Healing Waters Page 9

  “We get that.” Egan leaned over the lid of his computer and looked at Sonia, yet not quite at her. “And Sonia, we’re willing to hang in there with you until you’re back . . . in shape.”

  “That’s right.” A woman in large hoop earrings poured out her words like molasses. “Honey, we aren’t saying we’re not behind you, but the idea of going out now and speaking—this way—that’s not fair to you.”

  “Who ever promised fair? The only fair is where pigs win ribbons.” Sonia poured molasses back at her, giving fair more than its share of syllables. “This is not about me—this is about what people need, and they need to participate in this miracle of healing with me.”

  “Amen,” the redhead said.

  No one else joined her. Nor did anyone else appear to have the intestinal fortitude, as Chip always called it, to say what they were all thinking.

  Sonia drew herself up further. “So what you’re saying is that you won’t support me if I go out and speak like this.” She pointed to her face.

  “We’re saying you should wait,” Egan said.

  “And I’m saying God doesn’t want me to wait. I’m not afraid.”

  “Well, I’m afraid for you,” a queenly middle-aged woman said. Her hands shook as she pulled a large jeweled ring on and off her finger. “People don’t want to see you suffering, Sonia. They love you too much.”

  “And I’m here to tell you,” Egan said, “the ones who do come will be curiosity seekers just wanting to rubberneck.”

  Sonia stood up abruptly and rocked on her feet. I reached out a hand to steady her, but she knocked me away. I swayed off kilter, and my hip collided with the table. For an instant the attention shifted, en masse, from Sonia to me. We cut such a pathetic pair that I would have laughed, if the Middle-aged Queen had not curled her lip and Earrings hadn’t completely looked away.

  Sonia seemed to miss the whole thing. “You all disappoint me,” she said. “But I’m going to show some grace here.”

  She pulled her hands together at her chest, just inches beneath the chin that had slowly buried itself in scar tissue. “I will pray about this. We should all pray. And then we’ll come back together when I get back to Nashville.”

  I saw relief in Egan’s eyes. “Which will be in, what, two or three months?”

  “I plan to leave here within the week,” Sonia said.

  I caught my mouth before it fell open.

  Egan looked at me. “Do you agree?”

  “Lucia will be right there with me,” Sonia said.

  I froze.

  “You’re not serious.” Again Egan turned to me. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “I think it’s God,” Sonia said. “In fact, I know it is.” She twisted her torso around to look behind us and then leaned forward as if she were about to reveal a conspiracy. “They don’t get it here—what we’re about and what God is about. I can’t stay here with the Holy Spirit of healing being thwarted at every turn.”

  “You absolutely cannot.” That came from the redhead. She let a pair of too-green eyes fill with tears. “Let’s get you home where you can heal. Your next event is scheduled for when?”

  Egan gave her an exasperated look. “Roxanne, you’re not even on the board.”

  “She does more to promote this ministry than anyone who is,” Sonia said. “I want to hear what she has to say.”

  Roxanne dabbed at the corners of her eyes and shook her head. “No, I want to hear what Lucia has to say.”

  Egan let out a long, hissy breath. The Middle-aged Queen exchanged disgusted looks with Earrings. I jerked at the sweater, but it wouldn’t close me off any further.

  “Lucia is a medical professional,” Roxanne said, “and she cares about Sonia. If she thinks she’s ready to go home—if she thinks she’s already making miraculous progress—then we have to pay attention to that.”

  There was my chance to stop this whole ridiculous plan, to tell these people I thought they were heinous hypocrites, to get out from under my sister’s craziness and run back into myself.

  But with their eyes on me, barely concealing their contempt, I could feel the fat rolling at their feet. I couldn’t even open my mouth.

  “This is not Lucia’s decision,” Sonia said. “It’s mine—mine and God’s.” She swept the silk robe across the floor behind her as she turned to the door. “But Lucia will be with me. I hope I can count on the rest of you as well.”

  With one more awkward swish she made her exit, leaving behind mouths ready to share their horror as soon as she was out of earshot. I started after her, only to be blocked by the redhead.

  “You are just an angel from heaven,” she said in a voice intended only for us. “I’m Roxanne Clemm. It’s going to be up to you and me and Marnie to hold fast until the rest of those people understand what God is doing here.”

  I just gaped into her green eyes. I didn’t understand what God was doing, but I did understand what my sister was doing. She’d blindsided me. Made a decision for me in front of people who already thought I was inferior goods—where she knew I wouldn’t stand a chance against myself.

  “I think I better see about Sonia,” I said.

  “You are so devoted to her.”

  Devotion to my sister had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t going to let her do what she’d done to me before, over and over. I was going to her room to tell her I absolutely would not travel away from what little life I had left, to put hers back together.

  But I couldn’t go yet. I was shaking inside like the proverbial bowlful of jelly, and that was no state to be in when I confronted my sister. My only hope lay in the vending machines, with their selection of comforters and courage boosters I’d been depending on for weeks.

  I’d only purchased a Hershey bar when a scream penetrated straight through the walls. A scream that could only have come from a terrified six-year-old girl.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Personnel I’d never seen before erupted from back halls and storage closets. I burst through all of them, shoved someone aside to get to Sonia’s room, and plowed into Roxanne. She struggled, elbows flailing like an NBA forward, as she attempted to control the screaming mass in front of her.

  “Bethany,” she said between her teeth. “Listen to me. Honey, it’s all right.”

  How could there have been anything “all right” about the scarlet face and the pumping fists and the crazed eyes that looked as if they had finally seen the monster they’d imagined—and found it worse than anything they’d conjured up.

  “Bethany, stop!” Roxanne cried.

  “Uh—you need to get this child out of here, now,” someone else said.

  Other voices poked in: “What is going on?” “Other patients are getting upset.”

  Sonia’s voice rose from her chair above the others. “Lucia, can you do something?”

  The room was reduced to silence. Even the screaming little girl fell into soundless sobbing, though she still tried to wrestle herself out of Roxanne’s grasp. I felt all eyes on me as I leaned over and put my face close to hers.

  “You’re done here, aren’t you?” I said.

  She bobbed her head and looked up at me, although I knew she didn’t see me. Amid the blotches on her chubby cheeks, the blue eyes peered out from an abject fear that would erupt again if she dared open that shivering little mouth.

  I looked at Sonia, bent in the chair, hands outstretched but useless as she stared at her daughter. Real fear came through the holes in her mask.

  “Do you want me to take her out?” I mouthed.

  She barely nodded.

  “Come on,” I said to my niece. “Let’s find a better place.”

  I didn’t reach for the still rock-tight fist, but she followed me through the maze of bodies, still crying noiselessly except for the distressed huff of her breathing.

  I kept making turns until I reached an exterior door and pushed through it, releasing us into a blast of heat and light. I hadn’t seen the sun for days, a
nd I blinked as I waited for Bethany to creep through the door and join me. We were in a fountain courtyard where cherubs splashed happily, as if the world on the other side of that door were not inhabited by suffering humanity and the people who strove against the odds to take care of them. This little girl certainly shouldn’t be one of them.

  “How ’bout that seat over there?” I said, pointing to a park bench just out of spitting reach of the cherubs.

  She nodded, still hiccupping, and followed me once again. When I sat down, she hiked herself up, one bottom cheek at a time. She was something of a cherub herself. I hadn’t seen my niece since age two, at an event Sonia had done in Philadelphia in 2005. I’d never experienced my sister on stage before, and I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t connect with Bethany during the hour I did see her—an hour filled with offstage drama.

  We had dinner that night after Sonia’s evening address—my parents, Sonia, Bethany, Chip, and me. Sonia took one look at my newly expanded size and drew an immediate conclusion with her eyes.

  When Chip excused himself to go to the restroom between the salad and the main course, Sonia announced that she could see Chip had a drug problem and that in my heart I probably knew it too, which accounted for my gaining “so much weight.” Dad called her crazy, to which she replied that naturally he would defend Chip because he himself was an alcoholic. Dad vowed never to speak to her again. Mother fell into a black silence. I went home numb.

  There hadn’t been much opportunity to bond with my niece on that occasion.

  I swept my gaze over Bethany now as she sat, motionless as the concrete figures in the water that she gazed at. She had the Brocacini thick, dark hair, which hung in limp ropes down her back. The bangs stuck out over her brows like a Yorkshire terrier’s, as if someone had chopped them off when they noticed her round, blue eyes were being concealed.

  She wore a baggy beige T-shirt over beige-and-beiger leggings, whose narrow stripes widened at her calves and knees and were mercifully hidden above that. Pudgy heels peeked from creamcolored Crocs, which now hung motionless from the bench.

  We sat through a few more splashes from the fountain, and then she opened her little red bow of a mouth and said, “Can we stay for a while? I like it better here.”

  I forced myself not to smile at the Tennessee drawl, a miniature version of what I’d been hearing from the Southern contingent. Kin for can. Heah for here. Only she made it sound natural.

  “We absolutely can,” I said.

  Her body language didn’t change, and yet I felt some of the tension leave her. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a Hershey bar. I unwrapped it, broke it in two, and held out half.

  “Wanna share?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said—and snatched the candy out of my hand. She devoured it before I even bit into mine.

  “Chocolate makes things better,” I said.

  She didn’t answer. We sat some more and watched the cherubs play in all their stillness for a long time.

  Finally another thin woman, younger than everyone except Marnie, stepped out of the building. She had hair redder than Roxanne’s and skin so pale I could almost see the sun burning her as she came toward us.

  “Hi I’m Yvonne I’m the nanny I’m taking Bethany back to the hotel.”

  She said it all without punctuation, and without a glance at Bethany. I thought the child stopped breathing.

  I’m Lucia I’m the aunt and you aren’t taking her anywhere, I wanted to say. But Bethany slid off the bench and stood stiffly.

  “They said for me to take you to see the Liberty Bell or something,” Yvonne said to her.

  “It’s a little hot for that,” I said. “The lines will be long.”

  The nanny looked relieved. “Okay, then I guess it’s TV in the hotel. I know you won’t go in the pool.”

  Bethany’s head jerked up.

  “Okay, okay, forget I said that.” Yvonne jerked her own head toward the door. “We’ll go to McDonald’s and get a Happy Meal. How’s that?”

  “And then we’re going home?”

  It was the first hopeful sound I’d heard chirp from her mouth, and even at that it was more like a plea.

  “First thing tomorrow morning. You blew the surprise for your mom, so you’ll have to wait till she gets home to talk to her.”

  I wanted to slap her. Bethany just let out a long sigh and dutifully trailed Yvonne to the door. Once there, she stopped and looked back at me.

  “Are you ever coming to my house?” she said.

  Before I could answer, she dropped her chin to her chest and disappeared through the doorway with Nightmare Nanny. It was as if I were watching myself go.

  Bethany would not be absorbed into the compost heap in my chest. No amount of chocolate could erase the frightened cherub’s face that tore at me from the top of the pile. As soon as every scrap of Abundant Living had blown out, I marched into my sister’s room.

  Sonia sat straight up on the bed, eyes on the door as if she’d summoned me. Before I got two steps in, she had the floor.

  “They shouldn’t have brought her here,” she said.

  “Ya think?”

  She stretched up another inch. “I had no idea she was coming. I still don’t know who’s responsible, but I will see that—”

  “What difference does it make whose fault it is?” I planted my hands on the footboard. “Bethany needs—”

  “I know.” The in-charge edge softened. “She didn’t need to see this yet. But it’s you I’m concerned about.”

  I blinked at her as she tried to crane her neck toward me.

  “Will I, sorella?”

  “Will you what?”

  “Will I have you in Nashville?”

  I let go of the bed and crossed my arms.

  “Is that a no, you won’t come?” she said.

  “It’s a ‘gee, sis, you could have asked me first.’ ”

  Sonia had the gall to look surprised. “I thought we talked about it.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “Okay, that’s it.” She glared at the empty pill cup on the table. “No more pain medication. It’s messing with my brain. I really thought I’d spoken to you about it.” She let out a long breath. “Look, Lucia, you’ve held up better than anybody else, and they all went to a hotel at night. You haven’t even left the hospital.”

  I opened my mouth, but she went on as if she were on one of her platforms.

  “You can also tell me who I’ve talked to in the last twenty-four hours, in fifteen-minute increments—which my precious Marnie cannot do because she’s completely stressed-out.”

  She stopped to lick her lips. I didn’t go for the ice water.

  “Besides all that, I know you and Chip have things to work out.”

  I got still. She slanted her body forward.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed he’s not around here, supporting you—and that isn’t all because it’s too hard for him to be in a medical environment anymore.”

  “I didn’t come in here to talk about him,” I said.

  “He’s benefited from our recovery program, Lucia, and I know the two of you would do great with our Recapture Your Marriage course. I’d give you plenty of time to work on that together.”

  She groped for my hand with her gauzy one. I let it hang between us.

  “You’re saying bring Chip with me?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t ask you to leave your husband here.” She pulled the hand away and folded it across her chest. “I wanted you to come to Nashville with him in the first place, if you’ll recall.”

  “I thought he didn’t work for you anymore,” I said, voice stiff.

  “That was his choice. He can come back if he wants. Same salary. I’ll pay you both well.”

  Good. He could go back to working for Sonia and have his little thing with Marnie right under my nose.

  I jammed my hands into my pockets. Why was I even thinking like this? No way I’d go.

  “You
can work on other things too,” Sonia said. “I bet you haven’t even looked at the materials I sent you on weight loss.”

  My neck jerked. Faithless and Fat, wasn’t it? I’d gotten as far as the introduction that told me I needed to be delivered from the sin I literally wore on my body. The implication, barely buried between the lines: fat people don’t go to heaven.

  I’d forgotten which trash can I’d dropped it into.

  Sonia leaned further toward me. Her eyes, even trapped as they were, took on the condescending sag that made my hackles stand up.

  “You’re not working right now anyway,” she said, “and quite frankly, I think it’s time you trusted God to heal your grief so you can serve again. You have a gift for taking care of people that comes straight from Him, and you have an obligation to use it.”

  My stomach wadded up. “I’m not grieving.”

  “But you can’t bring yourself to go back into a hospital nursery, can you?”

  I snatched up the water pitcher from her tray table and hurtled myself toward the bathroom.

  “You obviously did something to calm Bethany down when you took her out of here.”

  I froze in the doorway.

  “You always loved her. She needs you.”

  My fingers cramped around the handle.

  “This is too much for a little girl,” she said.

  I turned back to the tray and slammed the pitcher onto it. “They brought her here to surprise you. Obviously nobody prepared her for the surprise she was in store for.”

  She caught my hand under hers this time. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. You really knew Bethany before I did. I think you’re the only one who can walk her through this.”

  Don’t. Don’t you even use this on me.

  “I know it’s asking a lot,” Sonia said, “but nobody can give her what she needs right now except you. This is God’s will.”

  Curse you, Sonia Cabot.

  “I’ve started a conversation with the admin office,” said a toocheerful voice in the doorway. “The social worker will be in tomorrow.”

  I had never before been happy to see Marnie. I half-ran to the restroom down the hall and hid in a stall. Not even bothering to sit down on the toilet, I pressed my forehead against the cold metal and imagined myself saying no to Sonia.