Family Matters Page 11

  His answer might as well have been a kick in the stomach. Michael looked away, trying to compose himself.

  Father, was I gone so much that it even mattered to Cody? Of course. Of course I was. So Jennie wasn’t the only one it mattered to.

  He turned back to his son. “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A professional snowboarder.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Or a professional biker like Lance Armstrong.”

  “Right.”

  “Or maybe—”

  “I think you’d better stop,” Michael told him. “You’ll give me nightmares.”

  “Or maybe I’ll just be a professional bull-rider. Like the ones we saw when you took me to the stock show in Fort Worth.”

  “Cody…”

  “Just kidding, Dad,” Cody said, grinning and his eyes smiling, too. He struggled to hold his arms out to Michael. “Love you, Dad.”

  When Jennie stepped outside the elevator toward Cody’s room, she heard Michael’s deep, booming voice from all the way down the hallway. “She hollered at me.”

  “Why? You were just trying to help it.”

  And so the conversation went.

  She didn’t intend to eavesdrop. She just didn’t have anywhere else to go. So she stood outside, listening to them laughing, feeling cut off from them, until the door opened and Michael stepped out. Closing the door quietly behind him, he leaned against the wall and wiped his eyes with the back of one sleeve.

  It didn’t occur to Jennie to be embarrassed or to slip away. She stood silently watching him until he realized she was there. He rocked forward on his feet, his hands in his pockets, and turned toward her.

  She gave a little shrug. “I was just about to go in to see him.”

  He jangled his keys in his pocket and looked angry, as if he thought she’d been spying on him.

  “You don’t have to be mad. And you don’t have to hide what you’re feeling. The last thing I want to do is make you feel like you have to conceal yourself around me.” She paused. “Believe me, this is hard for me, too.”

  Michael rode one thumb back over his shoulder, pointing toward the room where Cody lay. “He’s the bravest one of all.”

  “No, he isn’t,” she said quietly. “He just doesn’t know to be afraid.”

  Michael stared at the ceiling. “I want him to get better. I want him to grow stronger.”

  “So do I.”

  They stood for a moment looking at one another, each of them thinking it had been a long time since their wants had been so entirely focused on the same thing. “Did you know I took a leave of absence from my job?” Jennie said.

  His eyes shot to hers. “You did?”

  She nodded.

  Michael stared at her in disbelief. “What did you say to Art?”

  “That my son was more important—” she looked at him pointedly “—than anything else in the world to me.”

  “That was it? That was all there was to it?”

  “That was it. I cleaned my desk and left.” She shrugged her shoulders, half disbelieving it herself. “I didn’t even give them an hour’s notice. I just took off. And that may have been the easy part. I’ll have to learn how to get by on my savings for a while. I’ll miss the money.”

  “I’ll help you. You know that.” In their divorce settlement, he’d agreed to pay alimony if she ever had to stop working. He hadn’t begrudged her that at all. But he couldn’t believe she’d really done it. Until now, the Times-Sentinel had meant everything to her. “Jennie.” He didn’t have to say anything more. He knew she understood how much he admired her.

  “I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it? I told him if he didn’t give me a six-month leave, I’d just quit. And he gave it to me. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “But your job, Jen? It was so important to you.”

  “Cody needs more therapy.”

  “You know I’m helping with that.”

  “He needs more attention than ever now…especially if we’re going to avoid the surgery.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking of? Avoiding the surgery?”

  “It’s what I’m always thinking of now.”

  “I see.” Into his mind came the doubts once more. Had Jennie left her job to support Cody, or had she done it so she might win her way?

  “I can always go back to the Times-Sentinel. I haven’t burned any bridges.” But she didn’t really know how long Cody was going to need her. Maybe six months. Maybe forever. She sighed. “I got to thinking you were right. I shouldn’t have let my work become so all-important. Maybe I should have given Cody a higher priority a long time ago.”

  “No.” Michael reassured her. “You were usually there for him. I wasn’t.” Cody had just told him as much.

  And Michael wondered, Am I living my Christianity with the same blindness that I used to run my life?

  Cody, of all people, made him begin to question that.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Hi, Cody.” His best friend, Taylor Cowan, stood at the foot of his bed. “We miss you at school. I came over so I could bring you some stuff.”

  Cody leaned forward in his bed, a gesture as unaffected as if he’d just woken up from a sleepover. “What did you bring me?”

  Taylor emptied his pockets and came up with a roll of cherry Life Savers, a Tony Romo football card and a roll of quarters for the arcade games at the hospital lounge—and a letter from his teacher, Mrs. Bounds.

  “Dear Cody,” the letter said. “We’re thinking about you every day and hope you get better soon. Taylor promised to deliver this letter to you. Can we bring the class and visit soon? Are they taking good care of you there? Would you like me to put together a packet of studies for you? (You’d better not say no!) In geography, we’re learning about Africa. We’re reading about a troop of baboons that lives in the desert of Namibia. They can survive without water by eating berries and figs. It has been an interesting study and I think you’re going to like it. See you soon! Love, Mrs. Bounds.” Right behind the letter was a piece of green construction paper, signed by everybody in his class, that said Get Well Soon.

  “My mom says you can come over to our house and spend the night as soon as you get out of here.” Taylor plopped on the side of the bed.

  “I can’t walk around very much,” Cody told him, testing him.

  “That’s okay. We can still hang out and play Madden.”

  “I’ll ask Mom. Or Dad.” Cody frowned slightly. “I don’t know where I’ll be. I’ll probably be at Mom’s on Fridays.”

  Taylor pointed at the stuffed animal on a shelf beside the bed. “You still sleep with that?”

  “Nope,” Cody lied. “Not on your life.”

  Just then, Andy came in. “Well, hello,” she said to both boys.

  Cody made one sweeping motion with his arm that thrilled Andy. Two weeks ago, he hadn’t been able to move his arms nearly as well. “This is Taylor, he brought me this stuff.”

  “Looks like you’re having a good time.” She grinned at Taylor. “You want to stay while Cody has his therapy?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Taylor stood on tiptoe, leaning over, his small freckled nose propped right on top of the chair where he’d been sitting.

  Andy began working with Cody’s left leg.

  “How come you’re giving me therapy now?” Cody asked. “I thought we always just did this in the morning.”

  “The head orthopedist is coming to check you out in a little while. I found out an hour ago that she’s got you on her schedule tonight.” As Andy worked, she asked the boys more questions, not wanting Cody to sense how very important this doctor’s examination might be. “So, does Taylor live close to you?”

  “He lives close to my mom. I’m going to spend the night with him when I get out of the hospital.”

  “Do you guys really sleep when you spend the night or do you keep the Playstation burning all night long?”

  Taylor grinned. “I
t’s Playstation 2, Madden 2007.”

  Andy cuffed Cody on the shoulder. “That’s what I figured.”

  An hour later, the orthopedic surgeon arrived to examine Cody, flexing Cody’s toes and rotating his leg while Jennie and Michael watched from opposite sides of the room. Andy had called them both when she’d seen Dr. Phillips’s schedule.

  “Don’t know,” the surgeon said as she splayed the bones of Cody’s foot apart with gentle pressure. She watched closely as he flattened the limb against the heel of her hand. The examination lasted a few more minutes. When it was done, Dr. Phillips asked Michael, Jennie and Andy to accompany her to an empty lounge. Turning toward them, she glanced at Jennie, then her eyes leveled on Michael’s. “I have to tell you, I still think surgery is the best option for your son.” Michael heard Jennie take a ragged breath. “I think it would be best. But it’s fair to tell you that there’s room here for doubt.”

  Michael felt his annoyance growing. He’d always hated that phrase. Room for doubt. Father, why can’t you give her wisdom, give her a clear picture? Why can’t you give me a clear picture so we can just move forward?

  Andy said, in a fit of inspiration, “Cody is as limber as he can get. If you can’t make an assessment this way, I’d suggest a series of X rays. We’ll know how the bones are angling if we do it that way.”

  And for the first time in a long time, Michael felt like a prayer he’d uttered might actually have been answered.

  “Hmm.” Dr. Phillips nodded at Andy. “That’s not a bad suggestion.” Then, “Is the patient up to doing X rays tonight?”

  “I don’t see any reason why not.”

  “I’ll order them then.”

  Andy included both Jennie and Michael when she spoke, “I’ll go in to the X-ray room with him. I can keep him limber, and I can help hold him in position. I can make sure these pictures turn out the best that they can.”

  Once everyone left the room, Michael paced like a caged cat. He stood gazing out the window for a moment, then brought his fist down on the radiator so hard he’d have a bruise for a week.

  All he could see right now was the woman directly across the room from him, standing ramrod straight, her shoulders at a slight angle to him. It seemed as if the disagreement over Cody’s surgery represented everything in the world that stood between them. And, in a way, it did.

  She must have felt his eyes on her. She looked up, caught his glance, then turned away again.

  “She couldn’t tell us anything.” He gestured his frustration into the air. “Not one thing.”

  “The X rays might help,” she said to the window.

  “Why is this happening?” he asked mostly to himself, the frustration feeling familiar now, like something he could hide behind. “Why all this helplessness?”

  Jennie had her fingers on the window latch; she stared at her own hand as if she stared at something far away. “You never were the helpless one.” When she spoke, there was a gentleness in her voice that he couldn’t read. “You always knew what to do.”

  He let out a deep, shuddering sigh. “You know I only want the best for him, don’t you?”

  She smiled sadly, wearily, looking once more into Michael’s eyes. “Michael. Of all the times I’ve questioned you, I’ve never questioned how much you love your son.”

  “All these years as a doctor, and I’ve never known how the patients feel at times like this.”

  “It’s quite the discovery, isn’t it?” And he wasn’t sure he liked the touch of irony when she said it.

  He had to say it. “You could agree with me, for once. About Cody’s treatment. That would make it so much easier for us.”

  But she was shaking her head. “No, Michael. Not about something as important as this.”

  A pause. “You never were willing to compromise.”

  She wheeled on him again. “Is this the point where you remind me of all my bad character traits?”

  “That isn’t what I’m doing.”

  “Let’s make a promise to each other. Let’s agree not to remind each other of our failures.” There had been so many of them, the nights he hadn’t come home and had been unavailable to her emotionally, the times she had left the house on the edge of squalor because she’d been overwhelmed and depressed trying to work and manage a baby, too. There had been the times she’d met him at the door with a list of instructions, the hot water heater needed his attention tonight! The credit card company called and it was his fault they’d gone over the limit.

  But Michael’s exhaustion made him push it. He couldn’t stop himself.

  “I’m telling you,” he blurted out, “that it took eight years and a deadly disease for you to finally realize what your priorities are.”

  “Michael! Think about me! This all began because I needed something to fill my hours the way the hospital filled yours! Don’t you think I look at that little boy in there and know I made a mistake when I let the paper take over my life? At first all I wanted was to be there for you, Michael.” She said it again as if to make certain he’d heard her. “It was all I wanted.”

  “Then where were you when I needed you, Jennie?”

  “I said at first.” Her voice dripped with condemnation.

  Her controlled stoicism only made him angrier. “Did you once stop to consider that I had no other choices then? Did you once stop to consider that we might not have any choice now?”

  She backed up against the wall, eyes half closed, looking utterly drained, almost ready to slide down to the floor. “No.”

  “You’ve got to accept what Cody’s facing. And, when you do, then we have to discuss real, practical solutions. Do you think I—”

  “I liked you better—” she interrupted him “—when you were raging because you’re helpless.”

  The door swung open and here came the nurse pushing Cody’s wheelchair. Andy followed close behind them.

  Michael and Jennie both waylaid her at once.

  “What did she say?” Jennie asked.

  “When will we know something?” Michael asked.

  There were parts of Andy’s job that she loved and parts that she didn’t. There were times when a family asked her something spiritual and she was finally free to answer. Other times, she was forced to hold her tongue because she worked in a secular hospital. She wanted to say to them the way she’d said so many times to Buddy, It’s bigger than we are. There’s someone else you need to talk to about this.

  “The doctor has surgery first thing tomorrow morning, and she won’t have time to look at these until her office hours are over tomorrow.”

  “It’s still going to be over twenty-four hours before we know anything?” Michael felt ready to hit something with his fist again.

  “At least.”

  “She didn’t say anything at all?” Jennie asked. “She didn’t give you any indication which way she was leaning?”

  “Not about the surgery.” Even though Jennie had become her friend, Andy couldn’t help but feel accosted about it at the same time. But then she brightened. “Dr. Phillips did say one thing.”

  They both asked about it at the same time.

  “She spoke with the interns on Cody’s case. No matter what she decides to recommend about the surgery, she agrees it is time to release Cody. It’s time for Cody to go home.” And she turned to visit another patient, her footsteps brisk along the corridor.

  Home. Home? And which home might that be? Michael and Jennie stared at each other in the parking lot. Something new and dangerous to sort out. They’d been too preoccupied with Cody’s surgery to consider this yet.

  “We’ll have to decide, won’t we?” Jennie asked.

  Exhausted, they stood staring at each other. “There are times—” Michael pulled the keys from his pocket “—when I wish I could just give up…when I could let my defenses down…but I can’t.”

  “There’s no end to it.”

  A tree-lined curb lined the lot where Michael had parked his car. She sat down
wearily on it. Michael sat beside her.

  “I’m selfish and I know it.” She studied the grass as if it were the most intriguing thing she’d ever seen. “I can’t give him up, Michael. I want him home with me.”

  “I can’t do it, either. Jennie, I fought for him harder than I’ve fought for anything. He’s my life, Jen. He’s the only thing I’ve got. You know that.”

  She nodded.

  “We’re moving forward, I guess.” She gave him the slightest glance and a wry smile. “If we can’t agree, at least we can be honest with each other.”

  “Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah.” Clearer this time, his voice still soft, but low and disconcerting.

  Just as she was about to stand, Michael reached out and caught her elbow. She gasped in surprise and turned her head slightly away.

  “Jennie?”

  She hesitated before answering. “What?”

  “I wouldn’t put you through this,” he told her softly. “I’d stop hurting you if I could.”

  “It seems there’s no end to that, either.”

  “It should have been over a long time ago.” His thumb was rough on her bare arm and she shivered.

  “Perhaps…” She didn’t lift her face, yet he knew she could feel him watching her. “Someday it will.

  “Michael, I’ve got an idea.” She would never have suggested this, would never have even considered it, except for the things Michael had said about stopping the hurt. “What if Cody still changed houses but we gave him longer in each place? What if he spends two weeks with me, then two weeks with you? Then we could go back to the other schedule when he’s stronger.”

  “Two weeks with you? Two weeks with you first?”

  “I didn’t say that. I was just giving an example. Or if we got another house and Cody stayed where he was, and we switched places?”

  “Maybe. It might be an answer.”

  “All your talk about trusting God,” she pushed. “Sometimes I wish that you would just trust me.”

  And neither of them realized that, as they talked of this someday ending, the answer they sought would bind them together instead.