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“I’ll drop you off and come back. They said they weren’t going to extubate and try to wake her until after morning rounds. So not much is likely to change until then.”
“What about you?”
“I can sleep anywhere. And I’m not the one who’s sick.”
“Okay.” Gram took Nora’s hand and closed her eyes for a moment. I was pretty sure the woman who hadn’t been to church in twenty years just said a little prayer. It seemed the two of us were more religious today than we’d been in a long time. Gram lifted her purse onto her shoulder, but then stopped. “Hang on a second.”
She set her purse on the foot of the bed and rummaged through, coming up with something wrapped in newspaper and handing it to me. “This is her gratitude jar. Just in case she wakes up before I get back and needs a reminder.”
These two amazing women were carrying around glass containers filled with memories to hang on to when there was nothing left to grab. It was hard to fight my tears.
When I got back from dropping Gram at the hotel, it was almost one in the morning. The night nurse was fiddling with the machines as I walked in.
“Any change?” I asked.
She smiled politely. “No. But no news is good news in these types of situations. Tomorrow will be a big day for her, when they take her off the meds and allow her to wake up.”
I nodded.
After the nurse took some vitals, she rolled her mobile laptop desk and chair to the next patient’s fishbowl room. I went back to doing what I’d been doing most of the day—when I wasn’t talking to my grandmother or staring at Nora—researching cardiac rhabdomyosarcoma. I’d learned a lot about the rare cancer, including that it was sometimes hereditary. Nora’s mother had died from the disease in her early thirties. I’d also read that the five-year survival rate was only eleven percent, and Nora had been diagnosed more than ten years ago—she’d already beat the odds. But three open-heart surgeries had left her heart weak, and the tumors that came back this time were inoperable.
A few more hours passed, and my eyes grew blurry from reading on my phone, so I set it down on the food tray. The gratitude jar sitting nearby caught my eye and made me smile. I picked it up and held it.
The nurse from earlier stopped back in and changed Nora’s IV bag. She gestured to the Mason jar in my hands.
“What’s that?”
I smiled sadly. “Just some things Nora wants to remember.”
The nurse nodded like she understood. Maybe she did, working here and being surrounded by critically ill people day in and day out. She finished hanging the fluids on the pole and looked over at me. “She can’t respond, but I think she can hear you.”
My brows furrowed.
She pointed her eyes to the jar once again. “It might bring her comfort.”
After she walked out, I thought back to what Father Kelly had said.“Perhaps you’re here to provide comfort in her time of need.”
Twisting off the top felt intrusive, like I might be invading Nora’s private thoughts. But when I slipped out the first piece of folded up paper, I got over that feeling real quick.
June 1st—I’m thankful I was able to get two Harry Styles tickets today.
I chuckled and took Nora’s hand. I read it aloud for her before digging in for another one.
June 20th—Sunrise over the Smoky Mountains
June 9th—The smell of fresh gardenias
June 17th—The ability to Google the answers to anything. BTW, Google was right, and Tequila Tuesdays has the best tacos in Virginia.
I smiled.
June 9th—I’m thankful for William Sutton, the best father a girl could ever wish for.
A lump formed in my throat when I realized she’d written about her dad on the date we’d gone to meet her biological father in the Bahamas.
I pulled gratitude notes out and read them for almost half an hour. A few simple ones punched me in the gut—like the one that said puddles and rainboots. And some made me laugh—like the one she wrote on Thanksgiving last year that said she was glad she wasn’t a turkey. But one stopped me in my tracks.
May 22nd—I’m thankful for the chance to have met a man who reminded me what love is.
