The Ninth Step (16 page)

An old Mercedes, she saw. As big as a boat and painted a shade of reddish brown that would have been more hideous had it not been faded with age. The Cotton she had known wouldn’t have been caught dead driving a junker like that. Livie wondered what had happened to his truck, the glossy black Ford F-450. It was for business, he’d said when he’d bought it, a write off. Driving something smaller would make him look cheap. Nobody wants a cheap looking builder constructing their home, he’d joked. Half joked. Cotton was like Kat, he loved all the flash and dazzle.

But that was gone. All that big attitude, that swagger, worn off now. Livie imagined there was a story behind it.

Even his walk seemed subdued.

She waited, certain he would turn; he would find her again; she wanted him to, but he didn’t and it bothered her more than it should have that he could still disappoint her.

#

The ambulance led the way out of the subdivision, reassuringly without benefit of lights or siren. The early evening light was translucent, a watery mélange of silver, the palest tinge of lavender. Their pace was sedate enough that Livie felt comfortable dialing Charlie on her cell phone, but in all her explanation, she left out that she was following Cotton.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be. Should I call Kat and have her come pick up Stella, do you think?”

“Noooo. . . .”

“You have me on speaker?” Livie withheld a sigh.

“We went out for hamburgers and now we’re playing Parcheesi,” Charlie said. “Stell’s beating the pants off me.”

“Don’t call Mom. Pullleeease, Auntie Livie?”

“There’s no sense in getting Kat all riled,” Charlie said.

Bless you, Livie thought.

“Stella’s fine here. If it gets too late and you aren’t back, she can sleep over.”

“On the sleeping porch,” Stella shouted.

They laughed at Stella’s exuberance.

Livie told Charlie where he could find Stella’s overnight bag and she was passing along more instructions he didn’t need when the stripe of red light burst across the top of the ambulance and her heart paused. “I have to go,” she said, lifting her voice over the wail of the siren.

“You be careful, Livie, gal, you hear?--and you call me if you need me no matter how late.”

She said she would. She said he would never know how grateful she was that he was there for her.

#

She didn’t see Cotton at first when she went into the ER. Waiting at the desk, she heard a nurse say something about an ambulance, someone coding. Livie’s stomach dropped.

Cotton found her and she went with him into the waiting area. He told her that Delia’s heart had stopped. “That’s why they flipped on the lights and siren. They’re still working to get her back.”

“But she was stable when they left the house.”

“She’s lost a lot of blood, they don’t know from where.”

“She fell.” Livie remembered the bright swaths of red smeared over the kitchen wall, puddled on the floor.

“No, I don’t think-- Well, I guess she could have, but the way they’re talking, it sounds as if it’s something internal. Here, sit down.”

She perched on the edge of a molded plastic chair. The room was cold and she was afraid . . . of herself, Cotton, what was happening to Delia. The entry doors opened and a man and a woman burst through them on a billowing wave of alarm. The hair on Livie’s scalp rose. In her mind’s eye, she saw her mother’s face when she’d carried Kat, who’d been unconscious, through a similar set of doors, Livie in a dancing panic at her side. Livie remembered Kat’s little legs, the way they’d dangled uselessly over her mother’s arm. She remembered the bruised, sunken orbits of Kat’s eyes, how she’d prayed for Kat to open them.

Their mother insisted to the ER doctor that Kat was fine; she’d fallen from her bicycle the day before, but she’d been fine. It had been a lie. A bald-faced lie. Livie had burned over it; she’d been furious and shamed: Her mother had lied. Lied! To a doctor. How could she?

Livie didn’t like remembering. She might have lost her sister then. Because their mother had been so careless with her. It’s what happened when you didn’t pay attention. People died. And after that, what difference did it make for you to argue, the way their mother had, that you loved them? They were still just as dead.

The man and woman were at the desk now asking for information. A nurse directed them to the surgical floor. Someone down the corridor laughed. There was a page delivered in a well-modulated voice asking for Dr. Albertson, a squeak of rubber-soled shoes, the chime of an elevator, even the antiseptic smell struck a note. Livie tucked her arms around herself.

She and Cotton were alone.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Coffee? There’s a machine.”

“I should be asking you,” she said.

He sat beside her and looked at her. She had a sense that he was filling himself with the sight of her. She was treated to the brief light of his smile. “I can’t believe you’re real,” he said.

She shifted her glance. A television bolted to the wall high up in one corner reflected a picture, but no sound.

“You look-- You’re still so beauti--”

“Don’t.” She spoke more sharply than she’d intended.

He balanced his elbows on his knees. “They wanted to know if she drank. I guess they smelled the liquor on her.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth. What else? Nothing’s changed. She’s still a drunk, a total lush.” He kept his gaze on his hands, muttered something that sounded like, “I ought to know.”

Livie didn’t ask. She’d heard him argue with anyone who suggested his mother had a drinking problem, but she’d also heard him argue with Delia. When she’d complained about this pang or that ache or life in general, he’d said there wasn’t anything wrong with her that getting off the booze wouldn’t cure. “You could at least cut down,” he’d advised her.

Livie thought she could have done more, should have done more, when she’d gone to show Delia Cotton’s letter. She had seen Delia’s swollen ankles, noticed her pallor. She’d even wondered when Delia had last seen a doctor. Why hadn’t she asked? But Delia wasn’t her mother and on no account would Delia  take that sort of interference from Livie. Besides, Cotton was here. He should have been the one to see to Delia, shouldn’t he? She was his responsibility. Livie touched her temples. It wasn’t making her feel better to blame him.

His neglect didn’t excuse hers.

Livie knew Delia. It was only on the surface that they appeared to have nothing in common. Delia had no one except Max, the old man who lived down the street, who brought gin to her. Livie had her mom and Kat and Kat’s children. Charlie. Her little farm. Satisfying work. Compared to Delia, Livie had a whole world of things to be thankful for.

But like Delia, there were days when she didn’t give a flip about it; days when she would waken with depression and loneliness lying across her chest like wet dogs.

Days that had led her to give up hope.

All of Delia’s days were like that.

Livie twisted her hands in her lap. “I wish I’d pushed her harder. If I could have gotten her to talk--”

“No, Livie, for god’s sake, don’t blame yourself!” Cotton jerked to his feet and she flinched. He clapped his hands to his head. “I feel terrible as it is. I’m so sorry about all this, not just tonight, not just Delia--”

He bent his gaze to hers. “I would do anything, you know that, don’t you? Give anything to go back, to make it up.”

She said his name, “Cotton,” wanting to stop the rush of his words. He took no notice.

“The stuff I’ve written to you, it sounds so stupid, but I keep hoping-- I’ve driven to your place so many times, I think the car could find its way alone.”

Livie broke their gaze. She thought of the irises, the basket filled with eggs, the offerings of peace he’d left for her on the porch. She’d known, hadn’t she known they were from him?

Cotton sat beside her again. “Please believe me, I just want to make this right.”

“Your mother said you told her you left to get away from me.” Livie couldn’t keep the edge from her voice.

“No! See, that’s what I’m trying to--”

“--that I was pressuring you to change, to be other than who you are.”

“She’s a drunk, crazy old woman. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“She blames me because you dropped out of college. She wishes you’d become a lawyer like Nix.”

“Well, you know that’s nuts. I dropped out before I met you and I could never have been a lawyer. I was a terrible student.”

Livie smoothed the folds of her skirt. “This isn’t the right time to have this discussion. There’s something I need to tell you anyway. A woman called--” She hesitated.

Cotton waited, his gaze was patient, expectant. Sweet, she thought. He could be so sweet.

She started in again. “It’s just I heard from a neighbor who spoke to the sheriff and he said--” But no, she thought. It was too ridiculous. She couldn’t even tell Cotton the name of the woman who had called JB. It might be some crank for all she knew. It wasn’t as if she’d gotten all the facts and what she did know was second hand. Cotton had enough to deal with right now in any case.

“Livie?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. What happened between us, it’s in the past and I think it’s best if we leave it there.”

“But I don’t want anything from you, to take anything more from you. I don’t want to cause you more pain. I just want a chance to explain.”

She didn’t answer.

He stood up again, laced his fingers behind his head, whispered, “This is all so screwed up--”

“Are you with Delia O’Dell?”

Livie and Cotton both looked at the woman in green blood-spattered scrubs who was asking.

Livie half stood.

Cotton said he was Delia’s son.

“I’m Dr. Hoffman, Penny Hoffman.” The woman spoke quietly, but distinctly, the way Livie spoke to Zachary when he needed to be calmed down, when she needed him to listen. “I’ve been looking after your mother since they brought her in.”

“How is she?” Cotton asked.

The doctor gestured. “Let’s sit down.”

Chapter 12

“This is Olivia Saunders.” Cotton introduced Livie, fighting an urge to take her hand as he sat beside her. “She’s--”
My bride, my wife, the love of my life. . . .
 

“A friend of the family,” Livie supplied.

Penny Hoffman nodded. She was sixtyish, Cotton guessed, tall and angular. He had the sense that there was no flesh left over for curves under the loose-fitting scrubs. There was nothing soft about her face either except her eyes.

“Your mom’s in critical condition,” she said. “She was in cardiac arrest when the paramedics brought her in.”

“They said she died.”

“She’s lucky she was in an ambulance. We were able to resuscitate her. We’ve inserted a tube to help clear the fluid in her abdomen and we’re giving her blood transfusions. But she’s not out of the woods.”

“Will she be?”

“If we can stop the bleeding, that’s the tricky part. She’s very weak, not a good candidate for surgery at this point.”

Cotton took a breath of air, blew it through his teeth.

“I told her the last time she landed in here that she had to stop drinking.”

“Last time?” Cotton and Livie spoke at once.

“She was here for ten days last October according to her chart. A procedure was done then, a ligation, to close off the source of the bleeding.”

Livie brought her tented fingers to her mouth. “I should have looked in on her--”

“No.” Cotton held her with his glance; he couldn’t stand the sound of her distress. “It’s my fault. If anyone should have been checking on her, it was me.”

“Actually it’s your mom who’s the alcoholic and she’s back in here because she refuses to address her addiction.” Dr. Hoffman was matter-of-fact.

Cotton dropped his gaze.

Livie leaned around him. “What exactly is her condition?”

She was so close, Cotton could feel the warmth of her skin, her breath on his neck. He wanted to put his hand there; he wanted to turn and kiss her. He wanted to go to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. He wanted to look at her, to fill his eyes with the sight of her. He did none of those things. He kept his gaze low while Penny Hoffman answered Livie’s question: Delia was suffering from cirrhosis and in addition to massive internal bleeding, she was under siege from an entire host of other complications: edema, weight loss, jaundice; her condition was chronic and degenerative. The doc went on and on.

Cotton thought if Livie had asked him, his version would have been a lot shorter: You drink enough for long enough, you tear the shit out of your liver. You rupture a bunch of veins, bleed into your gut. You vomit blood everywhere. In Seattle, Anita had gotten drunk with a woman who’d choked to death on her own blood in the street outside a liquor store. She’d had the cap off the half pint she and Anita had just purchased when she fell. Anita said she’d cut her knees all to hell on the busted glass trying to save the bottle.

“Can we see her?” Cotton asked when Dr. Hoffman stopped talking.

“As soon as she’s stable, we’ll move her into the ICU.” The doctor stood up, said she’d be around all night if they needed to speak with her again.

Cotton asked if Livie would wait and when she nodded he went after the doctor and caught her before she disappeared through the double doors underneath a sign that read: Admittance Restricted.

“What are the odds my mother’ll make it?” he asked her. “You know, like. . . ?” He lifted a shoulder.
Through the night, out of here, another month, a year?
He could tell from Dr. Hoffman’s expression that she hated the question; he knew all the reasons why, too, but there it was.

Penny Hoffman crossed her arms. “It’s hard to predict. I’d say a bit worse given that this is the second major bleeding episode she’s had in less than a year. Of course, if she goes home and takes even one more drink, all bets are off.”

#

Livie was perched on the edge of the chair when he came back to the waiting area. “I should go,” she said. “My niece is spending the night and I’ve left her with a neighbor.”