Page 24 of The Moonlight Healers

“I’m doing okay.”

“I have to get to work,” Jake said, checking his watch. “The day nurse, Gena, can’t be here until ten. I usually go in later on Thursdays but there’s this meeting with the electrician.”

“I’ll stay until she gets here,” Camille said.

He leaned down and kissed Sarah. “I’ll call if I hear anything back, from Duke,” he said, gentler than he had been since they’d arrived.

After he left, Camille sat on the edge of the bed. “What’s at Duke?”

There was another rustle from the bed. “Oh, you know. Some trial or treatment that’s too expensive or too experimental or that will reject me outright because I don’t have the right genetic markers. He thinks it’s something promising. But he always does.”

“I can’t believe I forgot,” Camille said, her eyes bright as she motioned for Louise to come around the bed. “My granddaughter, Louise, is here. Is that okay with you?”

“Oh my God, little Wheezy,” Sarah said, and Louise could hear her shift her weight in the bed. “Oh please, yes, I’d love to see her, Camille.”

Louise made her way into the room and to the other side of the hospital bed.

“My goodness,” Sarah said as her chapped lips softened into a faint smile. “Is this really sweet little Louise?”

Louise tried to speak, to say hello, to do anything but stand there.

“Impossible, isn’t it?” Camille said, and Sarah nodded slowly, her eyes still on Louise.

“Hi, it’s nice to see you again.” The words hung in the air, meaningless and awful, but Sarah only smiled more.

“You too, honey,” she said, wincing as she pushed herself up in the bed. “You too.” She shook her head at Camille. “I can’t handle these little girls growing up into beautiful women. She’s supposed to be four years old and sitting at my kitchen counter eating a tuna fish sandwich.”

Louise felt a little of the tightness in her chest loosen at the memory.

“I completely agree,” Camille said.

Sarah looked back up at Louise. “How are things, hon? Graduation? Getting ready for college? Do you know where you’re going?”

“Things are good,” Louise said. “I’m going to NYU. I leave in a few days actually for their freshman summer program, for students who want to get a head start, get some course credit and settle in to the school early. I’ll be taking a Calculus II course, since I did AP calculus this year.”

Sarah beamed at her with a pride that made Louise feel strangely uncomfortable, as though it weren’t fully earned. “Wow, that’s incredible, Louise. Although you always were such a bright, curious kid.”

Camille went back around to the foot of the bed. “I’ll go get some towels and water. Be back in a few minutes.”

Sarah nodded and turned back to Louise. “How’s your mom doing?”

“She’s fine.” Louise’s gaze lingered on the clear tubing that ran out of the top of Sarah’s chest, the oxygen pressed into her nostrils. “She’s back home, in Richmond.”

“Is she still working in a hospital?”

“Oh, no. She’s not a nurse anymore. She’s a Realtor.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. “Bobbie is a Realtor?”

“She changed careers when we moved.”

“That’s surprising. Nursing seemed to always fit her so well.”

Louise’s mother had never explained the reason she left nursing. Louise only knew that for a month before she quit, her mother had been quiet and worried, her mood dark. And then one day she simply never went back. They moved to Richmond a few weeks later.

“I guess she just wanted something different,” Louise said, pushing back the memories of that time in her life, her mother adrift, Louise confused and lonely in a new city.

“Honey, do you mind handing me my water?”

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