At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  By the time Sam finished his last procedure, it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening. He was awfully tired for it to be only Monday, but actually, now that he thought about it, lately he felt this way every day. He showered and dressed, then sat in the doctors’ lounge and stared at the wall for a while. He became aware that he was hungry. He tried to remember what he had eaten today and couldn’t think of anything after breakfast. No. Wait. Izzy had brought him a cheeseburger and fries in between the truncus repair and the Norwood. He checked his watch. He sat awhile longer, even the effort of rising seeming to be too much.

  Finally he rose to his feet and went back to his office. The waiting room was tidy and empty. Even Izzy had gone home. He walked past the quiet phone banks. He went past the empty nurses’ stations where the phones were finally silent. Barney was on call tonight, but that didn’t mean Sam wouldn’t be paged. He went past the darkened exam rooms toward his office.

  “Sam!”

  He startled and turned, his adrenaline surging. It was Barney, smiling and sauntering, and Sam breathed in and out. No emergency. Just Barney. He was an odd duck, and normally Sam would have smiled just looking at him. He was one of the most able pediatric heart surgeons in the country, if not the world, yet he had all the sophistication and style of Columbo. Today he wore green khakis, a blue striped shirt, and dark brown suspenders and shoes. His brown hair was thinning, yet he parted it far down on the side as he always had. In another year it would qualify as a comb-over. He had been kindly supportive, and though he drove himself to excellence in his practice, he seemed free from the dark side of ambition. He had mentored Sam until Sam’s skill and knowledge surpassed his own, then he had humbled himself and taken a place alongside. He and Sam had practiced together with three other doctors for six years now. Barney had been a good friend, Sam reminded himself, but for a flashing moment Sam envied and despised his relaxation, his calm.

  “What are you doing here?” Sam asked. “I thought you’d be home having roast beef and mashed potatoes with the kids.”

  Barney smiled and let the barb deflect. Sam felt ashamed. It was envy that had made him throw it, pure and simple.

  “Got a minute?” Barney asked, and Sam felt a rumble of foreboding.

  “Sure.”

  Barney cocked his head down the hallway, and Sam followed his partner to his office. The coffee was on, and it smelled good. Barney poured him a cup without asking and gestured toward the table. There was a sandwich and an apple there. Cafeteria fare, but it looked good.

  “I thought maybe you hadn’t had a chance to eat.”

  “Thanks.” Well, if he hadn’t known it before, he knew it now. This was a meeting with an agenda. But he was hungry, so he sat down and unwrapped the sandwich, took a bite and washed it down with a drink of Barney’s strong coffee. A few more bites and one half was gone. Barney watched, sipping his own coffee.

  “Okay,” Sam said when he was done with the other half. “What’s on your mind?”

  “More coffee?”

  “No thank you.”

  Barney shrugged and smiled again. “How are you, Sam?”

  Sam stared. “Surely you didn’t wait around to ask me that.”

  “Actually, I did.”

  His partner’s eyes were friendly, but there was a pointedness to his tone that let Sam know he wasn’t going to get away with fuzzy generalities.

  “I’m all right.”

  “Are you?”

  “Sure.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  Barney sighed. “Sam, things could be different for you if you choose.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, we could bring in another partner,” Barney said, and Sam felt something in him relax now that the topic of conversation was clarified. “There’s Nathan Epstein over at Cleveland,” he continued. “I think we could woo him away, and then we could all do something other than just be surgeons. Think about it, Sam.”

  “I have thought about it,” he answered quickly. “Things are already complicated enough in this partnership.” There were five of them, and their meetings were the bane of his life. He hated all the jockeying for preeminence, and he didn’t like to think about billing practices and pension funds. Bringing in someone else would further snarl what was already a tangled mess. A plaintive voice in his mind that sounded suspiciously like Annie’s asked him if that was the real reason. If perhaps he would drop down to second string were Nathan Epstein to join them.

  Barney sighed. “We’re concerned about you, Sam. I’m coming to you with those concerns as I would want you to do for me were our positions reversed.”

  Sam bristled and frowned. He didn’t like the idea of being the topic of concerned conversation. “I appreciate that, but you needn’t worry about me.”

  “Think about it,” Barney said as Sam stood to leave. “That’s all I ask.”

  “Sure,” he answered. “Thanks for the food.”

  Barney nodded and Sam left. He went back to his own office, switched on the light, and went to his desk. At least two hours’ work awaited him, but the conversation with Barney had strung him tight. His eyes flickered down to the picture of the two of them still on his desk. He looked at her honest, sweet face, her beautiful eyes, the frank, engaging smile, and the tumble of shiny red hair. He stared for a moment, then forced his eyes away. He ran his hands through his hair, rubbed his eyes, and took a few good, deep breaths of air.

  He swiveled his chair around and examined the room. His diplomas and certifications covered the walls, edges neatly aligned a uniform six inches apart. The plants were pruned and freshly watered, thanks to Izzy. His cardiology and surgery textbooks and journals were arranged on the shelves according to subcategory. Computer, credenza, filing cabinet—all were orderly and arranged. There was a small bulletin board behind the desk covered with pictures from grateful patients. Smiling babies with pink cheeks. Toddlers sitting on Santa’s lap. Elementary age children playing soccer, playing the violin, holding younger siblings. Healthy. Smiling. “Because of you, Dr. Truelove,” they all affirmed. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Izzy kept the board for him, discreetly removing the pictures of the ones who had died.

  He picked up the telephone. There were twenty-two saved messages, and in front of him was a stack of pink message slips, a higher stack of files to be reviewed by tomorrow. That wicked, tense weariness returned, that anger laced with exhaustion. That hopeless sense that his abilities were not enough to stem the ever-surging tide of need. He realized with a jolt of shock that he did not want to add a partner. He wanted to quit. Just quit. Walk away.

  He began to work, his effort eating through the stack of paper. And what would you do? a voice asked him. And that’s where it had always ended before now, for truth be told, he couldn’t imagine himself doing anything else. He had devoted so much of his life to reaching this point, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But now, for the first time that rationale didn’t seem enough. Lack of imagination suddenly didn’t seem a powerful enough fuel to propel him through another year. Another month, week, day. Hour.

  There was another reason that had kept him here, as well: The belief that he had an obligation to surrender his talents to the world. He wanted to laugh at that now, and his head somehow found its way into his hands. His talents seemed as if they’d been loaned and were being reclaimed a fraction at a time.

  After a few long minutes he turned and examined the wall behind him. There was his Bachelor of Science degree from Duke. His MD degree from Johns Hopkins. There in the file cabinet was the research he’d done on intramural coronary arteries in transposition of the great arteries defects. His certification as Director of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at Good Samaritan’s Children’s Hospital of Knoxville. His Executive Committee membership on the Congress of Cardiac Surgeons and the American Society of Pediatric Cardiac Surgeons. A shelf full of journals containing papers he had written.

  “I consider them rubbish,”
he said aloud. The words echoed in the empty room, and he tried to remember the rest of that biblical quote. There it was, retrieved from the archives of memory, and when it came to him he gave a silent, humorless exhalation.

  “That I may gain Christ,” he finished quietly, and although he knew at one time he had understood the phrase, tonight it made no sense to him at all.

  After sitting for a while longer, he roused himself, made a last check of his office, gathered his briefcase and tomorrow’s files. He finally left, threading through the streets of Knoxville, and pulled into the parking garage of his apartment. He turned off the engine, then startled violently when someone knocked on the window of his car.

  His heart raced. He had read just last week that a lawyer in the next apartment building had been gunned down for the two hundred dollars in his wallet and his Rolex. Sam wore a Timex, but for just a moment he wondered if his time had come, and he was surprised to realize that in spite of his clenched fists and racing heart, he didn’t really mind. In fact, as he turned his face he was a little disappointed to find a paunchy, middle-aged man, and if truth be told, he was the one who looked afraid. Sam pressed the button to lower the window.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Dr. Samuel Truelove?”

  Sam nodded.

  “This is for you.” He thrust a legal-sized envelope at Sam, then turned and almost ran away before Sam could speak.

  Sam didn’t look inside. He walked heavily to the elevator, rode it up, then went inside his apartment. He poured himself a glass of water, then sat and looked at the envelope. The telephone rang. He ignored it.

  He finally opened it up, then stared for a long while at the sheaf of papers. He picked up the handwritten note she had sent, probably in direct violation of her attorney’s directions, but then, his wife had been nothing if not headstrong.

  Dear Sam, she wrote, I wish things hadn’t come to this, but I suppose it is time. I wish you all the best. Annie.

  His eyes filled. Dried. Then filled again. He read and reread the petition for divorce, filed in the Superior Court of King County, Washington, due to the fact that his marriage was irretrievably broken.

  * * *

  He didn’t know how long he sat there. Just that both his cell and wall phones rang several times. Finally he answered, wondering who had crashed, what emergency would propel him back to the hospital tonight. The number wasn’t familiar and neither was the voice he heard, out of context as it was.

  “Sam, it’s Melvin. Melvin Wakefield.”

  It took him a moment to place his attorney. Sam frowned, not understanding what would prompt a call this late.

  “Have you seen the news?” Melvin demanded.

  “What?” he asked stupidly.

  “Have you been watching the news?”

  “No. I’ve been in surgery all day.”

  “Turn on CNN. Quickly.”

  Sam looked around for the remote and finally found it. His mouth went dry as he watched. There, behind the pretty blond anchorwoman, was a picture of Kelly Bright as a bright-eyed eleven-year-old, then another, more recent photo, taken in the nursing home as she wasted away in her bed.

  “A judge has granted the father’s petition to have the feeding tube removed,” Melvin said grimly. “They’ve taken it out, but the mother’s fighting it. The governor and the legislature are involved. The president’s made a statement. This is big, Sam. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

  “All right,” he said, and for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything more to say, though Melvin continued to talk. The wall phone rang. He checked the caller ID. His brother’s number. He let it go to the machine. He flipped back through the previous calls and recognized familiar numbers: Barney, his mother, Carl Dalton, his sister, his brother, four or five he didn’t recognize. He sat down on the kitchen chair.

  “Sam, are you there?” His lawyer’s voice buzzed at him from the phone he still held in his hand.

  “I’m here,” he answered.

  “You’re going to have to make some kind of statement. The press have already tracked me down. They’ll be camped on your doorstep soon, if they’re not already. Your name’s been mentioned on several of the newscasts. It’ll be all over the papers tomorrow.”

  The wall phone rang again. The call-waiting feature clicked on the cell phone, interrupting his attorney’s voice. “Melvin, I have to go. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “You can’t ignore this, Sam,” Melvin warned. “You have to deal with it, or it will eat you alive.”

  He murmured something back and hung up the cell, then turned it off, as well as the ringer of the wall phone. He muted the television, but the anchorwoman talked on, her mouth moving with no sound coming out, the picture of pretty little Kelly Bright centered behind her.

  Ten

  Sam didn’t sleep but continued to sit in the hard-backed kitchen chair. He read the divorce papers several times all the way through, as if they might yield some vital piece of information he had heretofore missed. He watched the news channels. They ran the Kelly Bright story every hour or so. There was never anything new. He signed on to the Internet and read everything he could find about the situation, somehow thinking more information might help. It did not. Around three in the morning, he got into his car and drove to Rosewood Manor. He sat in the parking lot and saw the news vans clumped around the door. Reality dawned.

  There’s a court order, he told himself roughly. They’re not going to put the feeding tube back in because you would like them to.

  He felt he should go in anyway, that his penance should at least be to sit beside her as she died, but he knew that was a bad idea and probably more about his needs than anyone else’s. The mother would be at her daughter’s side, and Sam was the last person she wanted to see. After a while he turned around and made the drive back home.

  He tried to lie down then, but as soon as he put out the light, things rushed in on him, and he couldn’t bear it, so he turned it back on and went back to the chair. His thoughts seesawed between Annie and Kelly, and both were torments. Did Annie have someone else? Is that why she wanted to divorce? Or was she just pulling the plug on a hopeless situation, much as Kelly Bright’s father had done? They had removed her feeding tube. Was she hungry? Was she thirsty? And that only led to the more horrific, more terrible thought that during all these last five years she might have been hungry, in pain, cold or wet or hot, and in her helplessness unable to even cry out.

  Around five he realized he should get ready for work. Still he didn’t move. Fifteen minutes later or so a knock came at the door. He went to the peephole and peered out. His brother’s face, uncharacteristically serious, stared back. Sam opened the door.

  “Hey, bro.” As casual as if he’d been sauntering by and decided on impulse to knock.

  “What are you doing here, Ricky?” A less than gracious greeting, but his brother didn’t seem put off.

  Ricky shrugged. “Mama got worried when you didn’t answer your phone.”

  Sam nodded and stepped aside to let Ricky in. He should call Mama. He knew she would be worried sick. She went about in that perpetual state over him. It must have reached unbearable proportions if she had dispatched Ricky to check on him. Sam rubbed the stubble on his jaw. His eyes felt raw.

  “You look terrible,” Ricky put in helpfully as he came into the apartment and shut the door behind him.

  Sam didn’t reply. He shuffled into the kitchen and started some coffee.

  “You going to work today?” Ricky asked.

  “Of course. Why would you even ask?”

  Ricky shrugged. “News vans are camped out in your parking garage.”

  Sam closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought of that.

  “I can drive your car around, and you can duck out the back,” Ricky offered, and for a moment the mischievous gleam came back into his brother’s eyes.

  “Thanks,” Sam answered shortly.

  Ricky sat down. Sam finishe
d his preparations, turned on the coffee, and sat down opposite him. Ricky didn’t speak at all, just sat quietly with him. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, and Sam felt a surge of appreciation well up. Ricky asked no questions, offered no advice. Sam remembered Job’s comforters who sat with him in silence, and then he remembered why. They saw that his grief was very great. He had no right to feel grief. Over either situation, he told himself. But he supposed he did feel it, deservedly or not. That must be what this was called, this heavy, sucking torment.

  He never analyzed his feelings. In the past six years he had never once sat down and asked himself how he felt or what he felt or if he felt poorly or when he would feel better. In fact, he realized, he had kept up his bone-crushing pace just so he would not have to do those things. But now he felt. He felt grief rise up like deep, dark, dangerous water. It came to his throat, and he tightened it against it. It did no good. It continued to rise and spilled out of his eyes. He covered his face and shook his head, silent even now. There was quiet for long moments, a gasp of breath, more silence. Ricky put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and left it there, warm and steady.

  After a few more minutes Sam pulled his emotions back in. He took a few more deep breaths, rubbed his face, and cleared his throat. He wiped his eyes and face on a paper towel. Ricky got up and poured them each a cup of coffee, then sat back down. They sipped, and the scalding liquid felt good. Sam coughed and wiped his face again.

  “I hate what happened to that little girl,” he finally said, and when he spoke his voice sounded rough and uneven.

  “I know you do, Sam,” Ricky answered quietly.

  Not it wasn’t your fault. No one could say those words, could they?

  More silence. Finally Sam pulled himself together. He shoved all those dark feelings back where they belonged, but it was like trying to fit things back into the box they’d come in. They didn’t go back in as easily as they’d come out. He forced them to, at least shoved them down to where he could move and breathe. He stood up and rested his hand briefly on his brother’s shoulder. He cleared his throat. “I’ve got to go to work now. It was good of you to come.”