, my answer is, sometimes you can just work, eat, sleep, and be happy. And you have to keep those moments close, so when you can’t please everybody all the time, you haul out those happy moments and relive them until the unhappy people crawl back into their own little lives and leave yours alone. And, of course, you chose one of the worst careers to meet those conditions,” he concluded. “Now. I have you scheduled—”
“I’m not kidding, Greg. I can’t work here anymore.”
He sighed and sat in his chair behind the desk, looking much like the first day Grace met him when he was weary and ill with flu. He leaned back and closed his eyes briefly before opening them and leaning across his desk. “I think I can only remember one time when you ever took a vacation, which was in July, right?”
Grace saw the direction of the discussion and began to shake her head.
Greg reached across the desk and grabbed her hand. “Listen to me,” he said in his no-nonsense voice. “I want you to take some time off. There are extenuating circumstances”—Ted—“that necessitate your care being given elsewhere for the time being.”
He cocked his head and squeezed her knuckles painfully. “Two months’ leave for now. Middle of December I’ll expect you back here, bright and eager.”
Conveniently after Randy and Kaye’s wedding.
“I’ll keep in touch,” he promised.
Or threatened.
She understood that was all the time he was giving Ted Marshall to live.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Grace walked aimlessly toward the few scraggly apple trees behind her house. Hurting her best friend’s baby was horrifying, but having a date stamp on Ted’s life gutted her. For the first time she knew for sure he was going to die and nothing she did could make any difference. God wasn’t going to give her the chance to try. How could he do this? He had left her gaping and wounded, bereft.
Wasps buzzed lazily around the late summer fruit, its fermenting juice filling her nostrils. Tall grasses waved in the breeze and she stopped to watch a blackbird land nearby and tilt its shiny head at her. A wasp landed on her jacket sleeve and she wondered if she should shake it off. She put one foot in front of the other until she walked right up the cement steps leading to the Marshalls’ stoop. Ted stood braced against the door, waiting, arms open and shoulder available. It was the first time Grace had gone to him. She felt his chest heave even as she fitted so smoothly into his arms it was as if the two of them were two halves of the same mold.
Sharing her grief made it only a little less frightening.
Ted breathed in her scent, the familiar aloe mingled with the freshness of outdoors. Grace’s nose felt like ice buried in the side of his neck. She trembled. He jiggled her shoulders a little when he knew he could no longer stand comfortably.
“Hey.” He held her away. “I need to sit. Come.” Ted turned and led her into the house.
The ticking of the grandfather clock tried to drown out his worried thoughts. Ted smoothed her hair and cheek, running his finger around the rim of her ear while they sat on the couch. He whispered, “Grace. Look at me.” Her eyes were blank, shocked, as if she were just waking up in a strange bed. She looked around and slowly settled her gaze on his face.
“Shelby called here. She’s so worried.” He gave Grace another little shake. “You’re not supposed to be the one to make people worry.”
She didn’t respond.
“People talk, you know—it’s not mean or anything, or accusing, or strange. You have a special talent—the ability to make people better.” He babbled to fill the silence. “But sometimes things happen. Not even a doctor can save his patient every time. Germs find their way in. Shelby and Davy understand. It’s okay with me. You can’t always simply fix everyone…”
He was stunned at her reaction. She thrust herself away from him, getting to her wobbly feet. Two spots burned on her cheeks and her eyes shone unnaturally bright.
“Like I can’t fix you, you mean? It’s supposed to work. That’s why I have it, that’s why I was called to be a healer.” She paced strangely off-course as a blind woman might have been. She put out a hand as if to fend off the wall at the far end of the room. Ted wondered for a moment if she had taken something or had a drink. He wrinkled his eyebrows and sniffed. No booze on her breath.
What to do next. She had come to him—for what? He went carefully over the sketchy information he knew. Shelby had asked Grace to come and check out Alyssa but later took the baby to the hospital. Alyssa was sick but not that sick and recovering nicely. Grace wanted to quit her job but instead was on leave.
Why was Grace so upset? She had not reacted this strongly back when everyone was talking about her last summer.
Ted thought back to their conversation of the previous afternoon.
“Death is temporary,” she had told him. She was so sure of herself that he had no choice but to consider over and over what she said. He thought of her until he saw her through the window as if he had wished her to appear.
She stood before him, agitated. “Randy said…Randy told me…” She stopped, looking as confused as he was at the words coming out of her mouth. He watched her crinkle her forehead, before swiveling to face the window. She started pacing again. “Randy asked me to help you. But I can’t,” she whispered.
Ted stared, fascinated at the tears rolling down her face. She couldn’t be going through all this for him, could she?
“He knows. He found out when he went there. They told him…he knew that I couldn’t then, and I can’t now.” She shuddered.
He had no idea what she was talking about. He wondered if she were in the midst of a mental breakdown. What should he do? “What does Randy have to do with anything?” Ted asked. “You’re talking about last spring when he went to Woodside? I realize he had no business checking out your credentials and background but it’s not like you have anything to hide, is it? Your husband died of cancer. Your child was in a car accident far away from you. People die all the time. You didn’t want to stay in that place and came here to start new. Believe me, if I could I would have left, too—just taken Eddy and gone somewhere else.”
She wandered away from him, shaking her head. “No, no, no.” She slumped on the sofa.
He followed her. “Grace.”
“I’m so tired, Ted. I just need to lie down, okay? A little nap.”
“Grace!” He shook her shoulders. “Wait! You didn’t, um, take anything did you? Some aspirin, or…” He tried to think. “Or anything from the clinic, did you?”
Grace looked at him, smiling dreamily. “Of course not.” She patted the seat beside her. “Come, be here with me. It won’t be always, you know.” Her smile turned sweetly nostalgic. “We were talking about something important this afternoon. Before Shelby and Greg. It was important,” she said. “Ah, yes, about it not being always.” She frowned. A woozy, bemused little line appeared between her brows. “Some things are temporary, though, aren’t they?”
Ted sat beside Grace and pulled her close again, smoothing her hair and rocking her gently.
“But some things are always.”
And it occurred to him that it was true.
Eddy told his dad he thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have Grace sleeping over on his couch. Eds anxiously waited for her to wake up in the morning and kept going to check, tiptoeing with exaggerated care. He sounded like a herd of elephants. Ted was surprised she slept through it. He caught his son breathing practically into
her ear at one point and made him stay in the kitchen to give her some privacy.
Grace woke all at once right before ten o’clock. What she was doing on Ted’s couch? And why was he standing there?
“What happened?” She felt sick to her stomach and combed her hair with shaky fingers.
“We talked. Then you fell asleep, nothing more. Let me get you something to eat.”
Ted fixed her tea and Eddy brought her toast, walking carefully still on tiptoes with his precious burden. The child tipped the plate at the last minute and a few crumbs landed in her lap along with the plate.
“Whoops!” Eddy opened his eyes wide and dropped his chin.
“My lap isn’t that hungry,” Grace told him. He giggled. She looked closely into his eyes to see that all the sadness of the last week and the anxiety of who would sign his reading paper had gone.
When Eddy was satisfied that she had eaten every crumb of toast, the little guy went off to dress. Ted joined her, lowering himself stiffly in a nearby rocker with the aid of his crutch. Grace watched.
“I don’t remember anything from the time I left the clinic until this morning. The last time that happened was when I first came here to East Bay. I woke up in the motel with a paper that said I checked in two days earlier and I had no recollection of it. Or of much of the trip before.”
She put the empty plate and mug on the coffee table, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
“I think you were really stressed out.”
“How’s the baby?”
“Alyssa went home with her parents about a half an hour ago. Davy called. She’ll be fine. I could hear her cooing in the background on their car phone when they called. They tried here when you didn’t answer. Shelby was worried.”
Grace squeezed her eyes shut in relief. She opened them and sat forward, thinking it was time she left. She glanced around, trying to pick out any of her belongings. Shoes would be good. She put them on and stood up.
Healing Grace Page 22
