The You I Never Knew

by Susan Wiggs

  “You didn’t answer my question. What if something goes wrong?”

  “Nothing will—”

  “Mom, cut it out.”

  She took his hand, noticing with mild surprise that he had calluses from working at Sam’s. “All right. Yes, there is a risk that something could go wrong. But it is a tiny, calculated risk that’s hardly worth considering when you think of how this is going to help my father live again.”

  “Why wasn’t I tested?” he demanded suddenly, anger pushing through his fear, redness rising in the pallor of his face.

  “What?”

  “When you started in on all these tests to find a donor, why wasn’t I tested?”

  “Right from the start, it looked as if I was the best match, Cody. There was no need.”

  “You didn’t even bother testing me.”

  She was stunned. He actually resented her for overlooking him as a donor.

  “Hey, sport.” She forced herself to sound calm. “I did you a favor. How’d you like to be in my position right now?” She gestured at the thin, printed gown, the wheeled bed, the cold tile walls.

  Natalie came hustling in. “We’d best get going, kiddo. School today.”

  “Aw, man,” he said, genuine distress in his face. “Why can’t I go back to Seattle with Aunt Natalie—”

  “Hey,” Natalie cut in, her voice uncharacteristically sharp. “We went over this last night. You’re going to school today. You’ll knock ’em dead.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Michelle’s heart sank at the misery in his voice. She had never felt more helpless in her life. Cody had to go to a new school, and she was too out of it to be of any use at all.

  He glared at her. “You should have tested me for the kidney.”

  “I love you for saying so, Cody. Remember that. I love you.”

  A pair of orderlies came in. “Time to go to pre-op,” one of them said.

  “One more kiss, for luck,” she said to Cody.

  He kissed her cheek and squeezed her hand, and she closed the sweetness of the moment into her heart. “I’ll see you soon,” she whispered.

  “ ’Bye, Mom.” His eyes flooded with brightness, and then she lost sight of him as they wheeled her around a corner of the corridor.

  “You got a nice kid, ma’am,” an orderly said.

  A gentle cottony calm, augmented by the sedative she was given, washed over her. Doing the sketches this morning had been cathartic, and the last moments with Cody had set a seal of serenity upon her. The orderly had called her kid “nice.” What a concept.

  They reached the pre-op area, and she was amazed to see a second gurney there.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Gavin winked at her.

  Reaching out, they could touch hands. “I didn’t know I’d see you here, Daddy.”

  “Me neither.”

  Their respective anesthesiologists came in and chatted with them, telling them what to expect.

  Then the oddest thing happened. The orderlies and the anesthesiologists left. Gavin and Michelle found themselves alone for long, quiet minutes.

  “They gave me a pre-op sedative,” she said. “You?”

  “I’m not sure. They’ve been prepping me all night.” He rubbed his finger over hers. “So here we are, just the two of us.”

  “Here we are.” She didn’t know what to say. They’d had plenty of time to express their regrets, proclaim their commitment, acknowledge the love that lay at the center of everything. But had they said it? Had they?

  Michelle’s mother had died during surgery. She tried to keep her mind from going there, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Daddy?” The word came out on a high note, sounding juvenile, but she didn’t care.

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “I’m scared.”

  She could feel him smile, could feel it somewhere in the region of her heart. He squeezed her hand. She had forgotten they were still touching.

  “Me too, Michelle. I’m scared, too.”

  “I don’t think it’s something we’re going to get over, do you?”

  “Not likely. But we’d better not let Temple hear us. He’d put the brakes on this whole thing.”

  “He was a pain in the ass, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I know I only showed up in your life every once in a while.” He took his hand from hers and touched his chest. “But you’ve always been here, right here in my heart.”

  She wanted it to be true so badly that she held her breath.

  “Michelle?”

  “What?”

  “You’re giving me my life back. I wish I could tell you what that means to me.”

  Emotion came in a warm rush, driving away the chill of the tiled pre-op. They lay side by side, helpless in their hope and love and fear. She swallowed hard and tried to keep from crying.

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart. I don’t ever want to make you cry.”

  She felt it flowing, the smooth warm river of light that she had felt earlier, and she finally believed that maybe there was some merit in what Natalie had said about this bond, this invisible connection between father and daughter, between mother and son.

  “I don’t mind crying for you, Daddy.”

  “Everything’s done, Michelle. I fixed my life as best I can. I played my hand the best I know how. I don’t know what more I can do.”

  The doors swished open. “Showtime, folks,” someone said. “Ladies first.”

  Michelle kept thinking she should say one more thing to her father, something hopeful and profound, but the only words that came out were, “See you around, Dad.” Then they were both wheeled away, passing the glass-enclosed scrub area where surgeons and nurses readied themselves like postulants in some strange cleansing rite.

  The operating room looked smaller than she had pictured it in her mind. Too many doctor shows on TV. In the real world, operating rooms were chilly and crammed with monitoring equipment. Blue-green tile and stainless steel. Glare from the observation dome overhead—dear God, she thought, someone might be watching this?—and the transplant team assembled in a semicircle around her. Masked and capped, miner’s headlamps strapped to their heads, plundering hands in skintight gloves. The nurse stood on a stool to tower over the rest.

  Their questions came fast, floating disembodied from behind the anonymous masks: Did she remember them from the meetings? Did she feel all right? Did she know each person’s role and what was happening? Did she have any more questions?

  Michelle shook her head, mute with terror. Now it was real. Now it was happening. No turning back.

  The mask came down, the sharp lemony taste of the drug invaded her air passages, and images swam and stuttered before her eyes—the blue-green tile, the monitors and masked team, and then all that was gone and she saw faces tumbling through her mind: Cody and Gavin and Sam and finally the slender space formed by a gap in the draperies, a hole in the world, a shape she had to fill in, had to fill and fill with everything that was in her.

  Chapter 32

  Quit driving yourself nuts, son, and go on down to Missoula.”

  Sam kept shoveling. It had snowed last night, and he was clearing his mother’s front walk and driveway. “I’m not driving myself nuts.”

  Tammi Lee sat down on the porch step and regarded him with a knowing sympathy. “Well, you’re driving the hospital down there batty by calling every fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m not calling every fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes you are. And Karl’s on call, Cody’s at school, and if you shovel any more snow, you’ll end up having a coronary right here in my front yard. So get your butt in the truck.”

  “I should be around when Cody gets out of school. See how his day went.” It felt strange thinking about a kid’s school schedule. He had never imagined himself in such a role. The thought led to a flash of memory. When he was a kid, riding the school bus home, he used to observe kids getting off at their stops, eagerly awaited by th
eir smiling mothers. Watching them used to make Sam sick with envy.

  “You can get to Missoula and back before school’s out,” his mother said.

  “I’m not needed in Missoula,” he said after a long, ponderous silence. He kept telling himself that. Maggie Kehr had promised she’d page him the minute each surgery was over.

  “How do you know that?”

  He sliced the blade of the shovel into the new-fallen snow and thought about Brad Lovell. Serious, sure-of-himself Brad Lovell, who had a 401(k) plan, who had seen Cody play soccer before Sam even knew his son existed. Lovell was the perfect example of someone a woman needed, pure and simple. He was steady and clean-cut, practical and predictable. A regular bachelor of the month.

  How did a guy get like that? Sam wondered, deliberately ignoring his mother’s question. He wished he knew, because he ought to try it himself. Try listening to common sense. After surviving a chaotic childhood, struggling through school, and failing at marriage, he’d finally put his life in order. His mother was sober. He had his practice, his horses, a respected place in the community. Did he really want more than he had? He was wary of taking on more. He didn’t know if he had what it took.

  Michelle Turner had only been back for a week, and already people were starting to talk.

  He shoveled at a furious rate, scraping the driveway down to bare concrete. He was fighting to stop the knowledge building inside him, but he couldn’t run from it, couldn’t hide from the truth.

  In all the years he’d lived and all the miles he’d traveled, he’d never loved anyone the way he loved Michelle.

  When he had taken her into the empty theater, he’d felt a harsh desperation to possess her, even if it hurt them both. At the hot springs the harshness had softened, reminding him that he still had tender places deep inside him, places only she could touch. In that moment, he’d known with a certainty he hadn’t felt in years that they needed a second chance. They needed to get to know one another, to look at one another through adult eyes and see if the passion they shared as teenagers really meant something.

  At least, that was what he’d thought.

  Now he had no idea what to think.

  When his pager went off, he stabbed the shovel into the snow and pressed the readout button.

  His mother stood up on the porch step. “Any news?”

  “The surgery’s over.”

  Chapter 33

  Michelle. Michelle, wake up.” A woman’s voice reached like ghostly fingers through a fog.

  “Mmm.” Her mouth felt welded shut. Taste of rust and clay. She supposed what she was feeling was pain, but it was so huge, so overwhelming, that she couldn’t call it pain. It was a vast red cloud, pulsating in the middle, holding her in a grip of such power she couldn’t think.

  She moved her jaw from side to side. “ ’S’it over?” No saliva in her mouth. Completely dry. The crimson fog throbbed, intensified, punishing her for her effort.

  “You’re all done. You did great, just perfect.” Donna. That was the woman’s name. Donna Roberts, the nurse.

  Michelle didn’t feel perfect. She felt inches from death. The pounding in her head blotted out all sound. She forced her eyes to focus on the nurse’s mouth, made herself listen carefully.

  Donna checked a green-and-black monitor. “We’ll be transferring you to your room pretty soo—”

  “My father. I want to see my father.”

  “He’s all right, Michelle. He’s in post-op, too.”

  I want to see him. But she couldn’t get the words out. The pain surrounded her, clouding her brain, lifting her up and swirling her far, far away, and she couldn’t see anything except that tiny slit of space opening up to the paintings she hadn’t done. Two hands, parting a curtain. Giving her a glimpse of something she hadn’t created yet. Now it was clear to her. She had to learn to do it anyway, even though it hurt.

  She sank deeper and deeper into the formless red morass of pain, and she let herself go, a victim of slow drowning, too weak to fight her way back to the surface.

  Chapter 34

  There was something wrong with the clocks in this frigging school, Cody decided.

  They didn’t move like normal clocks. They must be from another dimension where a minute equaled an hour and a day lasted forever.

  Because that was how long his first day at Crystal City High School had lasted—forever.

  And it was only lunchtime.

  Feeling like a complete dork, he had shown up in homeroom with a “New Student” folder under his arm and this enormous zit on his forehead. He hadn’t had a zit since September, and he’d woken up that morning looking like he was about to sprout a unicorn horn.

  No sympathy from Aunt Natalie, who had driven him up from Missoula. “Nobody will notice. It just feels obvious to you. Act like it’s not there.”

  “Oh, right, like no one’s going to notice Mount Vesuvius in the middle of my face.”

  “Sweetie, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to you, consider yourself blessed.” In his mom’s absence, Aunt Natalie played the part of the expert on all things.

  At least Brad had gone back to Seattle. Cody had been worried that he’d hang around asking a bunch of questions. Brad liked to act all buddy-buddy, and Cody didn’t feel like answering stuff like how did it feel to meet his father and all that crap.

  Coming in new mid-year was a special torture that should be reserved for convicted felons. First there had been the homeroom teacher’s “Class, we have a new student” routine. Then the issuing of books and supplies. The stack of forms to be signed.

  The Assignment of the Seat.

  The teachers all thought they were doing him this big favor, putting him right up front in the middle so he wouldn’t miss a second of their fascinating lectures on the Voting Rights Act or phytoplankton. What they were actually doing was making him vulnerable to the whispers. This was the equivalent of blindfolded torture, because he could hear bits and pieces of the conversation, but couldn’t see the speakers.

  “… like some skater from the inner city…”

  “… he’s got a pierced what?”

  “Well, I think he’s cute…”

  “… acts like hot shit because his grandfather’s a movie star…”

  “… wait till you hear who his father is…”

  The hissed speculation, through civics, trigonometry, and science, had hit him like spitballs to the back of the neck. When he’d try to get a look at the speakers, dropping a pencil or something and twisting around, he was met by mute, blank stares.

  Losers. Everyone in this frigging school was a loser.

  After third period, he had trouble with his locker—of course—and once he got it open, couldn’t cram all his books in along with his coat, so he kept the coat on even though he was sweating like a hog in the overheated building.

  Lunchtime. In his regular school it was his favorite period of the day, because he sat at the table where everyone was cool and where everyone else only wished they could sit. Claudia would be at his side, eating like one potato chip and then saying she was full, and talking and laughing the whole time.

  He was a long way from that lunchtime, a long way from Claudia.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He went through the fast-food line and ordered a burger and a Coke. Safe choices. Picking something different for lunch was risky, even at his school in Seattle. If you had something like tofu or Thai noodles, you were in danger of being Different. There was a guy named Sujit at his other school who brought the weirdest stuff because of his religion. During certain times of the year, he couldn’t eat meat or dairy products or anything normal. The kids had made a big deal of it, holding their noses and gagging when he walked by, sometimes playing keep-away with his falafel burger or hummus. One time, Sujit had lost it totally, calling them all pig-eating infidels, which had only made them laugh harder.

  Cody wasn’t laughing now. He wished he hadn’t teased Sujit. Because now he was the
one surrounded by pig-eating infidels.

  He took a long time getting his napkin and straw, lingering at the counter while letting his gaze dart frantically around the busy, noisy cafeteria. Where to sit? Where to sit?

  Though fewer in number, the tables were segregated exactly as they had been at his old school. The popular kids occupied the middle. Just as in Seattle, these kids were uniformly good-looking, relaxed, laughing while the whole school revolved around them. Nearby sat the football players and cheerleaders. The jocks were like jocks everywhere—food fights erupting, body noises followed by a chorus of “eeeeuw…”

  Around the busy inner sanctum tables, there was a neutral buffer zone of regular kids with no distinguishing status. And of course, on the fringes of all the activity were the dweebs, geeks, and losers.

  They had plenty of room at their tables. Some hid behind comic books or thick-lensed glasses. The fat ones ate furtively, pretending they didn’t eat but were just fat because they had unlucky glandular activity. The totally clueless ones acted as if they had no idea they were dweebs. They just gabbed away and had lunch—lots of nerdy thermoses and Tupperware kits. These kids didn’t give a rat’s ass that they were the scum-sucking bottom-dwellers of the school population.

  Maybe he could just hunker down at the end of a geek table, scarf his burger, and slip out to the Commons, an outdoor spot for hanging out during break.

  But man, a geek table.

  If he didn’t do better than that, he’d be a goner for sure.

  He sucked in a deep breath and went to one of the neutral zone tables. Like all of them, it was crammed. He spotted one possibility. A gap at the end of a table of mostly boys who were talking loudly about snowboarding. Hey, he could talk snowboarding. Keeping his eyes focused on the empty spot, he moved in, trying not to hurry, determined to make it look as if he’d arrived there almost by accident.

  “Sorry, that’s my spot.” A kid scooted in fast, grabbing the seat.

  Cody felt his face redden, though he shrugged nonchalantly. But now he was trapped, standing like an idiot with his tray in the middle of the lunchroom.