She looked up at him, her fingers lightly touching her new cheek. “More beautiful than this?” she asked, stunned.
He laughed softly. “Much better than this, Jurea. This is just the first step. It’s the toughest surgery, so the worst is over now.”
“Never…” she began. A tear spilled down her cheek. “I never would have believed…”
June looked at Clarence and saw that his face was wet with tears, but just as she met his eyes, he bolted.
“Dad?” Clinton called out. “I’ll go after him, Ma.”
“Poor Clarence… He just wasn’t ready for it, I don’t think,” Jurea said. “When can I go home, Doctor?”
“After you see the ophthalmologist and the nurse gives you some instructions on how I’d like you to take care of the surgical site. This afternoon?”
“Really?”
“Sure. The hard part is over.”
A little while later, on the way back to the Intensive Care Unit, June tugged on her dad’s arm, pulling him to a stop in the hallway. “Dad, Charlotte looks bad.”
“I know it,” he said, shaking his head sadly.
“You should tell her, Dad.”
He knew exactly what she meant, for he hung his head. But he didn’t speak. He was going to make her put it into words.
“Do it with Bud. Tell her if she wants to fight it out, you’ll be there for her. But she doesn’t have to fight for your sake. Tell her that it’s okay. When she’s had enough—”
“I know,” he said, and lifted his head. He was just a little guy and worry made him appear smaller. “I’ve been losing a lot of old friends lately,” he said. “Wears on me.”
“Think about Charlotte, Dad. You know she won’t let go till she hears it from you. Even Bud doesn’t have the kind of hold on her that you do.”
“She’s a good old girl. I’ll do the right thing, June. But I have to work up to it.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Are you planning to be here this evening?”
“Probably. Unless you want to try again for meat loaf.”
“Actually, I heard from a friend I haven’t seen in ages. He’s going to be up this way and asked if I’d like to meet him for dinner.”
Elmer squinted and looked at her over the top of his glasses. “June? You blushing?”
She ignored his question. “If you think you’ll need me, or Charlotte will, I’ll take a rain check. But if I can be spared…”
“You are blushing. He must be quite a guy. I haven’t seen you blush since high school.” He cackled a little. “It would do my heart good to see you give that Chris Forrest some competition.”
That killed the blush. “Now don’t you start,” she warned.
“Go ahead, June. Enjoy yourself. I’ll keep watch here and call you on your cell phone if there’s any change.”
The day seemed to drag slowly toward evening, despite the fact that June stayed very busy and a great deal was accomplished. For one thing, Susan Stone came into the clinic and took over Charlotte’s duties. Susan had been a practicing RN when John met and married her, but even so, June hadn’t thought of the possibility of Susan helping out. It changed the whole culture of the clinic, for Susan was Charlotte’s opposite. Where Charlotte was grouchy, Susan was cheerful. While Charlotte was hardworking, Susan was brisk and efficient. And while Charlotte had trouble getting along with twenty-year-old Jessie, Susan acted like her older sister and the two got on famously.
Still, it seemed altogether wrong that Charlotte was not present.
It was nearly five and June was getting ready to leave the clinic when her cell phone twittered in her pocket. She went into her office to answer.
“It’s me,” Jim said. “I’ve been cursed.”
“What is it?”
“I’m already here. Can you hear the ocean in the background?”
“It sounds like static. I’ll be along shortly, right after I…”
“June, wait. I’m being called in. It’s an emergency. I have to go right away.”
“No!”
“I may not be in touch for a while. I’ll try. I’ll do the best I can.”
“Please, please be careful! Please be so careful!”
“Will you remember something? Will you remember that I said I love you? And that I want you forever?”
“I’ll remember.” She felt the sting of tears threaten, but she didn’t know if it was disappointment, fear for him or just the usual pain of saying goodbye.
“I have an important question to ask you, but not on the phone.”
“I’ll die waiting. Ask me. Please.”
“No. I’ll be back before you know it and then we’ll sort everything out.”
“What if we’re not right for each other? What if we just think we are because we never see each other?”
“June, listen to me. I’ve never asked a person to wait for me. Never in my whole life. Never in my career as an agent. But I’m asking you. Wait for me, June. I’ll be right back.”
“You better not get hurt!”
He laughed, that deep, amused chuckle. “With all I have to look forward to? You think I’m crazy? I’ll be fine. And I’m so sorry. About tonight.”
“You owe me.”
“Big time,” he said. “Say goodbye, June. I have to go.”
“I can’t.”
“Okay. Keep a good thought.”
The line went dead.
June sat at her desk, holding the phone. Once again, nothing had been resolved. He moved in and out of her life so stealthily that sometimes she wondered if he was real.
There was a light rapping at her office door.
“Yes?”
John poked his head in. “We just had a call from Clinton Mull. He can’t find his father anywhere. When he ran out of the hospital room this morning, he took off and hasn’t been back since.”
Four
June was feeling a little sorry for herself, to tell the truth. Charlotte was still barely holding on a few days after her heart attack, with Elmer sitting a painful vigil at her side. June was unable to spend much time comforting her father or her nurse because the clinic was full of kids whose parents had waited till the last minute to get them school and sports’ physicals and catch up on immunizations. Clarence Mull hadn’t come home yet, leaving Jurea wringing her hands in that stoic but distraught manner of hers. And June hadn’t heard a word from Jim.
She’d dreamed about Jim the night before, a dream so real and voluptuous, she woke short of breath and with his scent on her. It took long moments for her to realize that it was only the pillow he’d used. That, combined with her longing, made the whole nocturnal event so real. Then she turned over and said a prayer that he’d be safe, and a second prayer that he’d still love her as passionately when this next assignment was past.
There was a definite bright spot in the chaos, and that was Susan, who kept things moving with such efficient pacing that they were able to keep up with the heavy load without imposing on Elmer for help. It was difficult to believe she’d never been an office nurse, impossible to imagine that in the past seven years she hadn’t worked as a nurse at all. She was assisting in OB-GYN exams, removing stitches, helping Jessie schedule appointments, taking patient histories, giving shots and, most importantly, keeping the doctors moving if they started to get behind. Although it felt like a sacrilege, June thought she was even more capable than Charlotte, and that was saying something.
She caught John in the clinic hall, between patients. “I don’t know how we managed before we had Susan in here,” she whispered to him.
“Now you know how I felt when I met her. She was a surgical nurse. My life was a mess and she straightened me right out.”
“At least you know how lucky you are.”
“And if I don’t, she’ll be happy to remind me,” he teased.
“Seriously, John, she’s a fantastic nurse. Do you think there’s any possibility she’d stay on? Full-time? With Sydney in first grade this
year…”
“Sorry, she’d never even consider it. Susan is completely devoted to being a full-time wife and mother.”
“That’s too bad,” June said with disappointment. “I mean, not too bad that she wants to be a full-time wife and mother, but too bad that she can’t squeeze one more career into her day. You know what I mean.”
“Sydney is already starting to complain, and she’s been in here less than a week.”
She was just about to ask him if he was complaining as well, but she was distracted by the sight of two teenage boys—twins—who were replicas of her first boyfriend. Tall for their fourteen years, lanky, freckled, with unruly, curling brown hair. They wore identical sulks typical of their age, and long baggy shorts that hung low on their skinny frames. It was like stepping into the past. They had to be Chris’s boys.
“Right this way, gentlemen,” Susan was commanding. She followed them into an examining room and closed the door. June shook her head with silent laughter. She considered what a handful those two must have been and felt a pang of momentary envy.
A few moments later she and Susan were exiting their examining rooms at the same time. Susan put two folders into the slot outside the door and said, “I’m giving the Forrest twins to John because he’s a male doctor and they’re at ‘that age,’ you know.”
“Good move. Physicals? For sports?”
“Football. And they’re behind on immunizations, like everyone else.”
“Football,” she said, perhaps wistfully. Of course. “Did their father bring them in?”
“No, actually. Birdie did. She’s in the waiting room. Would you like to see her?”
“No need,” June said, but she was thinking, Sooner or later we’re going to come face-to-face, Chris and I. She had no idea what to expect.
Tom went alone back into the woods of Shell Mountain, in Trinity County. He drove his Range Rover along an old, abandoned logging road, and he had second thoughts now that he had come this far. He should’ve called Jerry, the shrink. Or maybe his Veterans Administration counterpart, Charlie MacNeil. And it would have been appropriate to call in some law enforcement with jurisdiction, since he was beyond his territory. But he wasn’t here on legal business, he rationalized. He just wanted to talk to a friend.
When the Mulls first visited June months ago, it was because their sixteen-year-old, Clinton, had been stepped on by their jenny, and his foot had begun showing symptoms of gangrene. She had instructed them to go immediately to the hospital, lest Clinton die. But Clarence, who had suffered from paranoia and delusions since the war, took the boy straight back home, to their little shanty in the woods. This was where Tom found him the first time, and where he suspected Clarence might have fled now.
But why was the question. Since they’d rescued him, Clarence had been doing great on antidepressant and psychotropic drugs. Things had been going well for the family. Added to that, there was the miracle of Jurea’s plastic surgery, an event no one could have predicted. Well, no one but June, he thought with a smile. Anyone who looked at Jurea’s morbid scars would have thought her condition hopeless. Why, when things were so good, would Clarence flee?
Tom parked the Range Rover out of sight of the shanty and went the rest of the way on foot. As it came into sight, it became clear Clarence was there. The jenny was back in the small, crudely fenced corral and smoke curled from the makeshift chimney. Relief was still a ways off, though. The first time Tom had approached this place, back when Clinton’s foot was injured and before Clarence was on medication, all that greeted him was a shotgun blast.
He stood behind a good-size tree. “Hey, Clarence!” he yelled.
It was a little while before there was any sign of life. The rag pulled back from the hole in the door that served as a glassless window. “What you want, Chief?”
He sounded sane. But then…
“I was just wondering where you went off to,” Tom yelled. “Jurea…she’s worried.”
“She’d know where to find me,” he yelled back.
True. It was Jurea who’d mentioned the house in the forest about the same time the idea had popped into Tom’s head. She couldn’t herself go after him; she was postsurgical. Plus, she didn’t drive. And she didn’t want the kids to go fetch him. She wanted him back, that was all.
“You gonna let me come in?” Tom wanted to know.
“What for?”
“Come on, Clarence! You know what for! We have to at least talk!”
There was no sound or movement for a long moment, then the door slowly creaked open. Tom took a deep breath as he walked toward the porch. He had his rifle, but it wasn’t at the ready. He was clearly at a disadvantage. If he shoots me, Tom thought, I’m going to be so pissed.
When he got inside the shanty, he found it unchanged from the last time he’d seen it. The lantern on the table was turned up to light the place, there were a couple of small, uncomfortable-looking cots, a table and two chairs, stacks and piles of books, newspapers, magazines and supplies. There was a crude stove with a corroded pipe that stretched through the roof, and a hanging blanket that served as a back door for the jenny to come in and out. The place had a faint smell of dung and wood smoke.
Clarence sat at the table, looking down.
“Lucky some squatter didn’t come in here and take over your place, Clarence. I didn’t realize you left it like it was.”
“Make your point and leave,” he said.
“Jesus, Clarence, when did you get so unfriendly? Last time we talked, we were like old friends. You upset about something?”
“That your point? That was hardly worth the drive, now, was it?”
Clarence still hadn’t raised his eyes and Tom really wanted a look at his pupils. Tom pulled out the other chair and took a seat opposite.
“Here’s my point, Clarence. Your wife just had a meaningful operation. She’s still a little under the weather, though she’s healthy enough. But weak as a kitten. The kids are looking after her, but everyone is put out that you took off like you did. They’d be grateful to know why, at least.”
Clarence didn’t take any time at all to answer. “It was a little too much for me.”
“What? The operation?”
“That, and everything else.”
“Being?”
“You know.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have troubled myself to drive up here.”
“Why did you then?”
“I thought I explained that! Jurea and the kids are upset that you ran off.”
“I just need some time to get used to the idea!”
“What idea?”
Clarence hit the table, causing the lantern to rock. “The idea that her face is gonna be all right!”
“Well, for God’s sake, Clarence…”
“What they gonna need me for? Jurea and the kids, they got everything they need now. They don’t need me.”
“Now, Clarence, that’s just plain ridiculous.”
Clarence looked into Tom’s eyes. “Is it?”
He was serious. It was ridiculous, but Clarence obviously felt this deeply. Tom tried to think of it from Clarence’s perspective. He’d been an isolated, dropout vet when he stumbled upon Jurea’s family. There she was, a fragile young woman whose parents and brothers had kept hidden because they found her hideous. Clarence took her, married her, built an insubstantial little place in the woods. He fed her from the woods, taught her to read, even delivered his own two babies, who he also schooled and fed and sheltered.
All the while, Clarence treated his own mental illness by staying hidden, isolated, paranoid and falsely safe in the dark and quiet of the forest. Medication had changed his life completely, changed the family’s existence totally. They came out of the woods into the town where they’d taken up residence in a small, rundown house that was like a palace to them. The kids proved well educated enough to go to public school and Clarence took up some janitorial jobs around town for rent and grocery money. Charlie Mac
Neil at the VA office had gotten Clarence involved in a group of vets suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“Are you taking your medicine, Clarence?” Tom asked.
“If it’s any of your business, yes.”
“Good. What do you want me to tell Jurea?”
He shrugged. “They’d be better off without me.”
“I’m not telling them that! That’s just plain cruel!”
“Well, ain’t it just the plain truth?”
“I don’t think so. I can see how you might think so, after all the years none of ’em could have survived the day without you to take care of them. Did it never occur to you that, in addition to depending on you, they love you?”
He didn’t answer, but had a look in his eyes that bespoke of tragedy and longing. So, he had never presumed on more than his family’s dependence, but if he were honest, Clarence would probably say he hoped they loved him. He was a sick old vet though, and his self-esteem wouldn’t allow for him to even ask.
“What should I tell them, Clarence? They want you home.”
“Tell them… Tell them after a while they won’t hardly notice I’m not there.”
Tom sighed deeply. “Clarence, you’re some load, you know that? I’m not telling them anything like that. It would scare ’em to death and break their hearts. And I know you don’t mean to hurt anyone. Do you?”
“’Course not.”
“Nor yourself?”
“’Course not.”
“Seems like you just need a little time to think about things. Seems like you might benefit from having someone come out and talk to you about things.”
“I’d sooner be left alone,” he said.
“So here’s what I’m going to do,” Tom said. “I’m going to tell Jurea and the kids that it was too much too fast and you’re taking a breather. You need some time to get adjusted.”