Between You and Me. Susan Wiggs
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pinched the bridge of his nose, surprised to feel the throb of a headache. He didn’t often get headaches. “Yes, son. Yes.”
Jonah turned his attention back to the bandaged arm. “Were you there?” he asked. “I mean, when they were cutting off my arm, were you with me?”
“What? No.”
“I wonder if they used a saw, like Eli Kemp when he’s doing the butchering.”
Good Lord almighty. “I was in a waiting room, thinking about you the whole time. When the operation was done, they put you here in this place called the surgical intensive care unit. Hospital folks have been checking on you all night long. I reckon the doctors will be real pleased to see that you’re awake and talking.”
Caleb left a gap of silence for Jonah. Sometimes silence was needed, not more talking. Caleb had learned this when, in a single terrible moment, he became responsible for Jonah and Hannah.
Yesterday, though, when they’d rushed the boy off to surgery, he had been grateful for talk. He remembered pacing the waiting area of the emergency room, wondering what was going to happen next and not knowing whom to ask. That was when Reese Powell had approached him. Caleb could not remember what had been going through his head when she’d arrived. But he remembered turning to her, and feeling a small but noticeable measure of relief when she offered a change of clothes and then helped him navigate his way through the labyrinthine hallways of the hospital.
He wasn’t sure why she had taken an interest in him. Everyone else in the emergency room seemed to race from crisis to crisis, darting and feinting through an obstacle course of equipment, coworkers, frightened patients, and families.
Reese had looked very young to Caleb, though she projected an air of confidence. She was different from anyone he’d ever met, man or woman, in a way that tempted him to stare, like he’d stared at Niagara Falls or a shooting star. Her short hair was as black and shiny as the wing of a raven, framing a face he could look at all the livelong day. Of course, he had no call to be noticing the beauty of a woman, especially at a time like this, but noticing her like that wouldn’t change what had happened, no matter who was bleeding on the operating table.
When she’d started talking to him he had realized the source of that beauty was something simple yet powerful—compassion, combined with a fierce and earnest intelligence. She had this way of looking at him as if she knew how scared he was for Jonah and how much he needed to understand what was happening to his nephew. As she’d explained the terrible injury, Caleb had sensed the smallest glimmer of hope. He knew a medical student was only at the beginning of the practice of doctoring, like an apprentice carpenter learning from a master craftsman. Yet there were things that she knew, things he couldn’t even imagine. Things about the human body and the way it worked or failed to work. Through yesterday’s endless hours, Reese Powell had seemed absolutely determined to stick with him, answering not only the questions he asked but also those he didn’t even know how to.
All this seemed to be a lot to notice about a woman he’d only just met. But Caleb was like that sometimes. He’d meet someone and see exactly what that person was like based on a few minutes’ conversation.
It hardly mattered now. He probably wouldn’t see her again. She was one of the many strangers passing through. Yet for some reason, his thoughts kept drifting back to Reese Powell. In addition to her fierce, intimidating intelligence, he also sensed something sterile and lonely about her. When they’d gone to the cafeteria, she hadn’t talked to anyone along the way. It was probably out of character for her to take the time to help him through his first night in the city.
Jonah gazed at him in silence, and Caleb felt guilty for dwelling on his encounter with a woman. Jonah’s face took on a soft, sleepy look, his eyes half-lidded. “Where’s Hannah?” he asked softly.
Caleb pictured Jonah’s sister, crumpled in a tragic heap as the helicopter bore her brother away. “Back home in Middle Grove. I left word with Alma at the phone box that you were going to be all right. And you are, little man, I swear.”
“How can I be all right if my arm’s gone?” Jonah’s voice was the tiniest whisper.
“Because you’re Jonah. My best good boy. And I swear by all that I am that we’ll get through this.”
His throat felt thick with the lie. There was no getting through a loss like this.
“Hannah knows about my arm? Did you tell Alma to tell her?”
“I told Alma you’re going to be all right,” said Caleb. “She’ll let Hannah know.” He had not said anything about the arm, only that Jonah was going to get better. Given what Hannah and her brother had already lost, he owed her the full story, but not until he could see her, hold her hand, and reassure her.
“You’re wearing funny clothes,” Jonah said.
Caleb looked down at the borrowed shirt and trousers. “A lady named Reese loaned these to me.” He didn’t want to explain that his other clothes were covered in Jonah’s blood. “They’re called scrubs, which is curious, since they don’t seem to be used for scrubbing anything.”
Jonah nodded, then yawned. His eyes fluttered shut.
“You rest now,” Caleb said, gently stroking his brow. “You rest as long as you like.”
Caleb, too, shut his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. Instead, his mind wandered back over time, touching on moments forever enshrined in memory.
When he was a boy about Jonah’s age, Caleb used to loiter around the village phone box, hoping against hope to hear the phone ring and his mother’s voice on the other end. Hoping she would explain why she had walked away from him and his older brother, John, never to return.
Of course, it never rang. Caleb had tried to find her name in the phone book, a slender paperbound directory with scenic pictures of the Poconos on the cover. He remembered sitting on the floor of the small shelter and methodically reading every name in the book, searching for Jenny Stoltz or Jenny Fisher, her maiden name. Finally, John had come along and explained that the book only listed folks who had their own telephones.
“Mem could be a million miles away,” John had explained. He was seven years older than Caleb, and he knew things. “You won’t find her name in any book around here.”
Some time afterward, Caleb recalled, John had made the big leap, determined to end his life by jumping off the hanging bridge at Stony Gorge. Until that day, no one had understood the terrible demons that haunted John, tormenting him to the point where he wanted to end his life. Caleb hadn’t grasped the connection between their mother’s absence and John’s desperation.
But that day, a miracle had occurred. Despite falling a hundred feet, John had not died. He’d walked away with nothing but bruises and scratches and a broken arm. Folks who witnessed the incident talked about it in hushed and reverent tones.
John himself had been transformed by the fall. A man reborn, no longer an angry rebel, John declared that it was the hand of God above that had saved him. In the time it took for him to fling himself off the swinging bridge, his life had been remade and given back to him. In gratitude, he declared that he was going to spend the rest of his days serving God. And he set himself to the task with a devotion that was almost fanatical. He had returned to the community, accepted baptism with a humble heart, married Naomi, and set himself on a new path.
After the kids came along, everyone seemed to feel the bad times were finally behind them. Caleb still thought about his mother, but time dulled the gnawing ache of missing her. He admired the way his brother had put his life back together after that desperate day at Stony Gorge.
Yet Caleb often found himself wondering about the world. He used to daydream about the jet planes soaring overhead or the cars roaring down the highway. In defiance of his father’s edicts, he borrowed books from the county library and read novels about imaginary worlds and far-off places, and people grappling with matters he could only imagine. When he turned sixteen, he knew he