she asked at last. Suddenly, with no forewarning at all, she found her entire being flooded with anger. Why couldn’t he find the right words to comfort her? He was a doctor, wasn’t he? Her doctor? Wasn’t it his job to know what to say at a time like this? She glared at him, her face a mask of pain and anger. “Do you know how difficult it is for me?” she demanded. “Do you know what it feels like to lose your baby and not even know why?”
Stung, Arthur Wiseman glanced around the cemetery as if he were looking for a means of escape. “No, of course I can’t feel what you’re feeling,” he muttered at last as Sally’s gaze remained fixed upon him. “But I hope I can understand it” He could see that she was no longer listening to him as she searched the cemetery for—what? Her husband, probably. Wiseman kept talking, hoping Steve would appear. “I do know how hard it is, Sally. Even for doctors who see death all the time, it’s still hard. Especially in cases like Julie’s—”
“Julie?” Sally repeated. At mention of her daughter’s name, her attention shifted back to the doctor. “What about Julie?”
Wiseman paused, looking deeply into Sally’s eyes. There was something in them—a sort of flickering glow—that told him Sally was on the edge of losing control. He searched his mind for something to say, anything that might ease her pain. “But we’re learning, Sally. Every year we’re learning a little more. I know it’s no help to you, but someday well know what causes SIDS-”
“It wasn’t SIDS,” Sally interrupted. “Something happened to Julie.” Her voice rose and took on a shrillness that Wiseman immediately recognized as the beginnings of hysteria. “I don’t know what it was,” Sally plunged on, “but I’m going to find out. It wasn’t SIDS—it was something else. Julie was fine. She was just fine!”
Wiseman listened helplessly as Sally’s hysteria soared, certain that he’d been wrong to come to the funeral, wrong to speak to Sally Montgomery right now. Here, today, he could see the true depths of her grief. When the time came for her to begin dealing with the reality of her loss, would he be able to help her? He was glad when Steve Montgomery, accompanied by Sally’s mother and Jason, appeared beside her.
“Sally?” Steve asked. Sally’s gaze shifted over to him, and Steve, too, saw the strange light in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I want to go home,” Sally whispered, the last of her energy drained by her outburst “I want to go home, and get away from here. Please? Take me home.” She moved once more toward the nearby car, Steve by her side, Jason trailing along behind them. Only Phyllis Paine stayed behind to speak to Wiseman, and there was an anger in her voice that he had rarely heard in the long years of their friendship.
“Arthur, what did you say to her?” she demanded. “What did you say to my daughter?”
“Nothing, Phyllis,” Wiseman replied tiredly. “Only that maybe someday we’ll have some idea of what causes SIDS.”
“At the funeral?” Phyllis asked, her voice reflecting her outrage. “You came to the funeral to talk about what killed Julie?”
Wiseman groaned inwardly, but was careful to maintain a calm façade. “That’s hardly what I was doing, Phyllis, and when you think about it, I know you’ll realize I would never do something like that. But it’s important that Sally understand what happened, and I wanted to let her know that if there’s anything I can do, either as her doctor or her friend, I’ll do it.”
As Wiseman spoke, Steven Montgomery came back to escort his mother-in-law to the waiting car. “There is something you can do, Dr. Wiseman,” he said. “Just try to let us forget about it. It’s over, and nothing can be done. We have to try to forget.”
He led Phyllis to the car, helped her in, then turned back to face the doctor once again. “You understand, don’t you?” he asked with a bleakness in his voice that Wiseman had rarely heard before. “There’s nothing we can do now. Nothing at all.” Then Steve, too, got into the car, and Wiseman watched as the Montgomery’s drove away. When they were gone, the agony of Sally’s eyes and Steve’s words remained.
As he left the cemetery, Wiseman pondered the true depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Montgomerys.
For Julie, the tragedy was over.
For her parents, it had just begun.
*