The Choice

  It was a Saturday afternoon, and Christine and Lisa were still playing on the tire swing that Travis had hung the week before. Because he wanted a long, slow arc for the girls—something different from the regular swing set—he’d cut a few of the low branches before securing the rope as high in the tree as possible. He’d spent an hour that morning pushing the swing and listening to his daughters squeal in delight; by the time he’d finished, the back of his shirt was slick with perspiration. And still the girls wanted more.

  “Let Daddy rest for a few minutes,” he’d wheezed. “Daddy’s tired. Why don’t you push each other for a while.”

  Their disappointment, etched so clearly on their faces and in the droop of their shoulders, lasted only moments. Soon they were squealing again. Travis watched them swing, his mouth curling into a slight smile. He loved the musical sound of their laughter, and it warmed his heart to see them playing so well together. He hoped they would always remain as close as they were now. He liked to believe that if he and Stephanie were any indication, they would grow even closer in later years. At least that was the hope. Hope, he’d learned, was sometimes all a person had, and in the past four months, he’d learned to embrace it.

  Since he’d made his choice, his life had gradually returned to a kind of normalcy. Or at least a semblance thereof. Along with Stephanie, he’d toured half a dozen nursing homes. Prior to those visits, his preconceptions of nursing homes were that they were all dimly lit, filthy places where confused, moaning patients wandered the halls in the middle of the night and were watched over by orderlies who bordered on the psychotic. None of which turned out to be true. At least, not in the places he and Stephanie visited.

  Instead, most were bright and airy, run by thoughtful, reflective middle-aged men or women in suits who went to great pains to prove their facilities were more hygienic than most homes and that the staff was courteous, caring, and professional. While Travis spent the tours wondering whether Gabby would be happy in a place like this or whether she’d be the youngest patient in the nursing home, Stephanie asked the hard questions. She asked about background checks for the staff and emergency procedures, she wondered aloud how quickly complaints were resolved, and as she strolled the halls, she made it obvious that she was well aware of every code and regulation that had been mandated by law. She offered hypothetical situations that might come to pass and asked how they’d be handled by the staff and director; she asked how many times Gabby would be turned in the course of a day, so as to prevent bedsores. At times, she struck Travis as being like a prosecutor trying to convict someone of a crime, and though she ruffled the feathers of a few directors, Travis was grateful for her vigilance. In his state of mind, he was barely able to function, but he was dimly aware that she was asking all the right questions.

  In the end, Gabby was transferred by ambulance to a nursing home run by a man named Elliot Harris, only a couple of blocks from the hospital. Harris had impressed not only Travis, but Stephanie as well, and Stephanie had filled out most of the paperwork in his office. She’d insinuated—true or not—that she knew people in the state legislature and ensured that Gabby was given a gracious private room that overlooked a courtyard. When Travis visited her, he rolled the bed toward the window and puffed up her pillows. He imagined that she enjoyed the sounds from the courtyard, where friends and families met, along with the sunlight. She’d said that to him once when he’d been flexing her legs. She’d also said that she understood his choice and that she was glad he’d made it. Or, more accurately, he’d imagined that she had.

  After placing her in the home and spending most of another week with her while they both got acclimated to her new environment, he’d gone back to work. He took Stephanie’s suggestion and began working until early afternoon four days a week; his father filled in after that. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed interaction with other people, and when he had lunch with his father, he found he was able to finish nearly all of his meal. Of course, working regularly meant he had to juggle his schedule with Gabby. After seeing the girls off to school, he went to the nursing home and spent an hour there; after work, he spent another hour with Gabby before the girls got home. On Fridays, he was there most of the day, and on weekends, he usually made it in for a few hours. That depended on the girls’ schedules, which was something Gabby would have insisted on. Sometimes on the weekends they wanted to join him, but most times they didn’t want to or didn’t have the time because of soccer games or parties or roller-skating. Somehow, without the choice of whether Gabby would live or die hovering over him, their growing distance didn’t bother Travis as much as it once had. His daughters were doing what they needed to do to heal and move on, just as he was. He’d lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives. And then, one afternoon nine weeks after she’d been admitted to the nursing home, the pigeon appeared at Gabby’s window.

  At first, Travis didn’t believe it. Truth be told, he wasn’t even positive it was the same bird. Who could tell? Gray and white and black with dark, beady eyes—and, okay, most of the time a pest—they all looked pretty much alike. And yet, staring at it . . . he knew it was the same bird. It had to be. It paced back and forth, showing no fear of Travis when he approached the glass, and it had a coo that sounded . . . familiar somehow. A million people could tell him he was crazy, and part of him would know they were right, but still . . .

  It was the same pigeon, no matter how crazy it sounded.

  He watched it in wonder, amazed, and the following day, he brought some Wonder Bread and scattered a few pieces on the sill. After that, he glanced at the window regularly, waiting for the pigeon to reappear, but it never did. In the days following its visit, he found himself depressed by its absence. Sometimes, in fanciful moments, he liked to think that it had simply come to check on them, to make sure Travis was still watching over Gabby. Either that, he told himself, or it came to tell him not to give up hope; that in the end, his choice had been correct.

  On the back porch, remembering that moment, he marveled that he could stare out at his happy daughters and experience so much of their joy himself. He barely recognized this sense of well-being, the feeling that all was right in the world. Had the appearance of the pigeon heralded the changes that took hold of their lives? He supposed it was only human to wonder about such things, and Travis figured that he’d be telling the rest of the story as long as he lived.

  What happened was this: It was midmorning, six days after the pigeon had reappeared, and Travis was working at the clinic. In one room was a sick cat; in another, a Doberman puppy needing shots. In the third room, Travis was suturing a mutt—half Labrador, half golden retriever—that had received a gash while crawling through barbed wire. He finished the final stitch, tied off the knot, and was about to tell the owner how to keep the gash from getting infected when an assistant entered the room without knocking. Travis turned in surprise at the interruption.

  “It’s Elliot Harris,” she said. “He needs to talk to you.”

  “Can you take a message?” Travis asked, glancing at the dog and its owner.

  “He said it can’t wait. It’s urgent.”

  Travis apologized to the client and told the assistant to finish up. He walked to his office and closed the door. On the phone was a flashing light signaling Harris on hold.

  Thinking back, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected to hear. He did feel, however, something ominous as he raised the receiver to his ear. It was the first—and the only—time Elliot Harris had ever called him at the office. He steadied himself, then pressed the button.

  “Travis Parker speaking,” he said into the phone.

  “Dr. Parker, it’s Elliot Harris,” the director said. His voice was calm and unreadable. “I think you should come down to the nursing home as quickly as you can.”

  In the short silence that followed, a million thoughts raced through Travis’s mind: that Gabby ha
d stopped breathing, that she’d taken a turn for the worse, that somehow all hope had been lost. In that instant, Travis gripped the phone as if trying to ward off whatever might come next.

  “Is Gabby okay?” he finally asked, the words sounding choked.

  There was another pause, probably only a second or two. A blink of an eye that was years in the making, is the way he described it now, but the two words that followed made him drop the phone.

  He was eerily calm as he left his office. At least, that’s what his assistants would tell him later: that in looking at him, he gave no clues as to what had happened. They said that they’d watched as he drifted past the front desk, oblivious to those who were watching him. Everyone, from the staff to the owners who’d brought their animals to the clinic, knew that Travis’s wife was in the nursing home. Madeline, who was eighteen and worked at the front desk, stared at him with wide eyes as he approached her. By that point, nearly everyone in the office knew that the nursing home had called. In small towns, news is nearly instantaneous.

  “Would you call my dad and tell him to come in?” Travis asked. “I have to go to the nursing home.”

  “Yes, of course,” Madeline answered. She hesitated. “Are you all right?”

  “Do you think you could drive me? I don’t think I should be behind the wheel right now.”

  “Sure,” she said, looking frightened. “Just let me make the call first, okay?”

  As she punched the number, Travis stood as if paralyzed. The waiting room was silent; even the animals, it seemed, knew something had happened. He heard Madeline speaking to his dad as if from a great distance; in fact, he was only dimly aware of where he was. It was only when Madeline hung up the phone and told him that his father would be right in that Travis seemed to recognize his surroundings. He saw the fear on Madeline’s face. Maybe because she was young and didn’t know better, she asked the question that everyone seemed to be thinking.

  “What happened?”

  Travis saw empathy and concern etched on their faces. Most of them had known him for years; some had known him since he was a child. A few, mostly the staff, knew Gabby well and, after the accident, they had gone through a period that almost resembled mourning. It wasn’t anyone’s business and yet it was, because his roots were here. Beaufort was their home, and looking around, he recognized everyone’s curiosity as something akin to familial love. Yet he didn’t know what to say to them. He’d pictured this day a thousand times, but now, however, everything was blank. He could hear himself breathing. If he concentrated hard enough, he believed that he would even be able to feel his heart beating in his chest; but his thoughts seemed too far away to grasp, let alone put into words. He wasn’t sure what to think. He wondered if he’d heard Harris correctly or if it had all been a dream; he wondered if he’d somehow misunderstood. In his mind, he replayed the conversation, hunting for hidden meanings, trying to grasp the reality behind the words, but try as he might, he couldn’t seem to focus long enough to even feel the emotion he was supposed to. Terror kept him from feeling anything at all. Later, he would describe the way he was feeling then as like being on a teeter-totter, with ultimate happiness on one end and ultimate loss on the other, while he was stuck in the middle, his legs on both sides, thinking that a single wrong move in either direction would send him tumbling off.

  In the clinic, he put his hand on the counter to steady himself. Madeline rounded the counter with her keys dangling. Travis looked around the waiting room, then at Madeline, then at the floor. When he raised his eyes, all he could do was mimic exactly what he’d heard on the phone only moments before.

  “She’s awake,” he finally said.

  Twelve minutes later, after thirty lane changes and three traffic lights that were definitely yellow and perhaps even red, Madeline brought Travis to a halt at the entrance to the nursing home. He hadn’t said a word since he’d been in the car, but he smiled his thanks as he pushed open the car door.

  The drive had done nothing to clear his mind. He hoped beyond hope and was excited beyond all measure; at the same time, he couldn’t shake the thought that somehow he’d misunderstood. Maybe she woke for an instant and was in a coma again; maybe someone had gotten the information wrong in the first place. Maybe Harris had been referring to some obscure medical condition that improved brain function, rather than the obvious. His head spun with alternating scenarios of hope and despair as he made his way toward the entrance.

  Elliot Harris was waiting for him and seemed far more in control than Travis imagined himself ever being again.

  “I’ve already called the physician and the neurologist, and they’re going to be here in a few minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you go up to her room?”

  “She’s okay, right?”

  Harris, a man Travis barely knew, put a hand on his shoulder, ushering him forward. “Go see her,” he said. “She’s been asking for you.”

  Someone held the door open for him—no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t even remember whether it had been a male or a female—and Travis entered the facility. A quick right led him to the stairs, and he bounded up them, becoming more wobbly the higher he got. On the second floor, he pulled open the door and saw both a nurse and an orderly waiting, as if expecting him. By their excited expressions, he assumed they must have seen him come in and wanted to tell him what was happening, but he didn’t stop, and they let him pass. As he took the next step, he felt as if his legs were about to give way. He leaned against the wall to steady himself for a moment, then took another step toward Gabby’s room.

  It was the second room on the left, and her door stood open. As he got closer, he heard the murmur of people talking. At the door, he hesitated, wishing he’d at least brushed his hair but knowing it didn’t matter. He stepped inside, and Gretchen’s face lit up.

  “I was at the hospital next to the doctor when he got the page, and I just had to come see. . . .”

  Travis barely heard her. Instead, all he could register was the sight of Gabby, his wife, propped up weakly on her hospital bed. She seemed disoriented, but her smile when she saw him told him everything he needed to know.

  “I know you two have a lot of catching up to do . . . ,” Gretchen went on in the background.

  “Gabby?” Travis finally whispered.

  “Travis,” she croaked. Her voice sounded different, scratchy and hoarse from disuse, but somehow, it was Gabby’s voice just the same. Travis moved slowly toward the bed, his eyes never leaving hers, unaware that Gretchen was already backing out, shutting the door behind her.

  “Gabby?” he repeated in near disbelief. In his dream, or what he thought was a dream, he watched as she moved her hand from the bed to her stomach, as if that took all the strength she had.

  He sat on the bed beside her.

  “Where were you?” she asked, the words slurry but nonetheless full of love, unmistakably full of life. Awake. “I didn’t know where you were.”

  “I’m here now,” Travis said, and at that he broke down, his sobs coming out in heaving bursts. He leaned toward Gabby, aching for her to hold him, and when he felt her hand on his back, he began to cry even harder. He wasn’t dreaming. Gabby was holding him; she knew who he was and how much she meant to him. It’s real, was all he could think, this time, it’s real. . . .

  With Travis unwilling to leave Gabby’s side, his dad covered for him at the clinic for the next few days. Only recently had he returned to something resembling a full-time schedule, and on weekends like this, with his daughters running and laughing in the yard and Gabby in the kitchen, he sometimes caught himself grasping for details of the past year. His memories of the days he spent in the hospital had a blurry, hazy quality to them, as if he’d been only slightly more conscious than Gabby.

  Gabby hadn’t emerged from her coma unscathed, of course. She had lost a great deal of weight, her muscles had atrophied, and a numbness persisted on most of her left side. It took days before she could stand upright without sup
port. The therapy was maddeningly slow; even now, she spent a couple of hours daily with the physical therapist, and in the beginning, she often grew frustrated that she could no longer do simple things she’d once taken for granted. She hated her gaunt appearance in the mirror and commented more than once that she looked as if she had aged fifteen years. In moments like those, Travis always told her she was beautiful, and he’d never been more sure of anything.

  Christine and Lisa took a bit of time to adjust. On the afternoon that Gabby woke up, Travis asked Elliot Harris to call his mother so she could pick up the girls from school. The family was reunited an hour later, but when they stepped into the room, neither Christine nor Lisa seemed to want to get close to their mother. Instead, they clung to Travis and offered monosyllabic answers to whatever Gabby asked. It took half an hour before Lisa finally crawled onto the bed alongside her mother. Christine didn’t open up until the following day, and even then she kept her feelings at bay, as if she were meeting Gabby for the first time. That night, after Gabby had been transferred back to the hospital and Travis brought the girls home, Christine asked whether “Mommy was really back, or if she’d go back to sleep again.” Though the physicians made it clear they were fairly certain she wouldn’t, they hadn’t ruled it out completely, at least for the time being. Christine’s fears reflected his own, and whenever he found Gabby sleeping or simply resting after a grueling round of therapy, Travis’s stomach would clench. His breathing would get shallow, and he’d nudge her gently, growing increasingly panicked that she wouldn’t open her eyes. And when she finally stirred, he couldn’t mask his relief and gratitude. While Gabby accepted his anxieties in the beginning—she admitted the thought scared her as well—it had begun to drive her crazy. Last week, with the moon high in the sky and crickets chirping, Travis began to stroke her arm as she lay beside him. Her eyes opened and she focused on the clock, noting it was a little after three in the morning. A moment later, she sat up in bed and glared at him.