Julie shook her head adamantly. “I’ll never love anybody the way I loved Luke. I won’t risk being hurt again.”
“Love is always a risk. Just like Luke’s surgery.” Nancy smoothed Julie’s tangled hair. “Just before he went back to the hospital, the bone marrow donor program had found him a match.”
Julie gasped. “They did? Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he get the transplant?”
“Because even if the transplant had worked, the tumor wasn’t going away. He made the decision to risk the surgery and do the transplant afterward.”
“Are you saying that he knew he might not live through the operation from the start?”
“Yes.”
“But why?” The information tortured her.
“Because in his mind, the benefit outweighed the risks. With the tumor gone, the bone marrow transplant had a better chance of working.”
“But if he’d had the transplant first, maybe he’d still be alive. He took the risk for nothing.”
Nancy shook her head. “He told me that life is full of risks and that if a person doesn’t take them, life is very shallow. And he said to me, ‘Mom, dead is dead.’ Luke hated dying by degrees. He told me that he’d rather have dying over with all at once than have it happen bit by bit.”
Julie felt no consolation. “What am I going to do without him?”
“You’re going to live your life. You’re going to honor him by doing the things you would have done if he’d never gotten sick and died.”
“How can I?”
“The same as all of us—one day at a time.” Nancy put her arms around Julie and held her for a long time. Finally, she pulled away, saying, “I’ll let you know when my house sells. Please come see me before I move. And once I settle in L.A., I want you to visit me there. Please take care of yourself, Julie.”
When she was gone, Julie flopped wearily back against her pillow, going over the meaning of Nancy’s words in her mind. Luke had known he would probably die, but he had the surgery anyway. She saw his face, his thumbs-up, his broad, sunny smile as he disappeared behind the OR doors.
Her mother stepped forward, holding the food tray. She set it on Julie’s lap and picked up the bowl of soup, stirring it, until the aroma and warmth filled the air. “Listen to Nancy, Julie. She knows what she’s saying. Life is for the living.”
Julie felt an unbearable weight of sadness press against her chest, but her mother looked so expectant, Julie reached for the soup spoon.
“No,” her mother said softly. “Please, let me help you.”
Their gazes locked, and Julie saw a tenderness in the depths of her mother’s eyes that shook her. “All right,” Julie whispered.
Then her mother smiled, ladled soup into the spoon, and held it to Julie’s lips, feeding her slowly and expertly, as she hadn’t done since Julie was a tiny child.
It took Julie another three weeks to regain her strength and begin putting on lost pounds. She also began studying at home, attempting assignments, doing take-home tests. She began to talk to her friends again and decided to return to school the first of April.
Her return was bittersweet. Luke’s presence haunted the halls, and sometimes she could swear she saw his baseball cap bobbing through the crowds as they moved between classes. But kids were genuinely glad to see her, stopping her, talking to her, sharing memories of Luke with her. Her mother helped her tremendously with makeup work and arranged special tutoring for the classes Julie was too far behind in to catch up with on her own. She structured a summer tutorial program, so that even though Julie wouldn’t technically graduate with her class in June, she would at least be able to receive her diploma at the end of the summer.
One Saturday, Julie was reading on the back deck in a patch of sunlight, a blanket thrown over her lap, when her father rushed out the door. “Honey, quick! Come with me!”
Startled, she gawked at him. His eyes were glowing, his expression excited. “What’s happening?”
“I can’t tell you. I have to show you. Come on.”
“Dad, I really don’t want—”
He tugged her to her feet. “You have to come with me to the football stadium and see this with your own eyes. You’re not going to believe it, Julie. But you have to see it.”
26
Julie hadn’t thought about the new football stadium in many months. And she didn’t want to see it now, but her father was so excited, she couldn’t refuse him. At the stadium, he screeched to a halt, leaped from the car, and hurried to open her door. “You need to get up high,” he said, taking her hand. “Then you can see it better.”
Julie climbed the cement bleachers obediently, forcing herself not to think about all the times she’d come to the stadium with Luke.
When they were about a third of the way up, Julie had to stop and catch her breath. “Sorry,” she told her father. “I’m out of shape.”
“No problem. This is high enough anyway. Look.” He pointed down toward the field.
She turned and let her gaze follow his finger. A fine stubble of wild grass blanketed the rough, rutted field with green fuzz. But there was something else sprouting in the center of the field. Green stems, arranged in neat rows, were emerging from the caked earth. She squinted. “What’s growing?”
“Tulips.”
“Why would you plant tulips in the middle of your football field? You told me it had to be smoothed out and sodded.”
“I didn’t plant them.”
Slowly, the truth dawned on her. “Luke?”
“I’m sure of it,” her father said. “It’ll take a couple of weeks until they’re all up and blooming, but once they’re finished, I think you’ll see a pattern of some kind. Like a design he planned out.”
She remembered Luke’s words: “If it’s possible to send a message from heaven, I’ll get one to you.” Tears blurred her eyes. “But how? When?”
“Tulips have to be planted by October, or November at the latest, before the ground freezes, so I figure that’s when he must have done it.”
“Right after he went back on chemo.”
“Probably so.”
She clapped her hand across her mouth to stifle a sob. Her father pulled her into his arms. “Julie-girl, it’s all right. Go ahead and cry. He meant this for you, honey. He did this even though he knew he might not be here to share it with you.”
She imagined Luke arriving in the dark of night, digging holes in the hard ground, dropping each bulb into each hole, and covering it over so that no one could tell what he’d done. The bulbs had lain dormant beneath the snow all winter long until the gentle fingers of spring had awakened them. Like the thawing snow, she felt her grief begin to soften, her terrible pain begin to melt.
Every day afterward, Julie returned to the stadium, climbed the steps, and watched Luke’s testimony of tulips bloom in a rainbow of spring colors—red, yellow, purple, hot pink. The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, another in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you. Just as Luke had carved on the oak tree in her backyard the summer before.
Late one afternoon, while she waited for her father down on the field, a bulldozer roared to life and rolled through double gates at one of the end zones. “No!” Julie cried, bolting toward the big yellow machine.
Suddenly, her father emerged from one of the stadium tunnels and parked his large body squarely in front of the dozer. “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled up at the driver.
“Got a work order, buddy,” the driver shouted over the noise of the engine. “I need to level the field so the sod trucks can come in and get it planted tomorrow.”
“Daddy, don’t let him,” Julie begged.
“Not yet,” Bud Ellis told the dozer driver. “It’s not ready to be leveled yet.”
“But this work order—”
“I’m the football coach at this school, and I’ll take responsibility for changing your order.”
> The driver looked doubtful. “I don’t know …”
“Not today,” Julie said boldly.
“Okay. So when?”
“When the tulips finish blooming.”
“What?” The driver looked at her as if she were insane.
“You heard the lady,” Bud Ellis said. “When the tulips are gone.”
She left them arguing about it and walked out onto the field, where she knelt next to a row of colorful flowers and gently fingered the waxy petals.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Luke’s face, his playful grin, and she smiled back at him.
“So, you’re still sending me flowers,” she said to his image. “Do you think you can fix everything with flowers?”
In the hazy sunlight, his image nodded, gave her a thumbs-up, and faded away into the spring air.
Julie blinked, glanced around, and realized that she was standing by herself in the middle of a football field blooming with tulips. Luke was gone. But he was waiting for her somewhere. Somewhere, on the other side of all her tomorrows.
I’ll Be Seeing You
For Christy Brown,
a real winner
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:11)
One
“Give it a rest, Reba!” Carley Mattea said. Only her friend Reba Conroy could get excited about a new patient admitted to their floor. “We’re not Knoxville General’s social committee,” Carley added. She balanced on her crutches, flipped the gears on Reba’s electric wheelchair, and guided it backward toward Carley’s room. Her new friend was an incredible optimist. Carley couldn’t understand it.
“I heard his name’s Kyle Westin,” Reba reported. “I asked a nurse and she said he’s from Oak Ridge, like you. Maybe he even goes to the same high school. Wouldn’t that be a fabulous coincidence? You come to the hospital but end up making friends with a cool boy.”
“You’re all the new friends I want to make while I’m here, Reba.” Carley tried to smile sweetly. Reba was too much, talking about boys. A few days before, Carley had undergone surgery on her leg for a nasty break that had occurred the day after Christmas. An infection had landed her in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Carley wasn’t so sick that she was confined to bed, but she’d been bored stiff. Then Reba had rolled into her room and started a conversation. Now it seemed as if they’d known each other forever.
“I like making new friends,” Reba volunteered. “It’s fun.”
Carley had a totally different attitude about meeting new people. Actually, the only place she felt comfortable was in the hospital. People were used to kids with problems, so they didn’t stare at her as much. Sure, a broken leg was a common enough thing to see, but her face—that was a different matter.
Carley propped her crutches against a chair and struggled up onto her hospital bed, where she punched the TV remote control button. “Oak Ridge High School isn’t so small that I wouldn’t remember a guy named Kyle Westin, and I’ve never heard of him. Besides, I’m sure we’d never end up in the same crowd.”
“Would you please turn that dumb thing off? We have strategy to discuss.”
“Strategy?”
“Sure. Like how we can meet him … get to know him.”
Carley rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to meet him. He probably doesn’t want to meet anyone either.”
“He’s just been admitted. Give him a day or so. He’ll loosen up.”
“From the back he looks perfectly normal,” Carley said, turning up the volume with the remote control. “Believe me, Reba, normal guys aren’t interested in girls like me.”
The eighth floor of the giant hospital was reserved for adolescent patients with a variety of medical problems. With his face turned to the wall and his covers pulled up to his shoulders, there was no guessing what might be wrong with Kyle Westin.
Reba looked crestfallen, and Carley momentarily regretted dashing the fourteen-year-old girl’s good spirits. It’s for her own good, Carley told herself. Carley had learned early on that if she didn’t set her expectations too high, she didn’t get hurt. “Look, I didn’t mean to rain on your parade. I’m sure Kyle will become one of the ‘gang’ once he realizes that he’s a prisoner and there’s nothing he can do about it.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Unless, of course, he makes a rope out of his bedsheets and lowers himself out the window.”
Reba giggled. “You’re so funny.”
“Sure, a real comedienne,” Carley said without humor.
She liked Reba. The girl had been born with a type of spina bifida. She had a dwarflike appearance and used a wheelchair. But she had an effervescent personality and a sunny disposition. She had been hospitalized for corrective surgery to her abdominal area.
“Once Kyle gets to know you, Carley, I bet he’ll like you.”
“I told you, guys don’t like girls who look like me.” She almost used the word freak, but stopped herself.
“Maybe dumb, immature guys. My dad says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Reba, get a grip. In the years between twelve and twenty, guys don’t think with their brains. Or see with their eyes. They see through the eyes of all their friends. And of their friends’ friends.”
Reba laughed. “Well, maybe Kyle will be different. Maybe he’ll like you for who you are.”
“Sure … and if cows could fly, we’d all be wearing football helmets.”
Afternoon sunlight filtered through the large window of Carley’s room, which looked out on the expressways of the large city. Flecks of snow clung to the outside windowsill, and although it was the second week in January, faint smudges of the words Merry Christmas could still be seen on the inside of the glass.
Reba fiddled with the controls on her chair. “You’ve got to stop putting yourself down, Carley. Sure, your face is messed up, but at least you’re alive.”
“That’s what my mother tells me,” Carley said dryly. “It didn’t help when I was twelve. It doesn’t help now.”
A nurse stuck her head through the doorway. “There you are,” she said to Reba. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. It’s time for afternoon medications. Come on back to your room.”
Reba made a face. “Do I have to?”
“Yes, you have to.” The nurse stepped into the room and tugged at the wheelchair. “You can visit Carley later. Your doctor wants you on bed rest before your surgery.”
“Go on,” Carley told Reba. “I’ll come down to your room after they deliver dinner.”
When she was alone, Carley switched off the TV. She elevated the head of the bed until she was sitting upright, crammed the bed pillow against the small of her back, and sighed. She’d start physical therapy (PT) on her leg soon. The process would be painful, but she could endure it. No use having two parts of her body messed up. Yet it didn’t seem fair to her that they could fix her leg but not her face. They could never fix her face.
Carley’s phone rang. “Hey, Sis,” the voice on the line said. “Are you driving the doctors and nurses nuts yet?”
“I consider it my sacred duty.”
Janelle laughed. “Listen, Jon is driving me over tomorrow after school. I’ve got a ton of work from your teachers.”
Carley had an instant image of her pretty eighteen-year-old sister and her boyfriend dragging in boxes full of homework. Today was Wednesday. “Don’t they ever let up? I’m stuck in the hospital. Who has any energy to study?”
“Getting your leg healed and functioning again isn’t a round-the-clock process,” Janelle kidded. “I’m sure you can find an hour or two to hit the books. Oh, Mom said that she and Dad will be over Saturday morning to visit. Is there anything you want me to bring when Jon and I come?”
Carley was looking forward to seeing her family. Her home in Oak Ridge was sixty miles from the hospital. With the distance to the hospital and everybody’s work and school schedules, daily visits were hard to fit in. “Could you bring new batteries fo
r my cassette player? And some more of my Books on Tape. They help pass the time.”
“You should make friends while you’re there. Don’t clamp on that headset and ignore everybody.”
“I’m in the hospital. How many friends can I make in a place like this?”
“You never know.”
“Believe me, I know.”
Just as Janelle hung up, the supper trays arrived. After eating, Carley went down the hall to visit Reba, whose room was full of relatives. Carley ducked away before anyone could see her and stare or ask questions. She hobbled back to her room as quickly as she could on her crutches. She watched TV and finally drifted off to sleep.
Carley awoke sometime in the night from a bad dream and lay wide awake, staring up at the ceiling. She couldn’t recall the dream, only that it had left her heart pounding and her body damp with perspiration. She took slow, deep breaths to calm her heart but knew sleep wasn’t going to return anytime soon. She decided to walk down the hall to the nurses’ station at the far end. She was too antsy to stay in bed.
The corridor was quiet, and as usual for the night shift, it was dimly lit. She hopped out of her room and paused at the door to the room next to hers. It was the room of the boy Reba was so eager to meet, Kyle Westin. She wondered if he really was a hunk and where he went to school if he did live in Oak Ridge.
Carley didn’t know why she nudged open his door. She saw in the dim light that Kyle lay in the bed, still turned toward the wall. Carley wondered if he’d even moved since his check-in. Was he paralyzed? she wondered. The night-light, mounted on the wall at the head of his bed, was on.
She edged closer, the rubber tips of her crutches squeaking. She realized she had absolutely no right to be in his room, but she stopped beside his bed and leaned over, hoping to catch sight of his face. Unexpectedly he flipped to his back and cried out, “Who’s there? Who is it? What do you want?”
Carley was so startled, she dropped one crutch and attempted to hide her face with her open hand. She needn’t have bothered. In the soft light she saw that large gauze pads covered Kyle’s eyes. The pads were taped snugly to his temples and cheeks, and strips of gauze were wound around his forehead.