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Though of course he looked as foolish and sweetly vulnerable as every patient did. Julie managed to brave face it until they wheeled him off and the door closed with a quiet whoosh. Betty's arm slid around her as Julie bit back a little tremble of reaction.
"He'll be fine," the nurse said firmly. "They took your friend up a few minutes ago. Why don't we go hang out in his room with his family? I'll let the nurse desk know where to find us. Dr. Pindar is the absolute best at this in the Charlotte area. Des is in great hands."
"I know. I'm just being stupid. Why didn't I say I love him, too?" She would have chased down the gurney like a melodramatic novel heroine, but Betty caught her arm.
"Because he already knows. And because you'll tell him when he wakes up, when it will mean even more." Betty touched her face. "You remember when we met, you told me you've waited a long time to find the right person for you?"
Julie nodded. Betty looked toward the door as if she, too, were following the progress of the gurney with her ears. "What you may not realize is, despite how much he tried not to let it happen, he's waited a long time for someone, too. No matter how much more time this gives him, Julie, you're the one who saved his life. You gave him a reason to want to live for himself." She linked arms with Julie. "And in my book, that makes you a real life miracle."
Betty's advice was sound. Julie, Marcus, Rory, Elaine and Betty hung out in Thomas's room, providing one another needed support and company. Though Des had checked into the hospital the night before, it was Betty's pull and Marcus's wealth that had obtained Thomas an assigned room before his surgery, and Julie was grateful for the gathering space. Daytime TV droned in the background while they talked and made runs to the cafeteria for bad, high calorie snacks. They discussed the hardware store, how Les was doing in medical school, Julie's impressions of Charlotte...an assortment of random topics that helped fill the time and turn minds away from worrying.
Eventually, Elaine started asking Julie and Betty questions about Des. Julie could see Marcus was absorbing the information as intently as Elaine, probably to fill Thomas in later, but he was curious for his own sake.
Julie was part of that rapt audience when Betty offered a more detailed picture of the boy and young man Des had been. Though the shrewd nurse kept them distracted with the stories, Julie saw Marcus check his watch more than once. A couple times he rose and paced the hall when it was obvious he was too restless to be still. The first time he did it, Elaine caught his hand as he passed her and squeezed. He answered that pressure and bent to drop a kiss on her head.
"Don't go far," she said. "You know Thomas doesn't want you smoking."
Despite her own worries, Julie hid a smile. Elaine knew enough about Marcus to know he smoked when he was tremendously agitated.
"I'll just be out in the hall," he said, brushing her cheek with a light knuckle, his way of reassuring her.
Betty handed the ball back to Julie and she entertained Elaine and Rory with her stories of Des's "Slinky" routine on the roof, his Type I kids like Mylo and people at the theater like Billie. She tactfully stayed away from the specifics of their performances. Julie was sure Elaine knew it was erotic in nature, since she avoided asking for details a person would normally ask about the productions. However, Julie knew she wouldn't be comfortable with open discussions about it, so she tactfully stayed away from that. As always, though, Elaine was supportive, lauding Julie's success in getting the theater up and running.
"Do you have any other pictures of Des?" Elaine asked her at length.
"Oh, I..." She didn't. She didn't have a picture of him. Not even the one Thomas had taken at the restaurant that night. Why hadn't she told him to send it to her? Here she was, doing what she was doing, feeling for Des the way she did, and she didn't even have a snapshot of him on her phone.
"Hey." Betty put a hand over hers, as if sensing the tsunami of emotion the simple request had provoked. "It's okay. I do. I have plenty." Reaching into the canvas tote she had with her, printed with whimsical purple flowers on the outside, she drew out a slim photo album that looked new. "I copied the pictures I've collected of him over the years and made you an album, Elaine. I figured his aunt and cousins would want them, or at least be interested."
"Oh." Elaine's face lit up. "How very kind of you."
Marcus had returned from his latest pacing, so he moved next to Julie as Betty shifted to sit next to Elaine. Rory rolled his wheelchair over to the other side of his mother to see, since Betty put the photo album in Elaine's lap. Marcus slid his arm around Julie and brushed his lips against her temple as the two women began to talk about pictures of Des, starting from his first intake picture at the boys' home, and the infant pictures from the hospital. Julie wanted to see them, too, but right now she needed Marcus's strong arm more.
"I know he's going to be fine today," she said softly, combatting the coil of desperation in her gut. "There's more potential for complications afterward, really. Infection, rejection, all that. But that's the thing. I can't stop worrying about a million things that might have made yesterday the last day we had for him to feel like himself, be himself, be the person I love... We're still so new to all of this."
God, was that what worried her? That he'd come out of that surgery no longer Des?
She hadn't meant for anyone else to hear her, but Elaine had incredibly sharp ears. She stopped and looked up. "Loving someone isn't like loving a painting, dear. It's like loving a garden. A lot of hard work, and some things thrive, while others wither and die, but those fertilize the rest. And things always, always change, from season to season."
She reached over the album to take Julie's hand and hold it. Betty watched the interchange with quiet approval and agreement in her expression.
"But your love for your garden, all it's been, and all it can be, never changes." Julie could tell from Elaine's fond, wistful expression she was thinking of her late husband. "You can't predict how it will work for you and Des. Only time and God can help you figure that out. Just don't lose your faith in love. It's one of the strongest, most wonderful things about you, and I'm sure that's a big part of what Des sees in you as well."
Hearing the wisdom of an older generation was as reassuring as Marcus's arm around her shoulders. Elaine gave her hand one more pat before returning to the album. "Look at him there. Twelve years old... Oh my."
Elaine's eyes abruptly filled with tears, alarming all of them as she fingered the teenage picture of Des. In the earlier pictures, his hair had been short, an incompatible look with his features, though Julie suspected short hair was a requirement of the boys' home. But in this picture, it was starting to grow out. His eyes were the same in every photo. A penetrating brown that conveyed his depth of character even in a two-dimensional medium.
"Mom? You okay?" Rory put his callused, large hand on her thin forearm. He'd grown into a handsome man like his older brother, and was tanned and callused in all the right places from his work at the family hardware store he managed, despite only being in his twenties. His physique made it clear he didn't let being in a wheel chair keep him from hard work.
Elaine nodded, withdrawing a small album from her own sizeable purse. Opening it up, she displayed a young girl around the same age as Des in his picture. The likeness was so remarkable, the only thing that distinguished them seemed to be gender. "It's no wonder Thomas saw the resemblance. Look at the two of them. It almost made the DNA test unnecessary. There's no doubt they were mother and son."
"You're right, Mom. He looks a lot like Aunt Christine. I remember she always had peppermint drops."
"Yes." From the press of Elaine's lips, and the flicker in Betty's eyes, Julie suspected there was a less-than-innocuous reason for that. If his mother was a drug addict, she likely had bad teeth. Julie thought about Des's subconscious preference for peppermint scent in his own home and wondered if he'd internalized that olfactory memory as an infant.
There was no unkindness in Elaine's v
oice as she gave her son the simple one-word answer, only sadness as her fingertips slipped over the picture. "She was never a happy child, not like you, Thomas and Les, but she was artistic and dramatic. She'd create costumes out of scraps of cloth and old jewelry our mother had. She'd stroll through the house like a fine Victorian lady, or a princess. One time she imitated a British accent and pretended to be Queen Elizabeth for a whole week."
