Where Mercy Flows (6 page)

It was too far away. I made a sloppy attempt just to humor him. “I can’t!” I called to him over the sound of rushing water.
“It’s too far!”

“Do it anyway!” he said.

I tried again twice and failed. “I can’t do it!”

“Samantha Dodd!” His tone was sharp. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say
I can’t
!” He waded out to me and wrapped his big hand around mine on the rod handle. His other hand reached around me to the loose
line hanging from the reel. Together we flung the rod tip forward and then back. “Ten o’clock . . . one o’clock,” he said,
holding my wrist tight. The loose line slid silently up through the eyes of the rod with each cast until a long arc of line
almost touched the white stone and then flowed behind us in the same graceful motion, only to return and this time drop the
dry fly on the exact middle of the rock. “Anything you believe, you can achieve,” he had said. “If you want to be successful
at anything in this life, see what you want, not what you don’t want. Then speak it. Speak it until you believe it. That’s
called faith.” I reeled the line in and watched the fly drag along the top of the water. “And faith has the power to move
mountains.”

Standing in the river, I wondered what my father thought of me now. Everything he had taught me about life and success and
fly-fishing had stagnated through seven Nevada years. Long, dry years. TJ was all I had to show for them. I had expected questions,
but there had been none from him and no reference to what had happened between us. I cast again, this time feeling the grace
come back, feeling in control until what should have been the last smooth arc of line before delivery snagged a vine maple
behind me. I glanced downstream and saw the Judge release a small trout. Maybe he didn’t even notice me flogging the sky or
catching trees. He quipped with Matthew but I couldn’t hear their words because of the river. My line pulled free without
the fly, which seconds later fell from the tree and was snatched by an impatient fish that could not wait all night for me
to deliver his supper.

I shuddered. My bones were cold and I found myself too exhausted to wade downstream for another fly. It was almost dark. I
found a rock at the river’s edge and sat hugging my knees for what seemed like a long time until the two men finally joined
me and started up the path toward home. My father said the bite just wasn’t on tonight. (I didn’t mention the greedy retrieval
of my snapped-off fly.) They took long, quick strides in their heavy hip boots and I couldn’t keep up. My chest hurt, worse
than ever before. I had to slow down and concentrate on breathing. My whole body shivered like a vibrating chair.

I followed them up the trail all the way to the edge of the backyard before stopping by a tree, suddenly becoming desperate
for breath. My chest heaved in motions beyond my control. I couldn’t get enough air.

The Judge and Matthew were talking. They couldn’t hear the strange sounds that grated past my throat as I clung to the scabby
bark of the tree trunk. My knees buckled and I dropped to the moist grass.

I
HEARD MATTHEW’S alarmed cry and the hollow thuds of hip boots on the lawn as the two men ran back to me. I was on my hands
and knees now, fighting for air, desperate for relief from the pressure in my chest. It had never been this bad before.

“Samantha, what is it?” My father’s hand was on my back.

“Get her inside and get her warm!” Matt barked as he ran off.

I couldn’t answer. I just shook my head. The Judge scooped me up and bolted for the house. I was aware of his strong arms,
muscles clenched in his chest, the closeness of my face to his as his breath grazed my cheek. His boots had taken on water
and sloshed noisily.

“TJ,” I finally managed to whisper. “Don’t let TJ see me.”

But it was too late. Matthew’s 911 call had alarmed the whole household. They hovered anxiously above me as my father laid
me on the leather sofa, muddy feet and all. Mom stripped me of wet socks, shoes and jeans and tucked a blue satin comforter
around me. The pain soon subsided and I found myself breathing normally again. “I’m okay now,” I said, but no one would call
off the emergency aid car. The closest town with a fire department was Dixon, a fifteen-mile drive on the state highway that
twisted along the course of the north fork of the river.

Matthew the fisherman metamorphosed back into a doctor. He sat calmly on the edge of the sofa, taking my pulse and gently
asking questions, while TJ hugged my feet.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s happened a few times, but never like this. Mostly when I overexert myself. At first I thought it was
some lingering symptom from a flu I had.”

“Did you see a doctor?”

“No.” Actually, I had tried to make an appointment at the clinic where I took TJ whenever he had an ear infection or a bean
stuck up his nose. Like my own doctor, they had a problem with my unpaid bill and sent me to the bulldog lady in their collections
department, whose nasal, condescending tone made me want to push her fat face into the doughnut by her keyboard. Instead,
I deliberately answered her humiliating questions, glaring at the nosy young woman waiting next to me at the counter until
she self-consciously sat down in the waiting area. After enduring the whole interrogation, I was informed that I would have
to pay off the entire outstanding balance on my delinquent account before a doctor would see me. I was a bad financial risk.

Matthew listened to my chest and then without comment nodded reassuringly at my parents. I felt relieved. Finally, I was not
alone. Whatever it was that had been plaguing me would be discovered now. Matt would probably prescribe some antibiotics or
something and soon I would be my wild old self again. A siren wailed from somewhere in the darkness.

I swore and slunk into the couch. “Do they have to do that?” TJ shook his head at me and I apologized for the bad word.

Within minutes a pickup truck with a strobing cherry on top stormed down the long driveway. A huge man barged through the
door, dropped a metal supply case on the floor and began hooking me up to things and asking questions. Matt and my father
did much of the talking. I just watched his hands—tough, hairy hands—as he repeated some of the same tests Matthew had done.
His jeans were attached to wide red suspenders, and I knew by the boots (and the fact that he was from Dixon) that he must
be a logger. There were no full-time firemen in this part of the county—just volunteers. The woman who followed him repeated
my vital signs into a radio transmitter. She must have been painting her kitchen when she got the call. Yellow paint highlighted
the tips of her dark hair and her chin.

They were there a long time. Mom served coffee while the men exchanged top-secret fishing-hole locations. Poor David. He obviously
didn’t know the difference between a graphite rod and bamboo and probably had wanted to go home long ago but felt it might
be considered rude with one’s newly discovered sister-in-law dying on the sofa. Lindsey had forgotten him. She was busy mothering
me and asking the woman with yellow paint what we should do next. The general consensus was that I should rest at home through
the night but see a specialist first thing in the morning.

Which I did. Matthew said not to worry, but he heard something irregular when he listened to my heart. He sent me to a Dr.
Talbot in Darlington, who took blood, urine and half my day. My mother came in to wait with me between tests. I read her the
quiz from
Glamour
magazine, “How Daring Is Your Sex Life?”but she was pretty uncooperative. Finally, Dr. Talbot came back in. “Okay, Samantha.
One more test. Did you ever have an ultrasound when you were pregnant?” I said I had. I obediently opened the front of my
gown again and lay on my side while he slid a short, fat wand between my breasts. The room was quiet as we studied the image
that appeared on a nearby monitor. My mother rose slowly to her feet, clutching a twisted tissue to her chest.

I found myself staring at a gray, sluggish shape. Some wounded animal in a cage of ribs. The revelation came to me slowly.
It started as a dull, heavy sensation in my chest and then spread, pulsing into my arms and finally to my brain. I was looking
at the very organ that I felt, almost heard, laboring even now and on which my life depended. Biology was not my best subject
but I knew the basic shape and structure of a heart. Something was wrong.

Dr. Talbot called it viral myocarditis. He pointed to the swollen mass and said that the muscle had become inflamed and was
not working as it should. “That’s why you’ve been having chest pains and shortness of breath. Your heart has to work harder,
especially when you exert yourself, to pump the blood your body needs.” He sighed and ran his hands down the thighs of his
pants. “Tell me more about this flu you had. Did your symptoms begin immediately after that?”

I thought they had.

He asked more questions and scribbled more notes.

“What caused this?” I asked.

He shook his head. “My guess is it’s the work of that virus.”

Mom lifted her chin and acted confident and collected now, for my sake. “How do we fix it, Doctor?”

“I’m going to refer Samantha to another specialist.” He passed her a card. “Dr. Sovold is a cardiologist at the University
Medical Center in Seattle. Let him take a look and we’ll go from there. In the meantime, Samantha, I’m going to put you on
a drug known as an ACE inhibitor.” He began writing out the prescription. Mom reached out and gently rubbed my back.

He passed me the little slip of paper. “I’m not going to lie to you, Samantha. Your heart has already suffered severe damage.
We’re going to do everything we can to relieve your symptoms and hopefully this drug treatment will succeed. If not, sometimes
surgical treatment of the problem is possible.”

I asked him what I could and couldn’t do, and he basically ruled out anything fun. No exertion, no overeating, no drinking,
no smoking. “Listen to your body,” he said, “and call me immediately if you notice any of your symptoms becoming more severe.”

Mom and I walked down the cracked steps of the doctor’s office into a light rain. Dr. Talbot’s office was one of several Victorian
homes on the block that had been remodeled into professional buildings. Tulips and daffodils bloomed in every neatly landscaped
yard, and the sidewalk beneath our feet was bulged and cracked from the roots of trees planted eighty years ago. We didn’t
say much. Mom was always good about giving me my space.

We ate lunch in a house-turned-restaurant with window boxes that burgeoned with geraniums and blue lobelia. Mom was still
being very brave and in control. It was one of the things I loved about her. She never panicked. She never screamed. If I
brought home a snake, she would flinch almost imperceptibly and then smile and ask if it had a name. She glanced at the menu
and recommended I try the chicken Caesar. “They make a good one here.”

I could have eaten dog food. I didn’t taste a thing.

“Is this why you came home, Sam?” she finally asked.

I nodded, rearranging the food on my plate idly with my fork. Yes, it was the heart thing. But it was more. There was a time
when my soul did not ache like this. A time when I skipped and laughed and wondered at the way delicate dandelion seeds drifted
like Mary Poppins and her umbrella above the fields. Back then I had no past clamped to my ankle like a ball and chain. When
I looked up at her, my eyes were watery. “I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know what. I didn’t know what to do.”
She reached for my hand, but I withdrew it self-consciously and scratched the back of my neck. There was so much more to say.
“Mom . . . I haven’t been able to work lately. I was waitressing, but I just couldn’t keep up anymore. Then I started calling
in sick. Anyway, they said sayonara and there I sat. Me and TJ. No money. No medical insurance. I owe his day care about three
hundred bucks; I owe Mindy, my roommate—”

“Shhhh. It’s okay, Sammy. You did the right thing. You came home. We’ll work out all the details. You need to work on getting
better, that’s all.”

Good old Mom. Here we were, sitting across the table from each other like two grown women taking a break from an afternoon
shopping spree, but I was snuggled on her lap with my thumb in my mouth, believing again that everything was going to be all
right. It
was
the right thing. I felt it in my gut. “I like how you are with TJ,” I said. “He’s been needing a grandma.”

Mom laughed. “I didn’t know how much I missed him, Samantha, until I saw him face-to-face. I guess I couldn’t let myself think
about him too much. I knew so little about him. I wish you had written more. You could have at least sent me a picture!”

“Then you would have seen that he’s a Mexiwegian and I’d have had to explain, and I didn’t want to explain.”

She smiled imploringly.

I stared at the mess of food on my plate.
That’s my life.
I pushed it aside and the waitress appeared from nowhere to whisk it away. “Mom . . .”

“Sammy”—she put her hand on my arm, and this time I didn’t move it away—“you tell me all about it when you’re ready, okay?”

I didn’t look up and a tear fell on the table. “Okay.”

M
Y FATHER TOOK the news of my diagnosis as calmly as if the doctor had said it was only indigestion that had caused me to crumple
to the ground on the river path. As Mom and I related the details of my heart condition, his fingers drummed the arm of his
big chair—the way I remembered from my childhood his fingers rhythmically rising and tapping when his mind was in a courtroom
miles away from us. He nodded from time to time, his forehead slightly pinched.

“Well,” he finally said, “we’ll know more after you see the other cardiologist. Hopefully they can correct this without surgery.
Do you have medical insurance, Samantha?”

For some reason I felt like I had regressed to teenaged status, sitting there across from him in that living room as I had
so many times, guilty somehow and dependent on him to bail me out of trouble again, knowing I would probably be required to
do penance in one way or another. I shook my head.