A machine next to the bed gave off a steady beep, beep, beep, and I watched the raggedy rhythm of her heart on the little screen and found it reassuring. It meant I didn’t have to watch the shallow rise and fall of her chest to make sure she was still breathing. I focused all my energies on giving the Padre’s Lord God Almighty, reportedly in Heaven, a piece of my agitated mind. Maybe we all had to die sometime, I told Him, but please not Bessie, and not at Christmas, not after everything else that had happened. If He took her now, He could take His stingy, stonehearted love and shove it for all time. A kid can only take so much.
Fred was off having a conference with Henry and the other doctors about Bessie. She was out of the woods for now, but Dr. Miller, who had set my broken arm, said we’d have to wait a while to be sure she’d stay that way. I liked Dr. Miller. She listened to me like I was a grown-up.
“You’re Dr. Royster’s daughter?” she asked while she wrapped my arm.
“Niece,” I told her.
“There’s certainly a resemblance. I don’t know what we’d do without his help every week at the free clinic.”
She told me Bessie would surely have died if Wil hadn’t found her when he did. “All of you got her here just in time,” she said. “Your friend Wil is a hero.”
Bessie shifted under the covers, and her eyes opened, bright as ever. “Baby, what are you doing here?” she asked, real soft.
I could hardly hear her through the little mask. I leaned in closer.
“Henry said to come get him if you woke up. Want me to?”
She shook her head. “Not just yet. Remind me how I got here so I don’t sound like an old fool.”
I told her what I knew. How after she’d got it in her mind to take a midnight walk, Wil had found her in the woods and tried to carry her to get help. How Hargrove had stood up to his daddy, and how I’d had to jump off some boulders onto the mayor’s head. The mayor was okay, more or less, I said, but I wouldn’t want to be Hargrove after what had happened with his daddy.
“I wish I’d been awake when everything happened,” Bessie whispered.
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “I’m putting it all in my memoir.”
“I want somebody pretty to play me in the movie,” she said. “Where’s the boy now?”
“Gone. Nobody knows where. He ran off after his deer in all the confusion.”
“Good for them.” She caught sight of the cast on my left arm.
“I broke it when I jumped. It doesn’t hurt much, though.” I paused, wanting to say something else.
“Spit it out,” she said.
“Henry said you nearly died.”
She softly patted the mattress between us. “Come up here.”
I climbed carefully over the rail and lay on my side facing her, my back against the gate.
“You know what I’m going to remember most about today?” she said.
I shook my head.
“What I’m going to remember is the best day I’ve had in a long time.”
I thought it was a strange thing to say.
“The absolute best day,” she went on. “I busted out of my jail cell and actually walked beyond my own backyard, far beyond it! That may not sound like much to you, but honey, I was living! When I walked into those woods, the first thing I thought was how long I’d let Fred and everybody worry over my poor heart so much that it had about stopped beating. Not today.”
“But you didn’t make it to the cabin.”
“But I tried, didn’t I? I threw off my chains and tried. You taught me to do that. Taught me not to let anything or anybody keep me from doing what my spirit was made to do.”
She smiled a weak smile. When she turned her face full my way, I saw that the left side was stiffer than the right. Her eyes closed just a little. “From now on, nobody’s keeping me from doing what that spirit moves me to do. And right now, it’s moving me to lie here next to you and take a little nap.”
She fell asleep almost at once. I lay in the bed thinking about what she’d said. I thought about Henry, and the hard time Fred and the sheriff had given him about letting me do what I needed to do. I’d ignored him, disobeyed him outright, scared him half to death, kept the truth from him, and brought a stray cat, a wild boy, people with guns, and two of Mama’s loser friends into his life. Not that I thought I could’ve done any different. And still he’d left the reins loose and the barn door open.
I drifted off to sleep for a while, and when I woke, Henry was standing at the side of the bed, frowning over Bessie’s chart. He was wearing his surgeon clothes and was as clean as I’d ever seen him.
He looked so grim and serious that for a minute I was sure he was still furious with me. But when he saw I was awake, he set the chart on the bedside table, leaned over the side rail, and lifted me in his strong arms. He hugged me hard to him, the way you hold somebody when you feared you’d lose them and didn’t. I lay my head against his chest and breathed in his faint grease, turpentine, and metal-dust smell, the Henry smell that no amount of scrubbing ever washed away, the smell I was beginning to love.
Fred stayed
