Blackberry Winter

by Maryanne Fischler

  “I reckon I’m doing fairly well,” she answered tentatively.

  “You probably don’t know who I am. My name is Brian McClellan. I stopped at the side of the road when you had your accident, then I rode with you in the ambulance. I just thought I’d stop in and see how you’re doing.”

  “How kind of you! I certainly appreciated your help the other day, even though I was in no shape to show it. I vaguely remember you seemed to know what you were doing. You must have some training in first aid.”

  “Well, you see, I’m a doctor,” he said.

  “Oh, then wasn’t it lucky for me that it was you on the road the other day?” she said with a little smile.

  “I guess it was about the only good luck you had that day,” he commented.

  “Really, when you think about it, I was rather fortunate. I mean, things could have been a lot worse. They tell me I’ll be as good as new in a few days.” After a pause, she asked, “Do you work in this hospital, Dr. McClellan?”

  “No, I’m a pathologist at the School of Medicine.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. Realizing from the location of his voice that he must be standing, she invited him to sit down. “That makes it all the nicer that you came to see me. That’s a ways from here. I’m curious, is any of the snow left?”

  “Most of it’s gone. There are still a few patches in the shaded spots. It never seems to last very long here,” he replied.

  “You’re not from North Carolina, Doctor?” she asked.

  “No, I’m from a small town in Vermont.”

  “Oh, then you must know all about driving in the snow. You’ll have to give me some pointers for future reference,” she said.

  “I don’t imagine it would do much good unless I gave the same pointers to all the drivers who might hit you,” he said. “The young fellow that ran into you certainly could stand a few lessons.”

  With the sort of smile Southerners reserve for wayward youth, she said, “I was glad that he wasn’t hurt. I’ll bet he was scared to death; from what I’m told, I looked quite a fright. Anyway, his parents sent a nice box of cookies. Won’t you have one?”

  McClellan hesitated, “I really ought to be going. I don’t want to tire you.” He rose to leave.

  “Oh, I’m not a bit tired. Mostly I think I’m just dying of clotted boredom,” she said, hoping that he would take the hint and stay a little longer.

  “I guess there’s no hurry. Tell me, Miss Stone, what do you do for a living?”

  She sighed. “I’m a librarian at the county library. I work in the interlibrary loan department. I send books out to the various branches and fill requests for patrons. I guess really it’s pretty boring.”

  A rule of thumb that Emily had learned long before was that people are much more interested in talking about themselves than in finding out about other people, so she asked, “What exactly does a pathologist do? I’m sure I’ve never met one before.”

  “There are several different kinds of pathologists. Some are forensic pathologists who do autopsies and gather evidence in cases of crime or suspicious deaths. I’m predominantly a clinical pathologist. I spend most of my time looking at things under a microscope.”

  He went on at some length about the nature of his work, and she seemed fascinated by it, which he found a little difficult to believe. His experience in the past had been that after a few polite remarks, most people found a way to change the subject when pathology came into a conversation. When he slowed down, she would come up with another question which showed her interest in what he had to say. After almost an hour, he politely took his leave, after promising to visit her again.

  The following day brought another visitor to Emily’s hospital room. Janet Barstow came in with a bustling air of forced good cheer. “Hello, Emily. So good to see you. How are you doing?”

  “Hi, Janet. Not as bad as I apparently look.”

  “Oh, no, you look amazingly well having lost an argument with such a big tree. What a thing! Right on your way home from work. Just terrible. Everyone at the library is asking about you. The director even called. He said he was making sure that you got the finest care available and that you stayed here as long as it was necessary.”

  Emily responded, “I wondered why they don’t seem in any hurry to get rid of me. They said they would keep me until they were sure I would be able to see well enough to take care of myself.”

  There was an awkward pause. Emily wondered if the library bosses thought she was going to sue them or something. Janet finally broke the silence by saying, “I feel bad that you came to work that day when so many didn’t and then you got in that terrible accident.”

  “You came in that day too, so I don’t think you should feel bad. It was one of those act of God sorts of things. I don’t blame anybody, really. I just...” Emily was interrupted by a tap on the door. “Come in, she said.”

  Brian McClellan did so. He stopped inside the door and said, “Oh, excuse me, Miss Stone, I didn’t realize you had company already.”

  “Do come in, Doctor. This is my supervisor from the library, Janet Barstow. Janet, this is Dr. Brian McClellan. The good doctor is also a good Samaritan.” She went on to explain the circumstance of their meeting. After a few moments of polite small talk, the Janet took her leave.

  “I hope I didn’t cut her visit short,” Dr. McClellan said.

  “If you did, I expect you did her a favor. It was one of those obligatory visits that people make. The truth is I don’t know her at all well. I guess I’m not the most sociable person. Most of the fulltime staff at the library is married or involved. I stick out there like an elephant on Times Square.”

  “We’ll have to be elephants together, then. I’m forty-six and unmarried.”

  “Now there’s a piece of information I’m glad to have,” Emily thought. “I may not have the slightest idea what this gentleman looks like, but I do know he’s unattached.” Aloud, she continued, “I wanted to ask you about Vermont. Is it really as nice as people say?”

  He paused thoughtfully for a moment and said, almost with a sigh, “It’s the most beautiful place in the world. In the spring you can see a hundred shades of green in the course of one walk through the woods. In the summer, it’s warm and yet never really hot. You can go out on a lake in the middle of July and need a light sweater. In the winter there are rolling hills, vast expanses of pure untracked snow. My favorite time of year, though, is the fall. I’m not much on hiking or strenuous outdoor stuff, but in the fall in Vermont I feel a kind of compulsion to be outside, to walk for hours, to roll around in piles of leaves like a little kid. The air is so clear you want to breathe it in like a tonic. The night sky is so full of stars, you feel like you’re among them rather than below them. Of course, I’m probably prejudiced since it’s home, and home is always the best place in the world.”

  “Not always,” she said. “Tell me about your hometown.”

  For the remainder of his visit, she kept him talking about Vermont, and in the process she learned a bit about his childhood. It was obvious from everything he said that he had enjoyed that time in his life. There was a utopian glow in his descriptions of the amusements in which he passed his youth. He was, it seems, an only child. His father had been the town doctor in a small, prosperous town. His youth sounded like bliss to Emily. It was early evening when Dr. McClellan looked at his watch and started at the time. “I can’t believe I’ve been going on like this,” he apologized.

  “Oh, I’ve enjoyed it enormously,” she answered. “You must tell me some more some time.”

  With that he took his leave, promising to return the next day. In fact, he visited every day she was there and they had long conversations about life in Vermont, and many other things. Dr. McClellan noted that while she had a lively if somewhat old-fashioned wit, Emily also had a gift for steering the conversation away from herself. She didn’t talk about her family, her youth, her home, or any very personal things. She was invariably friendly and che
erful, even on days when it was obvious that she was feeling pain. She always seemed genuinely pleased to visit with him, and urged him to return. For his part, he amazed himself with his willingness, even eagerness, to become better acquainted with her. A hospital room is a strange place in which to undertake a new relationship. Furthermore, the time of his life when he would have been described as a ladies’ man was far behind him. Emily was hardly a stunning beauty, especially with bruises and bandages on her face, yet she was charming in a prosaic and old-fashioned way. But for Brian McClellan, she had a peculiar attraction, at least for the moment. He was willing to break out of his usual solitary lifestyle in Emily Stone’s case because she was blind.

  Chapter 2

  The time was fast approaching when the ophthalmologist would remove the bandages that covered Emily’s eyes. In her own mind, she thought of it as the great unveiling. Despite all the assurances she had heard, there was still a little voice inside her whispering that something unexpected would happen and she would never see clearly again. One of the character flaws that she readily identified within herself was the tendency to worry about everything, including—if not especially—those things about which she could do nothing. While her days were spent in tedium relieved only by Dr. McClellan’s visits, her nights were filled with a cycle of worry and fear about a future she couldn’t control. “At least,” she thought, “I’ll soon know one way or the other. I used to think of myself as a patient person, but I guess that was only because I’ve never had to wait for anything really important.”

  In the midst of this reverie, she heard the sound of familiar, distinctive footsteps in the hall and a tap at the door. “Come in, Doctor McClellan,” she called out.

  “If you know me so well that you recognize my limp, maybe you should call me Brian,” he said as he came into the room and sat down. She, of course, didn’t see that he was smiling when he said it.

  A feeling of embarrassment came over Emily and she knew she must be blushing. “I’m sorry. I guess that was rude of me.”

  “No it wasn’t. Actually, I think it’s very flattering. A lovely lady recognizes the sound of my approach. Of course, it’s rather a distinctive footstep. You're too polite to ask, but the truth of it is something of a cliché; my limp is from an old war wound.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you were in the war. Did you get hurt in Iraq?” She asked the question and wondered if she was just making an embarrassing situation worse.

  His answer was a short affirmative, and Emily knew to change the subject. “Tomorrow is my big day, you know. I find out if there’s a white cane in my future.”

  “I’m sure things will turn out fine.”

  Something in his voice, the voice she had come to know so well and to enjoy so much, told Emily that there was still something wrong. It is the curse of people who are overly sensitive to embarrassment that the more they try to fix things, the more they embarrass themselves. Emily had experienced the phenomenon often enough to know that the best thing to do was walk away from the situation entirely or take all the nerve you’ve got, and any you can borrow, and confront things flat out. This Brian was more than just a beautiful voice that left you wondering for hours on end what the person that went with it looked like. He was more than just an unusually charming conversationalist. And he was most definitely not someone from whom she wanted to walk away.

  “I get the feeling I’ve offended you somehow. I apologize, especially since you’ve been so nice to me. Talking is really very awkward when you can’t see the person you’re talking to. Maybe we should start this whole conversation over again.”

  There was something that touched him about her sensitivity to his feelings. One of the things that had most impressed him about her over these past few days was that while she lay injured in a hospital bed, blind and no doubt apprehensive, she was always solicitous toward him, always concerned that he be comfortable in their conversation. “No, you haven’t done anything to apologize for. I’m too touchy, at least about some things. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, and I’m a little uncomfortable about it. It has something to do with my limp, as a matter of fact.” After a pause, he continued. “Tomorrow you’ll get a good look at me and I just want to mention something that might...startle you.”

  Emily’s mind was racing. What on earth could he be talking about? Maybe he’s married after all and he knows I’ll see his ring. That was the only possibility that came to her mind, it was ridiculous, and she hoped fervently that it wasn’t what he was about to say. She could have dealt with anything but that.

  “You see, I limp because I have a prosthetic leg. I have a prosthetic hand, too.” He said it as though every word cost him something. Emily was not the only one who embarrassed easily, who was sensitive to the evaluation of others, and who disliked being viewed in any way out of the ordinary.

  “Oh goodness, is that it? I thought you were going to say something terrible or shocking. I thought you were going to say that you were married or gay something like that. What a relief! Well, I mean not a relief exactly, but you know what I mean. I mean, it would mess things up if it were something like that. That is, I thought you were going to tell me something that would make a big difference. I mean, I don’t mean to say...Oh dear, I must stop talking before I say anything stupid—anything else stupid. Oh dear...” A reaction that had begun with a torrent of relief had sputtered and petered out like a car running out of gas. She stopped because he was making a noise. Brian’s deep voice turned into something of a low rumble when he chuckled.

  “You know, I could let you go on all day, because you’re pretty cute when you prattle, but that would be mean. Why don’t we just agree that you didn’t say anything stupid or wrong, and that you don’t anticipate any insurmountable difficulties for our friendship in the fact that I’m a one-legged, one-handed man? I have done my duty by giving you fair warning, and if you faint dead away at the sight of me, I shall have good cause to be offended.”

  “What a nice speech! You hardly ever hear anybody say 'shall’ anymore. And how handily you managed to extricate me from the hole I was digging myself into! I believe I’m looking forward even more to tomorrow now.”

  The funny thing about the milestones by which life is measured is that only very rarely does anyone recognize them until they are in the past. Emily could look back on her life and see the events in her childhood that had made her the person she was, but at the time those events occurred, she had had no idea that they in any way changed her. But this was different. This conversation, this brief exchange between two people who a week before had been strangers, was a marker in her life. For one thing, she had never been so bold in any conversation with a member of the opposite sex. Much more than that, however, was the feeling of honesty, of real communication. While she thought of herself as a truthful person, there was plenty of truth she kept to herself. It had in childhood been a defensive measure against the cruelties of an unhappy family to keep all of her feelings locked within, but it became in adulthood the insulation she felt she needed to live in a world she didn’t understand and couldn’t control. She always did what was expected of her, she always told people what she thought they wanted to hear, and she avoided telling people real things about herself. Somehow this man had slipped past her defenses. She knew that she had clearly communicated to him the fact that she cared about their relationship. For many people, that would have been a small thing, but for Emily it was a milestone.

  Emily spent a long and virtually sleepless night, asking herself “what if” questions that she couldn’t answer. Her thoughts kept coming back to Brian. She figured that it would be just her luck to find herself sightless on the one day in her life when there was something she really wanted to see. She played the game of downplaying expectations that is so common among confirmed pessimists. It began with, “It’ll probably take months before I can really see again.” It moved on to, “Even if I can see just fine, I’ll probably sa
y something stupid to him and mess everything up.” It veered off into “Maybe when he gets a good look at me, he’ll think better of being so friendly.” She had a gift for coming up with illogical arguments for why things couldn’t possibly go well in her life. Actually, gift isn’t the right word, it was more a curse.

  There was very little real drama in the unveiling when it happened. The ophthalmologist came into the room, made pleasant small talk, and unwrapped the bandages as one might unwrap an ancient mummy. He told Emily that her vision might be a little blurry at first and that her eyes would probably water. Both things proved to be true, but she didn’t mind. There was sunlight pouring into the hospital room, and the grateful patient just soaked it up.

  “I imagine people tell you this all the time,” she said to the eye doctor, “but you really don’t know how beautiful some things are until you can’t see them for a while.”

  Apparently her recovery was even more complete than the doctors had hoped for, and they told her they were discharging her that day. She was packing the few things that she had into a bag when she heard the familiar footfalls in the hallway.

  She turned toward the open door as Brian walked in. A broad smile immediately crossed her face.

  “You never told me you had red hair,” she said, “I’m especially fond of red hair.”

  He was smiling broadly too. She had just passed a test. “Well, you never told me your eyes were such a lovely shade of blue. Those are about the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. How do they work?”

  “They’re fine, they water some, but they work great. I’m so healthy, they’re letting me out of here.”

  “Well, then, how would you feel about taking a ride home with a disabled veteran?”

  “I think you’re supposed to say ‘differently abled,’ aren’t you?”