He shakes his head. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. The machine is being recalibrated and we’re going to test again. But…there’s a chance—a possibility—that her leukemia is…retreating.”
“Retreating?” Charlie, now looking deflated and stunned. Like someone poked a hole in a balloon. “What does that mean? We’ve been told it—that it can’t. It won’t. It’s not responding to treatment. It’s advancing. Now it’s retreating? Will she…can she...?”
The doctor rubs his face. “To be perfectly candid, Mr. Park, I just don’t know. I’ve heard of cases like this…maybe two other times, in my career.” He sighs again. “She’s still barely hanging on. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic, necessarily—but if we recalibrate the machine and re-scan her and the results come back the same as the previous couple sets of scans? This could be an anomalous, unexpected remission. But we’re in uncharted territory here, okay? I don’t know what’s going to happen. She could continue to improve. Or…not. We just don’t know.”
He stands up, takes a deep breath, lets it out, and seems to rally. “For now, we wait.”
And then he exits.
That man is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, it appears.
The moment he’s gone, Grandma stands up and strides purposefully to the exit.
“Mom?” Sherri asks. “Where are you going?”
“To pray,” is the response. A pause. A look to me. “Westley? Are you coming?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
I follow her to the chapel. Hold her hand as she descends to her knees in the second row, this time, holding on to the back of the pew in front of her. I’m beside her. Kneeling.
Once again, I can’t form ideas or words or thoughts. Am I directing the plea in my heart to the cross? To a being somewhere beyond the sky that I’m not sure I believe in? I don’t know even that.
I just know my heart beats a single word:
Please.
My mind repeats it.
My soul sings it.
At some point, I feel others join me. Macy on my left, her incredible profusion of hair bowed. Bethany is on the other side of her. Sherri and Charlie on the other side of Grandma.
We kneel together in the second row of the chapel.
We wait. Some of us pray. Others weep.
Eventually Grandma moves from her knees to sit on the pew. Reaches into her voluminous purse and removes a small bible with a locking front cover. Old, worn red leather, gold clasp in the shape of a heart, with a tiny red jewel in the center.
She pops the clasp and uses the crimson ribbon to open it. Psalms.
Reads aloud, but in a low murmur. Not quite to herself, not quite aloud.
I listen.
It’s Old King James, with thee and thou and thy.
Somehow, in this place, it fits.
There’s a sacred silence here, profound and deep.
Please.
Please.
Time spent praying passes sludge-slow and in a fast-forward blur.
“Westley?” Grandma, again. Beside me, sitting now. Fidgeting with something in her palm.
I rub my eyes. Sit up straight and look at her. “Yeah.”
“Do you love her?”
I nod, without hesitation. “I do.”
Her eyes search mine. Though aged, they’re sharp with fierce personality, resonant with faith, and a green much like Jolene’s. “My husband passed, a few years before Jolene was even born. Much too young, much too soon.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”
She nods, has a faint smile on her face. “He was the love of my life, and when he passed, I knew I’d never get over him. I’d never be with anyone else. And I haven’t.”
She opens her hand, revealing a simple ring on her palm; it’s a thin gold band with a tiny diamond. The gold is tarnished with age. The diamond can’t be more than a quarter of a carat.
“This is the ring my Jonathan gave me, fifty years ago. This week, actually. It would be our fifty-year anniversary this Friday.” She smiles at me. “It would mean the world to me if she were to wear it.”
I choke on my emotions, lodged thick and hot in my throat. “I…” a sigh escapes me. “Are you sure you want to part with it?”
“I’m not parting with it. I’m passing it on. It was given to me with love, and now I’m giving with all the love I have to my granddaughter. You love her, she loves you. This whole thing began with a proposal, did it not?”
I nod. “It did.”
“And you said you’d marry her.”
“I did.”
“Will you?” Her eyes are sharp and rife with intense meaning.
I take the ring from her—it has great metaphysical weight. It’s a tiny, light little ring. But the importance and meaning of it…it sits heavily in my palm.
“It would be my greatest honor,” I tell her. “Thank you.”
She shakes her head. “I was skeptical at first. I honestly disapproved. I thought it was a gimmick. A publicity stunt.”
I nod. “Understandable. I won’t hold it against you,” I say, smiling at her.
She gives me a faint smile in return, but the humor fades quickly. “I’m thankful to you, now. You’ve given her life and happiness of a kind I wasn’t sure she’d ever get to experience.”
My turn to shake my head. “Honestly, I’m the one who’s been given life and happiness. She’s…she’s taught me so much.”
A nod. “She’s like that. But anyway. Thank you for being with her. For being brave enough to take this journey with her.”
“The journey isn’t over,” I say.
She takes my hand in hers. “No, it’s not. The Bible commands us to pray without ceasing, and that’s what I intend to do, until she’s either healed, or the sweet Lord Jesus takes her home.”
A Spar of Hope
Jolene
Music.
Motes of nothing whirl, flecks of stardust flow like a river.
Darkness breathes.
And there is music.
“Jolene, Jolene, Jolene…
Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green…”
It’s a voice, a familiar one. Sad. Lonely. Pleading.
Whispers echo, like moth wings fluttering in a silent room.
Darkness again. Thick and heavy, a million pounds dragging down into deeper, colder silence.
Not there. No, not down there. Emptiness lurks in that deepness.
Music, again.
“…One day more
Tomorrow you'll be worlds away
And yet with you my world has started
One more day all on my own
Will we ever meet again?”
The weighty, titanic vehemence of the dark cold nothing lightens, ever so slightly. The claws retract, just a little. The silence is yet still and fathomless, but there is, somehow, a sense of…
Something.
Music once more, and now there are tears in the voice.