Passing Through Midnight (22 page)

She could find one good reason after another to delay her
departure. There were so many things she wanted to see and be a part
of—Fletcher's first broken heart, for instance. Gil's first
gray hair. Baxter playing Little League baseball. Matthew getting older
and wiser. Fletcher's senior prom and graduation. Gil working on his
novel. Baxter growing tall and gawky.

But in the end, she knew that leaving wasn't going to get
any easier.

"Oh, sweetheart, I'm so glad you've decided to come home,"
her mother said. "It's been so long."

"Has it?" she asked, with the strange sensation that she'd
only just arrived. "I guess maybe it has been."

"When do you think you'll arrive?"

"That's what I'm calling about. I've lost my car, and I'll
need—"

"Oh, dear Lord. Not another accident. Darling, are
you—?"

"No, no. Relax. I'm fine. I lost it playing pool."

"Pool? Oh, Dorothy, shame on you. You were trying to cheat
someone again, and they got the best of you, didn't they? I told your
grandfather you'd get in trouble doing that someday. I told him that
someday, somewhere you'd meet someone who played the game better than
you. There's always
someone
, you know. Why
couldn't he have taught you how to play pachisi?"

"Because you taught me to play pachisi when I was five."

"Oh."

"I still need a ride from O'Hare, Mom."

"Well of course you do, dear. When should I be there?
Wait, wait. Let me get a piece of paper."

Every Thursday during June and July there was a picnic in
Fike Park with musical entertainment featured in the gazebo. She and
Gil and the boys went into town that Thursday to say good-bye to as
many of the people she'd come to know as she could find. Typically,
those she didn't see at the picnic would know she was leaving before
supper time.

She hadn't wanted to leave without a word; blow out of
town the way she'd blown in. Being accepted at face value, being
gossiped and worried about like any charter member of the town, hadn't
been wasted on her. As annoying as it could be at times, the Colby
grapevine was a lifeline they used to protect one another, to stay
safe, to show concern and support for each other. And after a while,
Dorie had come to know that concern. She'd felt them protecting her,
and she'd felt safe while her wounds healed and she became strong
again. She hadn't wanted to leave without getting a thank-you online.

Friday she awoke at dawn and cursed Mother Nature for
deciding to make it a perfect Kansas summer day. She closed her eyes
and wished for the miserable cold and dreary rain of March. She felt
Gil's arms tighten about her, and she smiled. Horrible weather wouldn't
make any difference. She'd always think of him in the sunshine, the
wind twisting his dark hair as he stood knee-deep in a golden wheat
field.

"Is it time?" he mumbled at the back of her neck as they
lay like two spoons in a silverware drawer.

"Not yet," she said, backing into his warmth and strength.
"I was thinking that it might be easier if I took a taxi to the
airport."

"I want to take you."

"I might cry."

"I might cry too."

The image of them standing at the airport, sobbing,
flooding the terminal with tears, struck her as funny, and she giggled.
He must have had the same vision because he started to laugh too. She
turned in his arms to face him, kissing his smiling lips.

"Who'll cuddle with me and make me laugh in Chicago?"

"Who's going to argue with me and pester me to do things I
don't want to do?"

"Fletcher? Baxter? Matthew?"

"Yeah, well, they don't do it with your finesse."

"I don't want to go, Gil," she said, burying her face in
the curve of his neck. Her sole consolation was that she'd picked the
earliest flight out, and she wouldn't have to face saying good-bye to
Matthew and the boys because she'd done it the night before.

"You have to," he said, holding her tighter, his heart
like a rock in his chest. "You owe it to yourself. You have to be sure."

She pulled back and palmed his face with her hand. She
loved his face. She loved the goodness in his eyes; the stubble against
her palm; the tenderness of his lips; his solid jaw; his straight
nose… She loved him.

"We'll be fine, Dorie," he said tenderly. "Both of us.
We'll do what we were meant to do and look back on this as something
very special. Something not everyone gets to have, even for a little
while."

He kissed her, and she curved her arms around his
shoulders and neck. He held her close. He wanted her, but it would feel
like such a final act. No, it was enough simply to hold her, to
memorize the feel of her in his arms so he could bring her back night
after night, into his lonely bed.

The scene at the airport was unquestionably civilized.
There were no promises to write or keep in touch, but they each bid the
other farewell and good luck, they kissed, then kissed again as if they
could make the feeling last forever.

She didn't cry until she got on the plane. She could see
Gil standing at the window inside the terminal. She waved to him, but
he couldn't see her.

He couldn't see her
. Her broken heart
finally shattered. He couldn't see her anymore. She'd never see him
again. Her tears pooled, then spilled over onto her cheeks as a pain
far greater than any she'd known before wracked her body and soul. The
plane engines started up, and she closed her eyes, trying to imagine
her life without Gil. Without the boys. Trying to remember her life
before them, before the accident. Where did she go? What did she do?
What made her happy? Who made her laugh? What had she looked forward to?

They started to taxi out onto the runway, and a
life-threatening panic rose up within her. She wanted to get off the
plane. She had to get off!

But then what… ?

Gil hadn't asked her to stay, hadn't offered her a future.
Nothing in Colby belonged to her. Not Gil. Not the boys. Not the land.
She had a job in Chicago, a purpose. Her mother. An apartment.
Furniture. She had friends there. She could use the El and shop till
she dropped and eat in restaurants and buy gourmet cookies
and… maybe she could bake a batch of cookies herself
sometimes. Take a few to her mother. Share them at the hospital. She
hadn't minded making all those cookies. And Baxter had loved eating
them, except for the carrot-nut ones.

The plane took off. She sighed and wiped away the tears.
Her life had to be more than baking cookies. It had to be. She felt
like a hollow shell at the moment, but she'd fill up the empty space
soon enough. Wouldn't she? She couldn't simply dismiss the past five
months as if they'd never happened, but with time the pain would ease.
Wouldn't it? Going back was a wise decision. She couldn't keep running
from her life, running from who she was. She belonged in Chicago.
Didn't she?

Three weeks later, she still wasn't sure. Oh, it was all
so familiar to her: The crowds, the noise, the wind that was so
different from the gentle prairie breezes.

She fell right back into the routine at the hospital. She
tired easily the first week, but her stamina gradually increased.
They'd hired only one new nurse in her absence, the same residents
were finishing up their terms and looking around the country for
permanent places. The patients came and went, some of the regulars
asked if she'd had a nice vacation.

She had trouble with her days off in the beginning. She'd
rattle around her apartment, looking for something
green—plants to water or weeds to pull. She finally went out
and bought two philodendrons. She made three dozen pumpkin cookies one
afternoon—and ate them all. She went shopping with her mother
and couldn't find a single thing she wanted to buy. She tried it with a
couple friends the next week and not only could she find nothing to
buy, but they didn't have any good gossip to tell her. She tried it
alone the third week and bought a sketch pad and pastel pencils for
Baxter. She returned them thirty minutes later, knowing she couldn't
send them to him.

Someone once wrote that Chicago was the best and the worst
of everything American. That was pretty much true, she supposed. Maybe
that was why she loved it. The stately skyscrapers. Seeing the
sailboats on the lake. The stockyards. The old steel mills. The
museums. The nice, quiet neighborhoods on the North Side. The
smorgasbord of ethnic influences to the west. The restaurants were the
best in the world as far as she was concerned. The only dishes in her
sink were the coffee mugs she used each morning. She counted seventeen
the day she finally broke down and washed them.

She was back all right, and her life was the same as it
always had been, except perhaps that she was quicker to judge
strangers. When she might not have looked for friendly faces before,
she did now and found few. She couldn't be just a face in the crowd
anymore. She was too aware of being vulnerable and
breakable… but then, maybe that was a good thing to know.

Nights were the worst, of course, but she'd expected that.
She did a considerable amount of talking to the phone—it had
a tendency to stare at her impatiently.
You going to use me
or not
? it would ask. I can't, she'd say.
Their
lives are going on without you. You should call to see what's
happening. Don't you want to know what's going on there
? I
can't, she'd say.
You miss them. You should tell them
.
I can't, she'd say.
Then go to bed. I'm sick of looking at
you
. I can't, she'd say.

In August the heat soared to an all-time high. Dorie was
ecstatic that she'd come back in time to be a part of it.

"Gawd, I feel like a melted candle." She groaned, fanning
herself with a clipboard. "My brain feels like an egg on drugs."

When God cranked up the heat, everyone in Chicago had
cranked up their air-conditioning. They were experiencing a brief power
shortage that had started twelve hours earlier. The hospital was a
prelude to hell with all the backup energy being channeled to surgery
and the critical-care units.

"Why doesn't someone just shoot us?" a petite blond nurse
across the counter from her said with a moan. She'd stolen a precious
piece of ice from their stash and was rubbing it against her neck and
down the front of her blue surgical scrubs.

"Don't give anybody any ideas," she said, glancing about
at the twelve or fourteen people she could see in the hallway behind
her, waiting to go to X ray or waiting to take a loved one home with a
minor ailment. It was one of those rare, almost unnatural days when the
flow of patients wasn't a flash flood from beginning to end, but a slow
steady stream, in and out. "We might actually have to do something
today."

"I know. I can't believe it's so slow. Where is everyone?"

"Sitting at home in bathtubs full of cold water, no doubt.
And here we are, sweating bullets, waiting for someone to come in with
hypothermia."

"Yeah." The little blonde sighed, dreaming of a tub of
cold water.

"Boy, I bet it's really hot in Kansas," Dorie said,
thinking out loud.

"You liked it there, huh?"

"Yes. I did."

The nurse sat up a little straighter in her chair, looked
at the wall behind Dorie, then lowered her eyes and asked, "What did
you like about it?"

"Everything," she said. She sighed, resting her elbows on
the counter and her chin on her fists, forgetting about the people in
the corridor. "There was always this breeze. And if you got hot and
sweaty, it would blow on you and cool you off."

"A breeze, huh?"

Dorie thought for a minute. "And there's all this open
space. For miles. And bright blue sky, forever. You didn't feel as if
you were sitting in a closet all the time. And it was clean, no dirty
streets or filthy smells."

"What else?"

"I don't know." Dorie sort of hummed. "There was time.
Slow time, like this, only it was different. There was always something
to do, but between jobs there was this time when you could stop and
everywhere you looked was something beautiful to see. Not concrete or
asphalt or someone mugging somebody on the corner. Good things.
Peaceful things."

"What were the people like?"

"The best," she said without hesitation. "And it's not
like hee-haw heaven," she said, straightening to make a point. "They
don't run out and hug you when you walk into town. They watch you for a
while, help if you ask, smile when they meet you, then after a while,
if you don't do anything too weird, you become one of them. They don't
tell you when or how, you don't have to do anything special, but you
feel it one day. They've accepted you, and they're watching your back.
You're safe."

"Sounds like a nice place," the nurse said, glancing over
Dorie's shoulder again before she asked, "Think you'll ever go back
there?"

Dorie sighed and shrugged. She lowered her face and shook
her head. "I don't know," she said.

"You have to go back eventually," came a male voice from
behind her. The sound of it vibrated up her spine, and she was awash
with a chill that shook her head to toe. Her teeth chattered. The nurse
was grinning at her. "I'm planning a big wedding."

With tears in her eyes, she slowly turned to face him. He
stood tall and proud under the Kansas Farm Bureau cap he'd pointed at
to keep the nurse from giving him away; broad shouldered and slim
hipped in a clean cotton shirt and blue jeans.

"Who"—she cleared her throat—"who are
you planning this big wedding for?"

"Us. That is, if they don't arrest Baxter. We can't get
married without Baxter there. It wouldn't feel right."

"That's true. But Baxter's five years old. Who would
arrest him?"

"The hospital and Doc Beesley have both threatened to take
action against him if he doesn't stop calling and asking if they need a
good doctor to work with them. He did it every day for two weeks before
they finally asked me to put a stop to it."