At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  She could not do those things today, though, and she had desperately wanted to do something today. If she’d stayed at the house, Papa and Diane would have wanted her to go to church with them, for Papa had announced he was going. And she was not ready to do that. She had not set foot inside any church since Margaret’s funeral, and she did not think she could revisit that place this morning. She had finished her coffee, showered and dressed, left a note for Papa and Diane, then driven to Asheville.

  She got out of her car now, went inside the newspaper building, and spoke to the receptionist.

  “I’m Annie Dalton,” she said. “Is Griffin White still on staff here?” Her former boss, the features editor had been pushing sixty-five when she had left.

  “He says he’ll leave when they pry the pencil out of his cold, dead hands,” the young woman said with a smile.

  “Would he by any chance be here on a Sunday morning?”

  “Do you know him at all?”

  “I do.”

  “Then what do you think?”

  Annie grinned. Griffin had not willingly taken a day off since 1965. “I’d like to speak to him if he’s not too busy.”

  “Up on the second floor. His office is at the back.”

  “I know the way,” she said.

  She found Griffin at his desk. He looked up in amazement as she came in. He shook his head, and she smiled. He looked the same. Turkey-wattle neck, white hair, still thick and luxuriant. Skin that was crisscrossed with wrinkles. He wore double-knit pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a bolo tie. He was a kind, good man and a very good editor and writer. His pieces were clear and insightful, no fluff or beating around the bush. He had quoted Ernest Hemingway to her when she had first started out. “Write clear and hard about what hurts.” She had tried her best to do that.

  “To what do we owe this honor?” he asked, face beaming as he stood to greet her.

  She hugged him and smiled. “I’m in town taking care of some business. Thought I’d come in and see my old stomping ground.”

  “We’re still here cranking out the news. And I don’t need to ask what you’ve been doing. Those were some fine pieces of work, Annie.”

  She felt a quiet pleasure at his praise. “Thank you.”

  “Sit down. Have a cup of coffee?”

  She nodded. “Thank you. That would be nice.” She took the cup of dark substance from him—Griffin was infamous for his coffee—and helped herself to a doughnut from the cardboard box he handed her. It was the kind of breakfast she was used to.

  “So tell me where the years have taken you,” he said.

  “I don’t think you mean geographically.”

  “You can start there if you want.”

  “I’ve been in Seattle for the last five years. I’ll be going to Los Angeles in a few weeks.”

  “The Times snap you up?”

  She smiled. “I got lucky.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded and looked at her, shaking his head. “Where does the time go?” he asked.

  The question surprised her, for it seemed real instead of cliché. She thought about how to answer him and realized she felt as if her life had been stolen away and she left staring after it, openmouthed in surprise, and oddly, she remembered a verse she had known at one time about the thief coming only to kill, steal, and destroy.

  “And how is Sam?” Griffin met her eyes and asked it in measured tones.

  “He’s all right,” she said, and she could have left it at that. But she didn’t. “We’re getting a divorce, Griffin. I only came home because of the business with Kelly Bright. To make sure he was okay.”

  “Before you divorced him.” He said it with a sober face, as if he were trying to get all the facts straight.

  “Yes.” She didn’t smile, and neither did he.

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “How’s your life?” she asked him, eager to change the subject.

  “You’re looking at it,” he said, and she realized it was true. This was his life, for he had divorced years before and had never remarried. He had no children. He lived in an apartment, and for just a moment, for just a split second, it was as if she were looking at her own life years from now, and she felt a slice of fear.

  “What are you working on now?” he asked, and his face barely changed expression when she answered.

  “Kelly Bright.”

  She watched his eyes light with understanding. Had he not been the one who had found her on that horrible day? Had he not been the one who had first told her, had held her in his thin arms as she’d wailed and cried.

  “Are you going to write a piece?”

  “Probably not. I’m doing this for personal reasons.” Her face felt hot, and she was sure she was blushing. He was kind enough to pretend not to notice.

  “We’ve run the same kinds of pieces everyone else has,” he admitted. “Nothing really original.”

  “Anyone spoken to the mother?”

  “Just a quote here and there from the press releases. She hasn’t given out any interviews, but I’ll see what I can get you.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Griffin dialed an extension, made his request, and scribbled on a piece of paper, which he handed her. “Here’s the mother’s home number and address and the name and number of the nursing home.”

  “Thank you,” she said, though she knew there was no way a wounded mother was going to speak to a stranger on the phone. She would find another way into this sad situation. She rose and extended her hand. “Now don’t you go retiring before I see you again.”

  “I’m waiting for you to come back and take over my job. I’ll retire then.” He gave her a firm handshake, and she left.

  She drove back home, had dinner with Papa and Diane, helped clean up, then visited on the porch until Papa felt tired and went to rest. She helped Diane do some chores, made them sandwiches for supper, watched Papa’s favorite television shows with him until it was time for bed.

  “Do you mind if I use your workshop?” she asked Diane before she went upstairs.

  Her stepmother shook her head. “Knock yourself out. There’s some really nice soy silk I dyed with freeze-dried indigo. You’re welcome to use it if you want. Help yourself to anything,” she said, and Annie realized again what a kind and generous person she was.

  She thanked her, then went out to the workshop and flipped on the light. It was a generous, airy room with golden wood floors and high, wide windows. Three walls were covered with rugs and hangings, the floor space filled with several looms and spinning wheels. One wall was covered with cubbyholes much like Essie’s yarn shop, each one bulging with brilliant skeins of yarn and thread.

  She went to Diane’s design table, sat down, and pulled out a sheet of paper. She took the colored markers and began sketching, thinking of the things she loved about this place and incorporating each element into her design. She used the misty bluish purple of the mountain sky, the dark green of the hills, the soft gray of the river rocks, the bluish silver of the springs, the pink and soft white of the dogwood, the fiery pink of the flame azaleas, the dark purple of the mountain plum blossoms. She sketched a border, a design. She went to the loom.

  She was there for hours. Warping the loom and weaving. She hadn’t done this kind of work for years, and she felt something tight inside her begin to loosen. Finally she went inside. She was tired, but her mind was still stirred up. She fired up her laptop and searched for anything on Kelly Bright. Pages and pages of items appeared. Resolutions by the American Council of Churches, by the Catholic Diocese, pieces by political pundits on both sides, newspaper articles documenting every phase of the sad drama, hundreds of Web sites with informed and not-so-informed opinions. There was an interview with an anonymous nursing home employee who said she was not comatose. There was an interview with the governor, who had ordered the tube put back in. There was an interview with the university pro
fessor who had been appointed her guardian ad litem. There was a statement by the pastor of her church. She jotted down that name. There were articles about Sam. About the other work he had done. There were quotes by Sam’s attorney, quotes by the hospital administrator. She made a note of his name, as well. She printed out one article headed “Hospital Faces PR Disaster from Surgeon’s Error.” She read about the plight of the medical center, as their crusade to become one of the leading heart centers in the world was jeopardized after a botched surgery led to a nationwide controversy. How the mistake, instead of being buried as most were, had lived on to accuse Dr. Samuel Truelove, and now had, perhaps, finally ended what had been a brilliant career.

  She turned off her computer and stared. She knew where she must begin, and she would do it tomorrow morning.

  Thirty-six

  It was odd being here where he had worked. She had come here when he had practiced, of course. Not often, for he was always busy, but enough so that she knew the staff, and they knew her. Isabella greeted her with a shocked look followed by a tentative smile, and after a moment’s hesitation asked her if she had seen Sam.

  “I have,” Annie answered. “I think he’s doing well.”

  Izzy’s face looked hopeful, but Annie did not elaborate. Besides, Barney was here, and once again, Annie was struck by how kind he was. And how commonplace, in spite of his talent and position.

  “Annie!” he exclaimed, taking her hand and shaking it warmly. “It’s so good to see you again. Come on back,” he invited, and she followed him down the hall to his office. They both took seats, and he poured them each a cup of coffee.

  “It’s good of you to see me without an appointment,” she said.

  “I’m glad to do it. How is Sam?” he asked, and she gave him a little more information than she had Izzy.

  “My father had an MI,” she said. “Sam’s been covering his practice.”

  “Is that so?” Barney looked interested and cheered. She wondered if he had any plans to call Sam back to his own practice, but she did not ask. She had no right to ask such questions any longer.

  “Is that what brought you back?” he asked. “Your father’s illness?”

  She shook her head. “I came because of Kelly Bright.”

  He nodded with understanding, his eyes growing dark with pain. “I suppose I’m glad she has her reprieve,” he said quietly, “though that’s all it is.”

  “I wonder how long she will last,” Annie said.

  He shook his head. “No way to know.”

  “Can you tell me about her?” she asked. “About the surgery?”

  Barney seemed to consider for a moment. “I wouldn’t want to read any of this in the paper.”

  “All right.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What happened, Barney?”

  “Do you want the technical details?”

  She spent a long minute thinking of the honest answer to that question. “No,” she finally said quietly. “Not really. What I really want is to understand him. I want to know what led him to the choices that he made.”

  He was silent for a moment, then stood up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  ****

  She had seen it all before, of course, but only in brief glimpses. For some reason Sam had been reluctant to have her come here. Her one tour had been given by Izzy and had been little more than a peek in the door.

  “This is the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit,” Barney said. “The Pick-U.”

  She nodded. Sam had referred to it often. Barney led her into the first room, filled with gadgets and equipment, and in the center of the room was a clear plastic Isolette. A tiny infant lay in it, connected to all sorts of tubes and machines. His mouth was open. He was crying, she saw, but no sound came out because of the breathing tube in his mouth. Her chest began to hurt. A man and a woman wearing scrubs were fiddling with his machines, but there was no one with him who looked like a parent, and she wondered where they were.

  “This is little Jeffrey O’Brien,” Barney said. “Less than twenty-four hours old. He was born with transposition of the great arteries. Do you know what that is?”

  She nodded. Sam had explained it to her. “Things are reversed,” she said. “The oxygenated blood goes back to the lungs instead of the body.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “He’s being stabilized now. We’ve started him on massive doses of prostaglandins to keep the ductus, the newborn hole in the heart, open until we can do the surgery. That’s all that’s keeping him alive right now.”

  “Who’ll do the operation?”

  “Ordinarily Sam would,” Barney said with a smile. “He’s our star for that procedure. Do you know what his mortality rate is for that surgery?”

  She shook her head.

  “Point four percent.”

  “Is that good?” she asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, then gave a chuckle. “Yes,” he said. “That’s good. The closest second is not very close. He devised a new variation on an established repair method. When we first published his results, people thought we were fabricating. He’s incredibly gifted,” he said, and there was something like awe on his face mixed with other emotions familiar to her. A trace of sadness and regret.

  “Anyway, I’ll operate on Jeffrey and will try to be competent if not brilliant.”

  Annie leaned over the Isolette. He was a beautiful child. His hair was fuzzy blond. He opened his mouth and began his soundless cries again. She stepped back and one of the nurses took her place and began adjusting an IV. Barney led her out, and she followed, not sure if she really wanted to see more.

  Barney led her to the second room and paused outside the door. She looked in and saw a mother this time, and something in her both eased and felt more stirred up. The woman fussed over the Isolette, adjusting the blanket over the dusky child who lay too still and quiet.

  “No energy to cry,” Barney said, safely out of the mother’s earshot. “This baby’s ejection fraction is around nine percent. That means her heart is only pumping out nine percent of the blood it receives.”

  “Where’s the rest?”

  “Lungs. Peripheral circulation. Stagnant pools.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Surgery. Frank Kelson will do it this afternoon. It may help. It probably won’t.”

  They went to the next room and the next. It was all the same. Tiny infants in dire conditions. Some were emergencies, and the pace in those rooms was a sort of controlled panic. Some were dreary, never-ending stories of slow decline and heartache, and it could have been her imagination, but the staff in those rooms seemed to show it on their faces and in their movements, as well. She saw eleven tiny patients in all, and by the time they finished the tour, her own heart was aching. They finished at the surgical suite. He gave her a gown and booties and took her into the viewing room. She stood and watched while the team, led by someone she did not recognize, performed surgery on a two-day-old infant with hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

  “This is a very serious defect,” Barney said. “He was born without the pumping chamber. They’re doing what’s called a Norwood procedure.”

  “Will it work?”

  “Nationwide statistics for this give it an eighty percent chance of success.”

  “What was Sam’s failure rate for this one?”

  “Point five eight.”

  She shook her head. She was beginning to understand what had driven him to never leave this place. She tried to imagine what it would be like to know you could make the difference between life and death for a human being. That if you did the surgery, the child had an incredibly better chance of graduating from college, marrying, having children of his own someday than if your colleague did the same procedure. It would be a powerful incentive toward madness, and she could understand now what had kept him here hour after hour, night after night, for there was always another one after this one, a never-ending supply of broken children needing hi
m.

  She stood and stared at the team, so focused, gloved and gowned and moving with quiet intensity. She watched the surgeon make his precise movements, reaching for things and handing them back, speaking seldom, completely focused on the tiny patient in front of him.

  “How many of these kinds of surgeries did Sam do in a day?” she asked.

  “Two. Sometimes three.”

  She remembered how exhausted he had been when he had returned home. How hurt she had been that he had had nothing left for her. Well, she still might not excuse it, but she could understand it.

  “Do you talk to Emma?” she asked. “About all this?” Barney and his wife had been married for twenty-five years. Obviously whatever they had worked out was a success.

  Barney looked at her with understanding. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “Why not?” The yearning for an answer sounded in her voice. It was a protest rather than a question.

  “I see horrible things here,” he said quietly. “And it never eases or slows down. Some I can change, and some I can’t do anything about. There’s always a sense of tragedy here, because no matter how many you help, there are always more. Whatever you do, it’s never enough.”

  She understood. This was a place where the curtain was torn, and those who inhabited this place stared through to the other side as a matter of daily course.

  “Maybe it was selfish,” he said. “But I decided that I wanted our home to be a place I could go to get away from this. I made a wall between here and that place, Annie. I needed to, to preserve my sanity.”

  “Sam didn’t save anything for anyone else.”

  He nodded, his face sober. “But it was love that made him do that, Annie. Love for them.” He nodded down toward the tiny infant on the huge table, and she remembered, too, the sad, sick children in the rooms upstairs.

  She nodded. She went back upstairs with him, watched for just a moment as he was handed a stack of message slips, chased down the hall by a resident who needed the answer to a question, was given a stack of charts, and was paged to the Catheterization Lab.