Sam's Letters to Jennifer Read online

  I drove and Brendan gave directions. About three or four miles from the hotel, back near the hospital, he told me to park anywhere I could find a spot. Actually, the side street we were on was surprisingly crowded for a work night.

  “What’s here, anyway?” I asked.

  “Stephen Dunbar’s Pub,” Brendan said. “This is where we used to blow off steam when I was a resident. It’s where I want to take you for our date.”

  “A bar?” I asked him. “Stephen Dunbar’s Pub?”

  He nodded. “I don’t think I should drink tonight,” Brendan said. “But I definitely think I should dance.”

  Inside, the bar was about half full, a nice, comfortable crowd, and there were couples dancing to a Red Hot Chili Peppers ballad I liked, “Under the Bridge.”

  Brendan immediately took me in his arms. “I like this song,” he whispered against my cheek. And then we were dancing. “And I love dancing with you.

  “Thank you for Jennifer,” he continued to whisper. “She’s the perfect one. All that I ever wanted out of life.”

  It sounded like a prayer to me. “I saw you praying once. In the kitchen,” I confessed.

  “Same exact prayer,” Brendan said, and winked at me. “I’ve been saying it all summer.”

  We danced to all the slow songs that played on the juke, and we danced slow to some of the fast ones. I didn’t ever want to let Brendan go, not even for a minute.

  “What could be better than this?” he asked. “A date with my best girl, in my old school town, at one of the old haunts.”

  I felt so incredibly close to Brendan, so much in love with him, which made what was going to happen in the morning unthinkable. I didn’t want it to happen, but tears welled up in my eyes. “Stop being so sweet,” I told Brendan.

  “No tears,” he said, and wiped them away. “No tangles,” he laughed, then winced a little at his own joke. Brendan could always laugh. At any time. About anything, even this.

  We continued to dance, to an old Smokey Robinson and the Miracles song. “After this is all behind us,” he said, “let’s travel. I’ve never been to Florence, or Venice. China, Africa—there’s so much to see out there, Jen.”

  I started to tear up again. “I can’t help it. I’m not usually so sentimental,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s kind of a sentimental time. Kiss me again. Keep kissing me. Right up until they operate.”

  So we kissed again. But finally we headed back to the Colonial Inn, where I thought Brendan would collapse into sleep. But he didn’t.

  “Every day from the crack of dawn,” he said—and I completed the rest, “until we can’t keep our eyes open one second longer.”

  About three, we finally did fall asleep in each other’s arms, our fingers entwined, my head on his chest. I remember thinking, This is the way it should be. Just like this. For many, many years.

  And then the alarm clock began to ring.

  Sixty-nine

  BRENDAN LEANED down close and gave me a kiss on the lips. He was already up and dressed. “Crack of dawn,” he said. “Ready for a swim in the lake?”

  “Don’t make jokes now, not even good ones. Okay, Brendan?”

  “My chances of surviving three years with GBM is less than —”

  I cut him off. “All right, jokes are okay. Jokes are good.” I came across the bed and kissed him. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Probably from the first time I ever saw you at the lake. You were, and still are, the most beautiful girl in the world. In the world. Got it?”

  “I got it.” I smiled. “Of course, it’s only your opinion.”

  “Good point. But I happen to be right on this one.”

  I was pretty sure that I had my emotions under control for the moment. That’s why I wasn’t prepared for something so small to tear me apart. I noticed Brendan’s hands shaking badly as he bent to secure a new pair of shoes that looked like his Nike cross-trainers but weren’t. Instead of laces, the shoes had Velcro flaps. Brendan couldn’t tie his shoelaces anymore.

  He looked up, saw me watching him. “I like these shoes.”

  An image flashed into my mind: Brendan’s swimming stroke as he powered across the lake on a summer morning. Now he couldn’t tie his own shoes. I ached for him. Brendan knew what was in store for him: the pain, the sickening aftereffects, the very real possibility that he would die.

  I put my arms around him. “This is going to work out,” I said. It had to.

  Less than twenty minutes later, Brendan and I stepped out of the hotel into hazy morning light. He stood quietly, resting an arm on the roof of the car, and he still looked healthy. He was taking in a coffee shop’s blinking neon sign, then a fieldstone church across the street, as if he were memorizing each mundane detail.

  “Pretty diner, pretty church, very pretty girl,” he said. Then he climbed into the passenger seat. A little stiffly. I heard the seat belt click as Brendan strapped in for the ride of his life.

  “Let’s go, beautiful. We have an appointment in Samarra or someplace like that.”

  For one of the only times that summer, the two of us were mostly quiet. The early-morning drive took only a few minutes from the Colonial to the St. Marys underground garage. An elevator took us up to the first floor. From there, we headed along a stained-glass corridor to the Joseph Building, which was where Brendan would be admitted and prepped for surgery.

  Brendan stopped and put his hands on top of my shoulders. He leaned in and held me and stared into my eyes.

  “I think that I’ve run out of jokes, Jennifer. Do you mind if I tell you that I love you again?”

  “No. Please.” Just keep talking. Don’t leave me.

  “I love you so much, Jennifer. It’s important to me that whatever happens, you know you did great, fabulous. You helped me be strong, more than you know. You did everything that anyone could do, and then some. . . . Jennifer?”

  “I know,” I finally said. “I got it.” I held him even tighter. My eyes squeezed shut, but tears were rolling down my cheeks anyway.

  “You’re letting me cry,” I finally managed to say.

  “Uh-huh. Yeah. That’s because I am, too.”

  I looked into his eyes and saw that he was almost as big a mess as I was. Brendan leaned forward and kissed me on the cheeks, then my eyes, finally my lips. I loved the way he kissed, loved everything about him. I didn’t want to let him go.

  “There’s never enough time, is there?” he said. “I think I have to go. I’m late, Jennifer.”

  Once we arrived on the fifth floor, the admissions nurse, a portly woman with strong freckled arms, sorted through a pile of papers. Then she called for an orderly, who appeared with a wheelchair. That’s when the thought I really hadn’t been able to face flooded my mind. I might never see Brendan again. This could be it.

  “I love you,” I said. “I’ll be waiting right here. I’ll be waiting where I’m standing now.”

  Brendan said, “I love you, Jennifer. Who wouldn’t love the most beautiful girl in the world? One way or the other, I will see you.”

  He smiled that wonderful smile of his and gave me a double thumbs-up as the orderly wheeled him down the long hallway to surgery. Then Brendan let loose with one of his famous go-jump-in-the-lake screams.

  I clapped my hands together and laughed. “Bye,” I called. “Bye.”

  Brendan looked back, smiled again.

  Just before he disappeared, he yelled, “Bye!”

  Seventy

  BYE?

  Don’t let it be bye.

  I slid down into an upholstered chair in the corner of the hospital waiting room and began to imagine the operation going on six floors below me when Shep arrived with Brendan’s mother and father, whom I had never met.

  “He didn’t want us to come,” said Mrs. Keller. “He’s trying to make it easier for us. Or so he thinks.”

  “He’s always been that way,” said Brendan’s father. “He broke his hand once in high school and didn�
��t tell us until it was nearly healed. I’m Andrew, by the way. This is Eileen.”

  We all hugged. Then Brendan’s mother and father went straight to tears. I could see how much they loved their son, and it touched me.

  The rest of the day crept by at an excruciatingly slow pace. I glanced down at Brendan’s watch every few minutes, and the hands almost didn’t seem to move. Brendan’s father told jokes, which wasn’t much of a surprise. My favorite was, “How do you recognize an extrovert computer geek? He looks at your shoes.”

  Other visitors drifted in and out of the waiting room, a few of them crying, most looking worried. The television flickered with never-ending images of the news, CNBC, ESPN.

  As we waited I wondered if Shep might be Doc. But he hadn’t raised his children alone. So he wasn’t Doc—unless Sam had pulled a fast one.

  At about four I left the waiting-around room for a while. I wandered down to the Peace Garden in the St. Marys compound, a square filled with bright flowers and a statue of Saint Francis. I heard a carillon concert, the bells ringing out a pretty rendition of “Amazing Grace.” I got down on my knees and prayed for Brendan. Then I called Sam and told her about the day so far.

  Finally I returned to the waiting room. My timing was excellent. Ten hours after I had kissed Brendan good-bye, a young doctor with dark hair and a cherubic face appeared. He announced that he was Adam Kolski. He didn’t look old enough to be a surgeon, let alone “practically a goddddd.”

  I tried to read his face, but my journalistic skills weren’t working very well that day.

  “Things went as well as could be expected,” Dr. Kolski said. “Brendan survived the surgery.”

  Seventy-one

  VISITORS were permitted to see patients in the ICU for just a few minutes. One person at a time. After the Kellers and Shep took their turn, I went in. Adam Kolski came along with me to check on his patient. “He’s doing better than he looks,” Kolski warned.

  Brendan was unconscious. His head was swaddled in bandages, and his face was black and blue. Dr. Kolski explained that Brendan had been tubed and that machines could keep him alive, just in case.

  There was a tube in Brendan’s nose, another in his throat; a catheter led to a bag under the bed; and IV towers dripped saline and sedatives into his veins. Electrodes were stuck all over him, sending reports on his vital signs to several monitors; a blood pressure cuff on one arm inflated and deflated automatically.

  “He’s alive,” I whispered. “That’s the only important thing.”

  “He is alive,” Dr. Kolski said, and patted my shoulder. “He did this for you, Jennifer. He told me that you’re worth it and more. Talk to him. You might be the medicine Brendan needs right now.”

  Then Kolski stepped out of the room and I was alone with Brendan. I took off the watch he’d given me and gently buckled it over his wrist, right next to the plastic bracelet with his name on it. I squeezed Brendan’s fingers and leaned close to his face.

  “I’m right here,” I said, willing him to hear my voice. “You know, I’ve loved every minute I’ve spent with you this summer. But especially this one.”

  Seventy-two

  IT SEEMED as though my precious five minutes with Brendan was over in about five seconds. I was holding his hand, and then I was pulled away by a polite but firm nurse who sent me reeling out to the waiting room again.

  Mr. and Mrs. Keller and Shep wanted to take me to dinner, but I was emotionally and physically wasted. I couldn’t leave Brendan right then. When they left, I sank into a chair and let the tears sheet down my cheeks. I had restrained myself most of the day, but now I had no reason to hold back. All kinds of thoughts and voices were inside my head. Brendan could die soon. Well-meaning people would say, “Jennifer, you’re still young. Grieve, but you have to move on. Don’t shut out love.”

  I wasn’t—I loved Brendan! I hadn’t shut out love, but look where it had gotten me. I mopped my face with tissues, then stared at the empty rows of chairs lit by harsh white light. Outside the window, the street whined with a thin stream of traffic whizzing past. I felt so alone at the hospital.

  The minutes passed slowly. Eventually an hour went by. I would have called Sam again, but it was too late.

  I finally dug into my handbag and lifted out the last packet of her letters. I untied the frayed red string and fanned out the envelopes. My name danced across the length of them in her clear and distinct hand.

  I bought a cup of coffee from the machine, stirred in several packets of sugar. Then I pried open an envelope flap. “I need to hear your voice, Sam,” I said.

  In the endless white night of the hospital waiting room, I began to read the end of Sam’s story.

  Seventy-three

  Dear Jen,

  Here’s what happened—everything changed in an instant.

  Doc knocked on my kitchen door one pathetically hot day in August, and the moment I saw him, my heart started banging around in my chest. I was stunned and maybe even scared. Jennifer, he had never been to my house like that before.

  “Is something the matter?” I asked. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”

  All he said was “Come take a ride with me.”

  “Right now? Like this?”

  “Yep. You look just fine, Samantha. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “A good surprise?”

  “The best I could come up with. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.”

  Whatever he was up to, I was having none of it in my dirt-stained overalls and gardening clogs. So I let him inside the house and went upstairs to change. Fifteen minutes later I was wearing a pretty blue linen dress, my hair was neat, and I’d even put on some lipstick.

  When he saw me, Doc smiled. “God, you’re gorgeous,” he said. Of course, he would think I was gorgeous if I were wearing a trash bag with a tuna casserole on my head. I told him so, and we both laughed, because it was true.

  And then he grabbed both my hands. “Samantha, everything changes today.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me what changes today?” I asked.

  “No, I want to show you.”

  He wasn’t just enthusiastic, he was very mysterious, Jen, which added to the fun. Of course, I was excited just to see him, to look into his face and see how happy he was.

  And you know what? I really do like surprises!

  Seventy-four

  Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer,

  That whole week the Venetian Festival had been going full blast in the village, and the streets were mobbed with tourists who’d come to the annual end-of-summer bash at the lake. Doc parked in a municipal lot a block north of Main Street and fed a pocket full of quarters into the meter. It seemed that we were going to the fair, and apparently we would be staying for a while.

  “Is this your surprise?” I asked. “Because I kind of knew the festival was in town.”

  “This is just the venue,” he said. “Don’t be such a wisenheimer.” Which was one of Doc’s favorite words, if it even is a word.

  Kids were screaming on the roller coaster, the air smelled of buttered popcorn and cotton candy, and it suddenly struck me that I was in a moment I thought would never come. There we were, Doc and I walking hand in hand together in downtown Lake Geneva. I looked up at him with a big question written across my face. “Is this your surprise? Because it’s a great one, actually. Are we out of the closet?”

  Doc told me that he had just dropped his youngest off at Vanderbilt University. “The nest is empty. No more Mr. Mom,” he said. “I’m free.”

  Suddenly Doc pulled me into his arms and kissed me in front of God and everybody else in Lake Geneva. His kiss was so full of love that tears popped out of my eyes.

  He looked into my eyes. “I wonder if anybody has ever had a love affair like ours, Samantha. You know, I doubt it.”

  “That’s part of what makes it special, I guess.”

  The sun was warm on my face, the air was cool, and as I swayed in Doc�
�s arms, I felt alive in a way I never had before. This was even better than our weekends to Copper Harbor because for the first time we were absolutely free. I was flying, Jennifer, but somehow my feet were still on the ground as we reached Library Park.

  We found an empty bench next to the seawall. We watched the Lady of the Lake cast off from the Riviera Docks, and Doc bought hot dogs and beers from the Veterans’ stand. We stayed way after the sun went down, watching the lit boat parade and the fireworks finale.

  And here’s the amazing thing. It would be insulting if it weren’t so funny. During that whole day Doc and I spoke with people we knew, and not one of them noticed that we were glowing. I got it, of course. People just couldn’t conceive of romance between the two of us. How strange and backwards the world can be sometimes. So many people just give up on love, even though love is the best thing that can happen to them.

  I turned to Doc and told him how much I loved him and that I couldn’t imagine a better surprise. He pulled me close. “Brace yourself, Samantha. Our day isn’t over.”

  Seventy-five

  Doc’s car purred contentedly as we drove away from the festival, past the outskirts of town. I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Not until we pulled into the lot of the Yerkes Observatory. It was quiet, and all I could hear were the chirping of crickets and maybe my own pulse beating in my ears.

  Doc grabbed a plaid blanket from the backseat, and as we’d done years before, we ran on tiptoes across the lawn fronting the imposing building. A pal of Doc’s had left a key for us in a crack between two bricks in the wall. We climbed the three flights of stairs to the largest dome and entered into darkness.