cheek.
“How is he?”
“Better,” Mary said with a slight smile. “He likes to have you two come by, though he frets about the rodeo.”
Walker nodded in acceptance that Mary knew her husband’s thoughts. As Mary and Kalli left, he lifted the chair Kalli had been using, turned it and straddled it, his attention focused on the man in the bed.
As she walked with Mary to the cafeteria, restlessness seized Kalli—an urgency to do something, to tackle some project, to solve some problem. She thought of the paperwork waiting at the rodeo office with something like longing as she gently bullied Mary into taking more than coffee.
At a corner table, they ate wilting fruit salad and tired sandwiches, with frequent halts while one or the other stared, unseeing, at nothing. Mary finally pecked at enough food that when she sighed deeply and pushed away the tray, Kalli didn’t feel the need to badger her into eating more.
“I wish he’d talk.”
Mary’s unexpected words made Kalli’s fragmented thoughts stumble onto the realization that she’d harbored a wish that
Walker
would talk to her, really talk to her. How stupid. She and Walker had nothing to say to each other. But Mary’s need to have Jeff talk was very real.
“He will. Give him time. It’s—”
“No.” Mary cut off Kalli. “Time’s against him. If a stroke patient doesn’t talk early, often he never does. The nurses and the doctor hem it around with a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘sometimes,’ but that’s what it boils down to.”
Kalli was silent. Mary wasn’t bemoaning facts, she was stating them. In the face of such courage, Kalli wouldn’t offer empty words of reassurance.
“His body not doing what he wants, that would be hard for anybody, especially a man like Jeff. He’d get by, though. But not talking... I see the frustration in him and it’s so fierce. Sometimes I worry that he’ll just let go because the frustration’s so bad, that he’ll quit fighting.”
“No! Mary, don’t think that. Jeff would never give up, never. He’s too strong.”
Mary’s eyes examined her. “Even the strong give up sometimes,” she said slowly. “Walker did. You did. Jeff could.”
“He won’t. Jeff won’t give up.” She said it with every ounce of conviction in her, but Mary’s unwavering look demanded more. That was harder.
“Walker... Walker didn’t give up. He might have been down for a while, but he kept going with what he wanted from life. He never gave up the rodeo.”
Don’t slow down. Don’t linger on the thought of how he went on without you.
“And I...well, there you’re right. I gave up. On the life out here. On the marriage. But the difference is I’m not strong like Jeff and Walker—”
“You are strong. If you’d given yourself time—”
Kalli covered Mary’s hand with hers. “What I’m saying is, Jeff won’t give up. Not ever. You can’t let yourself worry he might.”
Tears welled in Mary’s eyes, but didn’t fall. “I must be getting old to go saying a fool thing like that about the man I’ve known fifty-two years.”
“You just needed someone else to say the words.”
Turning her hand, Mary returned the grip. “You’ve gotten to be very wise, child. You’re right. I’d said the words so much, they didn’t make sense anymore. I needed to hear a new voice. Now, c’mon, let’s get up to the room.”
Fueled by food or renewed hope, Mary walked smartly down quiet corridors. As they neared Jeff’s room, Kalli tried to ease away, planning to leave before Walker performed another disappearing act. But Mary’s firm grip on Kalli’s hand never slackened, and escape would have involved an undignified tug-of-war, which Kalli would probably lose.
Two steps inside the door, they both froze.
Walker stood at the far side of the bed, one hand splayed on the wall above Jeff’s head as he leaned down. With his back to them was a short, white-coated doctor, also leaning over the figure in the bed.
“Oh,
Catelynn Lowell, Tyler Baltierra