As I made my way back to Lake Geneva alone, I thought about the aurora borealis, but also about losing Doc, and how I could possibly bear it. I cried all the way home.
Fifty-four
POOR SAM.
A wind-driven rain forced me off the porch and into the darkening house. Sam’s loneliness, the unexpected sadness in her life, clung to me as I closed windows and mopped up raindrops from the windowsills. I thought about her good-bye to Doc, which sent my thoughts to Brendan.Where is he? It’s just awful outside. Teeming rain, and he’s driving in it.
I put Sam’s remaining letters on the mantel next to the old marble clock—and that’s when something else hit me. I had a deadline at 6:00P.M.I’d completely forgotten about my column.
I settled into the blue velvet embrace of the sofa, booted up my laptop, and called up my file of rainy-day notions. Not one of them was worthy of 750 words, but after a couple of hours, a big idea did float up from the deep well of my brain.
It was so big, in fact, I wondered why it had taken me so long to come up with it.
I picked up the phone and punched in a number that I knew by heart.
“Debbie, there’s no getting around this,” I said. “I’m no good to theTribright now, and I’m not being fair to my readers. It’s hard to explain. So hard, I won’t even try.”
I told my editor how sorry I was, but I had to take a leave of absence. But I didn’t tell her why. I didn’t want Debbie’s sympathy, and I didn’t want to have to explain myself and what was going on with Sam and with Brendan.
When I clicked off the phone, I felt a rush of anxiety. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff and staring down into darkness and nothingness.
I still needed to visit Sam that night, but the rain was absolutely sheeting outside, obscuring the lake, even the trees beside the house. I almost made it out to the Jag when the single toot of a car horn got my attention.Brendan!He was driving his black Jeep down the puddle-soaked lane behind the houses.
He rolled down the side window and smiled, and all was forgiven. “Jenniferrrrrr. I’m back. The rain was terrible all the way from Chicago.”
I was soooo glad to see Brendan’s smiling face.There’s your explanation, Debbie! That smile of his.I tacked to the left and leaned a dripping, yellow-slickered elbow into the open window.
“Hey, buddy, mind if I hop in with you? I have news. Sam is out of her coma.”
Fifty-five
“YOU’RE GOINGto love her. Sam’s much more interesting when she’s conscious,” I told Brendan as we rode to the hospital. “And she’s going to like you, I guess. Or she’ll pretend to, anyway.”
Brendan started to laugh. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.
“Oh, I just heard a sad story, and then I saw your smiling face. Strange, interesting juxtaposition. I also took a leave of absence at work. Now I’m a beach bum, just like you.” Brendan and I slapped high-fives over that one.
We arrived at Sam’s room, and—what was this?—dozens of shiny Mylar balloons and streamers hung from the ceiling, with cellophane-wrapped baskets of fruit and gaudy flower arrangements competing for space on the counters and tables. Obviously, word had gotten around Lake Geneva, and maybe the rest of Wisconsin and Illinois, that Sam was conscious. I wondered if any of the flowers or balloons were from Doc.
She was wearing a blue-striped hospital gown and her complexion was still gray, but her hair was combed and she smiled when she saw me. She was alert and seemed almost herself.
“Hello. Hello, Jennifer. And who’s the handsome one?” she asked.
“This is Brendan. I told you about him, but you probably don’t remember. He is kind of handsome, isn’t he?”
Brendan reached out and shook her hand. “Hiya, Samantha,” he said, and my jaw dropped. I had no idea where that came from.Samantha?Like in the letters. That was what Doc always called her.
“Don’t I know you?” Sam said. “You look like—oh, you know who.”
“My uncle Shep?” asked Brendan. “Just a wild guess.”
“That’s the one,” she said. “Of course you do.”
Brendan cranked up Sam’s bed a couple of notches; then we pulled a couple of chairs close. Sam started to give us a slightly fractured discourse on her day. But then she turned her eyes back to Brendan. She seemed just a little confused again. “I’m fine,” she said, and winked at me.
Then she looked at Brendan again. “I hear you’re a very good doctor, Brendan. So why have you given up hope?” Sam asked. “How can you leave somebody as special as Jennifer without a fight?”
I saw Brendan’s head go back as if he’d taken a punch in the nose, but then he recovered nicely. “It’s a good question, isn’t it? It’s the one I’ve been asking myself.”
