While My Sister Sleeps

Molly loved King Proteas, too. As exotic flowers went, they were gorgeous. But Snow Hill was only as good as its suppliers, and this supplier had sent bad flowers once, the wrong flowers another time, and no flowers at all the third time Snow Hill had placed an order. In each instance, clients had been disappointed. No, there were other exotics Liz Tocci could use.

But how stupid was it to be worried about Liz when Robin was comatose?

Unable to spend another second thinking, Molly set to ordering for the functions. But she wasn’t in a wedding mood. So she focused on Christmas. It was time to preorder. Last year, they had sold out of poinsettias and had to rush to restock at a premium cost. She wanted plenty at wholesale this year.

How many hundreds to order–three, four? Eight-inch pots, ten-inch, twelve-inch? And how many of each size to upgrade to ceramic pots?

She struggled with the decisions, but came up short. She was about as interested in poinsettias as she was in moving. Digging up her landlord Terrance Field’s phone number, she punched it in. ‘Hey, Mr Field,’ she said when the old man picked up, ‘it’s Molly Snow. How are you?’

‘Not bad,’ he replied warily. ‘What is it now, Molly?’

‘My sister’s had an accident. It’s pretty serious. This time I really do need an extension.’

‘You said that last time, too. When was that, a week ago?’

‘That was a problem with the moving company, Mr Field, and I did work it out. This is different.’ In the space of a breath, she realized that her argument was lame without the truth. ‘Robin had a heart attack.’

There was a pause, then a gently chiding, ‘Am I truly supposed to believe that?’

‘She collapsed while she was running. They say there’s brain damage. She’s in critical condition. Call Dickenson-May. They’ll verify it.’

After another pause came a sigh. ‘I’ll take your word for it, Molly, but I’m over a barrel here. You promised to be out Monday, and my contractor is starting Tuesday. I’ve paid him a hefty deposit to work quickly, because if the house isn’t ready for the estate agent to show by the first of November, selling will be difficult. I need that money.’

Molly knew his estate agent. She was an old family friend. ‘Dorie McKay will understand,’ she pleaded, ‘and she’s totally persuasive. She can work things out with the contractor. All I want is an extra week or two.’

But Terrance didn’t budge. ‘It isn’t the contractor, Molly. It’s me. First of December, my rent is tripling. The building is going condo. If I don’t sell in Hanover, I can’t buy here in Jupiter, and I can’t afford the triple rent.’

Molly might have begged–just one extra day? two extra days?–but one or two days wouldn’t make a difference, not with Robin breathing through that god-awful respirator.

Besides, it wasn’t like she couldn’t do the packing. Robin wouldn’t have done much anyway, and they did have a place to go. Molly just didn’t want to move. Despite all the natural beauty in the area, Snow Hill being the least of it, there was a special charm to the cottage. She loved driving down the lane and parking under the oak, loved walking in and smelling aged wood. The house made her feel good. It would be nice to stay a while longer, especially with Robin’s future in doubt.

One thing was for sure: Robin would be neither conducting a clinic that afternoon nor talking with sixth graders on Friday. Molly began with the Friday call, knowing that a Phys Ed teacher, who was less personally involved, would accept a cancellation more easily than a running group would. And she was right. When she explained that Robin was sick, the teacher was disappointed but understanding. The head of the running group was another story. Jenny Fiske knew Robin personally and was concerned.

When she asked what was wrong, Molly couldn’t get herself to blame the flu. ‘She had some trouble yesterday during a long run. They’re doing tests now.’

‘Is it her heel again?’

That would have been the recent bone spur incident. But a bone spur wouldn’t keep Robin from meeting with a running group. Robin adored meeting with running groups. She would have gone on crutches, if need be. No, for her to cancel out on a running group would take something serious. Molly tried to come up with a possibility. Pneumonia? Stomach cramps? Migraines? Lasting for weeks?

Finally she just said, ‘It’s something with her heart.’

‘Oh God, the enlarged heart thing. She was hoping it would go away.’

Molly paused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t think she meant to tell me, but we were together last year when the news reported autopsy results on a guy who died during the Olympic marathon trials. He had an enlarged heart. It was totally tragic. I mean, he was only twenty-eight. Robin was saying how scary it was, because she has the same thing.’

That was news to Molly. It would be news to her parents. But Robin told Kathryn everything. If she had known something like that and hidden it from her mother for the sake of glory, it would be awful!

‘Is that the problem?’ Jenny asked.

‘Uh…uh…’

‘Is she all right ?’

Oh, yes, her mother would have wanted her to say. But it was a lie, possibly compounded now by Robin’s lie. Angry at her sister, and at her mother, who reveled in the glory of parenting a world-class runner, Molly blurted out, ‘Actually, she’s not. She hasn’t regained consciousness.’

‘Omigod! Is she at Dickenson-May?’

‘Yes.’

‘In the ICU?’

Starting to worry, Molly backpedaled. ‘Yeah, but will you kind of…not tell people, Jenny? We don’t know where this is headed.’

5

Molly kept an eye out for Chris. The minute he returned to Snow Hill, she was in his office. ‘Did you hear anything last year about Robin having an enlarged heart?’

He shook his head. ‘Who says she did?’

‘Jenny Fiske. She implied Robin knew there was a problem and ignored it.’

‘You told her Robin had a heart problem?’ he asked.

Molly grew defensive. ‘I had to. And anyway, it’s ridiculous keeping this to ourselves when there are friends who really care.’

‘Mom will be furious.’

She threw a hand up. ‘Oh, well, what else is new? I can never say the right thing when it comes to Mom. Lately it’s Nick.’ She had met Nick Dukette two years earlier on the sidelines of one of Robin’s races. Nick had been there as a newspaper reporter, Molly as a fan, but they started talking and hadn’t stopped. Since then, he had briefly dated Robin, and though it hadn’t worked out, Molly and he remained friends. Kathryn had nothing good to say about the man. ‘She’s been after me for even meeting him for coffee. But I knew him first. So just because Robin breaks up with him, I have to stop being his friend? He is not an evil man.’

‘He’s media.’

‘He was media when he was dating Robin, and Mom wasn’t against him then. Wouldn’t Robin have spilled more inside information than I have, or is it just that Mom thinks I’m stupidly nave? What did I do to make her distrust me? By the way, Dad agrees with us about the EEG. If anyone can convince Mom to have it done, it’s him.’

‘Y’think?’

‘Definitely. She may be the leader, but he’s smart. He doesn’t have to raise his voice, and she listens.’

‘Exactly,’ Chris said with uncharacteristic feeling. ‘He’s a quiet force.’

Molly was feeling sensitive enough about her mother to take his sudden show of passion personally. ‘And I’m not? Is that what you’re saying? I’m sorry, but I can’t not express my feelings.’

‘Maybe the problem is how you do it. Maybe you should lower the volume.’

‘But that’s not me. You inherited quietness from Dad. I didn’t.’

‘Could you be married to a guy like him?’

Molly wasn’t thinking of marriage just then, but since he had asked, she answered. ‘In a minute. I’m like Mom. I need someone to calm me.’

‘Wouldn’t you find it boring? Dad comes home from work and doesn’t say much.’

‘But he’s always there.’ She had a sudden thought. ‘Do you think Mom and Dad knew about the enlarged heart and kept it secret?’

Chris snorted. ‘Go ask.’

Molly considered that for all of two seconds before saying, ‘I will.’ She wanted to be at the hospital anyway.

* * *

‘So Molly will box everything up and take care of the move,’ Kathryn told Robin. ‘It’s perfect that you two share a place. Molly’s a great backup person for when you’re away. And even now, she’ll keep your friends up on what’s happening until we get rid of this stupid tube-’ Catching a breath, she came out of her chair.

Charlie was quickly by her side.

‘Did you see that?’ Kathryn asked excitedly. ‘Her other hand. It moved.’

‘Are you sure? There’s a lot of tape on that hand.’

Kathryn’s heart raced. ‘Did you do that, Robin? If you did, I want you to do it again.’

She stared at the hand.

‘Come on, sweetie,’ she ordered. ‘I know it’s hard, but you’re used to hard stuff. Think what it’s like at that twenty-first mile when you hit the wall and feel dizzy and weak, and you’re sure you can’t finish. But you always do. You always manage to dredge up a little more strength.’ The respirator breathed in, breathed out, but not a finger moved. ‘Do it now, Robin,’ she begged. ‘Let me know you can hear me speak.’ She waited, then tried, ‘Think of the games you play. When you run, you imagine that long, smooth stride. Imagine it now, sweetie. Imagine the pleasure you get from moving.’

Nothing happened.

Brokenly, she whispered, ‘Am I missing it, Charlie?’

‘If you are, I am, too.’

Discouraged, she sank back into the chair and brought Robin’s hand to her mouth. Her fingers were limp and cool. ‘I know I saw something,’ she breathed against them, wanting only to keep them warm.

‘You’re exhausted,’ Charlie said.

She looked at him sharply. ‘Are you saying I imagined it? Maybe your problem is that you don’t want to see it as much as I do.’

There was a pause, then a quiet, ‘Low blow.’

Kathryn had known that the instant the words left her mouth. With his warm hazel eyes, shoulders that were broader in theory than fact, and a loyalty like none she had seen in any other person before or since, Charlie had been there for her from the start. The fact that she could accuse him of less showed how stressed she was.

Stressed? She wasn’t stressed. She was devastated. Seeing Robin like this was killing her, and that was even before she thought of the long-term meaning. This wasn’t just a setback. It was a catastrophe.

Charlie understood. She could see it on his face, but that didn’t excuse what she’d said. Slipping an arm around his waist, she buried her face in his chest. ‘I’m sorry. You did not deserve that.’

He cupped her head. ‘I can take it. But Molly can’t. She’s trying, Kath. None of us expected this.’ His hand lowered to massage her neck at just the spot where she needed it most.

Kathryn looked up, haunted. ‘Did I push Robin too far?’

He smiled sadly. ‘You didn’t have to push. She pushed herself.’

‘But I’ve always egged her on.’

‘Not egged. Encouraged.’

‘If I hadn’t, maybe she wouldn’t have pushed so hard.’

‘And never run a marathon in record time? Never traveled the country inspiring others? Never eyed the Olympics?’

He was right. Robin lived life to the fullest. But that knowledge didn’t ease Kathryn’s fear. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Ask for an EEG.’

Her panic shot up. ‘What if it shows no activity?’

‘What if it doesn’t?’

Charlie was the face of quiet confidence. Always. And she loved him for it. But this was too soon. ‘I can’t take the risk. Not yet.’

‘Okay,’ he said gently. ‘Then what about friends? They can’t get through to you, so they’re calling me. We need to tell them the truth.’

‘We don’t know the truth.’

He chided her with a sad smile. ‘You aren’t asking to have her transferred, which tells me that you accept the MRI results.’

How not to, when the pictures were so clear? ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘Let’s tell them there are irregularities. That’s the truth. We don’t have to tell them everything, do we? I can’t bear having the world think the worst.’

‘These are friends, Kath. They want to talk to you. They want to help.’

But Kathryn didn’t want sympathy. She wasn’t the type to talk for the sake of talking; she couldn’t bear the thought of giving progress reports to friend after friend, especially when there was no progress to report. And what were friends supposed to do?

No. No calls. Kathryn didn’t want people saying things that she wasn’t ready to hear. ‘I can’t talk with them yet. I just can’t. Handle this for me, Charlie?’

Molly struggled at the hospital. Showing no improvement at all, Robin lay pale and still, a cruel parody of the active person she had been, and Kathryn was appalled at mention of an enlarged heart. ‘Absolutely untrue,’ she declared. ‘Robin would have told me if she had a serious problem.’

Molly kept her voice low. She had never thought of her brother as being particularly insightful when it came to human nature, but she wasn’t doing real well herself. What better time to test his theory than with something as difficult as this? ‘You might have stopped her from running. What if she didn’t want that?’

‘Robin may be daring, but she isn’t stupid, and she certainly isn’t self-destructive. Why in the world would you believe a stranger over your sister?’

‘Because I can’t ask my sister,’ Molly said softly still. ‘I’m just trying to make sense of this, Mom. Did the doctors mention an enlarged heart?’

Confused, Kathryn looked at Charlie, who said, ‘Yes. We assumed it was something new.’

‘Did anyone in your family have an enlarged heart?’

Charlie shook his head and deferred to Kathryn, who said, ‘I have no idea. I never heard of anything, but doctors didn’t know as much in my parents’ or grandparents’ day. Besides, it’s the kind of thing a person wouldn’t know unless he had symptoms.’

‘Did Robin have symptoms?’

‘Molly. You’re assuming it’s true. Please. And why does it even matter? This is water over the dam. Robin had a heart attack. It’s a fait accompli.’

‘For her maybe, but what about for Chris and me? Shouldn’t we know whether we’re at risk?’ Realizing how selfish that sounded, she added, ‘If Robin knew she was at risk, she never should have run so hard. She never should have run alone.’

‘She always ran alone.’

‘Most runners train in groups. If she had a heart condition, shouldn’t she have made sure there were other people around just in case?’

‘You were supposed to be around.’

Molly might have argued, but her mother was right. Somberly, she said, ‘Yes. I’ll have to live with that. Always.’

Kathryn seemed taken aback by the admission, but only briefly. ‘Besides, there was someone else there.’ The Good Samaritan.

‘He didn’t have to come see us, Mom,’ Molly said, still cringing at her mother’s outburst. ‘That took courage.’

‘It was guilt. He wants to be absolved.’

‘He was concerned,’ Molly argued, deciding that Chris’s theory wasn’t worth beans. Loud voice, soft voice–she just couldn’t get through. ‘He wasn’t the one who put her here. If we’re talking cause and effect, what doctor would have let Robin run marathons if he knew she had this condition?’

‘Like a doctor could control what she did? Please, Molly. You were the first one defending doctors last night. Why the change?’

‘I don’t want my sister to die!’ Molly cried, eyes filling with tears because Robin was lying there, totally unresponsive. ‘When we were kids,’ she said brokenly, focusing on her sister, ‘I’d be on her bed, moving closer and closer, imagining that I would wake her up with just the power of my eyes, and she’d lie perfectly still until I got really close. Then she’d bolt up and scare me to death.’ She took a shaky breath and looked at her mother. ‘I’m sorry. I feel helpless. I want to know why this happened.’

‘Anger doesn’t help,’ Kathryn said quietly.

Neither does denial, Molly thought. ‘Can’t we do the EEG?’ she asked. ‘Just to know?’

But Kathryn was still hung up on the enlarged heart issue. ‘Robin wouldn’t lie to me about something as important as a heart condition. She shared everything with me.’

Let it pass, Molly told herself, but the remark was just too outrageous. ‘Did she tell you she got drunk with her friends the night after she ran Duluth?’

Kathryn stared. ‘Robin doesn’t drink.’

‘Robin does. I’ve driven her home afterward.’

‘And you let her drink?’ Kathryn asked, shifting the blame. ‘And why didn’t she tell me about Duluth?’

‘Because you’re her mother, and you hate drinking.’ Molly took pity because Kathryn looked truly distraught. ‘Oh Mom, I wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t been so adamant that Robin wouldn’t lie. Duluth was a blip. No harm came of it. I’m sure that if you’d asked her outright whether she’d ever been drunk, she’d have told you. But she didn’t want to disappoint you. She swore me to secrecy.’

‘You should have honored that.’

Molly hung her head. She couldn’t win. Discouraged, she looked at Kathryn again. ‘All I’m saying is that Robin didn’t tell you everything. She was human, like the rest of us.’

‘Was human? Past tense?’

Charlie held up a hand. At the same time, from the door came a gentle, ‘Excuse me?’ It was the nurse. ‘We have people gathering in the lounge down the hall. They say they’re Robin’s friends.’

Kathryn’s eyes went wide. ‘How do they know she’s here?’

‘I told Jenny Fiske,’ Molly said. Her mother was already angry; a little more couldn’t make it worse.

Kathryn sagged. ‘Oh, Molly.’

‘It’s okay,’ Charlie said. ‘Jenny’s a friend. Molly did what she felt was best.’

‘Robin would want Jenny to know,’ Molly tried. She was actually sure about this. ‘She’s always been right out there with her friends. I think she’d want Jenny here. And she’d want that EEG, too. She liked knowing the score–likes knowing the score, likes knowing what she’s up against. I mean, think of the way she studies the competition before every major race. She wants to psych it all out–who’ll run how on a given course, whether they’ll break early, how they’ll take hills, when they’ll fade. She’s a strategizer. But she can’t strategize for this race unless she knows what’s going on.’

When Kathryn continued to stare at her, Molly figured she had pushed as far as she could. And Jenny was in the lounge. The last thing Molly wanted was to have to be the one to talk with her. Plus she was worried about the nurse’s reference to friends, plural.

Feeling responsible, she set off to do damage control.

Kathryn wondered if Molly was right. Robin might want to know what she faced. The problem was that Kathryn didn’t. She wanted to see improvement first, which was why Molly’s spreading the word wasn’t good. ‘Why did she have to tell Jenny?’

Charlie drew up a chair. ‘Because we put her in an untenable position. How can she talk with a friend of Robin’s and not tell her Robin is sick? Really, Kath, there’s nothing wrong with what she’s done. What happened to Robin isn’t a disgrace. It’s a medical crisis. We could use people’s prayers.’

This time, Kathryn didn’t argue about prayers. She had begun saying a few herself. Doctors had been in and out all morning examining Robin, and they never actually denied Kathryn hope, simply gave her little to hold onto. Same with the respiratory therapist, who checked by every hour and refused to say whether he saw any change in Robin’s breathing. And the nurses? As compassionate as they were, repeatedly testing Robin’s responsiveness, they were cautious in answering Kathryn’s questions. Once too often she had been told that patients didn’t come back from the kind of brain damage Robin had suffered.

Charlie took her hand. ‘Molly’s right, y’know. Not knowing is the worst.’

Kathryn knew where he was headed. ‘You want the EEG.’

‘I don’t want any of this,’ he said in a burst so rare that it carried more weight. ‘But we can’t go back,’ he added sadly. ‘The Robin we knew is gone.’

Kathryn’s eyes teared as she looked at her daughter again. Robin had been an active infant, an energetic toddler, an irrepressible child. ‘I can’t accept that,’ she whispered.

‘You may have to. Think of Robin. How can we know what to do for her if we don’t know the extent of the damage?’

It was a variation of Molly’s argument. And it did hold some merit.

‘You love Robin to bits,’ Charlie went on. ‘You always have. No one would question that.’

‘I wanted so much for her.’

‘She’s had so much,’ he urged. ‘She’s lived more in her thirty-two years than many people ever do, and you were the force behind it.’

‘I’m all she has.’

‘No. She has me. She has Molly and Chris. She has more friends than any of us. And we love her. Yes, Molly too. Molly’s had to live in her shadow, not always a fun place to be, but she does adore her sister. She covers for Robin a lot.’

‘Do you believe her about Duluth?’ Kathryn asked in a moment’s doubt.

‘How can I not? You set yourself up for that one, my love. No daughter tells her mother everything, especially when she knows it’ll disappoint.’

‘I wouldn’t have been disappointed if Robin had told me she had an enlarged heart. Worried, yes.’

‘You’d have discouraged her from running.’

‘Probably.’

‘What if she didn’t want that? What if she wanted to take the chance? She’s an adult, Kathryn. This is her life.’

Is? Kathryn thought. Or was? She had criticized Molly for using the past tense, but if Charlie was right, and the Robin they knew was gone, everything changed.

She had always thought she knew Robin through and through, and that what she wanted, Robin would want. If that wasn’t so, and if Robin couldn’t express her wishes now, how could Kathryn know what to do?

This wasn’t the time for a crisis in confidence, but Kathryn suffered one nonetheless. It had been a long time since the last such crisis. She was rusty at it.

Crises in confidence had been the norm when she was growing up, something of a family tradition. Her father, George Webber, was a lumberjack. Then a carpenter. Then a bricklayer. Then a gardener. At the first sign of discouragement in one field, he moved on to the next. Same with her mother, Marjorie, who ran a little cottage industry–first knitting sweaters, then sewing tote bags, then weaving country baskets. Everything she produced was beautiful–or so Kathryn thought. When business was brisk, Marjorie agreed; but at the first sign of a lull, she moved on.

Kathryn learned from her parents. She raced for the town swim team until she realized she would always be second tier, at which point she turned to violin. When she couldn’t get beyond second seat in junior high, she turned to acting. When she couldn’t get beyond chorus in the high school musical, she turned to art.

That was when she met Natalie Boyce. Head of the high school art department, Natalie was a free spirit prone to wearing wild clothing and speaking her thoughts. Kathryn was mesmerized by her confidence and no match for her resolve, neither of which she saw much of at home. At Natalie’s suggestion, she started with watercolor. She immersed herself in the basics of brush control, palette, texture and wash, and she thrived on Natalie’s encouragement. Natalie loved her use of line and shape and saw a natural feel for space in her work–but timidity in her use of color. Kathryn tried to be bolder, but her life was more muted tones than vibrant ones. So she switched from water-color to clay.