All I'll Ever Need Read online

  Two doors down was Charlie Lambert, a manic-depressive who always stopped taking his hypertension medicine when he was up and overdosed when he was down. Next to Charlie lived the Smiths. Gladys Smith always brought her doctor oranges from Florida in January. On the corner was Jake Yoder’s place. He’d lost his wife to melanoma two years ago and came in almost monthly to have Dr. Jenkins look at a mole or two “just to be sure.” He always had dirt under his fingernails and a manicured lawn as a result. Jimmy saw Jake standing in the side yard by an azalea bed. Jake wasn’t wearing a hat, but hopefully was wearing his sunscreen.

  Jimmy drove with the window down and with classical music on the radio. Once he passed Community Chapel, he pulled over by the cemetery. There, he climbed the hill and weaved his way between the headstones, many bearing the names of patients he’d once loved and treated. But memories of old patients did not draw him to this place. He looked to the far corner of the field where the canvas awning of Lindsey’s Funeral Home had been erected over a freshly dug grave. He checked his watch. Thankfully, he was alone. Likely, mourners would gather later in the day for the ground to receive the dead.

  He was not there to gather with others to honor a common friend. Driven by his sorrow over a past secret, he stopped at a small stone bearing the name of his only child, a boy he’d not helped raise, and his mind drifted to the time of his son’s birth. Clay McCall was the first baby of twins, a fact that had taken both Dr. Jenkins and his clandestine lover by surprise.

  I deliver the head and suction the nose and mouth with a bulb syringe. The shoulders come next, and soon, I am holding the screaming infant, a boy, cradling him against my body. For a moment, I am frozen in thought. There is a special energy I feel, holding this infant, an unseen bond as real as anything I’ve seen with my eyes. I cannot describe it beyond that. I am warmed. And frightened. But I cannot reveal it.

  I look at my patient, no longer able or willing to avoid her searching eyes. I see her and I am speechless. We communicate without words, the way we did at our first meeting. She knows. I know. But there is no one else who will ever know the truth about this baby.

  Jimmy kept his secret for twenty-seven years before Claire McCall pried open his vow of silence when she investigated her own genetic past and solved the mystery of the Stoney Creek curse, a scourge of Huntington’s Disease that had long haunted the area. Since Clay’s death, the likelihood of Miriam learning the truth was small. But Jimmy couldn’t seem to escape the thought that his lie was a stone dropped into a pond. And the ripples had spread far and wide from his first cover-up to affect his whole pattern of communication. If his marriage to Miriam was to survive into their golden years, it would be because he decided to make some things right.

  He had been so naive, overconfident in his ability to keep himself from crossing a professional boundary. But Della was so beautiful. And so lonely.

  I watch as Della gently lays baby Margo in her crib and pushes a rebellious strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear.

  “Give her one-half teaspoon four times a day,” I say, handing her a pink bottle of aqueous penicillin.

  Our hands touch.

  Electricity.

  Our eyes meet.

  She smiles a perfect smile.

  She holds my gaze. I have a lump in my throat. “Don’t worry about your bill. I know things are tough without Wally.”

  “You shouldn’t. This is the fourth time.”

  I nod. “It’s okay, really.”

  Della kisses my cheek. “Wally’s been gone a long, long time.”

  He wiped the sweat from his eyes. It seemed odd. How was it after all these years that his sins were the things that were etched most deeply in his memory?

  “Dr. Jenkins?”

  He stumbled backwards at the sound of the voice and clutched his chest. He looked up to see a lean, well-muscled woman with gray-streaked black hair. He clutched his chest. “Nancy, you startled me.”

  Nancy Childress nodded. Her eyes were narrow and her long fingers seemed to be knotted in a tangle across her lower abdomen. She stood staring at him for a moment.

  He tried to discern her question. Was she wondering why he was standing by Clay’s grave?

  Her voice seemed frayed with fatigue. “I thought I might find you here.” She looked down. “I’ve been seeing you around town.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve seen you come here before and I wanted to catch you.”

  I’ve become boringly predictable too soon in retirement. “What is it, Nancy?”

  Her eyes bore in on his. “I want you to help Richard die.”

  Jimmy frowned but said nothing.

  Nancy Childress made a despairing gesture. “Dr. McCall only allows Richard to have a small prescription of pain pills at a time.”

  Dr. Jenkins shook his head. “I’m retired. There’s nothing I can do for you now.”

  The woman sighed. “Come and visit us. Then you’ll see.”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot. He’d never had such a request in all his years of practice in the Apple Valley.

  “He’s dying a slow miserable death. He just lingers day after day. He can’t take it anymore.”

  Jimmy looked at her, trying to see beyond her set, stubborn jaw. Or is it you who can’t take it anymore?

  “Please.”

  He took a deep breath. “You still live off Spring Creek Road?”

  She nodded. “Just after the Burner Towing Company.”

  “I know the place. I’ll visit after lunch.”

  Nancy looked into the distance beyond Jimmy. When she spoke again, her voice cracked. “I never dreamed it would come to this.”

  “What if I would bring Miriam? She has a practical wisdom about things. I’d like her perspective.” He hesitated as she continued to stare into the sky behind him. He found himself tempted to turn to follow her gaze, but he knew she was focused on something only she could sense: a slow pain that comes with months of fatiguing illness.

  She nodded again without speaking. She turned and walked away, the normal pleasantries of hello and good-bye having been brushed aside by the seriousness of her request.

  Jimmy watched her go and thought about how illness had crept in upon the Childress family uninvited, how it had slowly become everything in their life, defining their communication and every waking thought. He looked back at the headstone capping his secret past and resolved to make today a new start with Miriam.

  He traveled home, contemplating what to say to his wife. He may have excelled at communication with his patients, but silence had ruled the Jenkins’s home for the past few years. Sure they talked, the polite interchanges of strangers, but heart-to-heart communication faded from their lives soon after the lies began.

  He found her in their bathroom, behind a locked door. Miriam was always so private. The fan was running. He knocked softly at the door. “Miriam, I’m home.”

  He heard her sigh. A deep gasping breath, the sound of someone heart-weary of the charades. Perhaps Miriam had been doing some soul-searching of her own. She did not speak.

  “Look,” he said, leaning his forehead against the door and closing his eyes. “I know we haven’t really talked for a long time.” He paused. “I want things to be different. I want to start over.”

  He knocked again, softer. “Miriam?”

  He heard her sigh again.

  “I don’t blame you for being angry. I haven’t been the husband I should.”

  He waited a moment longer. “Won’t you come out so we can talk?” He sighed and tried the handle.

  He decided he could wait. He leaned against the wall, defeated by her silence. Miriam could be stubborn. Well, downright brick-wall unyielding. But Jimmy supposed that it wouldn’t be easy. He slid down the wall until he was seated on the carpet next to the door. If that’s the way she wanted to play this, he could talk to the door, make his confession just like he did growing up in the Catholic Church.

  Forgive me, Father, for I have sinne
d. Is that how I should start? Forgive me, Miriam.

  He leaned against the wall and let his hand fall to his side against the door. But as he drew his hand along the lower edge of the closed door, he startled. Something sharp had scratched his hand as he pulled it along the carpet. What? Something was sticking out from beneath the door.

  He squinted to see the tip of a finger, a long, red-painted nail that belonged to Miriam. He gasped and withdrew his finger. “Honey!” He reached out and touched it, then gave it a little tug. “Miriam!” He stood and shook the door. “Miriam, speak to me!”

  He rested his ear against the door. Her breathing was coarse and deep. “Miriam!”

  He shook the doorknob again, cursing.

  He ran to the front door and retrieved a key hanging on a small rack. Back at the bathroom, he unlocked the door and pushed it open against the weight of his wife’s body. She was sprawled on the floor wearing only a nightgown, facedown against the tile with her arms over her head and one hand extended to the undersurface of the door. Instinctively, he shifted his focus, doing a rapid assessment of her breathing and pulse. Respirations deep and gasping, pulse 120 and thready. Her pupils were wide, her gaze unfocused.

  He stumbled out of the bathroom to a phone on the nightstand. He dialed 911.

  “Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “It’s my wife,” he yelled. “She’s unconscious!”

  Chapter Three

  The afternoon came and went as Nancy and Richard Childress waited for Dr. Jenkins.

  “I don’t think he’s coming,” Richard said, his voice just above a whisper.

  Nancy rubbed a warm washcloth over her husband’s back and dipped it into a small basin. “Maybe I misjudged him.”

  With arms made strong by caring for him, she lifted him to get off his diaper.

  She turned her head away from the putrid smell of his diarrhea. When she looked back, she frowned. “There’s blood in it again.”

  “Careful,” he said as she pulled the diaper away.

  She wiped him with the cloth, wincing for him as she blotted the mucus away from his buttocks. A waitress by trade, she’d gotten her nursing skills the hard way, by cleaning and dressing her husband’s wounds as the colon cancer ravaged his body and robbed his strength.

  “There,” she said, attaching the sticky tape to secure a new diaper.

  “I hoped Dr. Jenkins might feel differently than Dr. McCall.”

  “Should I call him?”

  Richard shook his head.

  Nancy walked around to face him and touched his brow with her hand. The whites of his eyes were yellowing, a sign that the cancer was taking over his liver. “It’s time for Wheel of Fortune. Shall I turn it on?”

  Another shake of his head.

  “Do you feel like listening to a book? I can read another chapter of — ”

  He groaned, interrupting her question. “Just help me get back in my chair. It’s easier to nap there.”

  She nodded and assisted him to the recliner they’d positioned next to the bed. He was too weak to walk but could help bear weight to pivot into his chair. Once he was seated, she shifted his weight so that his buttocks were in the opening of an inflatable donut cushion.

  With that, Richard closed his eyes, and Nancy plodded to the front room, where she lifted a frayed curtain from the front window. Come on, Dr. Jenkins. You were my only hope.

  Claire finished work at the Stoney Creek Family Practice Clinic by six and groaned as she mailed a student loan payment that was two days overdue. Having finished medical school $120,000 in debt, she’d begun the slow process of digging out of her financial misery. Let’s see, at this rate, I’ ll have this loan paid off by the time I’m fifty-three . . . if Huntington’s doesn’t strike me before that.

  She punched the pound symbol followed by a “3” on her cell phone and smiled. At least I know John Cerelli doesn’t plan to marry me for my money.

  John answered after the first ring. “Hello.”

  “Hi, sweetie. I’m on my way to see Daddy. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  “Rehab is boring, Claire. Are you sure you can’t talk my orthopedic surgeon into letting me drive? I’m getting stir-crazy.”

  “You’re not roping me into that, cowboy.”

  She heard him sigh, then ask, his voice quiet, “And what about you? When you left on Sunday, you looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  She remembered the moment too clearly. She’d been trying to leave for fifteen minutes. John’s kisses had moved from good-bye to slow and dangerous. An eerie anxiety seized her. It was more than a prick of her conscience. This was a body memory, a dread she didn’t understand. She stiff-armed him and pulled away.

  “I’m okay, John, really. I think I put so much of my energy into making sure you were okay that I haven’t completely put the attack out of my mind.”

  “Della told me about the gun.”

  Claire hesitated. “It helps me sleep, that’s all. John, it’s not like I was really raped or anything. He didn’t even . . . well, you know.”

  “He attacked you in the night, in your own bed. He ripped your clothing. He — ”

  “Stop it.”

  Another heavy sigh. John wasn’t happy.

  Claire slowed to turn into the lane leading up the hill to Pleasant View Home. “I’ve invited Kyle and Margo to a cookout Sunday afternoon. I want you to have a chance to spend some time with my family.”

  “Sure.”

  She heard him tapping the phone with his fingers, a sure sign that he was irritated with her change of subject. “I’m at Wally’s place. I’ve gotta go.”

  “Sure.” The one-word answer of a frustrated male.

  She pulled her Beetle into the closest open parking spot. “Be patient, John. If it makes any difference, I’ll admit it. I know I need some help working through this whole attack thing. I just wanted it all to go away.” Her voice thickened. “I have the name of a counselor. I’ll call her tonight.”

  “That’s my Claire. You aren’t one to run from a fight. I love you.”

  She sniffed. “You too.”

  Claire hung up and took a deep breath. Dabbing her eyes, she studied herself in the rearview mirror. I’m going to bed early tonight. I just hope the dreams will stay away.

  Once inside, she inhaled the clinical deodorizer that typified the nursing home and walked the hallway to her father’s room. Even before entering, she could hear his legs whistling their way across the sheets. She watched him from the doorway, his little world framed by the padded railings on his bed. He was a man in constant motion, his arms, legs, and head in rebellion against the brain that once controlled them.

  She’d given up trying to embrace him. A kiss with Wally was a black eye waiting to happen. Instead, she stood back and tussled his hair. “Hi, Daddy.”

  His eyes seemed to flash recognition of her voice. He was concentration-camp thin, his constant movement now burning more calories than he was able to consume. A glass of thickened lemonade sat on a table by his bed. She turned a crank at the foot of the bed to elevate his head. “There. Want something to drink?”

  She didn’t expect an answer. Wally may decide to talk today, or next week. In the meantime, Claire would continue, talking as if he understood.

  She shoved the end of a straw into his mouth, carefully guarding the lemonade container from his hands. He slurped the thickened liquid, pausing several times when his swallowing muscles refused to obey.

  She kept her voice firm and steady. “John and I have picked a day for the wedding. How does the first Saturday in May sound?” She paused and sat down in a chair beside the bed. “I hope the weather will be warm enough. Spring is so unpredictable here, you know.”

  She crossed her legs. “John would like to get married tomorrow, but I told him to quit whining. Just like a man to rush through the most important time of my life, huh?

  “Work is about the same. I’m busier than ever. It
seemed like even that story in the paper about a rapist targeting my patients wasn’t enough to scare them away. I was hoping for a little breather.

  “John is doing so well with his rehab. He doesn’t really need his cane anymore. He just uses it for long walks.”

  Wally coughed, apparently choking on a little bit of lemonade that just made it to his throat. Claire wiped his mouth and frowned. “There. Feel better?”

  She sat back down. “Kyle and Margo are coming down to our place on Sunday. Won’t that be nice? I want John to get to know his future nieces. He and Kyle haven’t really hit it off, but I think it’s because they haven’t had a chance to talk.”

  As Claire rambled on, she had the sudden thought that talking to Wally felt like prayer, all one-sided, and her hand went to her mouth in dismay. Oh, God, I know prayer isn’t like that at all!

  She finally tired of telling him about the local happenings and sat quietly, paging through a Reader’s Digest that Della had left behind.

  When she stood to leave, her father spoke for the first time. “Cl – cl – claire.”

  “Yes, Daddy.” She touched his ashen face, which was wet with perspiration from his constant dance.

  The cadence of his speech was halted, as he struggled to control the uncontrollable relationship between his breathing and his voice box. The frustration often drove Wally to complete silence, or to aggression and anger at his inability to speak.

  Claire was prepared to have him repeat the words until she understood. If he was going to speak, she would be patient to help him communicate. But today, when the words finally tumbled out, it was as if he suddenly dislodged a boulder from its perch atop a hill, sending it down in one speeding event.

  He slurred, “I want to die.”

  That evening Kyle Stevens brought a bouquet to Margo and planted a noisy kiss on the foreheads of his three daughters, Kelly, Casey, and Kristen.

  Margo looked on from the kitchen as her gut tightened. Displays like this were too typical for her husband, a product of his struggle with self-esteem. It was a pattern she’d seen before. Early in their marriage Kyle spent lavishly on her to make up for their fights. Then, earlier this year, when he’d learned of Margo’s risk for the Huntington’s disease gene, he’d had a brief affair with a college coed. When Margo tested negative for the HD gene and Kyle wanted back in, she’d relented, partly because of their children, but also because she still loved the man who’d swept her away from her dysfunctional family. Predictably, a week after Kyle’s return, Margo found a new minivan in the driveway and a husband who seemed willing to give anything to buy her affection again.