Could I Have This Dance? (37 page)

Better to look like a fool than be at risk for Huntington’s disease.

And if I’m right, it looks like a lot of people are going to find out about Stoney Creek.

Claire slept in her old bed and rose early, partly from her excitement to get back to Carlisle, and partly because the eerie stillness of her childhood home unnerved her. She made coffee and sipped it while looking at the Blue Ridge mountains. Fog had settled in the low elevations, but the mountain peaks above were clearly seen, poking through the pillowy cotton of the morning mist.

She was more peaceful here, sitting on her father’s porch in Stoney Creek. The anxiety of residency life was far away, with the pressures it held seeming almost imaginary. She thought of the hectic ICU in Lafayette, and of her nights on trauma call, and of her disaster with Sierra Jones. It all seemed unreal and far away, shrouded in a haze like the Blue Ridge mountain fog. Had she really been away at all?

Intern life, the pursuit of a dream, had crowded everything else aside. Surgery was a bulldozer, forcing its way ahead, carving a path through Claire’s soul. Her family life offered little resistance and had easily surrendered to the bulldozer’s blade.

She found her mother’s Bible on the porch swing. Somehow, it warmed her, knowing her mother also came to this spot, this shelter, for renewal. She lifted the book. Its leather cover was soft and worn.

It had been so long since Claire had sought comfort or guidance from these pages. She opened to the passages her mother had highlighted with a yellow marker. She paused, feeling hesitant to continue. It seemed like an invasion of her mother’s private world, something Della did without thought that anyone else would see. Claire lifted her eyes to the mountains again wondering if she should proceed.

Claire shook away her apprehension. Sharing these words with her mother was the right thing, a way of restoration for Claire, a returning not just to her home, but to an intimacy with her mother that she’d long left behind.

She read in the Psalms, words of despair and longing, words of hope and confidence in a better life. She read from the book of Hebrews of men and women who overcame trouble with their focus on Christ. Claire lifted a small piece of notebook paper that was folded within the pages of the Bible. There, printed in her mother’s small handwriting, was a quotation, perhaps written during a recent sermon: “We are not necessarily doubting
that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. C. S. Lewis.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She wasn’t sure it was the message she read, or the realization that her mother had a depth she’d never appreciated. The image she had of a weak country woman trapped in a bad marriage, too insecure to leave and make it on her own, was not the woman Claire was seeing now.

The words her mother had often spoken in jest echoed in Claire’s mind. “I know I’m pretty, but you’re pretty and smart.”

“No, Momma,” she whispered, “you’re the one who’s pretty and smart.”

Back in Carlisle, with some minor arm-twisting by Claire, Dr. Smuland agreed to remove the paralyzing agent to see how Wally would behave.

Within an hour, his eyes were open, and a facial twitch began. A few minutes later, the irregular jerking movements of his arms and legs resumed. It was nothing new for Wally. Della had seen it a thousand times before.

Two hours later, with Wally’s oxygen level holding steady, Dr. Smuland instructed the respiratory therapist to remove the endotracheal tube which connected Wally to the ventilator.

After thirty minutes, Dr. Smuland seemed satisfied with the progress. He was uncharacteristically curt. “Call Dr. Visvalingam if you must. I think he’ll agree with my assessment.”

Claire watched the attending exit the ICU with stooped shoulders, obviously offended by her persistence at playing Wally’s doctor. It bothered her, but she felt certain she needed to continue. She shrugged off the feeling and opened her cell phone, only to be stopped by a hand on her arm.

“You can’t use that in here,” a nurse informed her. “It interferes with our monitoring.”

She shrugged and left in search of a pay phone.

She made the call and was transferred to Dr. V’s clinic. Dr. V and a resident would make time for the consult later in the day. He’d had a cancellation, and late afternoon would suit his schedule. Claire hung up the phone and sucked in a deep breath. She was on the edge of confirming an anxiety she’d carried for a long time. A black cloud had hovered ever since she’d sutured Wilson Davis’s scalp in the ER a month ago. Now she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was seeding the clouds for rain. She had a dagger in her hand destined to slice open the thunderhead and release a torrent of water.

There was little to do but wait. Della wanted to stay with Wally, but the
nurses were insisting on strict observance of the visiting hour limitation, especially since he had just been removed from the ventilator. So Claire and her mother found a corner booth in the hospital cafeteria and waited.

Claire worked on diagramming a large family tree, spreading her work over half the table. Across from her, Della sat in silence, paging through an old gardening magazine she’d borrowed from the ICU waiting room. Claire studied her with stolen glances, looking up from her work on the table. Something was eating her mother. She should have been encouraged by Wally’s progress, but something seemed to prevent it from showing. Perhaps Claire was misreading her. There were certainly multiple reasons for her mother to be quiet. Della chewed the inside of her lower lip and haphazardly flipped the magazine pages. Claire yawned and brushed away the intuition that her mother was sitting on a secret.

At four-thirty, they met Dr. V and Dr. Nadienne Rice. She was tall, with shoulder-length brown curls and beautiful nails. She wore a flattering navy suit.

Claire shook Nadienne’s hand before touching her own fingernails with her thumb, lightly caressing the nails she’d sacrificed for surgery.

Dr. V smiled. “Claire McCall,” he said, reaching for Claire’s hand, but eyeing Della. “One of my brightest students. I tried to talk her into neurology, but she was too stubborn.”

Claire laughed and kept quiet. Sitting around figuring out chronic neurologic problems all day long sounded like pure torture to her. Give her a scalpel, where she could make a difference.

“She’s been like that all her life,” Della responded.

Claire lifted her hand to her hair, now above her ears in a feminine and practical style, and studied the neurology resident again. Boy, she looked rested. Nothing like the surgery residents at Lafayette.

They sat in a private consulting room just outside the ICU. There, for the next hour, Dr. V interviewed Della about Wally’s symptoms and studied Claire’s diagram of the family tree. “It all makes sense, Claire. But we still need to examine your father. Very likely, I will want him to come to Brighton in a few weeks when he is stronger, so he can undergo a battery of tests.”

“Can you do a genetic screening for Huntington’s?” Claire asked.

“If he looks characteristic enough,” Dr. V responded, tugging at his bow tie. “Let’s take a look at him.”

Claire stayed with Della while Dr. V and his resident entered the ICU. She stood and paced in the little room. “Waiting is torture,” she whined.

Della pushed a chair forward. “Patience is not a common characteristic of surgeons. Sit down, Doctor. You’re making me nervous.”

Thirty minutes later, the neurology duo returned. Dr. V raised his eyebrows. “He’s quite weak now, as you might expect from all he’s been through, but he is showing classic choreiform movements of HD.”

Nadienne nodded. “He’s doing the dance, all right.”

Della wrinkled her forehead. “The dance?”

Dr. V explained. “Chorea is the type of movements we observe in a variety of neurologic disorders. They are involuntary, very complicated, and endless. It comes from the Greek word
choreia,
which means ‘dance.’” He looked over at Nadienne. “So our residents have become fond of describing chorea movements in this way. They say, ‘He’s doing the dance.’” He flailed his arms to the side in imitation of typical choreiform movements. After a second, he added leg movements, then facial and head movements in a demonstration that would have been funny if it didn’t look so much like Wally.

Dr. V stopped when he saw Della’s horrified expression.

“Does this mean my husband has Huntington’s disease?”

“Not necessarily. We see these dance movements in other diseases as well.” He looked at Claire. “I think we’re justified in ordering a gene test. I’ve instructed the nurses to do it.”

To Nadienne he continued, “I’d like you to get a more detailed look into this family tree, with exact dates of birth and causes of death.”

“You can get the information at the county clerk’s office here in Carlisle,” Claire volunteered. “A man that works there will be glad to help you. Just ask for Brad—er, Mike.”

“Well, I’ve got to dictate a note for the chart. It will take a few weeks to get the results of the blood test. If you’re right, Claire, our work will just be beginning. We’ll need to contact as many relatives as we can and dig further back in this family tree.”

Claire nodded soberly.
If I’m right, your work may just be getting started, but my life may as well be over. I could be doing the dance myself in a few years.

That evening, Claire headed east over North Mountain on Highway 2, which snaked from Fisher’s Retreat and the Apple Valley to Brighton. With her father’s clinical improvement, she felt free to search for a respite in the arms of John Cerelli.

For this trip, her grandmother had offered her Buick. It was a boat of a car, but luxurious, and Claire felt out of character driving a vehicle which seemed to proclaim, “I’ve arrived.” But, as her options were few, and Della needed the family car to get back and forth to Carlisle, Claire accepted the
offer with graciousness. Now, as she maneuvered the massive car over the treacherous road, she longed for her aging Toyota.

Dr. V’s consultation had been a small victory, the validation of her concerns which others had scorned. But with that victory had grown her concern that she too may be facing a genetic horror.

She hadn’t talked to John since their strained conversation on Friday, when Brett had intercepted John’s call. Her life was spinning so rapidly, and John seemed to be on the outside. She wore his ring, but she knew he had no idea what her life had become. Now, as she had begun a delicate reconnection with her family, she wondered what his response would be. How would John react to knowing that she may end up just like her father? Would it change his desire to commit his life to being with her forever? Did he have the depth that Della had shown to stick with a difficult spouse in the face of serious illness?

Oh, how she prayed that the test for HD would be negative, that her fears were unfounded, and that the worst outcome would be the humiliation of stirring up her family, and Dr. V and his resident. But somehow, she knew she needed to be prepared for the worst. If she expected the worst, and it didn’t come to pass, she would have relief instead of disappointment.

She’d called John that afternoon, but declined to leave a message on his answering machine. Surprise would be the order of the day. He’d done it to her. Now it was her turn to reciprocate.

She stood on his doorstep dressed in a new skirt and blouse, a bit more formal than she would normally have chosen, but, given her options, it would have to do.

John opened the door wearing a faded pair of gym shorts, no shirt, and holding a slice of pepperoni pizza. “Claire?”

She smiled. “In the flesh.”

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“Vacation,” she said, glancing past the doorway into his front room, which was littered with pizza boxes, two-liter soda containers, and old newspapers.

“Vacation? You didn’t tell me this, did you?” He looked over his shoulder. “It’s kind of a disaster in here,” he said, moving to obstruct her view. “When did you come down? Today?”

“It’s a long story, Cerelli,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Invite me in and I’ll let you in on another disaster.”

“Disaster?”

“Yeah,” she said, moving past him into a room which smelled of old gym shorts. “My life.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A
fter ten minutes in John’s apartment, Claire decided that surprising him wasn’t her brightest idea. Giving him forewarning was definitely appropriate, and would have been better for her lungs.

“How do you guys stand it this way?” She picked up a pizza box in order to find room on the couch to sit down.

“Hey,” John replied, “most of this junk is Mike’s.” He pushed a hamper of dirty clothes into the front closet and shut the door.

She peered into the kitchen and frowned.

John shook his head. “You don’t want to go there. Trust me.”

“Can we go out? Someplace casual where we can talk?”

“I need a shower.” He picked up a towel from the stairway banister. “Give me ten minutes.”

As he disappeared up the stairs, Claire could hear him muttering to himself, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe …” She giggled and braved a journey into the kitchen. There, she found plastic garbage bags beneath the sink and returned to the living room. She filled up a bag with pizza boxes, empty soda containers, and a few paper plates. Next, she returned to the kitchen and cleared the breakfast dishes, piling them into a sink of sudsy water.

She was placing the dishes in a drying rack when John appeared a few minutes later. “Ready?”

“This place wasn’t like this when I lived in Brighton. What gives?”

“You were the reason we kept it clean.”

“So, it takes a surprise visit to find out you’re a slob.”

“I’m not a—”

She halted his sentence with a flying damp dishrag.

He intercepted the cloth before it impacted his chin. “Okay, well, maybe I am a little bit of a slob. But we usually clean on weekends.”

“I won’t live with a slob, Cerelli. Surgeons don’t tolerate dirt.” She talked in jest, but knew he was getting the message. They were walking to his Mustang when she made a confession. “You want to know my secret, why my house in Lafayette is always spotless?”