At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  He looked down at her. Her hair was short, not long and thick as it had been the day he had first seen her. Her face was broken out in a few places, and that stabbed him, too, the fact that her body continued to mature even though there was no point in it. Her weight was down, he noted, even without reading the chart. He wondered if the doctor in charge would increase the calorie count of the tube feedings. Her breathing was rough. He could hear it even without a stethoscope. Her face was pale and gaunt.

  He came closer and forced himself to pick up the hand that lay contracted on the bedspread. He held it loosely in his own.

  “Good evening, Kelly, it’s Sam,” he said, sensing about as much response as he did when he prayed. He never said Dr. Truelove. Out of shame, he supposed. “I know it’s been a while, but I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” he continued. “I hope you’re not in too much discomfort.” The words cut as they left his mouth. What a vile, cowardly thing to say. I hope you’re not in too much discomfort. Why, he ought to say the truth. Kelly, I’m sorry. Kelly, if I could trade places, I would do so gladly. Kelly, forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  He said none of these things, of course. For whose benefit would he say them? Certainly not Kelly’s. Certainly not for her family, who crouched like sin at the door, ready to seize him by the throat when Kelly’s short life ended. “They’re waiting,” his attorney had said. “They’re poor, but obviously not stupid. They know they’ll get more for her death than for her disability.”

  He would have gladly given them all he had, but that would not even be allowed as a penance. His malpractice insurance would cut them a check.

  “It’s Monday today, Kelly,” he continued. “Monday, June second. It was warm and sunny this morning. About like you’d expect for Tennessee this time of year. It clouded up a little this afternoon, but there was no rain. Now it’s clear and cool outside. The wild strawberries are blooming up in the mountains.”

  He felt suddenly cruel as those words left his mouth. Why had he reminded her of joys she would never experience again? And he felt guilty himself for even enjoying the thought of them.

  There was a shuffle at the door, and Sam stiffened. He had only crossed paths with the family once, and that had been early on. It had been the grandmother, who had, thankfully, not recognized him. She had thought he was one of Kelly’s doctors, which, in a sense, he supposed he was. This time it was the physical therapy aide, or so her nametag said.

  “I can come back,” she volunteered.

  “No. That’s all right,” he told her, anxious to have a reason to leave. “Good-bye, Kelly.” He aimed his words at the still, pale face. He could see the blue web of veins on her eyelids. She breathed in. Out. No movement. No sign at all that she had heard him. He turned and left, and the feeling that overshadowed all others was weariness.

  He walked out into the parking lot, glad to leave the heavy reeking air behind him. The cool night air felt good against his hot face. The crickets and tree frogs rang shrilly from the fields next to the building. He stood beside a spindly ash tree and rested his hand on the bark, happy to have something real and alive to touch. He had a sense that both of the situations that had overshadowed his life for so long were drawing to a close. The realization had a hollow, bitter finality.

  Kelly Bright had lasted longer than anyone had thought, and though it was possible that someone in a deep coma could live many years, he didn’t think she would do so. It wouldn’t be long now. Days, perhaps. Weeks. Months at the most. He could tell somehow just from looking at her, from the ragged sound of her breathing, the moist pallor of her skin. And the other? Well, he had a feeling that the other had died long ago and he had just never allowed the burial to take place. In fact, he knew the exact day his marriage had received its mortal wound. He could document it by the date in Kelly Bright’s chart, for both had been collateral damage from another blow that still drained him white, left him speechless with pain.

  ****

  He dreamed the dream again that night.

  “Don’t, Sam. You’re in no shape to do this.”

  He looked down, and there was Kelly Bright’s heart and aorta, already exposed, the preparation having been done by his assistant and the chief surgical fellow. It was a simple job, at least for him. He would repair the tear the automobile accident had caused. It was a severe injury, but he could fix it. It was almost child’s play compared to the complex defects he repaired on much tinier hearts as a matter of course. Everyone was waiting for him, and he was ready to begin when the telephone call came. The circulating nurse went to the wall, picked up the phone, then returned to him, her eyes welling, shaking her head. “You need to take this call, Dr. Truelove,” she said, and he frowned with puzzlement, went to the telephone, lifted it up, and heard his mother’s voice as he had never heard it before, telling him that his child had died. He listened to her wild narration again. “She was sleeping. I went to the telephone. I went to find her, and she was gone.” Then the garbled details. The creek and paramedics and CPR and helicopters, and he could hear the hysteria in her voice. He could see her in his mind’s eye there alone, waiting for Annie to come, waiting for him to come.

  He felt his blood being replaced with something cold, and he asked a few more questions. When his mother could not answer them he asked to speak to the doctor in charge, and as he waited for him to come to the telephone, the calm overtook him. Oh, that calm! He could feel it seep into his heart and then spread through his arms and down to his legs and up to his brain, and he knew he would either pass out or become crystal clear and perfect, for it was a presence, cold and lifeless, a high white mountain of ice that calmed and cooled him, and his mind entered that blank white place he thought was flawless concentration.

  They were murmuring when he returned to the theater, all of them, the chief resident and the nurses and the anesthesiologist. He stripped off his gloves, and the resident said he’d call Dr. Hendricks to do the surgery, but Sam snapped on another pair, closing his mind to all but the problem before him, eager to keep it there, for he must not let it go anywhere else.

  “I can’t do anything for Margaret,” he said, still in that perfect coldness. “But I can save Kelly Bright.”

  They looked at him, shocked, appalled, shaking their heads. Only Florence, his scrub nurse, was understanding. She put her hand on his arm. “Go home, Sam,” she said firmly. “You’re in shock. You’re in no shape—”

  “You’ve contaminated me!” He lashed her sharply with his words.

  But even then she didn’t draw back, just gripped him harder and said “Go home! Let someone else—”

  The anger rose up then, a cold, mercury anger, and he said, “Get out of my way. There is no one else.” Even now, even in his lucid dream, the words burned like acid, their corrosive hubris eating him alive.

  “There is no one else who can do this better than me,” he said, then he regowned, regloved, took his place at the table, swept his eyes across every one of their eyes, challenging them as they peered at him above their masks with wonderment or compassion, disapproval or shock.

  He dropped his eyes away from theirs, then closed his mind to everything but the mess in front of him—the dissected aorta, which he must repair.

  “Forceps,” he said, nodding to Florence, and it began, and the rest of the dream was the same. Predictable, a gruesome gray repetition, a horror film he knew the ending to and yet was forced to watch again and again and again. He saw himself unclamp the great arteries. “Off bypass,” he said, and then he saw the stitches slip, her pressures drop, saw himself scramble to regroup, felt again the panic of his team, of himself, saw his trembling hands, the beige gloves covered in blood, saw them repair the tear, but only after the damage had been done. And he saw himself finally leaving the blood-soaked gown and gloves in a pile on the blood-pooled linoleum, saw himself finally letting Barney drive him home to Gilead Springs, and he remembered that drive, his mind mauled, tossed between the two horrors
like some dying creature being buffeted by its tormentors.

  He saw himself walk into the small hospital to find his daughter lying still and mottled, her hair still damp. He saw himself touch his mother’s shaking shoulder, saw her shake her bowed head, saw himself going to his wife, knowing he should comfort her but offering his arms and nothing more. He offered her nothing more because he had nothing more to give her. He had locked everything else up tight, for what would happen if he opened that floodgate? What would rush out? He still could feel Annie’s hair pressed against his dry lips, could hear her voice, muffled and hot, asking, like Mary to the Savior, where were you? Where were you? If you had only been here, my baby would not have died.

  And then the two of them were lying together, Margaret and Kelly Bright, and he woke to cold sweat, cold terror, both familiar companions. He lay still in the dark and listened to the sound of his apartment, to the hum of the refrigerator, the whir of the traffic outside. His heart and breath slowed, his sweat dried, and he wished over and over that he could tell himself it was only a dream.

  Two

  At the exact moment in question, when she should have been, by all that was right, coming through the door of The Inn at Smoky Hollow, Annie Ruth Dalton Truelove had been shearing a flock of Romney sheep. She had already taken the entire week off from her job at the Times—an unheard-of event—so when Jossie Delorme had called and begged for her help, she had found her clippers and left before sunrise. She had worked all day, and at the exact time Sam had specified, seven-thirty eastern time, four-thirty by the somewhat murky digital readout of her black plastic watch, she was finishing up her task, working on a particularly headstrong ram by the unlikely name of Hoochy Kooch. She was covered in mud, an occupational hazard of working outdoors in the double-minded Northwest no matter what the time of year, and her boots were caked with dubious substances. She had a moment of heart-thudding yearning when she thought of him there, as she did every year on that day and on some in between, if the truth were told. But it was hard to pine while performing delicate maneuvers on the nether parts of a two-hundred-pound ram, so she concentrated on the task at hand, and the moment passed. As they all eventually did.

  Her foolishness struck her now, the morning after. She was back in her real life, washed and dressed and in her right mind, sheep shorn and wool on its way to yarn. She listened once again to his message, and she felt the searing awareness that the opportunity had been there once again. And once again, she had let it pass.

  She had intended to go. Again. She had made preparations. As she always did. She had taken vacation from work, even bought a dress—a pretty periwinkle blue—and a pair of opal earrings and necklace to match. She had packed her bag and made a reservation. As usual. But also as usual, her foot had hesitated before taking that final step, and before it landed on ground again, Jossie Delorme had called and begged for her help. So yesterday, when she should have been there with him, she had been in Marysville shearing sheep. Something like panic gripped her now, and for a moment she thought of rash, passionate remedies.

  She could call him. In fact, she could go there now instead of climbing onto the plane for Los Angeles. But today he would be busy. Today he would be angry that she had not come. Today he would be Dr. Truelove, and she an interruption. Yesterday had been her chance.

  She felt the panicked despair again. It was not too late. She could—She stopped. What was the use? Any new plot or contrivance always wound around to the same dead end. They could put both of their bodies in the same room, but until their hearts were changed, what was the use?

  His heart, specifically. Hers was the same, she assured herself. She was the same girl he had married, right down to the last freckle. It was he who had become someone else. Someone angry and obsessed. Someone she did not know. Someone she did not care to know. She remembered what had changed him, and she felt her confidence waver, felt something gain on her, and she picked up the pace of her activity to keep ahead of it.

  She put the entire matter out of her mind. That’s what you have to do, she told herself. Just get busy and think about something else. Think about today. She put on her beige suit, a concession to the business world, but draped a scarf under the lapels, gold with swirls of coral and rust. She had another bad moment when she put on her amber necklace and earrings. Sam had given them to her the morning after they were wed. She had awakened to find the small package on the pillow beside her. It was an old tradition, he had said, the Morning Gift, the groom’s gift to his bride on beginning their first day as man and wife. She put them on now and refused to think about what they signified or who had given them to her. They were jewelry, nothing more. They went well with her hair.

  She leaned over and expertly twisted that hair into a bun, then rummaged on her dresser for a hairpin. She couldn’t find one and in desperation secured it with two pencils she grabbed from a jar on the bedside table. She would find the hairpins later. They were probably somewhere on the bottom of her bag, a voluminous black leather affair that held laptop, pencils, pens, notebook, wallet, address book, cell phone, the confirmation number for her electronic ticket, a bottle of water, a voice-activated microcassette recorder, a slightly mashed Snickers bar, a comb, and her entire cosmetic collection—mascara and a tube of lipstick she could never find.

  She finished her packing quickly. She had packed so many times she could do it in her sleep, and sometimes she almost felt as if she had. She rolled her nightgown into a tight tube, shoved it alongside her walking shoes. She was quiet for a moment and listened to the sound of her apartment building waking up. She called it an apartment building, but really it was just a ramshackle old house, her allotted square in the middle on the second story. Upstairs she could hear Mrs. Larsen’s television blaring out the Weather Channel. She checked her watch. She should check on her, remind her again of where she was going and when she would be back, so she wouldn’t worry.

  She took one last inventory of her suitcase. They had said she would be entertained for dinner, and her stomach gave a twist. She checked. Yes, there was the dress she’d chosen. Had she gotten the shoes that went with it? Yes. Jacket? She wouldn’t need one. It was Los Angeles, after all, and June. The only place it rained the whole blessed year was here in Seattle. She zipped her suitcase closed. Her stomach rolled and knotted, still trying to keep up with the impetuous action she’d taken yesterday morning. On her way to Jossie’s farm she had called Max Kroll and accepted his offer of an interview at the Los Angeles Times and changed the plane ticket from Asheville to L.A. It was time, she told herself, and she put aside the thought that the actions she was thinking of, the ones she fully intended to take, would change her life forever. They would take her even farther away from home, she realized with a lurch.

  She registered a small skip, a stutter at that word home, not sure if she should apply it to the three furnished rooms in this Seattle apartment or to the place she hadn’t seen in years, the place she could call up in a heartbeat by simply closing her eyes. She felt the strong tug of longing and a sharp pierce of pain, heard the rushing of the wind through the trees, felt the heat on her arms and face, saw the dense forests, the clouds of blue haze, smelled the sweet fragrance of apple orchards, tasted the sweet nip of iced tea.

  Well, life was all about making new choices, wasn’t it? She talked to herself briskly and hoped Max Kroll would offer her the job as feature writer for the Los Angeles Times. Then she could leave her temporary life here in Seattle. It was time to settle down and start a new life, forget the old one once and for all. She was ready. She switched off the light, took one last practiced look around to see that everything was in its place, then flipped the lock and pulled the door shut.

  She stepped out onto the landing, left her suitcase by her door, and went upstairs. She knocked, and after a long minute or two Mrs. Larsen’s wizened face peered out at her. Annie felt a rush of affection. She loved the old ones. There was something so peaceful about them, and she supposed it had t
o do with the fact that they had lived their lives, for the most part. All the drama and heartache and misery was behind them. She envied them that.

  “Oh, hello, dear.” Mrs. Larsen undid the latch and opened the door.

  “How are you today?” Annie shouted. Mrs. Larsen was a little hard of hearing.

  “I’m fine. Won’t you come in and have a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d love to,” she said, “but I’ve got a plane to catch. Remember?”

  “Oh yes.” A pleasant smile, a blank look.

  “Did you remember to take your medicine?”

  The eyes clouded in confusion.

  “Let’s just look and see.” Annie smiled encouragingly, and Mrs. Larsen stepped back, happy just to have another few minutes of company. Annie went into the kitchen and found the slotted box of pills she had loaded up the day before. The morning dose was gone.

  “I took them. I remember now.”

  “Well, you must have. They’re gone.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. I took them with my tea and toast.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “All right. Now, don’t forget to take the ones at lunchtime.”

  “Oh, I won’t.” That pleasant, sweet look returned, and Annie’s heart ached. Mrs. Larsen needed to be with someone who could take care of her, not living right by herself. She had a daughter close by who rarely visited, and Annie fumed for a minute, then remembered “Thou shalt not judge.” Besides, her ears would probably be ringing if she could hear what they said about her back home.

  The lady preacher Mrs. Larsen loved joined in their conversation from the television set. “The god of this age has blinded an awful lot of people, and I’ll tell you something. A blind person can’t see things the way they really are,” she pronounced. “You may think you see things right, but the truth is, unless Jesus lets you see things the way they are, you may be headed for a pit.”