Beneath the Night Tree (24 page)

I melted into Parker’s confident authority, so grateful for his presence, for his arms around her, that I could hardly breathe. There was nothing I could do but trace his footsteps and trust that he’d lead me in the right direction. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t pray.

But as I tucked the boys against me and settled them, weeping and shaking, in the backseat of the car, every fiber of my being groaned and whimpered and cried.

Save her.

Part 3

Different World

Grandma’s heart attack was acute.

The doctors in the ER started thrombolytic therapy almost immediately because they were more concerned about saving her life than the elevated risk of stroke complications. And as a social worker helped me wade through the necessary medical waivers and documents, the cardiac surgeon at the heart hospital two hours from Mason prepped for a lengthy operation.

She was whisked away before I could say good-bye.

I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again.

In spite of Grandma’s critical condition, the doctors assured me that she was stabilized and ready for airlift transport. But when I heard the muted thrum of helicopter blades fading away into an unknown sky, I went weak in the knees.

“Let’s sit down,” Parker murmured, catching me around the waist. He escorted me down the hallway to the nearest bench, bearing most of my weight so that the soles of my feet barely kissed the floor. “She’s in the best hands.”

“She is,” one of the ER doctors assured me. He didn’t look much older than Michael, and I was disgusted by the almost self-satisfied smile he wore. Though it was likely he was only trying to reassure me, his easy platitudes and unruffled demeanor just made me more agitated. Shouldn’t his stethoscope be crooked? his perfectly coiffed hair out of place? his white coat missing a button? Where was the blood? the macabre signs of trauma that would testify to the horror of this night?

But Grandma hadn’t bled. She hadn’t cried or struggled or fought. Instead, she withered quietly, barely moving when they hooked her up to an EKG machine, tried time and again to draw blood from flaccid veins, and started an IV for infusions of nitroglycerin, aspirin, and what the nurse called “clot-busters.”

Remembering the roller coaster of our hospital nightmare, I suddenly felt faint. The ER doctor must have noticed that any remaining color drained from my cheeks because one moment he was standing in front of me, and the next he was kneeling at my side with his hand on the back of my neck.

“Put your head down,” he instructed. “Between your knees . . . that’s the way. Now breathe; just breathe.” He patted my back awkwardly, and I longed to wiggle out from under his patronizing touch. But my vision was dotted with a million points of light, bright stars that danced behind my eyelids and made me too nauseous to move a muscle.

I took shallow gulps of air between my lips, each inhalation hissing over the sharp lines of my teeth as if I were having a heart attack too. And it felt like I was. My chest was bound so tightly that I realized I couldn’t get enough oxygen no matter how hard I tried. I gasped and coughed and wheezed. I panted. I choked. And I was so focused on my own implosion that it took me a very long time to realize there was a sound like fear in the room, a low moan of agony so acute, I finally lifted my throbbing head to see where it was coming from and why.

It was coming from me.

Parker materialized in front of me out of nowhere. I felt him more than I saw him, felt his hands on my shoulders as he pulled me to him and then his arms around me when my head fell to his chest. I sobbed against him, soaked the fabric of his T-shirt with my tears, and he only drew me in tighter. It felt like he was trying to press the ache out of me with the strength of his embrace. He didn’t say anything, just shushed quietly as if I were a child, and somehow the sound was soothing.

I don’t know how long we crouched like that, Parker on his knees on the hard, tile floor, and me on the edge of a molded plastic bench with the burden of my agony like a deadweight between us. But my tears subsided gradually, and my lungs began to function again. I wasn’t having a heart attack, and I didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse.

“I’ll be okay,” I whispered. I ducked my head and pushed away from Parker, yanking the cuffs of my sweatshirt down over my hands so I could wipe my face with the soft, gray material. If I could have, I probably would have hidden there forever, tucked behind the refuge of my cotton sleeves, where I could pretend everything was okay. But nothing was okay. The boys were terrified, blind and ignorant of all that had happened as they waited with a secretary in the prayer room. And Grandma was on her way to surgery. At best, she would end up in the intensive care unit of a hospital 120 miles away. At worst . . . But I couldn’t think about that.

“Take your time, Julia,” Parker said.

“She’s been through a lot tonight,” the doctor began as though I weren’t sitting right next to him. “You might want to give her a sedative when you get home so she can sleep.”

“We’re not going home. We’re going to the heart hospital,” I sniffed, emerging from behind my tearstained sweatshirt. “At least, I am. You can go home, Parker, and the boys can—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Parker insisted. “And we’ll take the boys along. I can stay with them while you . . .”

What? While I did what? paced the halls? held her hand? A fresh wave of helplessness made me whimper.

Parker didn’t even try to tell me it would be okay.

We sat in silence for a few more moments; then I took a deep, shaky breath and heaved myself up. Unbelievably, my legs supported me. My head felt foggy but capable of forming a coherent thought. I even nodded as the doctor handed me a few brochures on emergency coronary artery bypass grafts and heart disease in women. Only minutes ago I had been a blubbering mess, but I had more or less completed the transformation to a normal, functioning human being. Although nothing about the evening seemed anywhere near normal.

After a round of handshakes and a well-rehearsed wish for my grandmother’s full and complete recovery, the doctor disappeared down the hallway and Parker and I were left alone. It was a vacant feeling. A solitary, almost-desolate feeling, for where was I to turn from here? Grandma was in a helicopter speeding toward an operating room. Michael was six hours away in Iowa City. And the only person I had to lean on was a virtual stranger. A man who had cradled my grandma as if she were his own and held me when I cried, but an outsider all the same. Who was Parker to me but a complication?

It struck me that for the first time in my life, it was just me and God. Everything else, everyone else, had been stripped away. And Simon and Daniel would look to me the way I had looked to the woman who now lingered in precarious condition in the belly of a helicopter.

“Julia?” Parker asked, severing the thin strand of my concentration.

“Let’s go get the boys,” I said.

“What are we going to tell them?”

“The truth,” I sighed, feeling my voice splinter on the word. I swallowed, tried again. “They deserve the truth.”

He nodded and turned to lead the way. For just an instant, we were side-by-side, almost leaning against each other as we began the short journey to the prayer room and the distraught boys who waited for us there. We matched our steps, and Parker’s hand brushed my arm from elbow to wrist like he was going to lace his fingers through mine. As if that was the only way we could face this: together. It almost felt natural, and I turned my palm out to receive his touch, but before I could grasp the implications of such an action, Parker veered away a little and put empty space between us. It felt gaping.

Simon and Daniel must have heard our approach down the empty hospital hallway because they came flying out of the prayer room before the disgruntled secretary could stop them.

“Hi, guys,” I whispered as they crashed into me. Simon tucked his head against the hollow beneath my collarbone, and Daniel pressed his face into my side. I curled my arms around them and dropped my cheek to Simon’s dark hair. When he didn’t protest, I kissed his head. Once. Twice. Three times for good measure.

“Is she going to be okay?” Simon murmured against my shirt.

“We don’t know that yet.”

He flung himself away from me. “What are we supposed to do?”

I didn’t know if his question was rhetorical or if he actually wanted an answer, but I couldn’t stand the way grief and confusion mingled in his eyes. There were paths of dry tears that left narrow tributaries down the smooth plane of his cheeks, and his lips trembled with barely contained emotion. It nearly ripped me in two to see him so upset. “There’s not much we can do,” I told him gently. “We’ll go to the heart hospital and wait for her surgery to be over.”

“She’s in surgery? For what?”

“Her heart. She had a heart attack.”

“Grandma has a perfect heart,” Daniel said, looking at me. His expression was so earnest, so innocent, I bent to drop a kiss on his smooth forehead.

“Her heart is perfect,” I agreed. “It’s just . . . old.”

“What else?” Simon demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“What else can we
do
?”

I looked over his head and caught Parker’s troubled gaze. The man across from me appeared appropriately worn by the events of our afternoon. His shirt was half-tucked in and half-hanging out of the waistband of his creased jeans. His hair was disheveled and his skin looked ashen. As I watched, he tugged his lips into the semblance of a smile, but it was crooked and sad, and I was grateful when he abandoned his optimistic endeavor and simply mouthed the words,
I’m so sorry.

“Julia,” Simon demanded yet again, “what do we do?”

Turning my attention back to my brother, I brushed the line of his perfect cheekbone with my knuckles.

“We pray.”

* * *

Instead of taking the boys along to the heart hospital, I called Mrs. Walker and filled her in on the situation. At first, Simon was irate at the thought of being left behind, but by the time we stopped at home to pack an overnight bag, close up the house, and make a few necessary phone calls, both of the boys were glassy-eyed and numb. There was little for them to do but curl up on the Walkers’ couch and accept the cup of hot cocoa that Maggie had prepared for each of them. I watched as the young woman whom I loved like a little sister covered my boys with plush blankets and turned on a DVD that drew their gazes like moths to a flame.

“Thank you,” I said, my throat so full of gratitude I could hardly speak.

Maggie gave me a grim smile and a tight hug, then released me to the shepherding arms of her mother. “We’ll take good care of them,” Maggie promised as I left the room.

Mrs. Walker ushered Parker and me into the kitchen and eased the pocket door closed behind us. She wore a confident expression in front of the boys, but when we were alone in the kitchen, her features crumbled. “Oh, Julia, I’m so sorry!”

I wrapped my arms around her and said with more conviction than I felt, “She’s going to be okay. But I want to be there when she gets out of surgery.”

Mrs. Walker swept her fingers beneath her eyes and backed away. “Of course you do. Don’t worry about us; we’ll be just fine.” She threw Parker an uncertain look, and I realized that I hadn’t even bothered to make introductions.

“I’m not thinking clearly,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Mrs. Walker, this is Patrick Holt. A . . . a family friend.”

I could tell that her confusion was mounting, but the evening had already proven to be astonishing and she didn’t pry further.

“Parker is on his way home,” I began, but before I could explain, he cut in.

“Actually, I’m going to drive you to the hospital.”

My attention snapped to him. “No, you need to get home.”

“I don’t think you should make the trip alone.”

“She shouldn’t,” Mrs. Walker agreed, siding with Parker though she had known him less than five minutes. “Let him take you, Julia. I’d go myself, but someone needs to watch the boys.”

I wanted to argue, but my fingers were tingling and my head felt swathed in cotton. Maybe I wasn’t in the best condition to drive. “Fine,” I mumbled.

“We’d better take off,” Parker said with an air of irrefutable authority.

I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the way he was telling me what to do, but I felt powerless to protest. Rather than arguing or trying to assert control over the situation, I let him lead me out of the kitchen to the spacious entryway.

“Call me anytime day or night,” Mrs. Walker told me, following closely in my footsteps. “I’ll keep the phone by my bed.”

“The boys only grabbed enough clothes for tomorrow, but as always, the door is unlocked in case you need anything. If we decide to stay . . .”

“Stay as long as you need to. I mothered five children; I think I can handle two more for a couple of days.”

As Parker was lacing up his boots, I crept into the living room and gave Daniel and Simon one last hug and kiss. They were both clutching their mugs of cocoa and staring blankly at the television. I breathed a prayer over their heads, pleading with God to hold their hearts, to give them hope. To give us all a reason to hope.