At the Scent of Water (25 page)

“No.”

Sam nodded noncommittally. “Why don’t you just have a seat, and we’ll see what it’s reading.” Elijah opened the bag and handed him the cuff and stethoscope. He took it once. Twice. Standing. Sitting. Lying down. “One twenty over eighty,” he said. “Textbook normal.”

“Oh.” Definitely a disappointment.

“Any other symptoms?”

She thought, her expression hopeful. “Sometimes when I first wake up, I see little spots before my eyes.”

“Do you see them now?”

“No. I guess not.”

“When you do are there a lot of them, what you’d describe as a shower?”

“No. Just one or two.”

“Flashes of light or stars?”

“No.”

“Anything like heat waves?”

“No.”

Elijah handed him the opthalmoscope. Sam handed it back. “Be my guest,” he said.

Elijah obliged. “Looks just fine,” he said. He patted her arm and she brightened.

“What you’ve described are called vitreous floaters,” Sam told her. “They’re usually harmless clumps of cells. A normal part of the aging process.” Her face fell at the word aging.

“I don’t suppose you’d happen to have such a thing as a cup of coffee, would you?” Elijah asked, and she brightened considerably.

“Why, I was just going to offer you some,” she said. “Josie, bring coffee and scones.”

Elijah beamed. Sam shook his head. “Excuse me,” he said, and went into the hall to check messages at the office. There was one from another patient. He jotted the information down on his memo pad. An end-stage cancer patient needed something for pain. That definitely trumped scones and coffee.

“I’m afraid we have another call,” Sam said. Elijah made his apologies, and they were leaving just as the refreshments arrived.

“This is for Dr. Dalton’s free clinic,” Mrs. Goddard said, handing him a folded check. Sam put it in his pocket. “What hospital is he in?” she asked. “I’d like to send flowers.”

“Baptist in Asheville,” he answered.

He looked at the check when he was in the car. Five hundred dollars. No wonder Carl was willing to make a house call for a hypochondriac.

Elijah was more philosophical. “She’s lonely,” he said. “You can tell that by looking at her face.”

Sam shrugged, not bothering to argue that this wasn’t what he’d trained fifteen years for. They drove to their last call.

It was difficult. Their patient was a forty-three-year-old man in the end stages of stomach cancer. He was down to a hundred and twenty pounds. Sam administered an injection of morphine and prescribed fentanyl patches. The man fell mercifully asleep as the medication took effect. The family was grateful but worn down by the worry and grief. No cookies or coffee were offered. No money changed hands.

“It’s hard,” the drained wife said, and Sam looked into her eyes with compassion.

“What can I do for
you
?” he asked, his own words surprising him. He wasn’t sure where they had come from. Her eyes welled.

“Carl always prays with us,” she answered simply. Sam looked to Elijah. He stared down at his shoes.

Sam nodded and they all bowed their heads. “Heavenly Father,” Sam began quietly, “you see the suffering of your children. Your Word says you see every tear and your ears are open to their cries. That you have compassion on all you have made. Rain down, Lord,” he prayed, and he suddenly departed from the script he’d been composing in his mind. “Rain down.” His voice grew more intense. “We’re hungry for your touch, Lord. Have mercy. Give us healing. Help us, Lord. Help us.”

She was sobbing softly.

“Yes, Lord,” Elijah murmured. “Do it, Lord. In Jesus’ name.”

They drove back to town in silence, Sam lost in his own thoughts, Elijah in his.

****

Her father was sitting up in bed when Annie arrived, regaling the nurses with stories of the time old Jonas Carter popped both shoulders out of joint trying to lift his ’65 Pontiac off his prize-winning sow.

“He was drunk as a coot,” Carl said, “so I didn’t need any anesthetic to pop ’em back in.”

The nurse giggled. Annie cleared her throat. The story abruptly ended, details forever lost. How, for instance, the sow had come to be under the wheels of the ’65 Pontiac. Annie didn’t believe she cared to know.

“Annie, darling,” her father cried, and she went to him.

After their embrace, she inspected her father. She had expected a pale, wan, preparing-to-meet-the-Maker kind of attitude. She should have known better. Her father looked wonderful. His color was improving, his eyes were snapping and bright, and the most hopeful sign of all—his mouth was moving.

“I turn my back on you for a few days and look what happens,” Annie reproached him.

“Don’t I know it? But I’m on the mend now.”

Diane came in with a tray of food, and she and Annie greeted each other.

“What’s for lunch?” Annie asked.

Carl made a face as Diane lifted the lid off the plate. It was steamed whitefish and rice with cooked carrots and peas.

“I’m not bringing you a cheeseburger and fries, so don’t even start with me,” Diane said sternly.

“Sugar, it says
unrestricted diet
in big letters on my chart,” he argued back to his wife. “I just need to drink decaf instead of regular coffee.”

“That kind of thinking is what got you into this mess,” Diane snapped back. Carl looked at Annie with appeal in his eyes.

“No way. Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
Matlock
played on the television. It ended and
JAG
started. Carl started in on the fish and cheered himself by taking a small bite of his dessert, a bowl of peach cobbler that was mostly canned peaches with a sprinkling of oatmeal and brown sugar over the top. Diane bustled about, rearranging cards and flowers.

“Sugar,” Carl said to his wife, “would you mind running down to the cafeteria and getting me something to drink? A caffeine-free diet soda?” he asked, and her face brightened immediately.

“Of course I wouldn’t mind.” She took her purse, and after leaning over and planting a kiss on his pursed lips, she left them.

“How do you feel about a quick trip to the drive-through, Annie Ruth?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

She shook her head firmly. “No way, Papa. Don’t waste your breath.”

He shrugged philosophically, as if he were required to try for his own self-respect, then revealed his true agenda. “How are you doing, Annie?” he asked, his voice nonchalant, and Annie smiled. Only Papa could suffer a heart attack, go through major surgery, charm the entire floor of nurses, expend untold energy attempting to con friends and relatives into bringing him forbidden food, and still have the energy to probe his daughter’s affairs.

“I’m doing all right.”

“And Sam?”

“He seems to be doing fine. The little girl’s tube was put back in, you know,” she said, and her father’s face became serious.

“There were a lot of prayers going up for that little girl,” he said soberly. “If the Lord does take her, it should be in His time and His way, not like that.”

She nodded. Her own feelings exactly.

“How is Sam doing with my patients?” Papa asked, going to work halfheartedly on the fish.

“He saw a big crowd yesterday at the free clinic. Elijah Walker’s helping him.”

“Ah yes, the missionary doctor home from the field.”

Trust that Papa would know. Even in the hospital he had his ear to the ground.

“How did you find out?”

“Margie Sue came by and told me,” he said. “Now there’s a story,” he said, and Annie’s interest was piqued.

“Why do you say that?”

Her father looked coy for a minute, but neither one of them was fooled. He couldn’t keep a piece of news to himself any more than fly to the moon.

“Oh, nothing. Just that they aren’t strangers.”

Annie shrugged. “Sam said they had known each other before.”

Her father’s eyes lit. “Oh, it was a little more than that.”

She looked at him with interest. “Well? Are you going to tell me or keep me guessing all day?”

“They were engaged.”

“No!”

He nodded. “Elijah gave her a ring and everything, but then he got the call to the mission field. Next thing you know, he was gone, and Mary Ellen Anderson wasn’t engaged anymore. John waited around a decent amount of time, then moved in before somebody else snapped her up.”

Annie had an odd moment as she thought of how with one slight shift of fate Sam would not have been born and she would not have married him. Margaret would never have been born. All because of something Elijah Walker had decided over forty-five years before. She had known they were connected, somehow, the moment she had set eyes on him.

“Why didn’t she go with him?”

“I’ve wondered that myself,” Carl said, “but she never told, and I never asked.”

Annie nodded.

“So Sam’s doing all right with my patients?”

She felt as if his question jerked her back into the real world. “I suppose so,” she said. “He hasn’t complained.”

“Well, I know he’ll do a fine job.”

“General practice isn’t his specialty,” Annie pointed out.

“
People
are a doctor’s specialty, no matter what else he knows,” her father shot back. “Besides, he’ll pick it up quicker than I would heart surgery. Make sure he knows Margie Sue’s coming in to do the billing tomorrow,” he said firmly. “I’ll be back myself soon,” he promised.

Diane returned. They visited awhile longer, and Annie took her leave. “I’ll be back on Wednesday,” she promised. “Tomorrow I’m going to work on the house.”

She knew he must have heard her, but he completely disregarded her last sentence. “I’ll look forward to seeing you,” her father said with a wink. “Bring Sam with you and stop by Bojangles’ on the way. Bring me some fried chicken and a couple of those cinnamon biscuits.”

****

Sam and Elijah drove into Mary’s graveled driveway at exactly five o’clock. They had seen four patients in the office, made hospital rounds and home visits, and were home in time for supper. Sam shook his head, still not used to this slower pace of life. It felt good in one way to sleep at night, to wake in the morning refreshed, but he often found himself at loose ends, not knowing what to do with his mind and his hands.

As he approached the house, he saw an unfamiliar car and wondered who had come to call. He felt a moment of foreboding that faded away when he saw the
Buddy Smith Ford
license-plate holder, the
John 3:16
personalized license plate, and the
Pray for America
bumper sticker. This would not be a lawyer or a reporter or anyone bringing a load of trouble his way.

Elijah waved good-bye and headed toward the guesthouse, but Sam knew he would be back. His mother would have the table set for the three of them for supper, and actually, he liked that fact. He enjoyed the man’s company. Elijah was a balanced man, he realized. He had the firmness of purpose that his own father had, but a gentleness and calm that set the heart at rest. The thought nagged again that when Elijah left, there would be another tear in his mother’s tattered heart. He set it aside, ironically remembering Tom Bradley, the hospital administrator’s admonition: “Sufficient unto the day.”

He stepped onto the porch, pulled open the screen, stepped inside, and heard the hissing of the pressure cooker and the murmur of women’s voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. He went in and found his mother with two of his father’s sisters in sober conversation.

His two aunts mirrored many of his father’s features, and his own, he supposed. They had the same dark hair, though theirs had gone to gray, and the same shocking blue eyes. They had the wide foreheads and symmetrical faces of the Truelove clan, the same even white teeth and wide smiles. He greeted them each with a hug, and though he looked for condemnation or judgment in their eyes, he saw nothing but kindness and love.

“Sammy, we’ve been praying for you. Night and day,” Aunt Roberta said when she released him from her tight hug, and Sam received her words with thankfulness.

“I appreciate that,” he said simply. “I need it.”

“I’ve been telling everybody what a good doctor you are, what a fine Christian man,” Eloise interjected after a rough hug of her own. She was not the soft comforting type, but she had a fierce protectiveness of her family. He pitied the person who made a disparaging comment about him in her presence.

“We’re just discussing the reunion,” his mother said.

He nodded and went to the stove to lift pot lids. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes and whatever was cooking in the pressure cooker. A pie cooled on the counter. Strawberry, judging from the color of the juice that had escaped through the slits of the crust. His stomach growled.

“We’ve decided to cancel it,” Eloise said.

He turned around abruptly, whatever dread he might have felt at the thought of confronting all of his family suddenly overshadowed with a sharp pang of loss. “Why in the world would you do that?” he asked.

Roberta blinked. “We thought you might prefer it that way.”

He shook his head vehemently and found himself really meaning the words that came out of his mouth. “Now more than ever we need it,” he said, and he saw Eloise’s eyes light with fire.

“That’s
exactly
what
I
said,” she pronounced. “Let Sammie know his people love him, I said. It’s the best thing in the world for him.”

Sam smiled and felt his heart expand. They were flawed and rough around the edges, his people, but he realized again that they would never cut him loose. Chastise him, yes. Give him the rough side of their tongue, of course. But they were united by blood, and that was a loyalty that could never be broken.

“Same setup as always?” he asked, and with a moment’s hesitation they all nodded. The reunion itself would be on Saturday at the church campground, and every far flung branch of the Truelove clan would come to that. On Friday, though, a smaller group of close relatives would gather for the traditional fish fry.

“I’ll fry the fish this year,” he volunteered, and he watched his mother’s face light with joy.