The Mark (4 page)

I stayed with Nan through dinner. Her doctor did more blood work—her sugars were stabilizing slower than normal and he wanted to be sure she was A-okay before leaving. Finally, around nine she sent me packing.

“You’ve got school tomorrow, Cass. I don’t want you missing another day.”

I nodded. “I’ll come by after classes. Tell them I’ll have the filet for dinner.”

“I’m sure they’ll bring it with my Chianti. Scoot.”

I fell asleep in the cab ride home, dreaming of Agnes’s frescoed angels drinking wine.

chapter 4

“Was it Nan?” Tasha was waiting at my locker when I jogged in just before the first bell. There had been two messages on the machine when I got back to the apartment and three on my cell, but I was too beat to call her back.

“Yeah. She’s fine.” We were hustling to algebra for a test I hadn’t spent nearly enough time studying for. I’d squeezed in about thirty minutes at the hospital and probably another ten at home before I fell asleep. The sharp corner of the book was jabbing my leg when I woke up.

“She getting out today?”

I shook my head. “Tomorrow.”

“Want me to come to the hospital with you?”

“Nah, it’s horribly boring.” Tasha nodded. She had gone with me before. “But thanks for offering. What’d I miss at assembly yesterday?”

“What do you think you missed?”

“Nothing?”

“Bingo,” she whispered as we slid into our seats.

I bombed the exam. Algebraic formulas kept slipping from my mind like buttery noodles. I knew Mr. Manus would give me a break if I told him about Nan, but I hoped I had done well enough to at least pass. My average was high enough to take a hit or two.

I took the bus downtown after school. Tina and I had talked at lunch. She’d said everything looked good for Nan’s release the next day. I would take the morning off from school to go with Agnes and John for the discharge. What a party. We called John a lot after Nan had donated her car to Heritage for the Blind when the doctor said she couldn’t drive anymore. She’d regretted it almost immediately, thinking she should have saved it for me.

“I don’t need a car,” I’d told her. “I like the bus. You see more.” Of course, that was before I understood some of what I was seeing. I’d noticed that lately I’d been more inclined to read or pick my fingernails or study the floor as I rode. Just in case.

I got off the B3 before Court Street, avoiding Robert McKenzie’s corner. It was three short blocks to the hospital if I cut across the main square, one of my favorite places to hang out in town: great people-watching, brick sidewalks, cool shops. It’d be corny to say I could hear birds in the air and smell spring as I crossed through, but I did. That’s what I loved about the smallness of Ashville, even the most down parts of downtown were clean and friendly, safe for me to wander on my own, day or night.

A block off the square, I passed through the doors of Ashville General, trading the smells of outside for antiseptic and air-conditioning. Tina wasn’t at the nurses’ station on Nan’s floor, though I knew she was still on. I headed for room 316, the last on the right with a nice view of downtown through the window.

I walked into Nan’s room, ready to tell her about the beautiful day and my lousy math test, but all of this—everything—evaporated into empty nothingness when I looked at her.

“Hi Cassie,” Nan said, the words fading when she saw my face. If she could, she’d have rushed to my side, given me a hug, and held me up as she had the day I came home dripping wet after watching Robert McKenzie get run over. But she couldn’t because she was attached to cords and wires and tubes that I suddenly knew were useless. “Cassie, what’s wrong?”

I couldn’t answer. There was no voice, no words to tell her.

“Cassie?” There was a change, the start of understanding. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and closed my eyes, rubbing them with my fore-finger and thumb, not surprised to find them come away covered with tears.

“You see it, don’t you?” It was barely a question.

I wanted to go to her, but I was afraid to get closer, to touch the luminous haze. I stared at my hands gripping each other tightly, but I couldn’t feel the pressure that caused blood to pool at each fingertip.

Then she spoke, her voice steady and comforting. Soft. That made it worse, the knowledge that even now Nan was my rock and that tomorrow, I’d be all alone. “It’s okay, Cassie. It was only a matter of time, sweetheart.”

I nodded, still unable to look at her. It wasn’t okay. Not even a little bit. “I should go … find Tina … or the doctor. Tell them …” My brain struggled for the right action. “Tell them something’s wrong.”

In the two months since Robert McKenzie’s accident, I’d been able to grasp the reality of that day, but not tackle the question that had begun to form as I watched him step off the curb. There would never be a better chance than now. We were in a hospital, for God’s sake. And there was no one more important to me than Nan. I said it again, more decisively: “I’m going to get help.”

“Do you think there’s anything they can do?” Nan was so matter-of-fact. As if we were talking about something as trivial as improving my archery shot or making tea.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, but it was the small glimpse of hope that kept me sane. “Maybe.”

“Go see them, then. But, Cassie,” she cautioned, “think about what you want to say.”

I left the room, more determined with each step. There might not be much time. I had to find someone fast. Thankfully, I saw Tina leaving a patient’s room. I ran to her.

“Tina, I’m worried about Nan,” I blurted, grabbing her arm to pull her back toward Nan’s room.

She sped up. I could feel her muscles tense. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I just …” I remembered Nan’s warning, but I had to make Tina understand. “I have a really bad feeling. Something’s going to happen.” She slowed, just a fraction of a step, but hesitation, any hesitation, could be devastating. I stopped and grabbed her arms above the elbows, firmly enough that she winced. “Tina, trust me. You know I’m not the hysterical type.” My voice was steady and deadly serious. “I sometimes have a sixth sense about this kind of thing. Something isn’t right. I don’t know what, but can we please check Nan, go over her charts, get Dr. Wentworth. Something bad is going to happen.” I couldn’t stop my voice from breaking on the last sentence, and I think Tina, who had never seen me cry, was scared enough that even if she didn’t believe me, believed it was worth humoring me.

“Okay, Cassie,” she said, gently shaking free of my grip. “Let’s go see her.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Nan was unchanged when we got to her room. Still propped in bed, staring out the window. Quiet. Still glowing.

“Miss Nan? How are you feeling? Cassie said something’s wrong.”

Nan looked at me before answering. “I feel fine, really. Not much different than yesterday.”

“I told Tina that I had a bad feeling and that I sometimes have a sense about these things,” I added quickly.

“That she does,” Nan agreed.

Tina looked at the two of us, trying to reconcile it all: my panic, Nan’s calm, the apparent lack of a problem. “Well,” she said slowly, “we could rerun your blood work, just to see if anything looks amiss. But I’ll have to get Dr. Wentworth’s approval, and your insurance might not cover it.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s do it. How long will it take?”

“I’ll try to get him on the phone now.” Tina glanced at the clock on her way out. “He’s probably still in the hospital.”

Alone, Nan and I stared out the window. I felt better for doing
something
, but then I looked at her, saw the hazy glow, and tensed up all over again.

“How do you feel, Nan? Really?”

She shrugged. “Not like I’m at death’s door.”

“But something doesn’t feel right, does it?”

She shrugged again.

“Nan.” I tried to get through to her. “You have to tell me. You have to tell the doctor. You know what it means, what I’m seeing. How can you hold back?”

“There’s not much to tell, Cassie. I’ve got a little indigestion. Otherwise I feel perfectly fine. I’m in the hospital, they’ve run a thousand and one tests on me, they’re about to run even more. If they can’t find anything, what can we do?”

I was getting angry. And starting to wonder if Nan really believed me. “How can you be so nonchalant?”

“Maybe because I believe if it’s my time, it’s my time.”

Tina came back then. “Dr. Wentworth is in the middle of a case, but he gave me the go-ahead to run some tests.” Silently she drew the blood, five or six vials from Nan’s already depleted right arm. “He’ll be up when we get the results.” She turned at the door, adding, “I’ll be at the station. Call me if you need anything.”

The waiting had begun. I didn’t know what to do with myself and walked to the window, my stomach sour and nerves hair-trigger tense. Outside, the sky was still blue, I’m sure birds were still singing and the air still smelled warm and fertile. I didn’t give a damn about any of it. It looked surreal, like a painting or a stage set.

“Cassie, come. Sit with me.” Nan’s voice, still soft, still calm, brought me back to the room. Mechanically I obeyed, pulling a chair to her side, piling it with pillows as I did every time we sat together like this in the hospital. Me by her bedside. “You know what I was remembering this morning?”

“What?”

“The day your mother first brought you to meet me.” Nan shook her head, smiling. “They drove all day for two days, her and your father, sixteen hours from Bering, Kansas, in his new Chrysler.” Nan added softly, “God, he loved that car.”

I couldn’t believe Nan wanted to talk about this right now. I bit my tongue and nodded.

“It was a day very much like today. Sunny, mid-spring, just starting to warm. It is warm out today, right?”

“Yes.” It was strange to think that to Nan, it could be twenty or eighty degrees outside and the sky and clouds would look the same. She hadn’t been out today, hadn’t felt the breeze, smelled the dirt. Maybe never would again. It made me want to run from the room and find a wheelchair or, the hell with it, push her out there, bed and all. But we couldn’t leave. Not until we saw the doctor and the results.

“In fact, it may well have been today,” Nan was saying. “It would have been about this time of year. You had just turned five months old.”

“That’s the first time you met me?”

“I know. It seems odd, doesn’t it? But your father, Daniel, was tied up with his job at the university, couldn’t take enough leave to come. And Georgia didn’t want to make such a long trip alone. Looking back, it seems remiss of me not to have visited them to see my first, my only grandchild. Of course, in retrospect, I wished I’d gone out more not just to see you, but to see her.”

Clumsily Nan reached for the water on her nightstand. I started to help her, but she waved me away, carefully clutching the glass in her veined hand.

“You were such a beautiful family, standing at my doorstep. Georgia’s hair was just like yours, nearly black, almost blue in the sunlight. You were so little, Cass. It was silly, and I never said it to Georgia, but I felt like I could see myself in you. Even that early on.”

Another time, I’d have been fascinated by this conversation. I knew so little about my parents, their faces only photographs, their voices, their touch imagined. Nan rarely talked about them—I could tell it was hard for her—but I didn’t really want to hear about them now. My insides were churning and I was as jittery as if I’d been mainlining coffee.

“You only stayed the weekend,” Nan went on. “Four days of driving for just two days of visit. My fault again, I’m sure. Back at work on Monday, wouldn’t dream of taking time off. Not even for my daughter.” She shook her head and, for me too, it was hard to believe. So unlike the Nan I knew.

“And the next time I saw you,” she said, “was in Kansas. You were two, no longer a baby. I was there to bury your … parents. And to bring you home.”

“That must have been terrible, Nan.”

She nodded. “It was. It was so unreal, a jumble from the minute I got the call about the crash. Some of it I barely remember and some is … unforgettable.”

“And then, after that, we came back here. You and me?”

“As quickly as we could. Once I’d made up my mind to take you in, I wanted it done. Wanted away from that town. There was some talk of Daniel’s parents raising you out there, but Paula—Daniel’s mom—knew she couldn’t take you in right then as sick as her husband was. They must have hated seeing you leave with a virtual stranger. We’d talked about my bringing you back after her husband passed. She knew it was coming. But I don’t think she knew what a toll it would take on her. She was gone by the year’s end.”

“So you were stuck with me then.”

She smiled. “I was. And by that point, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d have given you up.”

Nan and I were startled by the soft whisper of the door opening. Tina stuck her head in. “Dr. Wentworth’s on his way with the labs.”

My stomach rolled. I hadn’t forgotten what we were waiting for or what the soft glow around Nan meant, but listening to her had taken my mind off it for at least those few minutes. In my lap, my hands were clasped, as if by holding firmly to each other they could keep today, tomorrow, all my days from unraveling as I was sure they soon would.

Nan kept right on talking as if Tina had just popped in to say lunch was coming. “I was a different person before you came to me,” Nan said, her voice still calm and assured, but sad too. “Maybe not a very likable one. So much changed after the accident. After Georgia died. Every day I wish I could have her back, but then I get to thinking what I was like before and wonder if it would have mattered anyway. Would I ever have gotten around to visiting more? Telling her how much I loved her? If she had lived, I’m sure you and I never would have been as close as we are, Cassie. Not that I am ever, for a minute, glad that Georgia is gone, but having you has been the best part of my life. Has, I believe, made all the difference in these last fourteen years being happy ones or not.”