Lydia’s eyes were wide. “You had to call him?”
“I wanted to call you, but I didn’t think you’d care.”
Lydia looked suddenly close to tears, and totally like the sweet person Samantha loved. “You’re stupid, you know that?” she cried.
Samantha was about to say she was right, when Hope walked in loaded down with cards, signs, and pictures. Jack followed with vases of flowers, which he set on the windowsill. Hope sank to the floor and opened her arms.
Samantha said to Lydia, “We’re counting on Murphy’s Law. Want to help?”
JACK was buoyed when sweet, unsophisticated, loyal Lydia stayed. He couldn’t help but think that if Samantha could go through life with friends like this one, she would survive and flourish. She certainly had a role model in her mother. Rachel had Faye and Charlie, Dinah, Jan, and Eliza. She had bridge friends, and friends at the girls’ school. She had Ben. And she had Katherine—who returned with an incredibly good lunch.
Steve Bauer arrived minutes later. He checked Rachel’s chart, the monitor, and the IV drip. He lifted her lids and studied her pupils. He called her name, then leaned closer and called it again. He left the room to order another lung scan. Within minutes, the necessary equipment was wheeled in. Jack sent the three girls out to walk around in the sun. He and Katherine waited in the hall.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and blew out a frustrated breath.
“She’ll make it,” Katherine insisted. “There are too many people working too hard to make her live.”
“The point isn’t just to make her live. It’s to make her wake up and be well.” He thought about Faith Bligh. “She could wake up not whole. You asked me once what I’d do then. I think I’d be destroyed.”
“Would you leave?”
“No.” It was a sober admission. “No. I couldn’t.” When Katherine said nothing, he met her gaze. It was open and warm. “What?” he asked, vaguely embarrassed.
“Man has risen to the occasion,” she declared. The words were no sooner out of her mouth than her eyes flew toward Rachel’s room. “Oh, man,” she murmured, folding her arms on her chest.
Jack followed her gaze. All he could see was Steve Bauer, alternately watching the technicians and looking out into the hall at them. And there was Katherine, with windblown air and warm apricot cheeks.
“Did I miss something?” he asked.
She bowed her head and made a strangled sound. “Don’t ask. This is so not the right time.”
He disagreed. If that strangled sound she had made was related to a laugh, the time was right. “I could use a lift. Make me smile.”
She was sober when she raised her head. “He’s a great kisser. What should I do?”
Jack did smile. He liked the doctor. The smile faded when he realized what she meant. “Ah. The old breast thing.”
She settled against the wall and looked into the room again. She kept her arms folded and her voice low. “He didn’t try to touch them, but he will. Men always do. It’s only a matter of time.”
Jack tried to imagine what he would want if he were Bauer. He thought about Rachel. All too well he remembered arriving at the hospital that morning, unprepared for what he would find. “I think you should tell him. If it were dark, would he know?”
“By feel? Yes. Silicone was the best, but it’s been banned. Mine are saline. There’s a difference.”
“Then tell him. You’ll be too nervous to enjoy it, if you don’t.”
She made another of those strangled sounds. “Yeah, well, I’d have thought that, too, before he kissed me. I didn’t have time to think of much, it was that good. I mean, he did everything right.”
“It’s chemistry.”
“It was chemistry with Byron. Funny how body mutilation can kill a good thing.” She pressed her lips together and met his gaze.
“And you don’t want it killed,” Jack said, “so there’s more at stake this time.”
She nodded.
Jack tried to think of all the women he had dated. The ones before Rachel hadn’t been anything special. The ones after had been nice enough, but Jill was the first he had viewed as a friend. For a while he had thought she might be it. But she wasn’t Rachel. Poor Jill wasn’t Katherine, either.
Hard to believe, but he liked Katherine a lot. Totally aside from all that she gave Rachel and the girls, she did things for him, too. Like now. Confiding in him. Telling him things he guessed she would normally tell only another woman. She made him feel like his opinion mattered, which was quite a compliment from a woman as strong as Katherine.
“There’s an analogy here,” he said, reaching out to tuck in a windblown piece of hair, then leaving it because it looked so nicely undone. “Samantha was sure Lydia wouldn’t want any part of her. I told her it was a test. If Lydia didn’t, then she wasn’t the friend Samantha thought, so the loss wasn’t as great. The same goes for you. Any man who loses it because of what you’ve been through isn’t worth your while.”
“Easy to say. You’re not the one baring all.”
He understood that. It had to be hard for Katherine to open herself to the kind of rejection she had already experienced twice. “But breasts are only a small part of a woman, and pretty fickle things, when you get down to it. They swell, they shrink, they sag. Intelligence is more constant. So is warmth, and humor. So is loyalty. Truthfully? If Steve was younger, I’d warn you off. Breasts mean more to young guys. They’re a symbol. I’d be lying if I denied it. But Steve’s not a kid. He’s been around the block. Look at him in there with Rachel. He doesn’t have to be here. It’s Sunday. Give a guy like that the choice between a bimbo with natural knockers and an intelligent, warm, funny, loyal, beautiful woman with rebuilt ones—come on, Katherine, no contest. Hell, I’d go after you myself if I weren’t still in love with my wife.”
JACK’S wife remained unresponsive to the clot buster. The scan showed no noticeable improvement in the passage of air through her lungs, and on the outside, to the eyes and ears of the people who loved her, the symptoms didn’t ease. The doctor said it would take longer. He wouldn’t say how much longer.
Sitting with her that afternoon, Jack thought about love, but he couldn’t relate to it in the abstract, only in specifics. Eighteen years ago, love had meant spending every free minute with Rachel. Seventeen years ago, it meant making monthly payments on a small diamond ring. Sixteen years ago, it meant marrying her; fifteen years ago, having a child.
Men like action, Katherine had said during one of their earliest discussions. He had made it into a semantic argument, but the truth was that he did like action. Having admitted that he loved Rachel, he wanted to do something. Talking to her, moving her arms, applying Vaseline to her lips or scented lotion to her legs was only part of that.
He wanted to believe she would wake up, and wanted things to be right when she did. He had gotten Hope through her picnic and Samantha through her prom. Okay, so he had canceled doctor and dentist appointments, but they could be done later. Right now, he needed to paint. He needed to frame. He needed to buy a car.
chapter twenty
THE CAR JACK BOUGHT was technically a truck. It was a large, loaded, four-wheel-drive vehicle with power, luxury, and class, and if Charlie Avalon wanted to accuse him of flaunting his money, he didn’t care. He wanted the best for Rachel and the girls. He didn’t know why in the hell he had busted his butt to make money or what in the hell he was saving it for, if not this.
And he could afford it. How well, he discovered in Rachel’s studio that night. He hadn’t planned on scrutinizing his finances, had hooked his laptop to the modem for the sole purpose of transferring money from one account to another for the car. Then he set about framing more of Rachel’s pieces. The girls were helping. Hope had done it once, and Samantha was a quick study. In no time, he had Samantha predrilling holes and Hope applying wood glue. He was the one using the miter saw to cut the molding to size, then hammering the nails in once the wood was glued, but n
either job was taxing. His mind wandered. Transferring money had put a bug in his ear. So, when it was time for a break, he went back to the laptop and accessed other of his bank records. After another round of leveling and bracketing corners, he accessed his investment accounts.
He hadn’t deliberately saved money in the years since his divorce. He simply hadn’t spent much. He also discovered, several links later, that San Francisco real estate was at a healthy high, which meant that the value of his house had appreciated considerably.
He was, it seemed, fairly well off. For a guy who had started with nothing—with less than nothing when school loans were factored into the equation—he had done well.
That thought gave him the same kind of good feeling that Katherine’s confiding in him had.
When Hope put her head down on the worktable, he sent her to bed. Samantha worked a while longer. He knew she had to be exhausted, given what she had been through the night before, but he suspected she was feeling some of what he was. As important as visiting with Rachel was, after a while it was discouraging. Working here, there was progress.
She didn’t say anything about the paintings themselves. Given the strength of her initial objections, he guessed that was asking too much. He chose to let her prolonged attentiveness to the framing speak for itself. By the time she finally went off to her room, six paintings were one step away from being done and ready to hang.
Alone, Jack went to work on a wolf. It was a beautiful thing, lying low in a carpet of khaki green summer grass, with the top of its head and body outlined, white fur backlit by the sun. Rachel had gone to the Arctic the summer before, with the girls this time. Studying the photographs she had taken, he wished he had been along. He found prints of wolves in packs, hunting, and at play. There was a primal power to them, foiled by surroundings that looked quiet and serene, in those things much like Big Sur. He felt Rachel’s appreciation in these prints, in her field sketches, in the wolf she had brought to life with her brush. Jack’s challenge was to render that appreciation in an understated backdrop.
She had used mixed media for this one—india ink for the detail of eye and muzzle, acrylic for the fur, watercolor for experimental patches of distant grass. The choice was just right. She had that vision. He was awed enough to hesitate, wondering if he was foolish to touch the canvas, if he could do it justice or would only ruin it.
Then he pictured Rachel, blue around the lips and gasping for air. Wanting, wanting to do it for her, he dug deep inside and began.
Warming up with a large brush on the distant grasses, he used a light watercolor wash of gray, ocher, umber, and green. He gave it depth with charcoal and sap green, gave it warmth with sepias. Layering acrylic over watercolor edges, he moved inward. He kept the grasses neutral in color, but textured. Though Rachel hadn’t put flowers on her canvas, they were on her field sketches. Several photographs depicted them well, cotton flowers, like the wolf, caught from behind by the sun.
Did she want them added?
It was his decision to make, but no decision, really. He saw harmony between animal and plant life in a barren land. The flowers were a must.
He stayed with acrylics to re-create the small cotton buds. When they didn’t capture the halo effect he wanted, he switched to a white pencil with a dulled tip, blending the lines with his finger, then a tissue, then a cotton swab. Nearly there, he put a scrap of paper toweling around the end of the swab and polished the buds. Satisfied at last, he stepped back.
IT WAS NEARLY five in the morning when he cleaned up. He slept for two hours and awoke exhausted. Samantha said she was too tired for school. Hope said she wanted to be with Rachel. He called the hospital, praying that Rachel had improved, but she hadn’t.
He pushed his hands through his hair. “I’ll be running around talking with the doctors. Your mother would want you in school, and it would do my mind good to know you’re there. I’ll pick you up right after. You can see her then.”
Samantha argued as they drove, but he held firm. He needed time alone with the doctors to express fears that he didn’t want the girls to hear.
When he pulled up at the school, Samantha didn’t budge. Where a mutinous pout would have been days before, now there was sheer apprehension.
He tried to understand what she was feeling. “Lydia had no problem with this.”
“There’s all the other kids. And Pam and Heather. And Teague.”
“Teague,” he said, monitoring his language with care, “is not worth your spit. As for Pam and Heather, they’re not much better if they side with him. Life is about making choices, Sam. You can go in there and try to salvage something with Pam and Heather. Or you can stick with Lydia.” When she didn’t speak, he said, “It’s hard. I know.”
“It’s mortifying.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “But the sooner it’s done, the sooner it’s done, if you get my drift.” He put his elbows on the steering wheel and watched a line of reluctant teenagers stumble from a bus. He looked back at Samantha. If she wore makeup, it was light and more in keeping with the natural curl that, for a change, she’d left in her hair. “I was wrong the other night.”
“You? Wrong?”
“When I told you how gorgeous you looked all dressed up. You did look gorgeous, but you look even better now. More beautiful. More you.”
She flipped down the visor and moved her head in the mirror. “I look dorky.”
“Beautiful. Anyone says different, they’re jealous.”
She scooped her hair back. Without the sleek swing, the effect was more feminine.
“Here goes nothing,” she mumbled, flipping up the visor. She opened the door and had barely stepped out when Lydia came toward her. The door closed with a solid new-car thud.
One down, Jack thought, and looked back at Hope. She seemed a great distance behind him, belted safely in, but too far away. When he motioned her forward, she unbuckled herself, shimmied into the passenger’s seat, and sat.
“What, sweetie?”
So softly that it was nearly a whisper, she said, “I have a funny feeling.”
“Funny feeling?”
“I want to be with Mom. Like I was with Guinevere.”
Jack’s heart buckled. He reached over and pulled her into a hug over the center console. “Your mother isn’t dying,” he said into her hair. “We won’t let her die.”
“I said that about Guinevere.”
“Guinevere had a tumor.”
“Is a tumor any different from a blood clot?”
“God, yes,” he said, wondering how long she’d been agonizing over that. “A blood clot isn’t poisonous in itself. It just gets in the way until we break it up. A tumor has bad stuff in it. It grows and spreads and does sick things to the places it touches.” It was a simplification, possibly inaccurate, but hell, he was doing his best. “They can just give her a megadose of that medicine to bust up the clot, then we’ll fight harder than ever to wake her up.”
“How?” came her small voice.
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but we’ll think of a way.”
THEY couldn’t give Rachel a megadose of medicine. They hadn’t even continued the drip through the night. “It’s a question of weighing the risks against the benefits,” Steve explained. They were in the hall—Jack, Steve and Kara, two residents and a nurse who had worked with Rachel, and Cindy. “Anticoagulants thin the blood and break up the clot, but thinning the blood raises the risk of bleeding elsewhere. We don’t want Rachel bleeding.”
Jack agreed. But he was frantic. “Why isn’t she responding?”
Steve shook his head. When none of the others offered an explanation, he said, “We’ll start another dose of the same drip, and then just watch her closely.”
JACK did that himself. Lowering the bed rail, he sat on the bed and exercised Rachel’s hands and arms. He told her that the medicine was working in places they couldn’t see, and that it was only a matter of time before her breathing quieted and her coloring im
proved. He went so far as to say that once those things happened, she would wake up.
“Sounds like a course in the power of positive thinking,” David Sung said from the door. He wasn’t a tall man, but he wore his suits well. Today’s was a light gray plaid. His hair, eyes, and shoes were dark, shiny, and straight.
He entered the room with those dark eyes on Rachel and put the heels of his hands on the bed rail across from Jack. “I thought I’d come see for myself what’s happening here, maybe give you a little support.” He swore softly. “I can see why you’re scared. I hadn’t realized it was this bad.”
Jack was just edgy enough to lash out. “Did you think I was joking? Made it all up, just looking for an excuse to get out of work for a couple of weeks?”
David held up his hands. “Hey, this isn’t my fault.”
Wasn’t it? If David hadn’t pushed, the business wouldn’t have grown as fast, Jack wouldn’t have been sucked in and blinded, Rachel wouldn’t have left him and moved to Big Sur and been hit by a car on the coast road.
But no. Too easy to shift blame. Jack could have stopped the treadmill at any time. He could have stepped off.
David pushed his hands into his pants pockets. It was a sure sign of deliberate restraint. “Let’s start over. Is she showing any improvement?”
Jack blew out a breath. “Nah. Not yet.”
“How’re the girls doing with this?”
“Hangin’ in there.”
In the silence that followed, Jack didn’t look at his partner. He didn’t want to talk business, but business was all they shared. Once, he had thought it might be different. But David had never had a family. He had divorced one wife after another. Even after Jack, too, was divorced, they didn’t mesh on a personal level the way they had when they were back on the bottom rung.
David cleared his throat. “Listen, Jack, I don’t mean to be the heavy … ” He tore his eyes from Rachel and glanced back at the hall. “Uh, can we—can we talk out there? It doesn’t seem right talking work in here.”
Coast Road Page 31
