Sealed with a promise (35 page)

  “I never dreamed he would do such a thing. He won’t come near you again,” Charlotte reassured her daughter.

  “Mommy told him to get out,” Vicky explained as she took up the tale, “but he was arguing, so Caleb
stood up.
” Her eyes got big, and her golden freckles danced. “It was scary. And fun. I thought Caleb was going to fight him.” Vicky looked quite satisfied. Now that she was safe and enjoying the attention of three adults, she was recovering fast. “And then
you
came in and Aunt-Lilly-Hale’d him to pieces. I didn’t know you could do that,” she said with admiration. “I didn’t know anybody could except Aunt Lilly Hale. Can you teach me?”

  Emmie hadn’t realized it was possible to feel guilty and pleased with oneself at the same time. After all, every word was an out-and-out lie-and for the pleasure of watching Fairchild try to figure out if he had been insulted, and if so, by whom, she’d do it all again. “I didn’t know I could either,” she admitted, “until I did.”

  “Did your grandmother really say that-that he was a toad?’

  As a teacher entrusted with the task of guiding young minds, Emmie was always conscious of her need to set a good example. Admitting to Vicky she had lied and then telling
her
not to, wouldn’t fly. “Grandmother would have said it, if she’d thought of it.”

  “Does that mean she did, or she didn’t?”

  Her mother gave her an admonitory look. “That means, it’s something it would be better if you don’t ever repeat, young lady.”

  Vicky looked mulish. “Well, he is a toad.”

  “Vicky, when I heard him call Caleb ‘opportunist trash,’ it made me mad. But if I’d known what he tried to do to you, I promise you,
Grandmother
would have called him much worse!”

  Caleb stood. Deep inside he still shook with rage at what he had witnessed earlier. He would do what he could to protect Vicky from Edward. First though, there was the need to protect her from the enemy inside her. “Charlotte, Vicky and I need to talk. It isn’t cold today. Is it okay with you if I take her outside the hospital?”

  Vicky kicked at a pine cone. “Are we out here so you can tell me needles can’t hurt me, and I have to grow up, and not be a baby, and not upset my mother by making a fuss?”

  Beyond one of the hospital’s parking lots Caleb and Vicky had located a landscaped area of lawn, pines, and magnolias where they had grass to walk on. It was as emotionally neutral as they were going to find.

  He wanted to hug her. Vicky was no fool, and she was no coward. “No.”

  “All right. What then?”

  “Your name’s Victoria, isn’t it? ‘Victoria’ means ‘she who wins.’” At least, he hoped it did. Bound to mean something close, and it was too good not to use. “When I came into the room, you were on the floor, and you were losing.”

  Vicky looked at him with deep disappointment. “That’s not fair. I’m just a little kid. I was kicking.”

  “Yeah, we need to work on that. You need to learn how to kick so that you do some damage.” Vicky looked at him, shocked. Caleb shrugged. “No point in kicking if you’re not trying to hurt someone.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “And then anybody who comes at me with a needle I can fight and get away.”

  “You’ll never win-not by running away.”

  “I thought you said-”

  “You weren’t losing to the people, Vicky. You were losing to the fear.”

  “But it’s there. I can’t help it.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. I hate needles too. People tell you it won’t hurt, or it won’t hurt but a little bit. And if you’ll be brave it will be over in a minute. You know
that.
You’re not afraid of the pain. It’s the needle-feeling, right?

  Her eyes filled, and her lips quivered. “Yes.”

  “You know exactly which feeling I’m talking about.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, don’t think about it anymore.” There were people who could faint from just remembering what a needle stick felt like. For some, needles caused a sudden drop in blood pressure called a vasovagal response. “I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page. You can’t control it, and you can’t make it go away. Trying to stop the feeling, not to have the feeling, will not work. Trying to endure it won’t work either.”

  “Then how can I win?”

  “There’s a way to win, but it’s not by fighting the needle or running away from it.”

  “What else is there?

  “You can have the problem and be bigger than it.”

  “But I hate it.”

  “Um- hmm.” If he said anything right now, she would look for ways not to do what he said. He set them in motion again.

  He had understood Vicky’s temperament at a glance. It was clear her parents had little control of her and no realistic ideas of what she was capable of. She wasn’t the kind of kid who would ever be held by rules someone else made. Put her in charge, and she’d be steady as a rock. He understood her because he had been the same kind of kid. Anytime he didn’t agree with the adults’ rules, he’d done as he pleased. And usually gotten away with it. At the age of ten, he would have been capable of going out a three-story window.

  Keeping a problem instead of fighting it
was
counterintuitive. He’d seen from the first that Vicky was strong-willed. Doing things because she was told to didn’t sit well. She wasn’t rebellious or contemptuous of authority (as he admitted he sometimes
was
). For Vicky, it just felt better to do anything she did because she had decided to. The needle phobia was probably distressing because it overwhelmed her and blocked her ability to decide for herself. He was offering her a way to be in charge.

  He’d done all the persuading he could by telling her she was losing. Now she had to make up her mind if she wanted to move on.

  He kept the pace slow. He’d felt how quickly her arms had tired even under the stimulus of extreme fear and anger. Something was wrong. He prayed it was easily dealt with. He could do nothing to shield her. He could only offer her a way to deal with it from strength.

  “Do you really hate needles too?” As he’d guessed she would, she had been thinking through everything he had said and coming to her own conclusions.

  He nodded.

  “You weren’t just saying that?”

  He shook his head.

  “What does ‘be bigger’ mean?”

  “Every problem has an edge.” The ground under a magnolia was littered with large brown leathery leaves and seedpods the size of Vicky’s hand. To illustrate what he meant, he picked up a magnolia pod, some of its bright red seeds still attached. He brushed sandy dirt from it and handed it to Vicky. “Hold this up to your face, right in front of your eyes.” He pushed it even closer to her face. “Now can you see anything but it?”

  “No.”

  “But you know it has edges, right? Even though you can’t see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to remember that you can know it even when you can’t see it.”

  Childlike, Vicky was already playing with the pod, turning it in her hands. “You know, it’s kind of interesting when you look at it up close like this.”

  Caleb smiled. “Some problems are like that. When you look at them real close, they turn out to be kind of interesting. Suppose you want to know what the edges look like?”

  Vicky held the pod at arm’s-length.

  “Right. And once you look at the edges, not at the pod, what do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, air, but you can’t see air.”

  “How about your hands? Can you see them?”

  “Oh!” Vicky laughed, delighted to suddenly see things a new way. The sound warmed in Caleb all the way to the bone. It was what he loved most about kids. They could shift on a dime. “My hands, yeah. And trees and bushes and grass. If I hold it up like this, I see the sky.”

  “You have a choice about how you look at it. Both ways are interesting. If you want to choose the best way to pick it up and move it around, what’s the best way to look at it?”

  Vicky extended the pod to arm’s-length again.

  “What do you think?” Once again, it was up to her to make the choice to go further. He was telling her she could do something many adults had never learned. It was impossible to solve a problem at the level of the problem. And yet people refused to grow beyond it-sometimes it seemed like they were afraid they would lose
themselves
if they did.

  “I’m bigger than this.” She held up the seed pod. “So looking at the edges is easy. How do I get bigger than the needle feeling?”

  “You already
are
bigger than it. You just need to look for the edges. See what’s on the outside of it.”

  “But I can’t. I can’t see any edges at all.”

  “Remember what I told you to remember?”

  “I can know the edges are there even when I can’t see them.”

  “Right, and if you know they’re there, you can find them. Fortunately, when it comes to things you are afraid of, things you hate, all you have to do is think yourself bigger, until it is on the inside of you, and you are on the outside of it. When you do, on the outside of things you fear and hate, you’ll find people and books and TV programs-all there with some of the answers you need to win.” Caleb checked his watch. “Your mother is going to be looking for us. Ready to go back inside?” “Can I carry this?” She held up the pod.

  Charlotte stood to greet them as soon as Emmie and Do-Lord were ushered into the doctor’s office.

  “Thank you for coming.” Charlotte held out a hand that trembled slightly. “As you know, my mother isn’t well herself, or she would be here.” Charlotte didn’t mention Fairchild. He hadn’t been at the hospital again. She hadn’t said, and Emmie hadn’t asked, what had happened to him. Charlotte also didn’t mention Calhoun. Emmie also didn’t ask. There were details she simply didn’t want to know.

  “Vicky trusts you, and so do I.” Charlotte smiled apologetically. “I must ask you not to reveal anything that’s said here to anyone-even the family-until the senator’s aides can prepare an announcement.” Emmie, seeing how Charlotte and Teague lived at close range, understood what compartmentalized lives they led. Information, even among their intimates, was shared strictly on a need-to-know basis.

  Charlotte bit her lip, one of the few signs of agitation Emmie had ever seen her make. “The specialist in blood disorders, the hematologist, said he wanted to go over some tests with me, and I didn’t want to hear it alone.”

  A man in a lab coat entered through an interior door. “Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Koppleman. I’m glad you could come in Mrs. Calhoun. Will the senator be coming?”

  “He’s been delayed and asked us to start without him,” Charlotte replied smoothly. Emmie wondered if any part of that speech was the truth. “These are members of my family, Dr. Emelina Caddington and Chief Petty Officer Caleb Dulaude.”

  Caleb might be considered a relation, though Charlotte didn’t know it, but Emmie wasn’t one at all. Emmie guessed it was easier to say they were family than explain who they really were.

  Dr. Koppleman shook hands all around and asked them to be seated. He shuffled papers for a minute. “Mrs. Calhoun, as I told you, we’re still waiting for some of the tests to come back, but they won’t change what we know. Vicky has a rare form of anemia. A disease called Fanconi anemia.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Charlotte said faintly.

  “It’s rare. There are fewer than one thousand cases.”

  “Is it serious?”

  Dr. Koppleman nodded gravely. The compassion in his brown eyes told the rest of the story. “It’s a bone marrow disease,” he explained. “Her bone marrow isn’t making red blood cells as it should.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I consulted with two nationally known specialists. They concur.”

  “Can it be cured?”

  “Fanconi anemia, or FA, is a genetically transmitted disease. Since genes can’t be changed, at least not at the present stage of stem cell research, we don’t speak of cure. FA is usually diagnosed between six and eight years of age, and there’s a wide range of how severely the child is affected-how many organs are involved. Fortunately, Vicky seems to be largely unaffected by the disease. She’s nearly average in height and weight, normal in appearance, and she’s highly intelligent.”

  “Normal in appearance?”

  “Yes. We’ll need more tests to determine organ function, but just at a glance, she looks normal. Some children are not.”

  Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears, which she managed not to let fall. “There’s no cure?”

  “The bone marrow failure can be cured with a transplant. You will want to educate yourself about FA, but my recommendation would be to take her to one of the centers that specialize in Fanconi. It’s not a simple diagnosis, and you’ll want to know everything that can be done is being done.”

  “Does
genetic
mean my husband or I passed it on to her?”

  “Fanconi is an autosomal recessive disease. For the disease to manifest, both parents must have the gene. If both have the gene, their offspring have a one in four chance of developing the disease. Two will be carriers like the parents. They have one gene for FA, but because they also have a normal gene, they don’t have the disease. And there’s a one in four chance of not having the gene at all.”

  “You say she can be treated with a bone marrow transplant?”

  “If the transplant is successful, the anemia can be completely eliminated.”

  “Can I give her my bone marrow?”

  “Because the parents have the gene, they can’t be marrow donors.”

  “Who can be a donor?”

  The doctor looked at his papers. “I see here that Vicky doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. That’s a shame. The best donor is a sibling who doesn’t have the gene.”