It didn’t happen all at once, like with Miss Justine. I didn’t find my husband in bed, lifeless. Instead, I received a phone call at the downtown office we’d leased for the drugstores after Miss Justine’s passing. The available thousand-square-foot space with exposed-brick-and-plaster walls and scarred, unpolished wood flooring had, at one time, been a candy- and ice-cream shop where children gathered after school, the younger ones with their parents, the older ones without. Miss Penelope’s had been an iconic Odenville site until Miss Penelope, an old spinster with a knack for bringing joy to everyone around her, passed on to her heavenly reward. Without heirs, the shop closed and remained that way until Westley had the idea to turn it into the office/storage space for the drugstores.
“We’ll add a few walls,” he suggested. “Make a boardroom where local groups can hold their meetings.”
“What kind of groups?” I asked as we walked through the dust-laden space.
He slipped his arm around my shoulder and drew me close. “You know, sweetheart. Book clubs. Women’s meetings. Men’s clubs. They can go across the street to Mama Jean’s, grab a cup of coffee and some donuts … whatever … and then come here. We’ll be the spot for this kind of thing.”
“But what will we get out of it? Do we charge?”
He squeezed my shoulder. “No, baby. We’re giving back to the community. That’s all.”
Westley had been right. What the good citizens of Odenville dubbed the drugstore office became the hub for club meetings, but it also offered me a chance to get to see how Westley’s work at the pharmacy had touched so many. Everyone loved Westley. Through the years, I’d become so enmeshed in raising Michelle—her schooling, her socializing—and my work at Miss Justine’s that I had failed to realize his influence on our small section of the world.
Now, I knew.
It was here, while a book club gathered in the boardroom early one afternoon as the summer’s heat gave way to autumn’s promise, that I sat at my desk, entering numbers into the computer as I had once entered into a ledger, that my phone rang and an anxious pharmacy tech told me to “come quick.”
And so, to the pharmacy I went. Just as I’d done that afternoon when I had a sore throat all those years ago. Only this time, I ran. Because, this time—unlike the day I followed Michelle’s dictate that her father needed me behind the house—this time, I understood. This time, I knew.
No, Westley wouldn’t dare leave the world in a snap. Instead, he lingered twelve days. Long hours upon hours where, every day, I sat by his bed where he lay comatose under a DNR sign. In a room where machines pumped and whirred, blinked numbers and codes, sending fluids in, drawing fluids out … keeping his heart beating and his lungs breathing. I stroked his arm, held his hand, worked his fingers when they curled inward as if in some wild attempt to hold on to a life that wanted him to let go. I spoke reassurances to him, telling him I knew he could beat this. That he had to stick around to see our grandchildren grow up and do all the great things we’d dreamed of. I reminded him how he’d planned to teach them to ski … and ride bikes—to enjoy life. I pressed into him the memory of how much we loved him—all of us—and that he had been the best husband I could have ever dreamed of having. The best father for Michelle …
Michelle, who had come down right away, leaving her work behind. Then, ten days after his heart attack, she and I made the godawful decision to end all life support. Michelle’s arm slid around my shoulder as my shaking hand scrawled my name on a solid line I barely could see … the final okay to bring our marriage to a close.
“It won’t happen right away,” his doctor told us. “Could be days. His heart is weak, but his lungs are still in good shape.” And then he left us.
“I have killed your father,” I whispered to Michelle when the door closed behind him.
“No,” she said, her voice choking. “You’ve merely allowed God to make the final decision.”
From then on, the only time I dared leave Westley, whether to get a cup of coffee or stretch my legs, was when Michelle insisted, saying she’d call immediately if anything changed. So, on those rare occasions, I kept my phone in my hand as I stepped down the now-familiar corridors, or entered the noisy cafeteria for coffee, and even as I sat in the tiny hospital chapel with its nondescript stained glass window and icons and books welcoming anyone of any faith to come in, to reflect, or pray.
Although I was able to sit quietly and draw strength from the words of those who had prayed there previously, I found saying my own impossible. Perhaps, I mused, their words lingered in this room of low lights and padded pews. Perhaps they rested on the heavy silver candlesticks or along the table near the front where a scattering of meditative books and pamphlets lay. Or, maybe, they skipped along the measures and bars of the almost imperceptible piped-in music. I don’t know; I only know that they were there, and it was upon a padded pew that I sat when the phone vibrated with a text message from Michelle. “Come quick,” it read.
I bounded up. Ran out. Dashed down hallways and up the staircase, not wanting to wait for the elevator. “Please, God,” I said over and over. “Please God …”
I cannot tell you, even now, what I was asking God for. Please don’t let my husband die ever?
