Angel Falling Softly - By Eugene Woodbury Page 0,86
for the heartfelt sympathy, the trite and meaningless reassurances of faith, and the litany of scriptures surely to come. Her favorite had no deep theological import attached to it other than a simple statement of reality: Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die.
Except that Jennifer refused to die. A perverse air of disappointment haunted this growing realization. Like a fireworks display interrupted by a sudden downpour, the big finale turning into an emotional fizzle. At first, in the words of the hospital staff, Jennifer was “holding on.” Then she was “soldiering on.” Then she was “out of the woods.” Then going from “strength to strength.”
“Her FDP is in the basement, and her ANC is through the roof,” said Dr. Ingebretsen. In other words, the blood factors of a healthy child.
The flock of her extended family finally figured out that the news of Jennifer’s death was very much exaggerated and with a collective shrug winged their way back to more comfortable climes.
And then Jennifer was “awake and alert.” She opened her eyes and smiled and said, “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” as if she’d just gotten off the bus from day camp. She cast her eyes around the room. “Where’s Milada?” she wondered.
Rachel and David exchanged curious glances. Rachel said, not questioning the thinking behind such an odd question, “She had to go back to New York.”
“Oh,” said Jennifer with a small, pouting frown. She quickly brightened. “How about Laura?”
“She’s at school. We weren’t expecting you to wake up so suddenly.”
“When can I go back to school?”
“Not so quick,” her father cautioned but with a broad smile that said, Yes! My child’s a trouper!
Two weeks later Jennifer was declared as healthy as could be expected of a leukemia patient who’d camped out at death’s door for the past six months—except for a persistent normocytic anemia revealed in her CBC that responded well to Epogen and blood transfusions. But Dr. Ingebretsen was sure her bone marrow only needed time to recover, and he sent her home.
Lingering concern about opportunistic diseases kept her out of school and wearing a surgical mask whenever she went out, which she treated as a comical disguise. To her mother’s great delight, Jennifer was Jennifer, in all her resurrected exuberance, everything she treasured about her.
But a shadow grew on Rachel’s soul. Nothing she had read—and she’d become a walking encyclopedia on the subject—suggested that a child in Jennifer’s condition should recover this fast. When Jennifer’s CBC dropped too low, she plainly declared, “Mom, I need blood.” Watching the phlebotomist feed the line into her daughter’s vein, Rachel restrained herself from blurting out, “Why not let her drink it and see what happens?”
Jennifer hated the needle. But after getting a transfusion, she would sit in the passenger’s seat in a kind of rapture, completely blissed out for most of the ride home.
Once Jennifer’s hair began to grow in, Rachel’s fears were confirmed. Dr. Ingebretsen remained unconcerned. The hair of cancer patients, he explained, often grew back in a far different fashion than before. But Jennifer’s silver-white hair—her pale skin—her once sky-blue eyes now the color of cut glass—could mean only one thing.
Laura was the first to state the obvious. “She looks like Milada.”
Rachel could no longer keep the truth at arm’s length. In the end Milada had bowed to her wishes and infected Jennifer. And then she’d left, convinced that she had killed her just as she had killed all those other children. Rachel knew she should contact Milada and explain what had happened. But every day she didn’t was another day Jennifer was hers alone.
Worse, Jennifer somehow knew. Remind my mother that God never walks away from an honest wager. Rachel had made the offer, and the bookie had accepted the bet. The only question was when she would be forced to give God or the devil their due.
Jennifer raised the subject again as they were tucking her into bed. “When are we going to go see Milada?” A subtle but demanding tone crept into her voice.
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “She’s very busy with her work. She has her own family to tend to.”
Here she was, lying to her own daughter.
David began to wonder as well. “How does she know Milada? I thought Milada left before Jennifer came out of the coma. Why does she keep talking about some deal they made together?”
Rachel thought carefully about which question to answer and how to answer it. She