The Courage Tree

The positive results were merely a temporary reduction in symptoms, Sophie’s regular doctor and his colleagues had argued. Beneath the surface, the disease still raged. They claimed Schaefer offered false hope to the hopeless, but stopped just short of calling the small, wiry, soft-spoken doctor a charlatan. Janine could easily see the situation from their perspective. After all, the medical profession had been grappling with Sophie’s form of kidney disease for decades, searching for a way to turn the tide of its destruction. Then along comes some alternative medicine doctor, with his combination of tree bark and herbs, and he thinks he can do what no one else has been able to do: cure the incurable. Sophie’s regular doctor said Schaefer’s treatment was nothing more than a Band-Aid, and it terrified Janine that he might be right. She was just getting her daughter back. She could not bear to lose her again.

“Where are the other parents?” Janine looked behind her toward the parking lot entrance. It was nearly three.

“Oh, I think it’s just you and me. I’m going to drive a couple of the girls home. Gloria and Alison will take the rest, but we figured you’d probably be anxious to be with Sophie, so we didn’t think to ask if you wanted one of us to give her a ride.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t wait to see how she made out.”

“She looked so excited when she got into the van Friday evening,” Suzanne said.

“She was.” Janine was glad she was wearing sunglasses, because her eyes suddenly burned with tears. Her baby girl. How rare it was to have seen such unfettered joy in Sophie’s face rather than the usual lines of pain and fear. The sort of fear no child should have to endure.

“She’s so cute,” Suzanne said. “Where’d she get that red hair?”

“It’s a combination of mine and her dad’s, I guess,” she said, touching her hand to her own strawberry-blond hair. Joe’s hair was dark, his eyes blue, like Sophie’s.

“It’s her kidneys that are the problem, right?” Suzanne probed.

“Yes.” Janine didn’t mind the questions. The only time she was bothered by them was when they were asked in front of her daughter, as though Sophie were deaf and blind as well as very, very ill.

“Would a transplant help?”

“She already has one of mine.” Janine smiled ruefully. “Her body rejected it.” Joe had offered one of his, as well, but he was not a good match. And now, Sophie was beyond being helped by a transplant.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Suzanne said kindly. “She seems to handle everything very well, though. I was so surprised when I met her, because she’s so tiny. I thought she was about six. But then this eight-year-old voice comes out of her, with a ten-year-old vocabulary. It’s such a surprise.”

Janine smiled. “Kids with kidney disease tend to be small.”

“What a lot you must have been through with her,” Suzanne said. “And to think of how much I worry when Emily has the sniffles. I really admire you.”

Janine didn’t feel admirable. She was coping the only way a desperate mother could—searching for solutions, doing all she could to make Sophie’s time on earth as happy and carefree as possible…and crying only when she was alone at night.

“Emily told me you’re a helicopter pilot,” Suzanne said.

“Oh.” Janine was surprised. “I was, a long time ago. Before Sophie got sick.” She had learned to fly a helicopter in the army and had flown for an aircraft leasing company after getting out of the reserves. Was Sophie telling people she still flew? Maybe it embarrassed her that Janine had turned from an adventurous pilot into a stay-at-home mom. But with a chronically ill child, she could imagine no other course of action.

“Emily has a secret hope that, when the girls in the troop get a little older, you might give them flying lessons.”

She had thought of that herself, in those rare, optimistic moments when she could picture Sophie reaching her teenage years. “Maybe one day,” she said. “That would be fun.” She turned to look at the parking lot entrance again.

“You must worry about Sophie when she’s away,” Suzanne said suddenly, and Janine knew that the worry was evident in her eyes, or maybe in the way she was knotting and unknotting her hands.

“Well,” she said, “this is new to me. Sophie’s never been away from home without me or her father by her side.” She’d also never been so far from emergency care, which was why Joe had said the trip was out of the question. But Sophie had begged to go. There was so little she ever asked for, and so little Janine could do for her. She said yes, after getting permission from Dr. Schaefer, who even called Joe to assure him that Sophie would be fine, as long as she watched her fluid intake and was home for dialysis on Sunday night and back at Schaefer’s office for Herbalina on Monday. Joe, who lost his temper too easily and too often, had hung up on him.

Like Sophie’s regular doctors, Joe thought Schaefer’s study was a sham, and he had argued with Janine about making Sophie into a guinea pig. Although Janine and Joe had been divorced since Sophie was five, they usually were in agreement on how to handle their daughter’s treatment. This study had driven a wedge between them and was unraveling the already frayed edges of Janine’s relationship with her parents, as well. They hadn’t wanted Sophie to take part in such an unconventional treatment, either. It wasn’t like Janine to stand up to any disapproval from Joe or her parents, at least not in recent years. But Sophie was terminally ill. Even dialysis was failing her, and she’d been given mere months to live. There was little to lose.

“I don’t think you need to worry,” Suzanne said. “Gloria seems like a very caring and responsible leader.”

“I wonder about Alison, though,” Janine said. Alison was the younger of the two troop leaders. Only twenty-five and single, Alison had no children of her own. She’d been a volunteer leader in Sophie’s troop for the past two years, and all the girls loved her. She was fun-loving, comical and had a spirit of adventure that the girls adored and the parents feared. Alison had made a few errors in judgment over the past couple of years. Very minor. Nothing life-threatening. But then, she hadn’t had a child as frail and needy as Sophie under her care before.

“Oh, I think Alison’s super,” Suzanne said. “How many young women do you know who are childless themselves but still volunteer to work with kids? And the girls love her. She’s a good role model for them.”

Janine felt mildly chastened and wished she had thought before she’d spoken.

She was about to apologize, when she spotted a white van pulling into the parking lot.

“Is that them?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” Suzanne said.

The van was heading toward them, and Janine waved.

Stepping away from Suzanne’s station wagon, she wished she could make out the faces behind the van’s tinted windows. Patience, she told herself. If she charged the van, or God forbid, started crying when she saw Sophie, she would only embarrass her.

The van came to a stop next to the station wagon, and Gloria stepped out of the driver’s side, giving them a quick wave as she walked around the front of the car to slide open the side door. Five grimy, tired little Brownies began tumbling out. Suzanne stepped forward to give her daughter, Emily, a hug, and Janine looked past them, watching for a sixth girl to emerge. She walked toward the van, trying to see through the dark windows, but there appeared to be no movement inside.

“Janine,” Gloria said. “How come you’re still here?”

“I’m waiting for Sophie,” Janine said, confused. “Isn’t she with you?”

“Didn’t Alison get here yet?” Gloria asked.

Janine frowned. Alison? Gloria had let Sophie ride with Alison?

“No.” She tried to keep her voice calm. “I’ve been here since ten of. I haven’t seen her.”

“That’s strange,” Gloria said, reaching into the van to pull out one of the girls’ knapsacks. “Sophie and Holly wanted to ride with Alison,” she said, “and they had a good ten-minutes’ head start on us.”

Suzanne must have caught Janine’s look of panic. “Maybe Alison drove Sophie straight home?” she suggested.

“She knew she was supposed to come here first,” Gloria said, reaching for another knapsack.

“But maybe Sophie or Holly persuaded her to take them straight home,” Suzanne said.

Gloria shook her head. “She knew Janine would be waiting here for Sophie.”

Janine turned her head between the women as if following a Ping-Pong game. “I’ll call home,” she said, heading for her car. “I’ll see if they showed up there.”

Her hands shook as she opened her car door and reached inside for her cell phone. She dialed the number for the mansion, and her mother answered.

“I’m at Meadowlark Gardens, Mom, waiting for Sophie to get back, and I just wanted to check to see if her troop leader might have dropped her off there.”

“I haven’t seen her,” her mother said. “Could she be in the cottage?”

“Possibly.” Although if Sophie had been dropped off at the cottage and found that Janine wasn’t there, she probably would have walked up the driveway to the mansion. “Could you check, please?”

Janine heard some movement of the phone. “Frank?” her mother called, her voice obviously directed away from the receiver. Janine pictured her father sitting in the leather recliner in the Ayr Creek library, his favorite perch, either reading or working on his laptop. “Go over to the cottage and see if Sophie’s inside. She might have been dropped off there.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Janine said, once her mother was back on the phone.

“Why would they bring her home if they were supposed to meet you at Meadowlark Gardens?”

Janine tensed. Here we go, she thought. “There might have been a misunderstanding,” she said.

“Well, if they could get something as simple as that wrong, what else could they get wrong?”

“Mom, please.”

“She’s only eight years old, and a very fragile little girl,” her mother said. “I wouldn’t have sent you off to camp when you were eight, and you were healthy as a horse.”

It was true that her parents had never sent her to camp. She’d had to create her own adventures, and create them she did.

“I think this was a terrific experience for Sophie,” Janine said, although she’d argued about this with her mother and father and Joe so much over the past few weeks that she knew anything she said now was pointless.

Janine heard her father’s voice in the background, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“She’s not there,” her mother said into the phone.

“All right. Please call me on my cell phone if she shows up there instead of here, okay?”

“How late is she?”

“Not really late at all, Mom. I was just checking in case they took her home. I’ve got to go now.” She hung up and walked back to the van, where Gloria and Suzanne were talking. Emily leaned tiredly against her mother, and Janine felt a pang of envy witnessing the simple, uncomplicated warmth between them. She wanted Sophie here with her, now.

Gloria and Suzanne were looking toward the entrance to the parking lot. Janine followed their gaze, but there were few cars pulling into the lot this late in the day.

“What color is Alison’s car?” she asked.

“Blue Honda,” Gloria said. “Sophie’s not at home?”

Janine shook her head.

“They probably took a bathroom break,” Suzanne suggested.

“We had to take three of them,” Emily groaned. “Tiffany had to pee twice.”

“Shh,” said her mother.

Janine turned to look toward the far corner of the parking lot, searching for a blue Honda. Maybe Alison had her southeast and northeast confused, but this was the same spot from which the troop had taken off. Besides, she surely would have noticed the van by now.

“I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.” Gloria touched her arm. “They probably got stuck in a traffic jam.”

“You would have gotten stuck in it, too, then,” Janine said. “Does Alison have a cell phone with her?” Her voice sounded remarkably calm despite the fact that she was furious with Gloria for allowing Sophie to ride with the young troop leader.

“Yes, she does.” Gloria sounded relieved at that realization. “I have her number in the van. Hold on.” She walked quickly toward her van, stopping only a second to talk to her daughter.

“Sophie’s just fine,” Suzanne said in a reassuring voice.

Janine tried to nod, but her neck felt as if it were made of wood.

“She had a really good time, Mrs. Donohue,” Emily said, somehow picking up her mother’s cue that Janine was in desperate need of reassurance.

“What sorts of things did you do?” Janine tried to smile at Emily, one eye on the van where Gloria was making the call.

“We rode horses,” Emily said. “That was my favorite part.”

“Really?” Janine asked. “Did Sophie ride a horse?”

“Yup.” Emily told her some of the other things they’d done, but Janine was stuck on the image of her daughter astride a horse for the first time in her life.

Gloria moved the phone from her ear and started walking toward them.

“Did you reach her?” Janine asked.

“No answer,” Gloria said. “She probably has it turned off.”

Brilliant, Janine thought.

The other girls were getting grumpy. They slumped wearily against the van, begging to leave. Their cheeks were pink from the sun, their arms blotchy with mosquito bites.

“Be patient,” Gloria said to them. “As soon as Alison gets here, we can divide up and start for home.”

Gloria and Suzanne chatted calmly as they waited, but Janine could not follow, much less participate in, their conversation. Minutes passed, and her hand became slick with perspiration around the phone locked in her fist, while the world in the parking lot took on a dreamlike quality. Janine was only vaguely aware of the movement of the cars and the people and the tired Brownies, who now sprawled on the stretch of grass between the parking lot and Beulah Road. She glanced repeatedly at her watch as the minute hand made its steady fall toward three-thirty, and her mind raced with explanations for Alison’s tardiness. Maybe Sophie had gotten ill and they’d needed to stop. Or maybe they were simply caught in a traffic jam that Gloria had somehow circumvented. Or maybe Alison had decided to take them on some new, unplanned adventure. Janine wanted to ask Gloria what she had been thinking, putting Sophie in Alison’s car for the ride home. Did Alison have with her the three pages of instructions Janine had written outlining Sophie’s special needs? Did these women understand how sick Sophie was? She suddenly wondered if Joe had been right in not wanting Sophie go on this camping trip. Maybe it had been a foolish decision, after all. Thanks to Dr. Schaefer’s treatment, Sophie looked quite well right now. It would have been easy for the troop leaders to have forgotten how seriously ill she was.

Gloria tried several more times to reach Alison’s cell phone, without success, and at four o’clock, Janine could take it no longer.

“What’s Alison’s home phone number?” she asked Gloria. Her voice sounded curt, but she felt herself soften as she saw the look of concern in Gloria’s face.

Gloria knew the number by heart, and Janine dialed it on her own phone.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice answered.

Janine gripped the phone. “Alison?” she asked.

“No, this is Charlotte. Alison’s not here.”

“Are you her…housemate?”

“Yes.”

“I’m waiting for her at Meadowlark Gardens,” Janine said. “She’s supposed to be bringing my daughter and another girl back from West Virginia. Have you heard from her?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “I was wondering where she was, actually. She should have been home an hour ago. We’re supposed to go to Polyester’s tonight.”

Janine had no idea what Polyester’s was, nor did she care. “Look, if you hear from her, tell her to call this number immediately.” Janine gave the woman her number.

“You could call her, if you want,” Charlotte said. “I can give you the number for her cell.”

“We’ve tried calling her. She must be out of range.”

“I doubt that. She has the same phone plan I do. We’re never out of range.”

“Well, I guess she has it turned off, then.”

Charlotte laughed. “She never turns her phone off. She’s terrified of missing a call.”

Janine said goodbye, then hung up her phone. She looked toward the entrance of the parking lot, where a short line of cars was waiting to exit, and none were waiting to come in.

For whatever reason, Alison had turned her phone off now.

CHAPTER TWO

They waited until nearly four-thirty before calling Holly’s parents, and by that time the muscles in Janine’s face ached from trying not to cry. She wondered how another mother might react in a situation like this. The mother of a healthy child would take tardiness in stride. She wanted to behave like the typical mom of a typical child, but she’d had so little practice with that.

Gloria stood next to Janine as she placed the call to Holly’s parents, but it was apparent from her end of the conversation that they were not home.

“Are you Holly’s sister?” Gloria asked into the phone. “Will you have them give me a call as soon as they get home? It’s important…no, now don’t worry them. I’m sure everything’s fine.” Her voice was tight but upbeat. “Holly’s just a little late getting back from camp, and I wanted to let them know, that’s all.” She gave the girl her number, then hung up the phone and smiled at Janine.

“They have seven children,” she said. “Can you imagine?”

They could lose one and still have six left, Janine thought, although she knew such thinking was both irrational and callous.

“Holly falls smack in the middle,” Gloria continued.

Suzanne glanced over at Emily, lying on the lawn with the four other girls. “Em’s the middle child, too,” she said. “Though she doesn’t have that middle kid syndrome. Not yet, at least.”

“Jason has it, that’s for sure,” Gloria said, referring to her son. “Of course he’s stuck in the middle between two girls, so it’s not just the middle child syndrome he’s coping with.”

Janine had nothing to add to this conversation. How could Gloria and Suzanne stand there chatting about birth order when Sophie and Holly were over an hour and a half late? She stepped away from the two women and dialed Alison’s cell phone number again. Still no answer. She thought of what Alison’s housemate, Charlotte, had said about Alison never turning off her cell phone out of fear of missing a call. Had she had the phone glued to her ear on this trip? Might she have been concentrating on a conversation rather than on her driving and smashed into a tree? But then, wouldn’t Gloria have seen the accident, since she had been behind her? Maybe Alison had taken a different route. Then Gloria wouldn’t have been able to see the accident, and…

“Why don’t I take the girls home?” Suzanne interrupted her ruminating with a question to Gloria. “I’ve got the station wagon. I can fit them all in. Randi, too,” she said, referring to Gloria’s daughter.

Gloria looked at her watch, then nodded. “That would be great,” she said. “No sense in all of us waiting here.”

Suzanne gave Janine a quick, one-armed hug. “I’m sure everything’s fine,” she said. “This is just one of those crazy misunderstandings. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” Janine tried to smile.

She leaned against the van, watching Gloria and Suzanne help the girls load their gear into the station wagon. She supposed she should help, but felt unable to move from the side of the van, dazed by the sight of all those healthy brown arms and legs, as the girls climbed into the station wagon with their sleeping bags and knapsacks. From the other end of the parking lot came a cacophony of whistles and applause, and she turned to see a car drive out of the lot onto Beulah Road, streamers sailing in the air from the rear bumper. Her mind was so heavy with worry that it took her a moment to realize it was a bride and groom making their getaway.

Gloria came to stand next to her as they watched the station wagon pull out of the parking lot. She looked at her watch again.

“I think we should call the police,” she said. “We should make sure there haven’t been any accidents.”

“Yes,” Janine agreed. She thought they should have called the police an hour ago.

Again, she listened to Gloria make a call in that tight, even voice, describing the problem in terms Janine deemed far too mild. She wanted to grab the phone from Gloria’s hand to tell the dispatcher her view of the situation, but she kept her hands knotted firmly around her own phone.

“They’re sending someone over here to talk with us,” Gloria told her as she clicked off her phone. “Though I hope by the time they get here, we won’t need them.” She looked toward Beulah Road as if hoping to see the blue Honda.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Janine said. “The one time I let her go someplace alone, and now she’s…Who knows where she is?”

Gloria put a gentle arm around Janine’s shoulders. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she said. “And Sophie had the best time, Janine. I was so glad she was finally able to do something fun with the rest of the girls. I just can’t get over how well she seems.”

“I know,” Janine said. “But she still needs to be careful. To watch her fluid intake and her—”

“And her diet,” Gloria finished the sentence for her. “We were careful with her, Janine. We were vigilant. Although she knows what she’s supposed to do to take care of herself. She’s very sophisticated about her condition.”

“Yes, she is,” Janine admitted. “But it’s gotten more complicated because of the study she’s in. Her fluid needs are always changing.”

“She told me about Herbalina.”

“What did she say about it?” Janine asked, curious.

“That she hated getting it at first. The needle was painful and all. But she knows it’s made her feel so much better. And it’s given her more freedom at night from being hooked up to that machine.”

“It has.” She remembered how Sophie had cried the first time that fat needle had pierced her vein. The last couple of weeks or so, though, she’d been so brave, sticking her arm out for Dr. Schaefer’s attack. Janine owed that change to Lucas and his courage tree.

“Is it a cure?” Gloria asked. “Or just a treatment.”

Janine sighed. “Depends on who you ask,” she said. “The doctor in charge of the study believes it can ultimately cure her. But Sophie’s regular doctor thinks it just buys a little time, and not much of it at that.” She looked away from Gloria, toward the road, tears burning her eyes again.

Gloria squeezed her shoulders. “Even if that’s the case, at least she’s able to enjoy herself right now.”

“Exactly my thought,” Janine said. Although she knew she was lying. Deep inside, she could not settle for mere temporary relief for Sophie. She wanted Sophie to have the chance at a normal life, the same chance Gloria’s daughter had.

“She’s such a sensitive little girl,” Gloria commented. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds,” she added quickly. “It’s not like she’s overly sensitive to what people say to her, or anything like that. But she’s very sensitive to the needs of the other girls. Brianna was homesick that first night, and Sophie told her jokes to take her mind off it.”

“That’s my girl.” Janine smiled. Sophie would always talk about the other kids in the hospital with sympathy. She felt sorry for them for being sick, as though she didn’t recognize that she was one of them herself.

“She said she was worried about you,” Gloria said.

“About me?”

“That you’d be lonely without her over the weekend.”

Janine shook her head, pressing a fist to her mouth. “I don’t want her to worry about me,” she said. Yet she knew that Sophie always did. More than once, Janine had stood in a hospital corridor, peeking unnoticed into Sophie’s room. Sophie’s pale, freckled face would be contorted with pain and misery, but her features would shift instantly into a devil-may-care smile once she realized her mother could see her. What about right now? she wondered. Wherever Sophie was, she had to know that Janine was worried about her. And that would upset her. Sophie had always taken on too much responsibility for the feelings of others.