Bloodstream (33 page)

“It feels as if I’m not being the best mother I could be.”

“I see you trying so hard, Claire. As hard as any parent could.” He paused, and sighed as well. “And now I suppose I’m throwing another complication into your life, at a time when you least need it. But Claire, there is no other time for me. I had to say it before you made a decision. Before you left Tranquility.” He added softly: “Before it’s too late for me to say anything at all.”

At last she looked at him. He was sitting with his gaze downcast, his head tilted wearily against his hand.

“Not that I blame you for wanting to leave,” he said. “This town is slow to warm up to strangers, slow to trust them. There are a few who are just plain mean. But for the most part, they’re like people everywhere else. Some of them are unbelievably generous. The best folks you could ever hope to find. . .“ His voice faded to silence, as though he’d run out of things to say.

A moment passed between them.

“Are you speaking on behalf of the whole town again, Lincoln? Or yourself?”

He shook his head. “It’s not coming out right. I came to say something, and here I am, beating around the bush. I think about you a lot, Claire. The fact is, I think about you all the time. I’m not sure what to make of this, because it’s a new experience for me. Walking around with my head in the clouds.”

She smiled. For so long she had thought of him as the stoic Yankee, plain-spoken and practical. A man whose boots were planted too firmly on earth to ever lose his head to the clouds.

He rose to his feet and stood, unsure of himself, by the fire. “That’s all I came to tell you. I know there are complications. Doreen, mainly. And I know I don’t have any experience being a father. But I have all the patience in the world when it comes to things I really care about.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll let myself out.”

He had already gone to the closet door and was reaching for his jacket when she caught up to him in the front hall. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he turned to look at her. His jacket slipped from the hanger and fell, unnoticed, to the floor.

“Come back and sit with me.” That whispered request, the smile on her lips, was all the invitation he needed. He touched her face,

caressed her cheek. She had forgotten what it felt like, the touch of a man’s hand against her flesh. It awakened a longing that was deep and unexpected and so powerful that she gave a sigh and closed her eyes. Gave another sigh as he kissed her, as their bodies folded into each other.

They kissed all the way to the front parlor and were still kissing as they sank onto the couch. In the hearth a log tipped over, and a shower of sparks and flames leapt up with startling brilliance.
Seasoned wood makes the hottest fire.
The heat of their own fire was consuming her now, reducing to ashes any resistance. They lay on the couch, bodies pressed together, hands exploring, discovering. She pulled his shirt loose and slid her hand across the breadth of his back. His skin there felt startlingly cool, as if all the heat he possessed was radiating toward her, in the kisses he pressed to her face, her throat. She unbuttoned his shirt, inhaling his scent. Those all-too-brief whiffs she’d had of him over the weeks had somehow been branded into her memory, and now the smell of him was both familiar and intoxicating.

“If we’re going to stop,” he murmured, “we’d better stop now.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“I’m not ready—I mean, I didn’t come prepared—”

“It’s all right. It’s all right,” she heard herself saying, without knowing or caring if it
was
all right, so hungry was she for the touch of him.

“Noah,” he said. “What if Noah wakes up.

At that she opened her eyes and found herself looking directly into his. It was a view of him she’d never seen before, his face lit by the fire’s glow, his gaze stark with need.

“Upstairs,” she said. “My bedroom.”

Slowly he smiled. “Is there a lock on the door?”

They made love three times that night. The first was a mindless collision of bodies, limbs tangled together, then the shuddering explosion deep within. The second time was the slower coupling of lovers, gazes locked, the touch and scent of each other now familiar.

The third time they made love, it was to say good-bye.

They’d awakened in the hours before dawn, and knowingly reached for each other in the darkness. They spoke no words, their bodies joining of their own accord, two halves gliding together into one whole. When, in silence, he emptied himself into her, it was as though he was spilling tears of both joy and sorrow. The joy of having found her. The sorrow of what they would now have to face. Doreen’s wrath. Noah’s resistance. A town that might never accept her.

He did not want Noah to find them in bed together when morning came; neither he nor Claire was ready to deal with the repercussions. It was still dark when Lincoln got dressed and left the house.

From her bedroom window she watched his truck drive away. She heard the loud crackle of ice under his wheels and knew that the night had turned even colder, that this morning, to merely draw in a breath would be painful. For a long time, even after the taillights had vanished, she remained at the window, staring out through moonlit-silvered icicles. Already she felt his absence. And she felt something else, both unexpected and troubling: a mother’s guilt that she was selfishly pursuing her own needs, her own passions.

She walked down the hall to Noah’s door. There was silence within; knowing how deeply he slept, she felt certain he’d heard nothing of what had gone on in her bedroom last night. She stepped inside and crossed the darkness to kneel beside his bed.

When he was still a child, Claire had often lingered over her sleeping son, stroking his hair, inhaling the scent of warm linen and soap. He allowed so little contact between them now; she had almost forgotten what it was like to touch him and not have him automatically pull away.
If only I could have you back again.
She leaned over and kissed him on the eyebrow. He gave a moan and rolled over, turning his back to her. Even in his sleep, she thought, he pulls away from me.

She was about to rise to her feet when she suddenly froze, her gaze fixed on his pillow. On the streak of phosphorescent green where Noah’s face had rested against the linen.

In disbelief she touched the streak and felt moistness there, like the warm leavings of tears. She stared at the tips of her fingers.

They glimmered with spectral light in the darkness.

19

I need to know what’s growing in that lake, Max. And I need to know
today.”

Max gestured her into his cottage and shut the door against the bitter wind. “How is Noah this morning?”

“I examined him from head to toe, and he seems perfectly healthy except for a stuffed-up nose. I left him in bed with juice and decongestants.”

“And the phosphorescence? Did you culture it?”

“Yes. I sent the swab off right away.” She took off her coat. Max had finally been able to get a fire going in the woodstove, and the cottage felt stiflingly hot. She almost preferred the bone-chilling wind outside. In here, surrounded by Max’s clutter, the air hazy with smoke, she thought she might suffocate.

“I’ve just made coffee,” he said. “Have a seat—if you can find an empty chair.”

She took one glance around the claustrophobic room and followed him, instead, into the kitchen. “So tell me about those water culture results. The ones you took before the lake froze.”

“The report came back this morning.”

“Why didn’t you call me right away?”

“Because there was nothing much to report.” He shuffled through a stack of papers on the kitchen counter, and handed her a computer printout. “There. The final ID from the lab.”

She glanced down the long list of microorganisms. “I don’t recognize most of these,” she said.

“That’s because they’re not pathogens—they don’t cause disease in humans. What’s on that list are just the typical bacteria and algae you’d find in any northern freshwater pond. The coliform count is borderline high, which may indicate that someone’s septic system is leaking from the shoreline, or into one of the feeder streams. But overall, it’s an unremarkable bacterial spectrum.”

“No phosphorescent
Vibrio?”

“No. If
Vibrio
was ever in that lake, then it didn’t survive very long, which makes it an unlikely source of disease. Most likely the
Vibrio
isn’t a pathogen, but an incidental bacteria. Harmless, like all the other bacteria we carry around in our bodies.”

She sighed. “That’s what the state health department told me.”

“You called them?”

“First thing this morning. I was in such a panic about Noah.”

He handed her a cup of coffee. She took one sip, then set it down, wondering if Max had used bottled water to brew it, or if he had unthinkingly drawn the water from the tap.

From the lake.

Her gaze drifted out the window, to the unbroken expanse of white that was Locust Lake. In so many ways, that wide body of water defined the everyday course of their lives. In summer they swam and bathed in its water, pulled struggling fish from its depths. In winter they glided over its surface on skates, insulated their homes against the merciless winds that howled across its ice. Without the lake, the Town of Tranquility would not exist, and this would be only another valley in a dark expanse of forest.

Her beeper went off. On the digital readout was a number she didn’t recognize, with a Bangor exchange.

She made the call from Max’s phone, and a nurse from Eastern Maine Medical Center answered.

“Dr. Rothstein asked us to call you, Dr. Elliot. It’s about that craniotomy patient you referred here last week, Mr. Emerson.”

“How’s Warren been doing since his surgery?”

“Well, the psychiatrist and the social worker have seen him several times, but nothing seems to be helping. That’s why we’re calling you. We thought, since he’s your patient, you might know how to handle this situation.”

“What situation?”

“Mr. Emerson refuses all his medications. Even worse, he’s stopped eating. Mi he’ll take now is water.”

“Does he give a reason?”

“Yes. He says it’s his time to die.”

Warren Emerson seemed to have shrunken since the last time she’d seen him, as though life itself was slowly leaking from him like air from a balloon. He sat in a chair by the window, his gaze focused on the parking lot below, where snow-covered cars were lined up like soft bread loaves. He did not turn to look at her when she walked into the room, but just kept staring out the window, a tired man bathed in the light of a gray day. She wondered if he realized she was there.

Then he said, “It doesn’t do any good, you know. So you might as well leave me alone. When your time comes, it comes.”

“But it isn’t your time yet, Mr. Emerson,” said Claire.

At last he turned, and if he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. She had the feeling he was beyond surprise. Beyond pleasure or pain. He watched with bland indifference as she crossed toward him.

“Your operation was a success,” she said. “They took out the brain mass, and the chances are, it’s benign. You have every hope of a complete recovery A normal life.”

Her words seemed to have no effect on him. He simply turned back to the window. “A man like me can’t have a normal life.”

“But we can control the seizures. We might even be able to stop them from ever—”

“They’re all afraid of me.”

That statement, spoken with such resignation, explained everything. This was the malady for which there was no cure, from which be

could never recover. She could offer no surgery that would resect the fear and revulsion his neighbors felt toward him.

“I see it in their eyes,” he said. “I see it whenever I pass them on the street, or brush against them in the grocery store. It’s like they’ve been burned by acid. No one will touch me. No one has touched me in thirty years. Only doctors and nurses. People who have no choice. I’m poison, you see. I’m dangerous. They all stay away, because they know I’m the town monster.”

“No, Mr. Emerson. You’re not a monster. You blame yourself for what happened all those years ago, but I don’t believe it was your fault. It was a sickness. You had no control over your actions.”

He didn’t look at her, and she wondered if he had even heard her.

“Mr. Emerson?”

He was still gazing out the window. “It’s kind of you to visit,” he murmured. “But there’s no need to lie to me, Dr. Effiot. I know what I did.” He drew in a deep breath and slowly released it, and with that sigh he seemed to shrink even smaller. “I’m so tired. Every night I go to sleep expecting not to wake up again. Hoping not to. And every morning, when I open my eyes, I’m disappointed. People think it’s such a struggle to stay alive. But you know, that’s the easy part. The hard part is the dying.”

There was nothing she could say. She looked down at the untouched meal tray by the window. A chicken breast in congealed gravy, a mound of rice, kernels glistening like tiny pearls. And bread, the staff of life. A life Warren Emerson no longer wished to experience or to suffer. I cannot make you want to go on living, she thought. I can force feed liquid nourishment, inject it into a tube that threads up your nostril and into your stomach, but I cannot breathe joy into your lungs.

“Dr. Elliot?”

Turning, Claire saw a nurse standing in the doorway.

“Dr. Clevenger from Pathology is on the phone, trying to reach you. He’s on line three?’

Claire left Warren Emerson’s room and picked up the extension in the nurses’ station. “This is Claire Elliot.”

“I’m glad I caught you,” said Clevenger. “Dr. Rothstein told me you’d be driving over this afternoon, and I thought you might want to come down to Pathology and take a look at these slides. Rothstein’s on his way down now.”

“Which slides?”

“From your craniotomy patient’s brain mass. It took a week to fully fix the tissue. I just got the slides back today”

“Is it a meningioma?”