The Cherry Cola Book Club

by Ashton Lee

  Instead, Councilman Sparks stole the floor right out from under her again. “If I might, Miz Mayhew,” he began, “I’d like to pose a question here at the outset to all you good people—but particularly the men.” He did not wait for her to acknowledge his request, pressing on like the polished politician he was. “I’ve been giving this a great deal of thought. Don’t you feel that Atticus Finch is unrealistic as a character and a father? For instance, he’s raising Jem and Scout by himself and always gives them the right advice and never seems to make any mistakes. He has the moral high ground on everything. I don’t know any men like that, do you? Where are the typical male foibles? In fact, he has none.”

  It took every ounce of Maura Beth’s restraint to keep from saying out loud: “I can see why Atticus Finch would be alien to a man like yourself.” Instead, she gathered herself and asked for reactions from the others.

  Becca was the first to respond. “I wish my Stout Fella was much more like Atticus Finch, even if the character is unrealistic. Justin knows his business and gets things done, but he doesn’t leave much time for anything else. For instance, he hasn’t made time to slow down and think about us having a family, and we’ve been married ten years now. If we have children eventually—and I do want to—do I think Justin will be an Atticus Finch? No way. I don’t think men are like that in real life. So I suppose Councilman Sparks has a valid point.”

  Douglas, who had been fidgeting in his chair a bit, entered the discussion with a slight scowl. “Now, wait just a minute here. I’ll admit we men aren’t perfect. Neither are our women. But I always took care of my family. I love my wife and daughter and granddaughter. You don’t have to be an Atticus Finch to do what you’re supposed to do—or the right thing, as the case may be. Have you thought that maybe Atticus Finch is written that way to make us strive to be better men—and lawyers, for that matter?”

  “Speaking of which,” Councilman Sparks said, “don’t you think the law profession has taken a turn for the worse since they allowed billboard and television advertising? Hasn’t it cheapened everything?”

  Douglas bristled, speaking up quickly. “I don’t advertise, Mr. Sparks. Never will.”

  “But you do admit the existence of high-profile ambulance chasers?”

  “Is that what we’re here to discuss?” Douglas pointed out, struggling for control.

  And then Locke Linwood spoke up while holding Miss Voncille’s hand. “I’m not qualified to answer questions about lawyers, but getting back to the subject of the perfection of men, I can tell you for a fact that my Pamela had no complaints about me as a husband. Yes, we both made plenty of mistakes, but we hung in there and raised a family together. I don’t know how much more you could ask of any man.”

  “Seems to me that what all of you are saying confirms my observation,” Councilman Sparks added, his face a study in smugness. “Atticus Finch is the perfect man and lawyer, and the rest of us could never measure up. We all have our profound weaknesses, and I guess we have to try to overcome them. In short, Atticus is unrealistic, and we are real. But we shouldn’t be made to feel bad if we can’t achieve a fictional ideal for the ages.”

  Maura Beth realized she must step in soon to rescue the tone of the discussion, but Connie preempted her with an emotional plea. “I think we need to step back a bit. I didn’t come here to gang up on the men, and I don’t think I would appreciate it if they ganged up on me.”

  “I agree,” Becca added. “Stout Fella drives me crazy, and I don’t know how my life with him will turn out in the end, but God knows, I don’t expect him to be perfect.”

  Maura Beth’s cell phone vibrated behind the podium, causing her to start noticeably. Her body continued to tense up as she answered the call and listened to the very agitated voice on the other end, while the shocked expression on her face gave no doubt as to the serious nature of the message she was hearing. Then she snapped the phone shut abruptly, as if trying to punish the messenger, and said as calmly as possible: “Becca, I need to speak with you in private, please. If the rest of you will excuse us for a minute.”

  Becca rose from her seat quickly with a fearful tone in her voice. “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  The two of them moved away from the podium and closer to the circulation desk where Maura Beth turned her back to the others for privacy, discreetly lowering her voice and blocking Becca from view. “There’s no easy way to say this, but that was Periwinkle Lattimore at The Twinkle. It appears that Justin may be having a heart attack as we speak, and they’re rushing him to Cherico Memorial right now—”

  Becca lost control before Maura Beth could finish, her face overcome with panic and her voice going shrill. “Oh, my God! Somebody needs to drive me there. Who’ll drive me? Who’ll take me? He just can’t be having a heart attack. That big gorilla is only thirty-nine years old!”

  All the others reacted by jumping up and approaching the front desk, with Connie and Douglas being the first to surround Becca. “Stout Fella’s having a heart attack!” she cried out, tugging at Connie’s sleeve like a frantic child. “Will you drive me there? I don’t have the car!”

  “Of course we will. Don’t worry,” Douglas said, taking her gently by the arm. “And we’ll stay right by your side.”

  Everyone in the room offered to do something helpful simultaneously, as the second meeting of The Cherry Cola Book Club dissolved in the face of the crisis. In the end, they all agreed that they would meet up at Cherico Memorial to provide whatever support they could for as long as they were needed. It might end up being a very long night.

  8

  Balloon Therapy

  It was in the crowded, second-floor waiting room of Cherico Memorial Hospital a half hour later that Maura Beth put things in perspective. The Cherry Cola Book Club had switched its focus from snippets of prose to snippets from the ICU, where Stout Fella was being monitored for complications due to acute myocardial infarction. Everyone—including Winston Barkeley and Councilman Sparks, but minus the teenaged Renette Posey—had gathered for the vigil and were variously fidgeting in their seats, blankly turning magazine pages or standing around full of nervous energy.

  All except Connie, who had become the liaison between the earnest young cardiologist, Dr. Oberlin, and the others. Each time he ventured out to give the latest update on Stout Fella’s condition to a mildly sedated Becca, Connie was there for the helpful translation.

  “They’ve given him a clot-busting drug called streptokinase to stabilize him,” she was explaining to the group after the doctor’s most recent visit, holding on to Becca’s hand all the while. “Fortunately, the blocked artery in question is not the widow maker. The affected area of the heart is on the bottom. Once they’re sure he can travel, they’ll ambulance him to Centennial Medical Center in Nashville where they specialize in cardiac procedures. I know that facility well. It’s one of the best in the country. I would love to have worked there during my career, but I could never quite pull it off.”

  Becca continued to grip Connie’s hand tightly as she spoke. “I need to be there. How will I get up there?”

  As he had at the library, Douglas reassured her. “Connie and I will drive you up when the time comes. We know every little nook and cranny of Nashville. We’ll both stay with you until he’s completely recovered, and we can even drive you and Justin back when the time comes. My brother Paul and his wife live up there and have plenty of room in their Brentwood house. I’ll give him a call, and he’ll put us all up. No problem.”

  “And Justin will recover,” Connie added. “Dr. Oberlin says there are so many positive signs already. For one thing, Periwinkle’s 911 call got him to the ER within minutes. Time is always of the essence with any heart attack. As we speak, I’m sure they’ve reduced the size of the clot. He has had a slight allergic reaction to the streptokinase, though. They haven’t been able to remove the blockage completely, but he’s got some blood flow back in the artery and that’s the most important thing
. He’s in no pain at this point, so we can all take a deep breath and think our best, healing thoughts.”

  “And the rest of the blockage is why they need to take him up to Nashville?” Maura Beth asked.

  “This is a very small, rural hospital,” Connie continued. “They don’t have the equipment or staff to do the next procedure he’ll require. It’s called a balloon angioplasty. They’ll thread a small guide wire with an inflatable balloon from an artery in his leg to his heart. They monitor the whole thing with a camera. Then, once they’ve inflated the balloon—bam! No more clot!”

  Despite her sedation, Becca rambled on a bit. “The doctor said the procedure was safe. But is it really? It sounds so dangerous and complicated. What if I lose him? Just tonight we had this silly argument over nothing and everything. I even told him that I could get along without him. Is this God’s way of punishing me for such callous thoughts? Connie, please tell me the truth. Just how safe is this balloon thing?”

  “Now, calm down, Becca. I’ve seen the procedure performed successfully so many times, I can’t count,” Connie said, stroking the back of Becca’s hand. “It’s far less intrusive than bypass, and the recovery time is usually a week or less. Some people are back at work in practically no time. This is a maximum recovery situation all around.”

  It was then that Periwinkle walked off the elevator with crisp authority, making straight for Becca and extending her hand solicitously. Hugs for Connie and Maura Beth soon followed, and she acknowledged the others with a smile and a nod. “What’s the latest?” she asked, catching her breath. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”

  Connie brought her up to date with a condensed diagnosis that only a medical professional could manage.

  Periwinkle relaxed a bit from head to toe. “Well, I got to close up a little early. Nothing clears a dining room like someone on a stretcher.” Then she brought herself up short. “Oh, I didn’t mean to make light of the situation. Please forgive me, Becca. I run off at the mouth all the time.”

  “Forgive you?!” Becca exclaimed, her eyes widening in disbelief. “You’ve got it all wrong. I can’t thank you enough for what you did, Periwinkle. Dr. Oberlin says the paramedics were there in record time. My Stout Fella probably owes you his life. How did you know what was going on so fast?”

  “Call it instinct, I guess,” Periwinkle explained, her gum noticeably absent for once. “Your husband called me over to the table and asked if I had some Alka-Seltzer or something for his stomach. He was drinking coffee with his friend over there, but he looked really pale and sweaty to me. I like to keep my restaurant on the chilly side during all this summer heat, so even then I started to wonder what was happening.”

  The tall, sportily dressed Winston Barkeley stepped up to add his own observations. “Yeah, I could tell something was wrong with him, too. He kept saying he had indigestion from the moment he sat down across from me. Said he’d eaten too much at a party he’d just come from. But I could tell the Alka-Seltzer wasn’t helping much by the way he kept rubbing his chest.”

  Periwinkle nodded and continued, “Then he called me over to the table again and said he was really starting to feel much worse, like there were gears grinding somewhere inside. Well, that did it. I’m never pleased to see indigestion at my restaurant, but this was just way different from the usual drink water and belch, if you’ll excuse my language. ‘I’m going to call 911 right this instant,’ I told him. ‘I don’t like what’s going on here one bit.’ So I pulled out my cell phone and the ambulance was at The Twinkle in . . . well, a twinkle, I guess.”

  Becca squeezed Periwinkle’s hand a couple of times. “Bless you, Doctor Periwinkle, bless you. Make all the little jokes you want to.”

  “Oh, honey, believe me, it’s just a part of being out there dealing with the public. You have to be on the lookout for everything and everyone. You’re a hero one day—the next day, you’re being sued for all you’re worth when somebody slips on a piece a’ lettuce.”

  Becca looked incredulous. “Has somebody actually taken you to court for something like that?”

  “Not me, knock on wood. But it happened to a nice-looking fella I met at a restaurant supply convention once. Would you believe he ended up spending most of his savings having to defend himself against some spilled Thousand Island dressing that cost someone a broken leg?”

  Becca managed to smile for the first time in a good while. “Well, I’m just thankful my Stout Fella was at The Twinkle tonight. That cup of coffee he ordered was the best bargain of his life.”

  An hour later, only Connie, Douglas, Becca, and Maura Beth were maintaining the vigil in the waiting room. The others had headed home with the understanding that either Connie or Maura Beth would notify them of any change in Stout Fella’s status. But the news was as good as it could be for the time being. With all vital signs stable, the doctors had decided that the patient would be ambulanced to Nashville within the hour for an angioplasty early the next morning.

  “I know the last thing you want to do is leave this waiting room right now, Becca,” Connie was saying. “But if Douglas and I are going to drive you up tomorrow morning, we need to get you home to do some packing, and we need to do the same. Matter of fact, why don’t you just spend the night with us after we’ve picked up your things? Dr. Oberlin assures me there’s no immediate danger now. Meanwhile, the three of us have got to get some rest for the trip.”

  Maura Beth backed her up with authority. “It’s best you listen to her, Becca. Connie knows about these things.”

  But instead of agreeing to their advice, Becca suddenly began to tear up. “I know things are going as well as they can, but I just feel like this is all my fault. I’m the one that put all that weight on him. And then I teased him all the time about it, calling him Stout Fella.”

  “But you told us he embraced his nickname in the end. Even thought it made him a superhero in his own mind,” Maura Beth said. “Don’t beat yourself up like this. You pointed out to all of us how driven he’s always been. I’ve never seen anyone eat so much food so fast in my life at the library tonight. No one was shoving it down his throat. You can’t be responsible for that kind of behavior.”

  “You also said you couldn’t believe he was having a heart attack at the age of... thirty-eight, was it?” Connie added.

  “Thirty-nine, actually,” came the sniffling reply. “His birthday was last month. I made him a big, fattening devil’s food cake, and he ate the whole thing. Of course, if I hadn’t baked something homemade, he would have gone out and bought a dozen éclairs from Hanson’s Bakery and put candles on every one of them. That big dope and his sweet tooth!”

  Connie smiled while once again assuming her medical professional persona. “There you are. But birthday goodies aside, you’ve got to understand that for someone to be that young and suffer an AMI, there have to be other significant contributing factors. Not just eating habits and weight gain, but issues like management of stress, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels have to be taken into consideration. This is by no means as cut and dried as it seems.”

  Becca furrowed her brow for a moment. “He’s supposed to be taking cholesterol medication, but . . . I can’t swear he does. But he does a lot of things he’s not supposed to. I guess he’s paying the price now.”

  “You can discuss all that with him after the angioplasty in Nashville when he’s well on the road to recovery,” Connie continued. “Meanwhile, I think we ought to check in with Dr. Oberlin and let him know we intend to join your husband up there.”

  It was only after she was told her Stout Fella was being prepped for travel and there was no more time for visitors that Becca finally gave in, and the vigil officially came to an end—at least in Cherico.

  “What time do you think you’ll be leaving tomorrow?” Maura Beth asked the McShays on the way down in the elevator.

  They exchanged glances and then turned toward Becca. “Six-thirty okay with you? We can go up the Nat
chez Trace Parkway and be in Nashville well before nine,” Douglas said. “That’s the way we’ve gone back and forth for our vacation time these past six years.”

  Becca offered no resistance, nodding slowly while briefly closing her eyes.

  “Of course. You have no choice but to get up bright and early,” Maura Beth observed. “And you might need something besides a cup or two of coffee to keep you focused on the way up.”

  Connie looked at her sideways. “What on earth are you talking about? Speed? Douglas and I have never gone there, and I worked many an all-nighter at the hospital to tempt me.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. It’s nothing like that. I’ve just had this absolutely inspirational idea, and the closer you get to Nashville, the more excited you’ll be about it,” Maura Beth continued as the elevator doors opened. “I’d like for you to follow me and pop into the library after we leave the hospital. I promise this will only take a few minutes.”

  Douglas shrugged. “Okay, might as well. Nothing else has gone by the book this evening.”

  It was Connie who accompanied Maura Beth into the library once Douglas had pulled the car up in front of the portico, idling the engine with a drowsy, emotionally exhausted Becca slumped in the backseat. “I hope you’re not going to offer us all the book club leftovers hiding out in your library fridge,” Connie remarked. “If not, I can’t imagine what you could possibly have up your sleeve.”

  Maura Beth laughed as she unlocked her office door. “Oh, I assure you, it’ll make all of you feel better once you get to Nashville and get to visit with Stout Fella in his hospital room.” She walked over to her desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. “Aha, I was right. My memory is not failing. I did put them in here.” Then she handed Connie the big bag of balloons she had decided not to use for the Gone with the Wind meeting. “I’d hold off on blowing them up now, but they might make a terrific day-brightener when you walk in and say hello to Stout Fella. You can tell him they’re from everybody in The Cherry Cola Book Club with their very best wishes for a speedy recovery.”