Elodie and Heloise (21 page)

She began strumming the strings and at first, Elodie liked the unusual chords she was using and was intrigued by her music. However, as soon as she opened her mouth, Elodie cringed. Anna Maria sounded like a female version of Bob Dylan with even more whiskey and cigarettes in her voice, a wheeze that could barely hold the intricate, classically inspired melodies coming out of her mouth. It was all Elodie could do to not laugh out loud, and even when she glanced over at Duncan, she could see he was holding back as well. 

Fortunately, Anna Maria kept her set short and sweet. After another torturous song, she slapped her hands over the strings to stop them from ringing and left the stage as quickly as she'd come. It was now Elodie's turn.

"Thank you Anna, that was lovely. Next up we have a newcomer here. Everyone give it up for Elodie DeGarmo."

Her hands trembling, Elodie opened her guitar case and removed her guitar. Let's do well tonight, Cerise. The last thing she needed was her black capo deep in the zippered pocket on the outside of her case. She dug into the pocket and found it hiding in a corner.

Here we go.

Duncan mouthed good luck to Elodie and gave her hand one more squeeze before Elodie made her way through the crowd toward the stage. She was temporarily blinded by the stage lights as she ascended the stairs and walked over to the wooden stool about halfway across the stage. She sat down on the stool and adjusted the mics down to her level and finally looked up.

She could hardly see the audience from the lights shining on her, but she could hear their scattered applause as she greeted them. Elodie looked over toward her table where she knew Duncan was sitting and though she couldn’t see him, she knew he was there.

Elodie swallowed and told herself to just pretend that she was back in her study room. She placed the capo on the third fret of her guitar neck and then leaned forward into the microphone to speak. She pretended like she was talking to her mother in an effort to curb her nerves. This time, it seemed to be working. Her throat was not as dry and her heart stopped pounding as loudly.

“So I tend to write about love and I’ve been playing and teaching myself for about two years. And this is a song I wrote earlier this year about someone special, my wonderful boyfriend Duncan. He’s never heard me play this one. I was absolutely head over heels in love with him as a child and we hadn’t seen each other in seven years, so when I saw him again, all these feelings came back to me and I had to write something or I felt like my heart would just burst. All right, enough talking, so here’s the song.”

She cleared her throat and placed her fingers for the opening G major chord and began to play as she had done so many times before in the privacy of the study room. 

It’s been so long, since I last saw you

It’s been so long, you didn’t recognize me

Coming back to me, a million and one memories

Of a love that I held, but you never knew

And I’m reliving every little day

From the day that we met

‘Til the day you moved away

Now that you’re back

You’ve made me the happiest girl

And I can’t wait to see you again

You’ve made me the happiest girl

And I can’t wait to see you, see you, see you again

You’ve made me feel, like sunshine

You’ve made me feel, like a bird

All I need to hear are your words

And all I want to do is make you mine, mine, mine

And I’m reliving every possibility

Of what could happen

Between you and me

Now that you’re back

You’ve made me the happiest girl

And I can’t wait to see you again

You’ve made me the happiest girl

And I can’t wait to see you, see you, see you again

She closed her eyes about halfway through the song, remembering what it felt like to write that song after seeing Duncan again after so long, telling the story of her emotions through every note and syllable. When she opened her eyes, she saw the stage lights had been dimmed a little and she could clearly see the audience as they clapped. Most importantly, she saw Duncan sitting at their table with a soft gaze fixed on her and happiness written all over his face as he applauded along with everyone else. She could have sworn that she saw tears glistening in his eyes, but she wasn’t sure. It could’ve been the stage lights playing with her.

Seeing such a positive reaction, especially from the one she cared about the most, made Elodie’s heart swell with emotion. She breathed a thank you into the microphone and started moving the capo further down the fretboard for her next song.

Suddenly, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. It was almost enough to completely distract her from this moment, but unfortunately, as soon as she saw that it was her mother sending her a deluge of text messages, she got taken out of it. 

Elodie, come quick to the hospital. It’s Papa. Heart attack. Very serious.

Her stomach dropped into her feet and she gazed at the audience waiting for her next song. She stammered into the microphone, “Well that’s all I have to play. Thank you for listening. Good night!”

Without thinking of anything else except for her mother and father, she left the stage as quickly as she’d come, making a beeline for her table and scrambling to put her guitar back in the case. Duncan bent down to help her zip up her case and asked her what was wrong.

“My mom just texted me about Papa. He’s in the hospital and I need to get there to see him.” She fumbled with the zipper on her guitar case, trying to hurry out of there to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. “Do you think you can take me there? Oh God, I can’t believe this....”

“Of course I can get you there. Now Elodie, relax. Let me zip this up. I’ll take care of this.”

“Okay.”

In the meantime, Elodie grabbed her capo that she’d set down on the table and scrambled to throw away her empty paper cups of hot chocolate in the nearest trash can.

“Don’t worry about that. Come on, I’ve got your guitar in here. Let’s go.”

Duncan took her trembling hand and led Elodie through the crowd, her guitar in hand. She just hoped she would get there in time to see him and it seemed that Duncan couldn’t get her to the hospital fast enough.

“Elodie, over here!”

Shannon called to Duncan and Elodie from across the waiting room at the front of the hospital. Elodie rushed over to her obviously very distressed mother, who had an open magazine sitting on her lap that she no doubt had been thumbing through before Elodie and Duncan came through the sliding doors and a serious look on her face. 

There was only one time that Elodie could remember when she ever went to a hospital. She was about six years old at the time when she had her adenoids removed because she had such horrible ear infections when she was little. Elodie hardly remembered the experience of being in the hospital. What she took away from that event were two things: the laughing gas they gave her to knock her out, and then, after the surgery, the horrible sore throat she had from all the tubes they’d stuck down her throat. She’d never eaten so much ice cream in her life.

Other than that experience, Elodie had never been to a hospital, certainly never under such circumstances as she was experiencing then. Come to think of it, she’d never even been through something like this. Many of her friends lived through close grandparents passing away or family members being hospitalized for something, but never Elodie and her family. For one thing, she never knew her mother’s parents. She also only ever met her father’s parents a few times when she was a baby, but since they lived in France, she had only ever seen them once or twice when she was too little to even remember. She also wasn’t especially close with any of her mother’s sisters; in fact, Elodie hesitated to even call them acquaintances. There was her Aunt Marie, but she was in good health.  No, she’d never dealt with anything like this before. She wasn’t even sure how to even handle it either.

Elodie and her mother embraced and started crying on each other’s shoulders, Shannon’s sobs coming in raspy bursts that indicated to Elodie that she had been crying a lot this evening. Shannon gave her daughter a rundown of what had happened. They were going to surprise Elodie at her first open mic when Francis had a sudden heart attack. The doctors had wheeled him away and all that Shannon was allowed to do was sit in the waiting room to hear how he was doing since he had to be taken up to Intensive Care due to the severity of his condition.

“And I’ve called Heloise. As of twenty minutes ago, she said she would be on her way from Richmond. And since it’s about a two hour drive from here, she should be here soon. I hope. She sounded very distressed over the phone and I just hope she drives carefully.”

“Well she was the closest to Papa, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

Hearing her sister’s name reminded Elodie of how little she’d heard of her sister these days. Heloise had spent that summer preparing to go to VCU to study physics and spending time with Kyle before she left for Richmond and he left for college at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, so Elodie didn’t get to see much of her. Not that that really seemed to bother Heloise too much, since Heloise made no concerted efforts to be in her sister’s presence for more than a few minutes at a time. Elodie saw occasional updates on her sister’s Facebook page, but heard nothing else. They were even more distant than ever. 

Then Shannon and Elodie fell into silence, trying to pass the time with magazines sitting on the tables of the waiting room. Duncan remained by Elodie’s side, never letting go of her hand while she cried, spending most of the time with his arms around her and her head on his shoulders. In the corner of the room, a television blared depressing news stories from around the world. Everyone else was either watching it intently or doing the same thing that Shannon and Elodie were doing: just getting by. There was a tense silence that hung in the air, broken only when someone’s cell phone rang or a nurse came out to deliver long-awaited news to distressed family members.

“Shannon DeGarmo?” a voice suddenly called out in the waiting room. A tired nurse stood in the archway between the waiting room and the rest of the hospital, glancing around the room.

“That’s me,” Shannon responded, setting down her magazine and walking over toward the nurse. “Wait here, Elodie.”

Shannon scurried over to the nurse while Elodie stayed behind. She remained in Duncan’s arms, waiting for the nervousness to subside. 

“Elodie!” Shannon called from across the room.

Elodie and Duncan looked in Shannon’s direction. She was standing across the waiting area and waving at them. Elodie looked up nervously at Duncan as he took her hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” he soothed.

Elodie saw her mother’s face as the two of them walked hand in hand toward her. Shannon still looked like the wind had been taken out of her, and if Elodie wasn’t mistaken, there was even more color gone from her mother’s cheeks. Her heart sank. 

“What did the nurse say?”

“She said that he did have a heart attack and he’s...... not doing so well,” Shannon replied very gravely. “We can go back and see him now but.... the nurse says it’s not looking good.”

Tears came quickly to her eyes, but instead of breaking down crying, Elodie simply nodded in acknowledgement and looked up at Duncan. He gave her a kiss on the head and began walking with her and Shannon down a long corridor toward Francis’s room.

As they walked along, Elodie tried her best to not look too freaked out at her surroundings: people being carried away on stretchers, random beeps coming from open rooms, and doctors rushing around them toward their next destination. She disliked the thick atmosphere of uncertainty and lives hanging in the balance and it made her very uncomfortable. That evening was no exception since the life now hanging was her dear father’s.

Duncan seemed to recognize her anxiety and eventually put his arm across Elodie’s shoulders, pulling her close to him. The three of them walked in silence down the hallway, the only sounds being the clicking of Shannon’s heels on the hospital tile. 

Francis’s room was at the end of the hallway right before a set of double swinging doors leading to the rest of the corridor. He lay on the white hospital bed completely still, hooked up to monitors that beeped slowly every ten seconds. He never even stirred as the three of them walked in and gathered around his bedside, with Shannon to his left stroking his hand and Elodie and Duncan on his right.

Elodie stood awkwardly next to Duncan and reached for his hand, unsure of what to even say or do. Meanwhile, her mother’s eyes never left her husband’s face, as if Shannon was watching for some kind of clue that he was still alive. Finally after standing in silence for a few minutes with tears running down her face, Shannon reached out for her husband’s hand as it lay on top of the hospital blankets and gave it a light squeeze. Shannon looked like she was about ready to burst but was trying to hold it in. She dabbed her eyes with her free hand, but nothing could hold back the flood of tears that came faster than she thought possible. 

To see her mother in such distress made Elodie even more unsure. She’d never seen her mother break down like this before. She’d always been the strong matriarch of the family, able to hold her emotions together even in bad times and always having something positive to say to her daughters. Not at this moment. Elodie had never seen her mother so vulnerable before.

Elodie gave Duncan’s hand a light squeeze and gave him a plaintive look. He gestured for her to go over to her mother, and so she did, her feet feeling like they weighed at least a hundred pounds. She wrapped her arms around her mother, resting her head against her mother’s back. Shannon patted her daughter’s hand in an acknowledgment of her affection and continued to sob.

“Mrs. DeGarmo?” a voice from behind said.

Shannon immediately looked up at the nurse standing at the door. The nurse gestured for her to come over, as if she had something top secret to tell her. Shannon patted her daughter’s hand again and stumbled over to the door, still sobbing but this time much more quietly. The nurse took her mother out in the hallway and though Elodie was curious as to the proceedings, she stayed behind in the room with Duncan.