by Ray Garton
“What do I think?” she asked with an escaped giggle. “I’m in advertising, not medicine.”
“Yes, that may be. But I can’t help wondering . . .”
She was still smiling, but her giggling fit had passed for the time being. “Wondering? Wondering what?”
“Well, um . . .” He leaned back in his plastic orange chair and ran a finger-splayed hand through his hair as he sighed. “You know, when I was in medical school, it was just a given that every single professor, every one of those old graybearded doctors, had a Twilight Zone story to tell. That’s what we called them. Twilight Zone stories.”
“And exactly what were these Twilight Zone stories?”
He reached over to the bowl of cellophane wrapped crackers in the center of the table, tore one open and took a bite, chewing rapidly, like a squirrel.
“I had this one old doctor who told us — the class, I mean — about a guy who not only had advanced cancer of the liver, but also a gangrenous leg. He lived in the hills in an old cabin and had never had so much as a physical exam when this doctor got a hold of him. So, the guy’s not only going to lose his leg, he’s going to die. He goes to an evangelical revival. You know, one of those tent things? The preacher claimed to be a healer. Now, the next time the doctor sees this guy, the gangrene’s gone . . . and so is the cancer. Both of them, just gone. The doctor freaks and asks the guy what happened. When he tells the doctor about the preacher, the doctor immediately tries to reach this healer. But he’s already left town, and nobody knows where he’s going next. He never found the preacher, and he never understood how that hillbilly was cured so suddenly when he was not only going to lose a leg, but die soon as well. So. What do you make of that, Margaret?”
“You’re right. Sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. But what’s it got to do with Lynda’s cancer?”
“All I’m saying is that there are a lot of things out there that the most accomplished doctors don’t understand. Some of them deny those things, or just ignore them. Others want to satisfy their curiosity. That’s me. I’m curious.”
He sat there, silently chewing another bite of his cracker, staring at her. His eyes remained on hers, and he waited . . . for something.
The giggles returned. They came out of her like bubbles, even though she pressed her hand over her mouth tightly.
“I’m sorry, please just — ” She tried to bury the giggles with forced coughs, “ — just excuse me, I haven’t slept much and I’m — ” The coughs began to overcome the giggles, and she was finally able to speak clearly again. “ — I’m just feeling a little goofy from traveling and not sleeping, that’s all.”
A few stray giggles found their way out, but she pressed her lips together tightly and forced them out her nose, muffling them.
He didn’t move for a long moment, just watched her, studied her, almost if Margaret were a patient. Then he leaned forward and folded his arms on the table.
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” he asked quietly. “I mean, could there be something about Lynda . . . something from her past, her childhood, maybe . . . that I don’t know about? Something you could share with me?”
“Well, let’s see.” She belched up a few more renegade giggles. “I can tell you that, when she was a kid, Lynda was a cruel bitch. But we’ve decided to put that behind us now. Don’t you think that’s good?”
“Yes, I think that’s wise. But what I was referring to was something a little more, how should I put this? Um . . . something about your sister that you might have kept . . . secret?” He looked embarrassed as he spoke.
She let a few more giggles slip by before saying, “You mean all those bodies she’d buried in the basement’s dirt floor?” Then she laughed loudly, bowing her head and covering her mouth again as her shoulders quaked silently.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Margaret?”
She nodded without looking up. Then, she lifted her head slowly, in control again, and said, “Dr. Plummer, I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing weird about my sister, if that’s what you’re asking. She’s never been psychic or telekinetic. She got through her entire senior prom without killing a single person with her mind, as far as I know.”
“Then maybe I’m asking about the wrong person.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem to be doing an awful lot of giggling.”
“Yeah, well — ” She shrugged one shoulder. “I’m a giggler.”
Dr. Plummer leaned forward a little further, locking his fingers together beneath his chest. He smiled at her and said very quietly. “Maybe there’s something you’d like to tell me, Margaret?”
She stared at him for a long moment, no longer feeling the urge to giggle or laugh. She realized then that she wanted to tell somebody. But she couldn’t believe that her story would be met with anything besides laughter.
Almost as if reading her mind, Dr. Plummer said, “I’ve already told you how curious I am. Something has happened to your sister that is so far beyond explanation . . . well, I didn’t even see its dust. So, now that you know I’m open-minded and willing to listen . . . is there something you’d like to me?”
She adjusted her position in the chair, sipped her coffee, patted her hair, rubbed an eye with a knuckle, all nervous gestures to buy time as she mustered her courage. Finally, she said, “Yes, actually there is something I’d like to tell you. As long as you promise me that, once you hear my story, you won’t try to have me put in some ward in the bowels of the hospital with lots of locks on the doors and bars on the windows.”
He laughed, leaning back a little. “Not at all. We don’t even have bowels in this hospital. I promise you that — ”
Dr. Plummer beeped three times, sharply.
“Damn,” he muttered, leaning back in his chair and reaching under his white coat. When he pulled his hand out, it held a small black beeper, which spoke to him in a pinched female voice: “Dr. Plummer — 4-East, room four-fourteen, stat. 4-East, room four fourteen stat.”
He stood quickly, replacing the beeper beneath his white coat as he said, “I’m very sorry. I’ve got to go. I’ll be able to find you in Lynda’s room, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I want to finish this conversation. I want to hear your story.”
He turned and rushed out of the cafeteria.
Left alone at the table, Margaret sipped her coffee, giggled a few more times, then went to the vending machines to see what they had to offer.
If Lynda could get through that steak sandwich, then she’d be hungry again, and Margaret wanted to make sure there were plenty of goodies available . . .
15
“So, does he have the hots for you, or what?” Lynda asked. She was lying back on the upright bed, her knees drawn up, watching television. On the far side of the bed, on a rectangular wheeled table, was a crumpled, grease-stained bag, several wadded napkins, and an empty plastic cup with a straw sticking out of the lid.
Margaret walked into the room with an armload of junk food. “He just wanted to talk, so you can stop any match-making you had in mind right now.”
“What’s all that stuff?”
“Well . . . how was the steak sandwich?” She dumped everything onto the bed table.
“It was absolutely delicious!” Lynda said with a small growl of pleasure in her voice. “I loved it! And you know what? Nobody’s gonna believe this, especially Dr. Turner, but . . . I’m still hungry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Something . . . sweet.”
Margaret began to look through the pile of stuff she’d brought with her. “Something sweet, huh? Well, I’ve got M&M’s, a Milky Way, a Hershey bar and a Nestle’s Crunch.”
Lynda grinned. “You did that for me?”
“Sure. I figured if you were hungry, I’d be heading down to the cafeteria sooner or later, anyway.”
“Hershey bar! Gimme, gimme!”
Lynda tore the wrappi
ng from the bar.
Margaret had been thinking all the way back up to 4-East. Dr. Plummer had said that the cancer was gone. But did that mean it would stay gone? Not necessarily. She was determined to maintain as much physical contact with Lynda as possible until she was certain that the threat of death had passed.
“Aside from the candy,” Margaret said, “I brought two sub sandwiches, two bags of chips, two bagels with cream cheese and two Hostess fruit pies. All from cafeteria vending machines, so don’t expect a whole lot. You have no idea how people stared at me on the way back up here, my arms loaded with loose junk food and candy, like I was trying to find a place to sit down and binge, or something.”
“Sub sandwiches?” she asked after biting into the candy bar. “You brought sub sandwiches? Oh, you’re a Godsend! And potato chips? I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me.”
“There’s just one thing. Before you get any of this other stuff, you have to agree to something.”
Lynda looked at Margaret through narrow eyes as she chewed slowly. “Are we going to be holding hands some more?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Lynda said with a smile. “We’ll hold hands if you promise you’ll go to Daphne’s this afternoon and get a knock-out dress for the reunion.”
Margaret laughed and said, “You still want me to go to that damned thing?”
“If you don’t, I’ll be pissed. You’ve got a lot to show off. If I could go with you, I would, just to watch the reactions. So, do we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
“You’ll leave one hand free, won’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“So I can eat, whatta you think!”
Laughing, Margaret wrapped her right hand around Lynda’s left hand and nodded . . .
16
Dr. Plummer came into the room, hurried and distracted, as Lynda and Margaret clumsily lunched on cellophane-wrapped sub sandwiches with one hand, still holding hands with the other. He stayed only long enough to ask Lynda how she was feeling (“As if I have to ask,” he’d added), and to tell Margaret he’d try to see her later in the day. He reduced the drip on Lynda’s I.V., made a note on her chart, and told her she’d be rid of the needle and bag by that night if she still felt this good. On his way out of the room, Dr. Plummer stopped and looked at their locked hands. He glanced at Margaret briefly, curiously, then left.
As she’d promised, Margaret went into town that afternoon to buy a dress. She felt reluctant to leave Lynda, to let go of her hand, but she’d promised. Margaret decided she simply would not take very long so she could get back to Lynda’s bedside as soon as possible.
In Daphne’s, the store Lynda had recommended, Margaret was surprised to find how much she enjoyed trying on one outfit after another. More importantly, she was surprised by how much she enjoyed looking at herself in the mirror. While trying on the first dress, she was so stunned by her reflection that she couldn’t move from where she stood. She just stared silently at her reflection, wondering when she’d last looked so good . . . wondering if she’d ever looked so good.
“Is something wrong?” the young woman who’d been waiting on her asked as she came to Margaret’s side.
Without taking her frowning eyes from the mirror, Margaret asked haltingly, “How old . . . do you think I am?”
“What?”
“My age . . . how old would you guess I am? And please, be honest.”
“Soon as you walked in the door, I figured you were about my age. I was happy to see you, too. You have no idea how many pasty-faced, aging housewives we get in here, trying to dress younger than they — ”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirty next month.”
Resisting the urge to hug the young woman, Margaret tried on more dresses, finally settling for a tight red-velvet strapless sheath that stopped two inches above her knees.
When she returned to the hospital, Margaret found her sister sitting up in a chair by the window, watching the television intently as she methodically popped one M&M after another into her mouth. She was no longer wearing a bandanna on her head, and her hair, while very short, actually looked thicker than when Margaret had seen it the night before. Lynda smiled when Margaret walked in with her package.
“Can you believe this?” Lynda asked snidely, nodding toward the television. “To keep her marriage together, this idiot woman on Geraldo finds other women for her husband to have sex with, because he says she’s too fat. She even lets him sleep with her own sister! And I’m the one in the hospital? Even Geraldo couldn’t afford to provide her with the amount of therapy she needs. So, what did you find?”
“Oh, a nice red dress.”
“Not too nice, I hope. I intended for you to find something provocative, something a little naughty.”
“Well, maybe it is.”
“Put it on, put it on! I insist!”
“I left it hanging in the car. You’ll see it tomorrow, before I go to the reunion.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You’re stuck in a hospital and you say I’m no fun?” She sat in what she’d come to think of as “her chair” and reached over the side rail, which had been lowered, and patted the mattress with her palm. “Now, why don’t you come over here and lie down, and we’ll — ”
Lynda rolled her eyes as she interrupted, “Don’t tell me we’re holding hands again? Margaret, my fingers are stiff from holding hands. And my curiosity is up because you keep insisting.” She rose from her chair and got onto the bed, facing Margaret as she propped herself up on one elbow.
As Lynda looked at her very seriously, with just a hint of wrinkles in her forehead, Margaret was pleased to see how very good her face looked, how vibrant her eyes, how colored and healthy her skin.
“There’s something weird about this, Margaret,” Lynda said in a near-whisper. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot today.”
“What are you talking about?” Margaret asked, smiling, as that giddy feeling rose in her chest again.
“I’m talking about the fact that, before you got here, I didn’t have very long to live at all. I knew it, my doctor knew it and everybody who got one look at me knew it. I was nothing more than a corpse that hadn’t stopped talking yet. Now . . . after you’ve been here a few days . . . after you’ve insisted that we hold hands . . . my hair’s growing back . . . my pain is gone . . . I can sleep without all those horrible nightmares from the chemo . . . and I can eat like a horse without puking my guts up. And my doctor looks at me like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a semi. What’s going on? What have you done? How have you done it?”
Margaret leaned back away from Lynda with a sigh, thinking. She couldn’t tell her everything, not yet. If she did, Lynda might think she was having some kind of breakdown and she might not want her around.
Finally, after a long, silent period of thought, Margaret smiled and said, “Look, if my coming here has helped you to recover — and Dr. Plummer says that’s very possible — then I can’t tell you how glad I am that I came. If . . . well, if the idea of being close, holding hands, bothers you . . . I mean, sometimes that’s the best medicine in the world, you know? Being with a loved one? And we haven’t seen each other in about twenty years, so maybe . . . I don’t know, Lynda, I just wanted to touch you, that’s all. Twenty years is a lot of lost time to make up. If you don’t like it, then — ”
“Oh, Margaret, I’ll hold hands!” Lynda said suddenly, her words spoken in a gaspy breath. Unspilled tears glistened in her eyes. “I don’t mind at all. I just couldn’t understand why I would suddenly improve and . . . get better so fast and . . .”
“Who cares why?” Margaret asked, taking Lynda’s hand.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Lynda said with a stuttering laugh as she dabbed her eyes with a knuckle. “Who cares why? And Margaret . . . what you just said . . .” Her voice lowered to a quivering whisper. “. . . I can’t tell you how much th
at means to me. I could never tell you how much.”
They both smiled and squeezed one another’s hand.
I’ll tell her the whole story once they’re convinced she’s completely cured and they let her out of this hospital, Margaret thought. I’ll hold her hand today until I leave, then I’ll do it again tomorrow, and for however long it takes, until she gets out of the hospital I’ll tell her everything then . . .
17
Margaret awoke in her motel room early the next morning feeling chipper and alert. That alone was enough to startle her, but to add to it, she found herself getting out of bed immediately without even reaching for the snooze button and walking into the bathroom as if she’d been awake for an hour or more.
“Hello, gorgeous,” she said to her reflection with a grin.
She showered, shaved her legs and underarms, humming the whole time. Though she tried to tell herself otherwise, she was nervous. In twelve hours, give or take, she would be confronting the very people who had made her youth — those years that adults are always saying are the best years of your life — such a nightmare. As she went about her business in the motel room, she thought many times that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to go after all. Even though she looked like a million bucks and would no doubt turn a lot of heads, how could she possibly have a good time with all those ugly black memories swirling around her like menacing ghosts. But she’d promised Lynda.
She put her new dress into a garment bag, picked out some jewelry and makeup and put them in her vanity case, and took it all with her to the hospital . . .
18
When Margaret arrived, Lynda’s I.V. pole was gone and she was sitting up in a chair eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes, half a grapefruit, coffee and a tall glass of orange juice. She ate as voraciously as a trucker in a roadside diner who was three hours behind schedule, and when she talked, it was usually while she was chewing food.
