Seasons Under Heaven (21 page)

The urgency surrounding Joseph’s heart transplant became more apparent to Cathy each time she visited him that week. It was clear that he was running out of time.

On Thursday, Cathy came home from the hospital more depressed than she’d been all week. Annie was sulking in front of the television, unable to leave the house or talk on the phone since the stunt she’d pulled at the restaurant. Cathy had threatened to keep her from getting her driver’s permit if she was disobedient during her punishment, and that had worked. Annie hadn’t made any more surprise disappearances.

The phone rang as Cathy searched the refrigerator for something quick to cook for dinner. Annie leaped for it. “Hello?” she almost shouted. Cathy gathered from her scowl that it wasn’t for her. Rolling her eyes, Annie shoved the phone toward her mother.

Cathy froze for a moment. “Is it Brenda?”

“No,” Annie said. “Some guy.” She looked up as Cathy took the phone. “Why? Is Joseph worse?”

“He’s real bad,” Cathy said. She thought of getting Annie to take a message, but the thought crossed her mind that it might be Steve. She hadn’t heard from him since their lunch Sunday, and didn’t really expect to. Still, she didn’t want to take the chance of missing his call. “Hello?” she said.

“Cathy? This is Steve.”

Her spirits instantly inflated again. “Hi.”

“Hi. Listen, it sounds kind of busy there…”

She reached for the remote control and turned down the television, then took the cordless phone into the dining room. “No, no. Not at all.”

“Well, I won’t keep you, right here at supper time. I just wanted to see if you’d like to have dinner tomorrow night.”

She was so stunned that she almost couldn’t answer. “I can’t believe you’d ask me again after being around my kids.”

He laughed. “I’m not inviting them.”

“Still…I thought I’d heard the last of you.”

His laughter faded, and there was a moment of silence. “I meant to call before now. I just…didn’t.”

She didn’t tell him that she’d noticed, or that she’d had at least two depressing, miserable nights hoping he would. It had taken all week for her to get philosophical about it. “It’s okay. I’ve been busy, anyway. I didn’t know if you had or not.”

“Sometimes…” His voice faded off. She frowned, wondering what he was going to say. “Sometimes dating seems too complicated,” he went on. “I start to worry about Tracy’s reaction, and I think about all the potential problems…”

She swallowed, but tried to keep her voice light. “Hey, it’s not like we’re walking down the aisle together. Just two friends having dinner. Without their kids.”

He laughed again. “So—Tracy will be spending the night at her grandmother’s tomorrow night.”

“My kids’ll be at their dad’s.”

“Then tomorrow sounds good.”

But by the next evening, Cathy’s spirits were lower than they’d been all week. She was looking forward to her dinner with Steve, but she had talked with Sylvia on the phone that afternoon about Joseph’s plight, and the news wasn’t good.

Steve arrived exactly on time, and she tried not to look too eager as she let him in. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

There was a chemistry between them, an electric spark that she hadn’t felt in years. She liked being around him. His very presence made her feel better. “I’m almost ready,” she said. “Just let me get my sweater.”

“Sure,” he told her. “No hurry.”

She ran to get her cardigan, then hurried back to the front room. He took it out of her hands and helped her put it on. “So how’s Joseph?” he asked.

“Not well,” she said. “I’m starting to think he may not make it until he gets a heart.”

Steve’s expression mirrored her own concern. “No kidding.”

“Yeah, it’s getting pretty bad. I don’t know how Brenda does it. She reads to him, sings to him, talks and tries to play with him. But he just lies there, too weak to do anything.”

“What’s your friend next door saying? The doctor?”

“They don’t give him much time,” she said.

His expression collapsed, and he sank onto her couch. “Wow. I didn’t expect that. Guess I thought that, with all the success at the fair and all the money we raised, he’d
have
to get better. Stupid thinking, I guess.”

“I had the same idea. It just seemed like everything was working out.” She got her purse and looked down at him. “So where are you taking me?”

He thought for a moment. “Well, I was thinking of some place where we could get some good seafood, but…” He hesitated.

“But what?”

He got back to his feet and met her eyes. “Cathy, I don’t know how you’d feel about this, but I had this idea this afternoon…”

“What?”

“Well, I was thinking we could go to Kinko’s and print up some flyers about Joseph. Get about a thousand run off, and then go to the coliseum where they’re having that big gospel thing tonight, and we could go around and put the flyers on the car windows asking for prayers and donations. I mean, if they don’t send any money, we need the prayers even more.”

She gazed at him for a moment, moved to tears. “You’re right.”

“Does that sound like a good idea, or would you rather go eat steak?”

She laughed. “How can I say no? Steve, it sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“The restaurant will still be open when we finish,” he said. “We’ll miss the movie, but I don’t care about that if you don’t.”

She could hardly speak. As they walked out to his car, she prayed silently that God wouldn’t let her fall head over heels for this man unless it was part of the plan.

The home video of the Dodd kids singing a song for Joseph played across the hospital television screen. Brenda watched Joseph staring at the screen with dull eyes. The videos weren’t cheering him anymore, and she wondered if he had the energy to smile. The song ended, and the video camera began recording the supper table conversation. They had set the tripod in Joseph’s place, so it would seem as if he was there, listening to the idle chitchat and the family bantering.

On the video, David looked tired, bedraggled. She knew he’d been taking in more work than he could handle and working around the clock to get it all done. He was a proud man who didn’t want to depend on donations to pay for his son’s medical bills, if there was any possibility of his paying them off himself. Often, his days were interrupted by real estate prospects wanting to view their house. At night, he spent as much time as he could at the hospital with Brenda and Joseph, while Sylvia sat with the kids. She saw the despair on his face as he ate, and she
wished there was something she could do about it. But she was as helpless to make things better for David as she was to help Joseph.

“You want me to turn the video off, honey?” she asked her son.

For a moment, Joseph didn’t answer, then finally, in a voice just above a whisper, he said, “No, I like it.”

She turned on the bed so that she was facing him, and gazed down into his pale little face. “What’s wrong, honey? You seem kind of sad today.”

He looked up at her and tears filled his eyes. “Mama, if I die, how long before you’ll come to heaven?”

A cold hand gripped her heart. In all the books she’d read on parenting and homeschooling, she’d never seen advice on answering
this
question. “You’re not going to die.”

“But if I do. How long?”

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I can’t say for sure,” she whispered. “But I bet it’ll just be a blink of an eye. Time passes differently in heaven, you know.”

He nodded pensively and looked back at the television screen. “You think Daddy’ll ever get there?”

She turned her head back to the screen so Joseph wouldn’t see her tears. The video showed David piddling in the kitchen, chattering with the kids, talking to Joseph every now and then as if he was at the table with them. “Honey, I pray every day for your daddy,” she said. “Something’s going to get through to him one of these days. I know it is.”

His silence pulled her gaze back to him. A tear rolled down his face, but he didn’t seem to have the energy to wipe it away. She did it for him. “What if I never see him again?” Joseph whispered.

She looked down at him, waging a war within herself to keep from falling apart. “It could still happen, Joseph,” Brenda said in a shaky voice. “You might still get a heart.” It was the only answer she was capable of giving him. That stubborn faith was the only thing keeping her functioning—keeping her in this room day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, talking to
Joseph, trying to keep him from despairing—trying to keep
herself
from despairing.

Joseph shook his head feebly. “What if I don’t, Mama?”

She didn’t know if her voice would make it through an answer. “We’re still praying, Joseph,” she said. “God’s still in control. He knows about your heart. He hasn’t forgotten.”

“Then why hasn’t He given me one?”

“It’s not time yet,” she said.

He stared up at her, thinking, and she wanted to tell him to stop it, that it wouldn’t do any good, that he needed to spend his time thinking little boy thoughts, pretending he was a wounded cowboy, an injured soldier, a football player who’d just scored a winning touchdown. He needed to pretend he was going to get better and get up out of this bed and go home. But he wasn’t having little boy thoughts. His thoughts were those of an old man who’d lived his life to its end, and now faced the death that his loved ones weren’t prepared for.

“Mama?” he whispered, finally meeting her eyes.

“Yes, sweetie. What is it?”

“I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

She stroked his forehead and tried valiantly to hold back the tears. “Of course you will, when you get that new heart and the doctor releases you. We’ll have a big party. The whole neighborhood.”

He stared at the ceiling for a long while as his thoughts reeled by. Finally, mercifully, his eyes closed. He fell into a light sleep. Relieved that she wouldn’t have to answer his questions anymore—not for a while, anyway—she tucked his blanket around him, then went to the end of the bed to make sure his feet were warm. His toes were swollen, further testimony that his heart wasn’t adequately pumping his blood. She got a pair of socks and slipped them on him, then tucked the sheets and blanket around them. She stood at the window, staring out into the night. Crossing her arms across her stomach in a selfembrace, she let the tears flow harder and faster than they’d flowed yet.

After a while, she turned back to the bed and regarded her little boy with his gray face and his bluish lips, held hostage by a heart in rebellion. Soon, that heart would go on strike altogether. It might be a quiet, merciful ending. Or there could be pain that grew worse hour by hour, long past the point either mother or son should be able to endure. Only God knew.

She heard footsteps in the corridor outside, then David appeared in the doorway. It was after visiting hours, and she hadn’t expected him.

He saw her crying and quietly came to her and pulled her into his arms. She clung to him with all her might. “Did you leave the kids alone?”

“No,” he whispered. “Sylvia came over to spend the night so I could come back. It was good that she did.” He seemed to hesitate, then added, “I felt like I should be here tonight.” His voice caught on the last words, and still holding her, he looked at his sleeping son. “Any change?” he asked.

Brenda shook her head. “He’s talked a lot about dying.”

David closed his eyes. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“We talked about heaven,” she said quietly, her eyes fixed on Joseph’s face. “He’s worried that he’ll get there but never see you.”

He looked down at his little boy, then back up at his wife, and shook his head drearily. “I’ll tell you something, Brenda. I find it real hard to believe in a God who would let a little boy like this get sick and die at nine years old.”

The angry, whispered words cut through her heart. “David, you didn’t believe even when things were fine. If none of this had ever happened, it wouldn’t have made any difference to you—not spiritually.”

“Well, we’ll never know that, will we?” Wearily, he went to Joseph’s bed, leaned over, and pressed a kiss on the boy’s forehead. Then he dropped his head to the sheet next to Joseph’s head, and his shoulders began to shake as the sobs tore silently out of him. Brenda put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him up. He turned around and held her, his body quaking with despair.

“You know, if I could cut out my own heart, I’d give it to him.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I feel the same way.”

“None of this should be happening. Life stinks.”

She couldn’t answer. They sat down together on the vinyl couch, wiping tears from their faces as they watched their little boy sleep, checking every rise and fall of his shoulders, every weak, irregular bleep of his heart on the monitor. It was nearing midnight, and except for the occasional footsteps outside the door, there hadn’t been a sound. It was as quiet as death, and she wondered if Joseph would just slip away from wherever he was right now—just stop breathing quietly, without a fight, and never open his eyes again.

Hours passed, and without meaning to, she and David dozed off, their heads resting against the back of the small vinyl couch. When Brenda awoke, it was one A.M. She felt instantly guilty for falling asleep when her son was dying, and she got up and went to Joseph’s bed.

Behind her, she heard David stirring. “Is he all right?” he asked softly.

Joseph hadn’t moved since falling asleep last night. Studying the monitor, she was discouraged by how weak his heartbeat was. Would those little peaks flatten out altogether before morning came?

“Brenda?” David asked, getting up and joining her beside the bed.

“He’s…I don’t know.” She checked the pulse in his neck. It was so weak she almost couldn’t find it. “He hasn’t moved. He’s just lying there, on his back. He never sleeps on his back.”

They turned him on his side, and began massaging his back and legs, trying to get his blood circulating. His heart rhythm changed as they did, which brought two nurses in to check on him. They seemed somber and concerned, which made Brenda worry more. The activity around him didn’t waken him.

They sat back on the couch, watching their son as if he would pass from life as soon as they took their eyes off him. When the monitor began to show a weaker beep, they both stood up.

Brenda went to Joseph’s bed and shook him, watching the monitor as she did. His heartbeat didn’t change. “Joseph, no!” she cried.

Suddenly the line on the monitor flattened, and an alarm sounded. Nurses bolted in and pushed her aside. Doctors rushed in behind the nurses. They all began working on her son, shouting instructions to each other and calling for equipment. Someone ushered them out into the hall, and she buried her face in David’s chest as she waited for them to pronounce her son dead.