by Amanda Foote
He leaned down to kiss me. “I’ve never met anybody like you,” he said.
I smiled. “Ditto.”
“Well,” he breathed, leaning up. “I think we’ve seen about all we can see here,” he said. He laced his fingers through mine. “Dinner?” he suggested.
“Yes, please. I am starving!”
“What do you want?”
“Hmmm.” I played with the fringe on a purse Cadence had leant me. “I want tacos.”
He laughed. “Like, seriously?”
“Seriously. As Liberty Bell would put it, I have a hankering for tacos!”
He put one arm around my shoulder. “Sounds delish,” he laughed, and we made our way out of the museum to the car.
He cranked up the A/C and the radio when we got in, and it was tuned to 101.9 The Twister, the main country radio station for the Oklahoma City area. I laughed. “Gone country, huh?”
He shrugged, laughing. “Bobby has been a bad influence on me.” Tim McGraw’s voice coasted through the speakers and he twisted the dial to turn it up. “And a heart don’t forget, somethin’ like that!” he sang, slightly off key.
I was laughing so hard I almost didn’t notice my phone ringing. I felt it vibrate in my pocket and I was still laughing when I answered it. “Hello?”
“Heaven, it’s me.” It was Marlene’s voice, but it was hard to hear her over the music. I smiled at Dillard and motioned for him to turn it down, but he was too busy dancing in his seat and trying to drive to notice.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, grinning at him.
“You need to come back right now,” she said, her voice harsh. My smile disappeared.
“What? Why?” I said, panicked. Dillard noticed the change in my tone and quickly turned the music down.
“What’s wrong?” he mouthed. I glanced at him, but I didn’t respond.
“Heaven, it’s Cadence. She’s in the hospital again,” Marlene croaked.
My eyes shot up to Dillard’s, and I could feel the panic building in my chest. “We have to go back, now,” I said.
He nodded carefully, turning his blinker on and making a right at the next stoplight.
“We’re on our way,” I said to Marlene, and we hung up.
“What is it?” Dillard asked, concerned.
I shook my head, almost hoping that the action would shake away what was happening. “It’s Cadence,” I answered him. “She’s in the hospital again.”
His eyes went wide, and he nodded. He picked up speed as we pulled onto the highway, and thirty five miles and forty three minutes later, we were turning into the hospital parking lot.
Chapter Nine.
Cadence was in room 139 this time, and Marlene was in the waiting room with Bliss when Dillard and I arrived. I rushed over to her. “How is she?” I demanded.
Marlene took me into a hug and breathed through her teeth. “Not good. The doctor says her health is declining rapidly, especially since she hasn’t been taking the best care of herself.”
“This is our fault,” I said. “We should have been making her eat better.”
“What were we supposed to do, Heaven?” Marlene asked me, sitting back down and pulling me down with her. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and it felt like a thousand pounds. “Tell her she wasn’t allowed to enjoy the time she had left? You’d feel worse now if we’d done that.”
Dillard sat down next to me and laced his fingers through mine. Three minutes passed. “How long does she have?” I asked, and the words felt like knives.
Marlene sighed, and I could hear her pain in it. “They’re not sure. Days, maybe less. Her oncologist in L.A. spoke with the doctors here and he thinks it could be as little as a few hours.”
I sat up quickly. “How could she possibly be that bad? We’ve been with her the entire time!”
Marlene patted my leg. “She was hiding the worst of her condition from us, Heaven. She told me a few minutes ago that she’s been in serious pain for the last week. She didn’t know how to tell us that she thought it was almost time.”
“How did she end up here?” Dillard asked weakly.
“I came home from the post office to find her collapsed on the floor. Bliss was crying in her playpen. I called the ambulance as soon as I found her.”
At that moment, Liberty Bell and Bobby rushed into the waiting room. They ran over to us. “How is she?” Liberty Bell asked, panic on her face.
Marlene answered, and gave them the brutal truth. “She doesn’t have a lot of time left,” she said.
My chest constricted. I gripped the edge of the chair. I looked around, there were seventeen chairs in that waiting room, and two couches. Two TV’s. A red coffee table. Twelve randomly placed magazines.
I stood up so quickly I made myself dizzy. “I need to see her,” I said, clutching my forehead. “Now.”
“They said we should wait-” Marlene began.
“I don’t care,” I interrupted her. “We don’t have time to wait.”
Marlene nodded. “Room 139,” she said, and I left them all there behind me.
I knocked softly at Cadence’s door, then let myself in when there was no answer. She was sleeping on her back, her face turned toward the other side of the room.
“Cadence,” I said, but she didn’t wake up. I found myself walking the seven steps over to the other side of her bed, and sat down in the cold, hard purple chair beside it. Her hand was resting over the hospital blanket, an IV snaking into her vein. I rested my hand gently on hers and counted the drips - one, eight, twenty-four, ninety-seven, one hundred and forty five - before I began to speak.
“I don’t know how to do this without you,” I said.
I tried not to cry, but I was failing. Her face was pale, weak. There were deep dark circles under her eyes, and I tried to remember what they looked like when they were open. A lot like mine.
“I didn’t know I’d ever have to do this without you,” I said. “I didn’t even know about you five months ago. You weren’t even a possibility.” I brushed back a tear angrily. “This isn’t fair. Our parents - that was one thing. A catastrophe. But I knew them my entire life, I have so many memories with them that I will cherish forever. But-” I couldn’t control the sobs now. They were wracking my entire chest and I could barely speak over them. “I’m not done getting to know you,” I cried. “I didn’t know I needed a sister until I had one.”
I rested my arms on her bed and my head on top of them, letting the tears fall. Six minutes passed. I was still crying when I felt her hand rest itself on the top of my hair.
I lifted my head and she was smiling weakly at me. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I responded.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and I blinked hard. Took a deep breath. Nodded.
“Why won’t you fight?” I asked her.
She sighed. “There’s nothing left in me anymore. Now that I know Bliss has a family that loves her, I have no reason to keep fighting to stay.”
I clenched my fist. Not in anger, but in sad frustration. “Fight for me. Stay for me.”
She placed her hand over mine, rubbed her thumb along my fingers. She didn’t respond.
“Am I not enough to fight for? Your sister?”
Her lip started to quiver and she bit it. A tear escaped her eye but she blinked, and it was trapped in her eyelashes. “You are. You’re more than enough.” She sat up and scooted over, patting the bed.
I eyed her carefully.
“Come on now, I know it’s cliche. But get up here!” she laughed weakly.
I obliged and climbed onto the bed next to her. I folded myself into her side and she patted my cheek with one hand, and played with my hair with her other. It was exactly the same way our mother used to comfort me. And it felt like losing my mom all over again. I gripped the blanket next to me.
She lowered her voice, it was almost whispering. “You’re more than enough,” she said again. “If there were anyone besides Bliss that I would stay f
or, it’s you.” She cleared her throat and I could hear her tears catching in her voice. “But I can’t stay. There’s really nothing else they can do for me.”
I sat up quickly. “What about chemo? Natural remedies? A shaman, for pete’s sake?! Anything but this,” I said. “Anything but giving up.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t real. “I’m not giving up. I’m letting go.”
I stood up, frustrated. “I will never understand this.”
She shook her head. “I know you won’t,” she replied.
I started to leave the room, but at the door I turned back around. “I’ll never understand this either…” I began. “But I love you. More than you can possibly know. And I don’t know how or why, I just know that I do. I love you, Cadence.”
She smiled and took a deep, rough breath. “And I love you, Heaven Belle Lee.”
I turned away.
“Could you send in Bliss?” she asked as I walked away, and I nodded.
The others still sat down the hall in the waiting room when I emerged. Marlene stood up instantly. “How is she?” she asked me.
“Not great,” I said. “She wants to see Bliss.”
Marlene nodded in understanding. “I’ll take her down there,” she offered, and she picked Bliss up and walked the eighteen steps out of the waiting room toward the hallway I’d just come from.
I sat down and Dillard wrapped his arms around my shoulders, Liberty Bell grabbed my hand. Seven minutes later, a doctor in a white coat approached us, a stethoscope around his neck. “Are you Cadence Highwater’s family?” he asked me. His tan skin seemed mismatched to his bright blue eyes, the kind that look so much younger than the person, as if he’d stolen them from someone. Maybe he had. His dark hair was speckled with gray along his sideburns. I nodded. “I’m Dr. Erikson,” he said. “Cadence’s doctor. I just wanted to let you know that I ran her vitals, and she looks okay. She’s not declining as quickly as we originally thought. I’d say she has another day or two. Maybe more.”
He smiled at me, as if he thought that was good news. I cleared my throat. “Thank you,” I said, and he walked away.
“You need to sleep,” Dillard said to me. He stood up. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
“I can’t leave,” I said. “She needs me here.”
He grabbed my hands and pulled me up gently. “She needs Bliss right now, and she has her. The doctor just said she has a few days. You can spare a few hours.”
I wanted to fight him some more on it, but I just didn’t have the energy. So I let him take my hand and lead me out of the hospital, forty seven steps to the entrance and another thirty two to the car. Liberty Bell and Bobby were behind us, walking to Liberty Bell’s car eight spaces away from us. I glanced up at the hospital one more time, its lights seeming to dance against the dark night sky. “We’ll come back first thing in the morning,” Dillard said. “She’ll still be here.”
I didn’t resist as he guided me into the car. The streetlights whipped by beside us, and I counted eighty seven of them before suddenly they were blurring together and then it was dark.
✽✽✽
I woke to a scratching noise. I groaned and opened my eyes. Vicious sunlight was streaming in through my bedroom window and I rolled away from it. My eyes met Dillard’s back, which was resting in the bed next to me. He was rising and falling softly, his breaths coming in steadily. Then I heard it again.
Scratch scratch scratch.
I sat up. It was coming from the door.
“Mreow,” I heard.
I got up and opened my bedroom door. Lucius rambled in as if he hadn’t been nervously tearing at my door just moments before. “Morning,” I said to him, and he ignored me, jumping up on the bed and snuggling in next to Dillard’s legs.
“Morning,” I heard in response. It was Dillard, just waking. He must have thought I was talking to him.
I walked into the bathroom. I still had on my dress from the day before. I took it off and pulled on a pair of capris from the bathroom floor. There was a red T-shirt Cadence had hung on the doorknob several days before for me, and I pulled it on as well. It said “Girl on fire” on it, and I smiled.
“You slept over?” I called to Dillard as I ran a brush through my dark, wavy hair. I pulled it all up into a loose ponytail on the top of my head. My bangs weren’t long enough to stay in it, and they fell to the side of my face.
“Yeah,” he responded. I could hear him rustling around in my room, sitting up and pulling his shirt back on. “You asked me to, last night when I carried you to bed. So I stayed.”
My breath caught in my throat. He could have chosen better words. It made me think of Cadence, who I’d almost forgotten about in the harsh sunlight and fresh day. If there was one thing I wanted from her, it was that she would stay. I don’t think that was too much to ask.
I finished up in the bathroom and made my way past Dillard, still wiping sleep from his eyes on the edge of the bed, and I told him I wanted to go back to the hospital as soon as possible. “Okay,” he responded. “As soon as you’re ready.”
I went into the kitchen to make some quick toast. As I grabbed the bread off the kitchen island, I noticed Cadence’s marble cats resting next to the butter dish. Staring at me.
Like tiny marble statues of my guilt. I wanted to chisel them into something else, something besides these cats, taunting me. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Do no evil. It felt evil to have left while she was still there. I picked one up, the one covering its eyes. He’s grinning, like he had a secret. I don’t want to know what it is. Time doesn’t exist in his world, but it does in mine. And secrets always reveal themselves. They beg to be known. But it’s no secret that I left Cadence in a hospital while I slept in a bed next to a guy I still barely knew. That’s what was evil. It felt like choosing him over her, and I wasn’t. I swear I wasn’t.
Dillard came into the kitchen and I handed him his toast, we threw on our shoes and got straight in the car, crisp pieces of bread still hanging from our mouths.
✽✽✽
The moments leading up to it and directly after it are still hazy to me. But I could feel it as soon as I walked through the sliding glass doors of that cold hospital. The air was electric, and an unwanted energy buzzed around me like a current of distress.
I could see Marlene near the lobby desk, talking to a doctor, looking at some forms. I reached up and gripped Dillard’s shirt sleeve. “No,” I breathed. He glanced up and saw Marlene too.
“What is it, Heaven?” He was confused. He didn’t know. How could he possibly know?
But I knew.
Marlene raised her head away from the forms then. Her eyes caught mine. Her red bedazzled glasses were pushed up over her hair, and all around her eyes were puffy and pink. This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible.
She left the clipboard with the papers resting on the counter, and crossed the room to me. She started at a walk, but sped up to a brisk jog. When she reached me, she clutched my free hand. The other hand was still grappling onto Dillard’s shirt.
She took a deep breath. “Heaven,” she started. “She’s gone.”
I told you the words were worse. They are so much worse than any other words I’ve ever heard, and will ever hear again.
I plummeted to the floor. “No.” I said. “NO.” I cried. “NO!” I screamed. Dillard sank down next to me and wrapped his arms around me. My face was hot. My breath was heavy. My knees were aching. Marlene’s hand still clung to mine. But none of it mattered. Absolutely nothing mattered, because she was gone. I told you. I tried to tell you. This isn’t a happy story.
“I should have been here.” I said through sloppy tears. “I should have been HERE! I should have been with her before-”
“No, Heaven,” Marlene interrupted me. “No, it’s better that you weren’t. It wasn’t a happy moment where she drifted off to sleep, then she was gone. There were machines beeping, people pushing on her chest. It was sca
ry. Really scary. Remember her the last moment you saw her.” I looked up at her. “That’s when Cadence died, Heaven. Remember it that way.”
My eyes stung as I opened them from their tightly clamped lids and looked up at Marlene’s panicked face. “I told her I loved her,” I squeaked.
She sighed heavily, wrapping her hands around my wrists and pulling me up. Dillard let go and let her move me. My head fell to her shoulder and one of her arms wrapped around my waist, the other rubbed my back. I held onto her as tightly as I could.
“Then it was good,” she said. “You can’t have asked for any better than that.”
✽✽✽
“Mama?”
Bliss played with Bobby’s cell phone while she sat on his lap. He was dozing off on Marlene’s couch, Liberty Bell beside him watching something on CNN.
Dillard and I had been gone for several hours. We had left Marlene at the hospital to deal with the details, knowing there wasn’t much I could do. Dillard had taken me to our spot at the lake. I cried, and he held me. He didn’t say much, didn’t need to. When my eyes were dry, he drove me home.
Bliss looked up from the phone as I walked through the door. “Mama?” she said, looking at me, and I nearly burst into tears again then and there. Instead, I clutched Dillard’s sleeve and took a deep breath.
Liberty Bell saw me and frowned. “Hey,” she said, and I could tell she already knew.
But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except for one thing.
I rushed to Bliss and picked her up from Bobby’s lap, pulling her into a tight hug. She giggled at first, until she noticed me crying. She patted my face. “Hev,” she said.
I left the others in the living room and took Bliss outside into the backyard. We sat in one of Marlene’s red cushioned patio chairs, and I leaned back, pulling Bliss onto my lap. “Yes, Bliss. Heaven. I’m Heaven.”
