“Why are you crying?” he asked.
“Because I hurt for you.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“And I love you.”
He looked at her, surprised by the emotion, the ardor in her voice.
“I love you, too,” he said.
“No, Joe. I mean I love you,” she said. “Not just as a friend, which I know is how you mean it.”
He studied her face—the fine lines around her eyes, the freckle on her left nostril, the one lock of dark hair that never stayed in place above her ear. She was dear to him. But it was true that he had never thought of her as anything more than a very close friend.
“You know you’re very special to me, don’t you?” he asked, knowing those words were a weak response to her admission.
“Yes, I do. And I’ve watched you yearn for Janine,” she said. “It’s hurt me, because I wanted it to be me you were yearning for.”
“I’ve always been honest with you,” he said. “I mean, I never gave you reason to—”
“No, you’ve made it clear we were just friends. But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting more. Or from loving you.”
Joe shook his head. “I’m not even sure I know what love is anymore,” he said, frustrated.
“You do.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you showed it to me when my mom died,” she said. “You came over to be with me in the middle of the night. You skipped work and your golf game and dropped everything for me. You drove down to Florida with me, so I wouldn’t have to make the trip alone, and you worried about me when I didn’t eat. I felt very, truly…loved. So, I don’t believe you when you say you don’t know what love is. I think you are positively over-flowing with it, Joey. For Sophie. For Janine. And even for me.”
He thought back to the moment Paula had called him to tell him that her mother had died. He’d felt her pain across the phone line, felt it deep in his bones, deep enough that it had brought tears to his eyes. He would have done anything in his power to save her from that hurt.
“Come here, Paula,” he said, pulling her close to him again. He held her tightly, feeling himself fill with gratitude and admiration for her, and he wondered if she just might be right about him, after all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“We’re all so sorry about Sophie,” the nurse said when Joe checked in at the reception desk in Schaefer’s office Tuesday morning. She had red hair, the same shade as Sophie’s, and he couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Thanks,” he said. “And thanks for squeezing me in today.”
“No problem. I know Dr. Schaefer would want to extend his condolences to you in person.” She peered over her shoulder to look down a long hallway. “I can take you back right now,” she said. “The kids are getting their Herbalina IVs, and he’s in his office.”
He followed her through the waiting room door and down the hall, remembering the only other time he’d set foot in this office. He’d left yelling then, cursing this fool of a doctor for taking advantage of Janine and making a guinea pig out of Sophie. God, he’d been a pompous ass.
But Dr. Schaefer did not seem one to hold grudges. He stood up and reached across his desk to shake Joe’s hand, and the smile he wore was kind and sympathetic.
“Mr. Donohue,” he began. Motioning to one of the chairs in the room with his small, wiry hand. “Please, uh, have a seat.”
Joe took a seat on the other side of Schaefer’s broad walnut desk.
“I’m sorry about Sophie,” Schaefer said. “It’s an incredible tragedy. Just when she was getting well.”
Joe nodded. “And I know now that she was getting well.”
“Yes.” Schaefer nodded. “I spoke with Lucas. He called from the hospital and told me that you know everything.”
“I was…shocked,” Joe said. “I still am.”
“You understand the need to keep what you know to yourself, don’t you?” Schaefer looked worried.
“Yes, I do.” Joe shifted in his seat. He’d come to this meeting with several questions on his mind, questions that had kept him awake most of the night, and he was anxious to get to them. “Do you think Sophie would have been cured if she’d been able to continue with the…P.R.E.-5?” he asked.
“I’m not sure about cured.” Schaefer played with the silver fountain pen on his desk, rolling it an inch to the left, an inch to the right. “But I believe we could have gotten her disease under very good control. And I believe that Lucas was on to something, and if he’d only had the chance, he could have played around with his formula, or maybe with the way it was, uh, administered, and in time, he would have come up with both a cure for the kids and a way to make it work with adults. That’s where he was headed.”
“Well, he can still do that, right?” Joe asked. “You’re talking in the past tense.”
Schaefer shook his head. “Did he tell you how sick he is?”
“He needs frequent dialysis. An eventual transplant, I suppose?”
“They took him off the transplant list.”
“Why would they do that? Because he’s too sick?” He remembered that Sophie needed to be in otherwise good health before they would allow her to receive Janine’s kidney.
“No. He’s stabilizing. Physically, he’d be able to tolerate a transplant. But they took him off the list because he’s, uh, handled his treatment very irresponsibly of late. He’s missed dialysis treatments, he’s rushed through them. Taken too many risks with his life, when other candidates follow their treatment to the letter.”
“Why did he do that?”
Schaefer chuckled softly to himself, and Joe felt slightly mocked. “First, because he put so many hours into trying to find a cure for pediatric renal failure while pretending to be a gardener,” he said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “But more recently, because he’s put so many hours into trying to find your daughter.”
Joe felt chastened. “He should have taken care of himself first,” he said. “He won’t be much good to anyone else if he’s not able to do the research.”
Schaefer fingered the pen on his desk, and it was a moment before he spoke again. “Do you know what it’s like to put the needs of other people ahead of your own, Mr. Donohue?” he asked.
Joe narrowed his eyes at the verbal barb. “Yes, I do,” he said, his anger rising. “I was a good father to Sophie, damn it.”
“I don’t doubt that, and I’m sorry.” Schaefer looked suddenly contrite. “I’m stepping over the, uh, the line here,” he stammered. “It’s just that Lucas Trowell is a humanitarian who loved your daughter and your ex-wife, and who hasn’t allowed himself much happiness in his own life because he cares too much about everyone else. So, I’m impatient with any criticism of him right now. And I have the National Institutes of Health breathing down my neck because they’re hot to take the P.R.E.-5 study to a higher level, and—”
“Can you do it?” Joe asked, leaning forward in his chair. “I mean, do you understand enough about the…the formula or whatever to be able to manage the research without Lucas?”
Schaefer shook his head. “I understand the current formula,” he said. “I understand how it works. But I don’t have a clue about the theory behind it. I don’t know how to manipulate it…to, uh, tweak it, as Lucas would say. And I’m worried that Lucas will never be well enough to continue doing the research behind the scenes. So I’m in a bind, and you’re hearing my frustration.”
“I understand.” Joe stood up, still stinging a bit from the doctor’s attack on his character. He’d come to this meeting with a number of questions, but one primary purpose: to know if Schaefer could continue the study without Lucas’s help. Now he had the answer.
The red-haired nurse saw him walking down the hall after leaving Schaefer’s office.
“Mr. Donohue!” she said, rushing toward him. “I wanted to catch you before you left. A few of the kids are getting their IVs right now, and their parents wanted to
see you.”
“I don’t really have time.” Joe kept walking. He was not up to meeting a bunch of sick kids and their parents.
“Please. They begged me to bring you back to the Herbalina room.”
He made a show of looking at his watch, although there was nowhere he truly needed to be.
“Okay,” he said. “Just for a minute.”
She guided him down the hallway once again. The large room at the end of the hall reminded him a bit of a dialysis treatment room, but there were none of the cumbersome dialysis machines, only IV bags on poles, and four kids sitting in recliners. Three women and one man rose to their feet as he entered the room.
“Joe!” one of the women said, as though she knew him. She took his hand, squeezing it between both of hers. “We feel so terrible.”
“Sophie was such a delight,” another woman said. “We all miss her so much.”
“She was doing so well on Herbalina,” the first woman said. “It’s so unfair.”
The man shook Joe’s hand. “I’m Jack’s dad,” he said, nodding toward the small boy in the recliner. “We got to be sort of a family here. I know you didn’t think much of the study, from what Janine said, but I hope you realize now that she was making the right choice for Sophie.”
Joe nodded. “I know.”
“That was Sophie’s chair.” One of the women pointed to the recliner nearest the window. A few stuffed animals were propped up against the back of the seat. “All the kids brought stuffed animals in, you know, for Sophie when she came back. I guess we’ll eventually donate them to the hospital or something, but for now we like having them there as a reminder of her.”
Joe could only nod again; he seemed to have lost his voice. He could picture Sophie in that chair, hooked up to an IV the way these other kids were, bravely enduring yet another affront to her fragile and unreliable body.
He looked around him at the three boys and one girl. A couple of the boys smiled at him. Another read a magazine, while the little girl colored in a coloring book. Joe knew they were all smaller than their ages would suggest, but they had rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes.
And thanks to Lucas Trowell, they had every reason to hope.
CHAPTER FORTY
Joe needed to be alone.
After leaving Schaefer’s office, he drove directly home. Downstairs in his family room, he mixed himself a drink, even though it was still early in the day and he was not much of a drinker. Right now, though, he felt the need.
The stack of videos Janine had given him was on the coffee table, and he picked one up at random and inserted it into the VCR, then slouched down on the sofa and hit the play button on the remote. The image on the television was of a clinical-looking room, the walls lined with recliners, and it took him only a moment to recognize the setting as the room he had visited an hour earlier: Schaefer’s Herbalina room. But in this film, the chairs were empty, the room still. Then, suddenly, he heard voices, and the camera moved in the direction of the long, empty hallway.
The red-haired nurse appeared in the hallway, leading Janine, Lucas and Sophie toward the Herbalina room. Janine held Sophie’s hand, and Lucas had one hand on Janine’s elbow. In his other hand, the one with the splint, he was carrying a plastic grocery bag.
“See the camera, Sophie?” the nurse said, pointing straight ahead of her. “You’re one of our first patients, so we’re making a little movie about you.”
The camera closed in on Sophie.
Sophie.
Oh, God. So tiny and pale. She looked puffy and sick; Joe had almost forgotten how sick she had looked before starting Herbalina. She was clutching Janine’s hand hard, and the frightened look in her huge eyes seemed to be asking, What new torture do I have to endure now?
“You don’t need to be afraid, Sophie.” Janine seemed well aware of her daughter’s trepidation. “You’re just visiting here today, and Gina will explain everything that they’ll do here. Then we can come back tomorrow for your first treatment.”
“And there will be other kids here then, right?” Lucas asked the nurse…as if he didn’t know.
“That’s right. There will be six other children here tomorrow. So you’ll all be able to talk and laugh together, and we can play some cartoons on that screen over there.”
The camera followed Sophie’s gaze to the large screen TV in the corner of the room, but the sight of it did nothing to alter her suspicious expression.
“Why don’t you pick out the chair you’d like to sit in tomorrow?” Gina suggested. “We’ll reserve it for you, then, and it can be your chair when you come every time.”
“How many times?” Sophie asked.
“Every Monday and Thursday,” Janine said. “Twice a week.”
“I don’t want to come here that much,” Sophie said. She was still holding Janine’s hand, clinging to her. “Please, Mom,” she begged.
“Sophie.” Lucas sat down on one of the recliners so that he was at her height. “They have something here called Herbalina,” he said, “and your mom and the doctor who works here think that it can help you feel much, much better. You wouldn’t need to have your dialysis nearly as much. You could probably go to school again, right?” Lucas looked at the nurse for confirmation, and Joe thought about how ludicrous that was. But Lucas was doing a good job of playing ignorant for the sake of the ruse.
“Yes, he’s right, Sophie,” Gina said. “We think Herbalina’s going to change your life. Now, which chair would you like?”
Sophie looked from chair to chair, then pointed to the one next to where Lucas was sitting.
“Hop on up,” Gina said, and Sophie reluctantly let go of Janine’s hand to climb into the huge chair. She looked so fragile, so heartbreakingly small and vulnerable in that big chair, that Joe had to pause the tape for a minute to bring his emotions under control.
“Now you will be able to either sit up like that or recline a bit, whichever makes you most comfortable,” Gina said, once Joe started the tape again. “Then I’ll put a little needle into the vein in your arm and—”
“No!” Sophie hugged her arm against her body.
“You’ve had needles like that before, honey,” Janine said. “You know they’re not that bad.”
“No,” Sophie repeated. “No more needles.”
“Herbalina is a liquid,” Gina said. “It looks like water. It comes in a plastic bag. In order to get it from the bag into your body, we need to put it through a tube and get it into your vein with a needle. It will only hurt for the tiniest of seconds.”
“Mommy…” Sophie reached for Janine, the helpless look on her face tearing at Joe’s heart. He felt for Janine, as well, knowing how much it hurt her to put Sophie through yet another form of torture. It must have been especially hard with Herbalina, when she was facing such an unknown treatment and outcome—plus the wrath of her parents and ex-husband.
“Sophie,” Lucas said, “I have something for you.”
Sophie turned to him. There was unabashed trust in her eyes, and Joe knew that Janine was not the only Donohue female to have fallen in love with the gardener.
Lucas reached into the grocery bag he was carrying and pulled out some sort of plant. He rested it on Sophie’s lap, and Joe leaned closer to the TV to try to get a better look at the green-and-peach-colored blossom. It looked like the seed pod from a tulip poplar, but he couldn’t be sure.
“What is it?” Sophie asked.
“This is a flower from the courage tree,” Lucas said, with some reverence in his voice. “It’s very special and very magical.”
“What kind of magic?”
“Well, if you put a flower from the courage tree beneath your pillow when you go to sleep at night, you wake up feeling brave in the morning.”
Joe waited for Sophie to scoff at Lucas’s claim. She was too smart for that, he thought. A born skeptic. She’d questioned the existence of Santa Claus at the age of four, and never bought into the tooth fairy.
But Sophi
e stroked the peach-and-green seed pod with her fingertips. “Does it really work?” she asked.
“It always works for me,” Lucas said. “Works like a charm, as a matter of fact. Will you try it tonight?”
Sophie looked at the seed pod again. “Okay,” she agreed.
“Hooray, Sophie!” Gina clapped her hands together.
“I’m so glad, honey,” Janine said.
Sophie offered the smallest possible grin she could manage, then wrinkled her nose. “Can I get out of this chair now?” she asked.
A few minutes later, Joe turned off the tape, but he remained seated on the sofa, staring at the dark television screen, still seeing the images there. He saw the love in Janine’s face for Lucas and the amazing strength she seemed to draw from him. He saw Lucas’s ploy to get Sophie to take the medicine he had created, that he knew would make her well. Medicine that could make any number of children well.
He’d blamed Sophie’s illness on Janine. He’d blamed it on her selfish enlistment in the reserves, her tour of duty in the Gulf War. He’d never for a moment thought that he might be to blame—that something in his genes might have caused her to be sick, that something in his stubborn, self-righteous nature might have interfered with her getting well. He owed Janine. He owed her much more than a simple apology.
Getting up from the sofa, he walked upstairs and out the front door. He turned in the direction of the trail that ran through the woods surrounding the town homes. He knew there were tulip poplars along that trail. He needed to find a courage tree of his own.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
It had rained during the night, and there were puddles of rainwater in both the bedroom and the living room. Zoe tore one of her many sheets into rags, and she and Marti spent most of the morning plugging the leaks in the ceiling of the living room. They would have to do the bedroom later; Sophie was still sleeping.
They’d worked in silence, taking turns balancing on the wobbly chair to reach the cracks between the boards of the ceiling. Marti was still angry over the night before, when Zoe had built a fire to cook the fish. Sophie, although admitting to not generally liking the taste of fish, devoured two of the flaky fillets, but Marti had stalked off into the woods with a can of cold ravioli. She’d returned hours later, after the sun had gone down. Still sulking, she had sat in the living room in the dark, flicking her lighter on and off, while Zoe read in the bedroom. Pretended to read, actually. She could hear the sound of Marti’s cigarette lighter, and with each flick, her fear for her daughter intensified.