picture of health, with a ready smile, a booming laugh, and a robust complexion. He ran every day—and worked out, too—but on the inside, where no one could see, he was a mess. And to make matters worse, his pancreas had been acting up and his heart had been a ticking bomb.
She entered the lobby, walked past the pink-frocked volunteers, made her way to the elevator, and rode it up to the third floor. While awaiting the doors to open, she wondered if she should have chosen to use the stairway for the exercise. After all, she had no idea what shape her own heart was in. But she’d worry about that later. She’d never liked hospitals and had managed to avoid them ever since her husband’s recuperation at the military hospital in Honolulu, so she was in a hurry to get in and out.
Had it been anyone else, she’d have sent an expensive floral arrangement and come up with some plausible reason why she couldn’t stop by for a visit. But this was Joseph Jr., her only son.
Her only child. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—be anywhere other than here. So she pressed on and continued the forward momentum.
Whenever she found herself stressed, she’d learned to inhale deeply and blow it out, but she couldn’t do that here. The medicinal smell was enough to send her running and gagging.
Besides the odor, everything about the hospital—the irritating squeak of rubber-soled shoes upon the polished linoleum, the hollow clunk of a plastic lunch tray on a cart, the blips and beeps of the machines keeping people alive—seemed to send her back in time to the mid-sixties. But she’d fought the mental spiral by forcing her thoughts on the present.
When she reached the nurses’ desk, she waited for the woman on duty to glance up. When she did, Barbara said, “Good morning, Simone. How’s Joey doing today?”
The dark-haired Florence Nightingale managed a smile. “About the same. His minister is with him now.”
Barbara nodded, then proceeded to her son’s private room. She’d never understood how Joey had come to be so religious, since he hadn’t been raised in the church. Her mother had carted her off to Sunday school for as long as she could remember, and she’d refused to do that to her son.
So needless to say, Joey’s faith had surprised her.
She could understand why it would flare up now, when his health and recovery were questionable, when he was facing his own mortality. But he’d held those same beliefs for years.
It probably had something to do with his grandmother’s influence, which was one reason Barbara hadn’t encouraged much of a relationship between her mother and her son while he was growing up. But once Joey had gotten a driver’s license, there’d been no stopping him. He’d visited his grandma regularly, a practice that had continued even after he married.
In fact, as her mother slipped deeper into a fog of dementia, Joey had volunteered to take her in and let her live with him and his wife, rather than place her in a home.
Barbara had tried to talk him out of it, insisting that there were plenty of quality convalescent hospitals that were better equipped, better trained to handle Alzheimer’s patients.
“If we put her there,” Joey had said, “you’d never visit her.”
Barbara hadn’t argued that point. Everyone knew she hated medical facilities, even if they didn’t have any idea why. But her mother didn’t even recognize her these days anyway, so what would it hurt?
As Barbara entered Joey’s private room, she spotted Craig Houston, the associate pastor of Joey’s church, seated in the blue vinyl chair next to the hospital bed. When the fair-haired young man in his mid-twenties looked her way, she returned his smile.
There wasn’t even the slightest resemblance between the men, since Joey had inherited his brown hair—now silver-laced at the temples—and olive complexion from his father’s side of the family. Yet for a moment, seeing the two together, Barbara couldn’t help wondering what her son’s children might have grown up to look like had Cynthia, Joey’s wife, been able to carry a pregnancy to term.
“Good morning,” the pastor said. “How are you, Mrs. Davila?”
She supposed she should tell him he didn’t need to be so formal, but she hated to get too chummy with a man of the cloth. The next thing you knew, he’d be pressing her to attend Sunday services.
“You can call her Barbara,” Joey said, his voice softer than it had been yesterday.
Weaker?
Oh, please, don’t let him be failing, Barbara silently pleaded to no one in particular.
“Is that all right with you?” the pastor asked, his grin warm and friendly.
To call her Barbara? Not really, but she managed to revitalize her smile. “Of course.” She broke eye contact with the minister and focused on her son. “I’m not going to stay long, honey. I just wanted to check on you and say hello. Any news on the surgery? Have they scheduled it?”
“Not yet.”
An ache settled in her chest and fear clogged her throat, yet she tried to keep the optimism in her voice. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.”
A nurse popped into Joey’s room to check his IV and take his vitals, and Barbara turned her head away. Distancing herself further, she walked to the window, where several plants and floral arrangements sat along the sill to brighten up the room. There was a basket of various plants that had been sent by one of Joey’s neighbors, a vase of drooping carnations from someone at his office.
In the center of the display was a new arrival, a black ceramic vase holding a single red anthurium, an exotic, tropical flower with waxy leaves that reminded her of the many unique and colorful plants of Hawaii.
She felt herself hurtling back to 1966 all over again, and this time she couldn’t stop it.
The Beatles, Bob Dylan.
Walter Cronkite, Vietnam.
The phone call that turned her life on end.
Is this Barbara Davila?
Yes.
Is Captain Joseph Davila your husband?
She’d wanted to hang up, to pretend the call hadn’t come in, but she’d responded truthfully, her fingers clutched so tightly to the receiver that she’d thought her flesh would meld to plastic. Yes.
Your husband’s plane went down.
Somehow, she’d managed to get through the heartbreaking, blood-pounding call—maybe because the caller had offered her hope by saying her husband had been seriously injured but had survived.
She’d left Joey in her mother’s care that very day and had flown to Honolulu to be at Joseph’s side. She supposed she should be happy that he’d returned from Vietnam, even though he’d been scarred on the right side of his face and still had to use a cane to walk. Many other soldiers and their families hadn’t been so lucky.
Her mother had implied that Joseph’s injury had been some sort of punishment for Barbara’s rebellion.
Okay, so she hadn’t actually come out and pointed
