(2006) When Crickets Cry (32 page)

I nodded. "Yes."

She hopped off my leg and walked over to the steps leading up to my hammock. "Can I nap in your hammock? I won't mess it up."

I nodded one final time, and she began a slow climb to the top of the boathouse. Halfway up the first flight of steps, she stopped to look for fish below and catch her breath. I carried up a fleece blanket and pillow, but when I got there, she was almost asleep. I covered her, propped up her head, and watched her elevated heart rate rhythmically pulse through the carotid artery on her neck. After counting her pulse and watching her quick, short breaths only partially fill her lungs, I returned to my bucket where the sun was beating down.

I don't know how long I sat there, looking out over that water. However long it'd been, it was long enough for Annie to fall asleep, for clouds to block out the sun, and for Cindy to finish Crusoe. When I looked up, a lizard was climbing across my feet and shins. Cindy was standing in front of me, leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, looking out over the lake.

Too skinny, eyes sunk too far back in her head, Cindy was starting to show some wear and tear, but she could not hide the fact that beauty lurked just below the surface. It struck me that was the first time I'd thought such a thing about anyone since Emma. And that thought in itself scared me.

Cindy had wrapped a towel around her waist, but had evidently grown comfortable walking around me in her bathing suit. As bathing suits go, it was conservative, same halter top and bikini bottom, but it was still a bathing suit. And bathing suits and underwear are basically the same thing; we just wear them in different settings. When you boil it down, the deciding factor is geography.

She didn't look at me but just stood quietly, as if doing so was comforting and had become easy. That too scared me. Finally she spoke. "You said make yourself at home, so I went looking for some aspirin. Found it in the upstairs bathroom. I love the tub. 'Magine your wife did too."

I nodded, wondering about my locked office door.

"I finished your book." She pointed toward the chair, then looked back out over the lake. "I can't imagine what it must have been like to be him." She shook her head and pointed her big toe at an ant that was walking around her feet.

I didn't follow. "What?"

"Crusoe."

"Oh."

"One minute he's sailing along, not a care in the world, the next his ship is going down, he's tossed about like Jonah, and then ... the island." She wrapped her arms tighter about herself.

I stood from my bucket and hung it on the wall behind me. My signal that this conversation was about to be over. I don't know why I said what I did, other than that I'd had a long time to think about it, and maybe because I was starting to remember. "Cindy?"

She looked at me.

"We are all shipwrecked. All castaways." I took a few steps forward, toward the boat launch and the edge of the dock. I dug my hands in my pockets and then turned, my eyes meeting hers. "One day, we all wake on the beach, our heads caked with sand, sea foam stinging our eyes, fiddler crabs picking at our noses, and the taste of salt caked on our lips." I turned slightly, glancing up at the shadow of Annie's frail frame swinging gently in the hammock, rocked by the wind. "And, like it or not, it is there that we realize we are all in need of Friday to come rescue its off this island, because we don't speak the language and we can't read the messages in the bottle."

I walked out to the edge of the dock, the corner closest to Charlie's house, and sat on the ledge, dipping my feet in the water. Moments passed before Cindy sat beside me. She sat down close, her shoulder and thigh rubbing against mine. She was entering my personal space, suggesting that, at least in this moment, it was space that we shared. More ours than mine or hers. Her touch was friendly and knowing, not invasive. But it was also terrifying.

She wiped her eyes, which were red and wet, and would not look at me, but studied the water below us. Our feet looked green and distorted. Below them, bream sped past followed by two good-sized bass.

"Did your wife teach you that?" she asked quietly.

"No," I said, shaking my head, "her absence did."

riday morning I woke early, got on the water with Charlie long before the sun was up, and left Royer a voice mail telling him when we'd be at the hospital. I also told him a couple of other things. Actually, I asked.

I asked that he perform Annie's procedure in one of the rooms near an exit and not on the cardiac floor-preferably the children's floor, where the walls were painted to look more like a child's room and less like a hospital. The less stress we inflicted upon Annie, the better.

There was an obvious benefit for me too, but I addressed the root of that one with my next question. I asked him to use nurses and other staff who had never met me. His staff, our staff, was loyal, and according to the records I'd been snooping into, I still knew most by name. In spite of my haggard appearance, they'd recognize me much the same way Shirley had in town. I wasn't ready for that, and I knew he'd understand. Finally, I asked him to check with accounting, and said he'd understand why once he did.

I picked up Cindy and Annie at their house just after daylight. They both slept most of the way to Atlanta. When I drove through Starbucks and ordered a latte, Cindy held her hand up, and her two fingers made the peace sign. I changed my order and asked for two.

Royer himself met us in the parking lot. He was standing behind a wheelchair, smiling. Inside the seat of the chair sat three stuffed animals: Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Eeyore. Annie stepped out the car and promptly hugged him, a sight that caused me to remember that Royer was everything good in a doctor.

Cindy grabbed her purse and introduced me to him. We shook hands, his engulfing mine, and exchanged formal pleasantries. Then he led us into the service entrance, up the elevator, and off at the children's floor, where we were met by bright walls, butterflies, and a hallway that looked like the yellow brick road. Annie lit up.

Royer steered us down a short hallway and into a large room in a corner of the hospital. It was perfect: a couch, an easy chair, a television with VCR, and a window that looked out over the northwest side of Atlanta. The room had been painted to look like the Hundred Acre Wood and Pooh's house.

Annie hopped up on the bed and grabbed something. "Look," she said, pointing it to Cindy, "our own remote control."

Cindy looked at us, embarrassed, and shrugged her shoulders. "The simple pleasures in life."

Royer pulled Cindy to the doorway and whispered just loudly enough for me to hear him above the cartoons Annie had selected. "Nurses will be in shortly to get her IV line in and take her vitals. I'll be back in about thirty minutes to drip some sleepy stuff down her arm."

Cindy crossed her arms and nervously scratched the outsides of both.

Royer continued, "The procedure might take all of fifteen minutes; then we'll let her sleep it off and spend the day parked in front of that TV." He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Don't worry. Hang in there."

Cindy nodded and pulled on the tattered sweater she'd been carrying since the car.

I grabbed a magazine, tried to look dumb, and kept my glasses on until I was certain I'd never seen the nurse before. As other nurses came in, dressed in clown-printed scrubs and colorful plastic shoes, each talked with Annie. If Annie was nervous, she didn't show it. They got her into a gown, helped her put on her big red Clifford slippers, and swabbed her arm with alcohol.

She winced when they inserted the IV needle, and a tear slipped out of her left eye and down her cheek. Cindy, biting her own lip, caught it, and sat on the other side of the bed holding Annie's hand. I stood against the far wall, pressing my back hard against the window for fear that I might launch myself across that room and start acting like the someone I used to be.

They began a fluid drip to keep her hydrated and brought her a cup of ice, which they told her she could chew on. She didn't touch it, but quietly watched the television above us. After a few minutes of cartoons, she mashed the power button on the remote and then pressed the button on the side of her bed to raise her head. The mechanical bed raised her to a sitting position, and then she looked at me. "Reese?"

"Yeah," I said, prying my back from the wall and pulling up a chair next to Annie's bed.

"You be here when I get back?"

I nodded, afraid to speak for fear that my voice might crack.

She held out her hand, and I placed mine in it. She leaned closer and twitched her head, pulling me closer as if she wanted to tell me a secret. I leaned in, and Annie's eyes darted to Cindy, "Don't let her sit here and worry while I'm gone. There's a really good cafe on the third floor, so get her a piece of chocolateraspberry cake with the yummy raspberry dressing."

I nodded and smiled.

"Oh, and-" She raised her hands around her neck and took off the sandal necklace. She unlocked the clasp, slid it from around her neck, and then laid it in my open palm. Her hands were shaking. "Hold this for me 'til I get back."

I looked down and held the small sandal in my hand. I ran my fingernail through the edges of the letters and raged against the torrent of tears that was spilling over the dam inside me. I will give you a new heart ...

"You know what my mom told me when she gave it to me?"

I shook my head.

"She told me she had a dream where she saw my surgery and the doctor putting a new, strong heart in me. In her dream it was raining outside, and the clock on the wall read 11:11 and the doctor had a Band-Aid on the inside of his elbow."

"She tell you how it turned out?" I asked.

Annie smiled. "Nope. Said she woke up before we got to that part. "

Royer walked in, sat down across from me, and took Annie's other hand. "Okay, big girl, here's the deal." He held up a syringe and eyed the line running out of her IV bag. "I'm going to shoot this sleepy stuff through that valve called the piggyback. Then, once you're good and snoring, we'll roll you down that hall while your aunt and your kind chauffeur sit and wait on you."

Annie liked him calling me her chauffeur. She also liked the part about her snoring.

"Then I'm gonna take a look at your heart. When I'm done, I'll roll you back in here and let you wake up at your leisure." From his pocket he pulled a small silver bell that looked like the kind the Salvation Army rings at Christmastime, and laid it in her lap. "If you need me before, after, or during, you ring this. You got it?"

Annie picked up the bell and rang it a few times. Royer stood and walked around my side of the bed, so I walked to the corner of the room and held up the wall. Royer emptied the syringe into Annie's IV and said, "Okay, waiting on you."

Royer was walking out when Annie said, "Dr. Royer?"

He turned.

"You're forgetting something."

"Oh, yes, yes." Royer walked back over, knelt next to Annie's bed, and grabbed her hand. He closed his eyes, she closed hers, and Cindy sat on the end of the bed and held Annie's feet that were cozy beneath the sheets.

After a second of silence, Annie looked up at Royer and said, "You want to ring and I hang up?"

Royer shook his head. "You ring."

"God?" Annie said, as if He were sitting on the edge of the bed. "Please help Dr. Royer to see what he needs to do. Help Aunt Cici not to be scared and let her know that I'll be right back ... and ..." She paused, and her voice told me she had cracked into a large smile. "Thank You for my own personal chauffeur."

The single light above painted her in white, the monitors next to her flashed red and blue, and Royer looked huge kneeling next to the bed.

She looked to Royer and whispered, "Your turn."

Royer cradled Annie's tiny hand between his huge paws. He kissed her hand, pressed it against his forehead, and said, "Lord, You're the only one here who really knows what He's doing, so we're planning on You taking charge. You promised Annie something, and we're holding You to it. Forgive us if that's too bold, but we don't have time to be timid. I got a feeling You're not finished with this one, not hardly-You're just barely getting started, so ... bottom line, You're needed. It's time to clock in. Let me see what I need to and ..." Royer paused, and his voice grew low and more steady. "Give this girl sweet dreams in the process."

I whispered "Amen" and watched as Royer kissed Annie on the forehead.

"See you in an hour or so."

Annie nodded; her eyelids had grown heavy, and she tried to speak, but her words were all connected and run together. Another minute, and she was asleep.

The nurses pushed the bed down the hall, leaving Cindy and me sitting in the room wondering where to start.

I took a stab. "How 'bout that chocolate cake?"

Cindy nodded, tucked her hands tighter under her armpits, and we walked out into the hall. When I pulled my hat down and put my sunglasses on, she raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She and Annie had warmed to my eccentricities, partly from kindness and partly just from having too much going on with themselves to figure someone else out. We walked to the cafe, and I kept my eyes to myself.