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“I’ve always loved her. ” Marge’s voice caught on a little sob. “You can’t know what it’s like, Nora, to love your daughter so much . . . and watch her stop needing you. What if she marries this man and forgets all about me?”
Nora closed her eyes and cleared her mind. She’d learned that skill long ago; callers were constantly saying things that struck at the heart of her own pain. She’d had to learn to let it go. “Every mother is afraid of that, Marge. The only way to really hold on to our children is to let them go. Let Suki take your love with her, let it be like a light that’s always on in the house where she grew up. If she has that for strength, she’ll never be too far away. ”
Marge wept softly. “Maybe I could call her . . . ask her to bring her boyfriend around for supper. ”
“That would be a wonderful start. Good luck to you, Marge, and be sure and let us know how it all works out. ” She cleared her throat and disconnected the call. “Come on, everybody,” she said into the microphone, “let’s help Marge out. I know there are plenty of you who have mended families. Call in. Marge and I want to be reminded that love isn’t as fragile as it sometimes feels. ”
She leaned back in the chair, watching as the phone lines lit up. Parenting issues were always a popu- lar topic—especially mother–daughter problems. On the monitor by her elbow, she saw the words: line four/trouble with stepdaughter/Ginny.
She picked up line four. “Hello and welcome, Ginny. You’re on the air with Nora Bridge. ”
“Uh. Hi. I love your show. ”
“Thanks, Ginny. How are things in your family?”
For the next two hours and thirteen minutes, Nora gave her heart and soul to her listeners. She never pretended to have all the answers, or to be a substitute for doctors or family therapy. Instead, she tried to give her friendship to these troubled, ordinary people she’d never met.
As was her custom, when the show was finally over, she returned to her office. There, she took the time to write personal thank-you notes to any of those callers who’d been willing to leave an address with the show’s producer. She always did this herself; no secretary ever copied Nora’s signature. It was a little thing, but Nora firmly believed in it. Anyone who’d been courageous enough to publicly ask for advice from Nora deserved a private thank-you.
By the time she finished, she was running late.
She grabbed her Fendi briefcase and hurried to her car. Fortunately, it was only a few miles to the hospital. She parked in the underground lot and emerged into the lobby’s artificial brightness.
It was past visiting hours, but this was a small, privately run hospital, and Nora had become such a regu-lar visitor—every Saturday and Tuesday for the past month—that certain rules had been bent to accommodate her busy schedule. It didn’t hurt that she was a local celebrity, or that
the nurses loved her radio show.
She smiled and waved to the familiar faces as she walked down the corridor toward Eric’s room. Outside his closed door, she paused, collecting herself.
Although she saw him often, it was never easy. Eric Sloan was as close to a son as she would ever have, and watching him battle cancer was unbearable. But Nora was all he had. His mother and father had written Eric off long ago, unable to accept his life’s choices, and his beloved younger brother, Dean, rarely made time to visit.
She pushed open the door to his room and saw that he was sleeping. He lay in bed, with his head turned toward the window. A multicolored afghan, knitted by Nora’s own hands, was wrapped around his too-thin body.
With his hair almost gone and his cheeks hollowed and his mouth open, he looked as old and beaten as a man could be. And he hadn’t yet celebrated his thirty-first birthday.
For a moment, it was as if she hadn’t seen him before. As if . . . although she’d watched his daily deterioration, she hadn’t actually seen it, and now it had sneaked up on her, stolen her friend’s face while she was foolishly pretending that everything would be all right.
But it wouldn’t be. Just now, this second, she understood what he’d been trying to tell her, and the grieving—which she’d managed to box into tiny, consumable squares—threatened to overwhelm her. In that one quiet heartbeat of time, she went from hopeful to . . . not. And if it hurt her this terribly, the lack of hope, how could he bear it?
She went to him, gently caressed the bare top of his head. The few thin strands of his hair, delicate as spiderwebs, brushed across her knuckles.
He blinked up at her sleepily, trying for a boyish grin and almost succeeding. “I have good news and bad news,” he said.
She touched his shoulder, and felt how fragile he was. So unlike the tall, strapping black-haired boy who’d carried her groceries into the house . . .
There was a tiny catch in her voice as she said cheerfully, “What’s the good news?”
“No more treatments. ”
She clutched his shoulder too hard; his bones shifted, birdlike, and immediately she let go. “And the bad news?”
His gaze was steady. “No more treatments. ” He paused. “It was Dr. Calomel’s idea. ”
She nodded dully, wishing she could think of something profound to say, but everything had already been said between them in the eleven months since his diagnosis. They’d spent dozens of nights talking about and around this moment. She’d even thought she was ready for it—this beginning of the end—but now she saw her naïveté. There was no “ready” for death, especially not when it came for a young man you loved.
And yet, she understood. She’d seen lately that the cancer was taking him away.
He closed his eyes, and she wondered if he was remembering the healthy, vibrant man he’d once been, the boy with the booming laugh . . . the teacher so beloved by his students . . . or if he was recalling the time, a few years before, when his partner, Charlie, had been in a hospital bed like this one, fighting a losing battle with AIDS . . .
