8
That morning, Brooke was released to go home later that afternoon (after finally having a bowel movement—“It’s amazing the effect Dave has on my body!”) but would arrive to an empty house, as Leah and Jodie would head for Richmond after lunch, dropping Penni at the airport to fly back to Boston on their way out of town.
At their meeting in Brooke’s soon to be vacated hospital room, all three women offered to remain as long as needed to help Brooke get settled back into her house; but Brooke would hear nothing of it. “What do you think Dave’s for?” she asked rhetorically. “He’ll tend to my every need!” Then she winked suggestively and whispered, “And certain needs are best tended in private!” To that Leah smiled, Jodie shook her head, and Penni groaned “Mom!” But the statement had its intended result—all three women left the hospital and their recent lodgings confident that Brooke was safely on the mend, her near-term medical prognosis good, her spirits high. Leah promised to visit on her way back to Atlanta, Penni said she’d call every night till told to stop, and even Jodie offered to check-in at regular intervals. Everyone was near-giddy at the crisis just averted; and all colluded to avoid discussion of Brooke’s cancer prognosis, now that the experimental treatment had nearly killed her. There wasn’t anything new to say on this point anyway, as all prospective cancer treatments were on hold pending her body’s full recovery from the infection and termination of the antibiotic and antifungal regimen. Her next appointment with her oncologist would be late in the coming week.
As they rode to the airport with Leah driving, Jodie in the front passenger seat, and Penni in the back seat flanked by her two bags, their conversation focused on Brooke’s amazing recovery. Both Jodie and Penni were having trouble grasping just how close to death their mother had come. And Leah refused to dwell on the matter, saying only “it was touch and go for a day or two.” They all acknowledged that it was Brooke’s indomitable spirit that had saved her, that same spirit that could be so overbearing at times.
Penni asked, “Could you sense it even when she was unconscious, Aunt Leah?”
Leah had not considered that. By all external appearances, and apparently also according to the numbers documented on the screens and in the electronic charts, Brooke was as frail and vulnerable and helpless as anyone else would have been in her situation. Yet despite the apparent fragility and vulnerability of her critically ill sister, Leah had emerged from each of her overnights stronger than when she’d gone in—and apparently Brooke had too. Sure, the drugs did their work—the antifungal IV in particular—and so had the doctors and the heroic nurses. But none of those efforts would have mattered if the part of Brooke that made her Brooke had been missing. She would’ve succumbed. And how much of that grit and will had been transferred to her—in those overnights and over a lifetime? How much of that spirit resided now in these two sisters—by different fathers but of the same mother, of her will and determination? The world had always seen it in Penni, even if Penni secretly doubted it. But no one, not even the endlessly sympathetic and supportive Leah, had seen it in Jodie. But maybe, just maybe, Jodie had seen it in herself, glimpses of it when off on her own in hostile or indifferent environs, struggling to find her way, prosper or just survive. Leah caught Penni’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Now that you mention it, yes, I could feel it—not in any measurable form but like a spirit in the room.”
“A will to live,” Penni suggested.
“A love of being, I think,” Leah said, not quite sure what she meant.
“A silent guardian,” Jodie laughed.
“That’s it,” Leah said.
Penni only smiled. No one had mentioned Jodie’s blow-up or prolonged absence the night before. This was consistent with past such incidents throughout Jodie’s high school and college years. In her mind, she called it the Redmonds’ “see-no-evil syndrome.” But this time she—and, more importantly, Jodie—had Leah there. While sipping herbal tea in the kitchen that morning, she’d heard two sets of footsteps emerge from Jodie’s room—first Leah’s unfamiliar and nearly silent padding to her room at the end of the hall, then Jodie’s heavy-footed elephant thumps plodding to the hall bathroom. She was again briefly jealous of Jodie for having Leah’s devotion. But then she recalled that she had Randall, and realized she’d see him tonight. The thought produced a strange flutter in her stomach and other body parts—or was that the baby stirring? No matter the feeling’s origin—she had both, Randall and the baby growing. She could afford to be glad for her sister that she had Leah.
After dropping Penni off at the airport’s Departures terminal with an exchange of hugs at the crowded curb (during her hug, Jodie had pressed her mouth to Penni’s ear and whispered “Take care of that baby” to which the startled Penni could only reply “I will”), Leah directed the quiet smooth-riding sedan back onto the lightly travelled interstate for the four-hour drive to Richmond.
Not long into that drive, Jodie looked to Leah and asked, “All right if I zone out?” She held up a pair of white earbud headphones to indicate her version of zoning out. “I think I still have a bit of jetlag.”
They both well knew that Jodie’s fatigue had little to do with the time-zone shift, but Leah didn’t challenge the assertion. “Sure,” Leah said. “Get some rest.”
“You’ll be O.K. without someone to talk to?”
Leah laughed. “Jodie, I lived in a bubble of silence for over forty years, including while driving. I’ll zone out in my old way.”
“But keeping us on the road.”
“I promise.”
Jodie nodded, popped in her earbuds, and was asleep within five minutes. Glancing every now and then at her niece, Leah drove through the overcast afternoon feeling an unprecedented mix of contentment and purpose, both feelings emanating from the sleeping child at her side.