Beyond 4/20 (15 page)

Chelsea arrived at the hospital before John was even out of surgery. Irene had made her travel arrangements, chartering a jet to get her there as quickly as possible. When she entered the surgical waiting room and found her dad, Irene, and Mark there waiting, she stopped in the doorway and simply stood, staring at them. The sight of them all there assured her this was no light matter.

Bob took Chelsea into his arms and whispered, “He’s strong. He’ll get through this.”

They all waited in near silence. The only question she asked was of her father. “How long have you known he was having problems?”

She was angry to have been left in the dark and was looking for an outlet for that anger.

“Just since today. I promise. He’s kept it to himself.”

Bob looked at Irene. She had known only since John had her make the travel arrangements for them.

Hours went by and still no word. Finally, John’s doctor appeared, looking worn out and rather disappointed.

“The surgery went well.” He sighed. “Now we’ll have to wait and see how he responds to the device.”

Nothing was the same as before. Their lives as they had known them were so drastically altered that Chelsea could hardly remember what it was like not to worry and wonder. Every day she woke with the fear that John would die that day. For the most part, he was stable, or so the doctors believed. So far, in the months since John’s surgery, they had unsuccessfully tried a handful of medications. Nothing seemed to help. From what she had read online, which John begged her to stop doing, Chelsea knew,
sudden death may occur at any stage of the disease.
Every online resource said almost exactly that same thing. Not only was John not guaranteed tomorrow, he wasn’t guaranteed the remainder of any given day. It could come at any time, and Chelsea waited daily for it. That ticking was ever in her mind, so excruciatingly loud that she could hear little else. It had become the countdown to John’s death.

At the moment, she watched out the kitchen window as he sat with the girls while they played outdoors. She simply felt numb. Some days she operated out of a place of sheer faith that God would give John more time. As they waited for a donor heart, she found herself hardly able pray for one, knowing what that would mean for the other family. Their loss would be John’s only chance. Because his condition had become so grave, he had been placed near the top of the list, so they waited, anxiously hoping for a call at any moment.

John felt good sitting in the sunshine as if the sun gave him a new lease on life. Having recently battled another round of pneumonia, he was left drained and with little energy, but his energy was high this day, allowing him to be out in the backyard with the girls. They ran around while he watched. For him, it was like breathing in life to be with his little girls, hearing them giggle and play. At the moment Chelsea was inside making lunch for them, probably watching him out the window. Her devotion to him broke his heart, and though she would never consider things in such a way, he had truly let her down. Always he thought he would have more to give her, more than this pitiful man he had become, one who needed his wife to care for him as she did.

Because it was early spring, there was still a crisp chill in the air, but it felt good to be out of the house. Many times he squinted up at the sun, allowing the heat of it to warm his pale face. Today, it was truly a source of new strength. He needed it since he had a rough few days and hadn’t felt much like being out and about. After his surgery, Chelsea had their things, including their bedroom furniture, moved down to the study, so that’s where John spent much of his down time. He never dreamed so many months would pass with them still there since he had always anticipated a full recovery. Instead, he had only experienced a very steady decline. Anytime he had a day such as this one, though, he took advantage of it and got out of the house, even if it was only to the backyard to watch the girls play.

Lucy stopped and looked up at John. She smiled and waved at him.

He waved in return. When she busied herself again with Sara B., John reached for his phone and dialed Bob’s number. John insisted, “Come get me out of the house for a while.”

Though Chelsea put up a fuss, he left with Bob anyway. There was something that needed to be done, something he had put off for way too long. Over the past weeks, John had spent more time with the Lord than ever, which eventually brought with it a new sense of peace over days to come and decisions to be made. Of all the things he wrestled with since his illness, this one was the most difficult, but he knew what was right and had finally come to the place where he had the emotional strength to accomplish it.

Bob pulled alongside the fence at Tuck’s place. He had seen Tuck out in the south pasture, and when Tuck spotted them, Bob motioned for him to meet them at the barn. As he put the truck into park, he asked, “You sure this is what you wanna do?”

“Positive.” John had known for weeks that this day would come.

By the time John reached the fence, moving more slowly than usual, wheezing and coughing along the way, Tuck met him there. John leaned against the fence, dreading the conversation ahead. Even the sight of Tuck, so lean and tanned and so blasted young, caused John a moment of hesitation, but no matter what he felt in the moment, however, what he was doing was right and necessary.

Tuck hadn’t seen John in a few weeks, so the sight of him was pretty shocking. He knew he was getting sicker, but still he was surprised. Lucy had kept him updated. She was really worried, and now he could see why. Several nights he had to comfort her as she cried herself to sleep. She loved John and sensed he didn’t have long. More than once, she told him John was going to be with Maw Maw soon. She promised that Jesus whispered it into her heart. Now he believed it without question.

“Guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“A little, I guess.”

“Are you still in love with my wife?”

Tuck was leaning against the railing just as John was, but at his question, he straightened up, about to turn and walk away. He didn’t want this to become a confrontation and had no intention of answering that question.

“Don’t walk away.” John should have led with the real reason he had come since he already knew the answer anyway, so he quickly added, “I’m here to ask you to wait for her.”

He needed to sit, but in the presence of the man his wife would someday marry, John refused to show himself so weak.

Tuck leaned back in. That wasn’t at all what he expected, and at that, he didn’t know what to say.

“You once said you would wait out the grieving process. I hope you still have the heart for that. She’ll need you.”

“Look, John…”

John interrupted. “I don’t have much left in me today. I need to get this out while I can.” He glanced over at Bob who was watching while trying to pretend he wasn’t. “I don’t have much longer to live. I know that. But I’ve got to know you’ll take of Chelsea.” Choking up, he had to pause before adding, “And Sara Beth.”

Though his first thought was to wave John off, tell him he would be fine, Tuck knew better. He knew this conversation was what John needed to make peace with leaving his family.

“I’ll take care of Chelsea as much as she’ll allow.” His eyes burned as if he might cry. “Sara Beth, too.”

“I need more of a commitment than that. I need to know you’ll love them, both of them. I’ve loved your daughter from the very beginning. Now I’m asking you to love mine.”

Deciding to be honest, understanding that truth was what John needed, he softly admitted, “I already do.”

For a moment John was silent, feeling more at peace than he expected. The typical heaviness in his chest suddenly felt the slightest bit lighter. He thought back to the first time Tuck held her and how he whispered softly into Sara Beth’s ear. He had to wonder if those were the words he spoke, that he loved her. Thinking so gave him an even greater sense of peace.

“I’ve known since before I married her that you two belonged together, that somehow I had stepped right in the middle of what should have been. That probably should have kept me away, but obviously it didn’t.”

John smiled a bit at the thought of that earliest observation. He could no more have walked away from Chelsea than he could have flown. Once he held her again after so many months apart, nothing could have caused him to give up and walk away.

When John had struggled through such a season of jealousy, there was a point at which he was certain God was stirring up his strong emotions. Often he suspected that he was supposed to step aside so that Chelsea could be with Tuck and Lucy, but back then, he was totally incapable of something so drastic and selfless. It wasn’t until he became sick that he understood: God was never asking him to walk away from Chelsea, but rather to prepare for the day when he would have to let her go. The time had come, and John was doing the best he could. Having this conversation with Tuck was his final act of being wholly submitted to God’s will.

Tuck considered John’s words that he and Chelsea
should have been
. “Maybe we should have been, but it was my fault we never were. I know that. I thank God that you stayed. Chelsea’s never been any happier than she has been with you.”

John looked at Tuck intently, admiring him, envying him. “What you did was a lifetime ago, and now, you’ve both got a lifetime ahead to work that out. Just give her time. Be patient and wait for her.”

At John’s words, Tuck’s knees buckled out from beneath him, so he quickly grabbed for the fence rail to keep from falling backwards. The verse from the Psalms rang in his head, “Be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord.” Over the past few years he was certain he had waited all those years in vain, but now he understood: hope wasn’t lost after all.

When John arrived home, Chelsea and the girls were sitting at the kitchen table playing with Play-Doh. John sat next to Chelsea and took hold of her hand. Since his illness, she had become this amazingly strong woman. She was aggressive with his treatment, constantly researching options for patients with his form of cardiomyopathy and suggesting his doctors study up on new procedures and trial medications. Always so positive, certain that at any time a breakthrough would come, Chelsea held onto hope. Her hope never seemed to waver, or at least if it did, she never showed it.

In the past few weeks, however, he had seen something new in her eyes as she was finally grasping the reality he had already come to terms with. He was going to die. She knew it but refused to actually believe it. So far, in the midst of the upheaval that had become their lives, she was constant and bold, but when the end came and he was gone, would she carry on with the same strength? The things Bob told him of how depressed and withdrawn she was while they were apart weighed heavily upon him, and his greatest fear in leaving her was that she would fall into a similar state. No matter what she felt, his little girls needed her to be strong. Since she had never allowed him to speak of dying, he was never able to talk to her about the time after he was gone. After talking to Tuck that day, handling business that needed to be handled, John was determined to begin the tough conversations with Chelsea. Lucy would be going with Tuck later in the evening, and once Sara Beth was in bed, he planned to talk to Chelsea, no matter how much she wanted to avoid it.

Alone in bed after making love, or at least their new version of making love, John held Chelsea near and caressed her stomach. Over the past months, he had been unable to truly make love to her as he used to, likely a side effect of one of the medications he was taking, and because of it, felt inadequate and often avoided intimacy altogether. He knew he disappointed her no matter how she tried to reassure him. This was one of those nights when she reached for him. She had needed him.

So now, afterward, she was quieter than usual. All he could think of was how let down she must feel, not just in the moment but in general. Up until his illness, they had had this fairy-tale marriage, so romantic and passionate that it could put any chick-flick to shame. Their lives together were literally so perfect that it was hard to believe it was real life. Suddenly, nothing was the same, and he had to imagine she felt as helpless as he did, no matter how strong she tried to appear.

“Are you still awake?”

“I am.” Stretching, she kissed his chin. “Barely.”

She was exhausted since she had woken so early that morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. Even though she tried to rest when Sara Beth napped, her mind simply wouldn’t shut down. In the past months, she rarely felt at peace enough to sleep. Constantly, she would lie there and worry that maybe she was missing something, maybe there was some treatment available that she had not yet discovered. Having researched all options in the US and all over the globe, there seemed to be nothing left to try. Without the transplant, John wouldn’t last much longer. He was becoming weaker and weaker by the day, but Chelsea refused to give up the fight.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

Chelsea moved so that she could see him, propping herself up on her elbow, and asked, “What?”

“I need to know you’ll be okay, that you’ll take care of my girls. They’ll need you, Chels.”

Chelsea rested her head back on his chest. She hated when he tried to talk about the end and usually she demanded he stop, but this night she was too tired to argue, so she said nothing.

“Please look at me.” When she did, he traced his fingers along her cheek. “I need this. I need to hear you promise. I’m not scared about anything but this one thing. Baby, you can’t shut down. Promise me.”

Closing her eyes so that she couldn’t see the loss of fight in his, she whispered, “I promise.”

He held her tighter. As images of her future formed in his head he began to cry. “Promise me one more thing.”

When she looked at him again and found tears rolling down his cheeks, she began to cry too. She didn’t do it very often, fearing if she began she might never stop. Wiping the tears from his cheek with her fingertips, she asked, “What, babe?”