and shook her head, but when she saw a navy baseball cap with the South Carolina palm and crescent moon logo, she bought that, too. Placing it on her head, she handed over the straw hat to add to the burgeoning bag. Leaving the shop, she caught a glimpse of herself in a long mirror. Her neck and arms were sunburned and her long thin legs looked as pale as the underbelly of a fish.
“I scream tourist,” Cara said, but laughed, pleased to see the same jaunty look she’d admired in her mother.
“Now you fit right in.”
Though the mother loggerhead is tired and hungry, her work is just beginning. She will nest an average of four times during this season, resting two weeks between each nest.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lovie sat slump shouldered on the hard examining table while her shaky fingers buttoned up her blouse. These radiation therapy sessions leached the energy right out of her. If only it was as efficient with the cancer, she thought. But cancer wasn’t about if onlys. Cancer was about what was, and the plain fact was, the radiation wasn’t doing much. She’d only continued this long in hopes of prolonging her life by a few months. After such a full, active life, Lovie didn’t want to spend her last days as an invalid.
Her hands stilled on her blouse as she considered again whether or not now was the time to tell her children about the cancer. When the tumor was discovered last December she’d felt shocked. Numb with fear. The tumor was already large and inoperable and the prognosis was dim. She had weighed the decision carefully, then drawn on years of experience in keeping unpleasantness from her children. So she’d kept her illness private.
Besides, Palmer would have made such a fuss. He was very attached to her and there would have been lots of his useless hand-wringing and wild declarations on how he was going to call in the experts and holler that she’d get the best damn treatment possible. Then Julia would have been pressed upon to be her primary caregiver and Lovie knew that her daughter-in-law wasn’t up to the task. She was a good girl, but she would fret and worry and generally fall apart at the seams, more about how the illness was affecting her own schedule and life rather than Lovie’s. The resulting chaos would have been too disruptive to the children. Not to mention, Palmer never would have allowed her to leave the house in Charleston and come out to the beach house to live if he knew.
And Cara…Lovie finished the row of buttons, then let her hands fall to her lap. She didn’t know how her daughter would have reacted to the news. She might have taken time from work, flown in and demanded to take charge of the medical treatment in her efficient manner. Or she might simply have sent flowers.
Oh, she’d heard stories from other cancer patients. Heartbreaking tales of children who didn’t visit their sick parents, of old friends who didn’t even pick up the phone to chat, of brothers and sisters who pretended the cancer wasn’t real or that, if ignored, it would simply go away. Did they think cancer was contagious? Were they so self-absorbed that they didn’t want the inconvenience of sickness to interrupt their lives? Or were they so afraid of the very idea of death that they preferred to look the other way? It was no wonder so many of the terminally ill felt so alone.
Lovie shivered on the examining table, staring blankly at the green-tiled walls. The chill of the room went straight through her thin skin to her bones. She was so very tired, she felt like weeping, and the radiation always made her stomach queasy. All she wanted was to go home to her beach house, sit in her favorite rocker on the windward porch and listen to the comforting murmur of the sea.
A brisk knock on the door brought her head up in time to see the door swing open and Dr. Pittman walk in, his long white coat billowing behind him. He always seemed to be in a hurry and when he spoke he shot out the words to get to the point as quickly as humanly possible. She found it unnerving and attributed it to him being both so smart his mouth couldn’t keep up with his brain and to him being from somewhere in the North, Harvard or Yale or some such place. He was said to be the best, but nonetheless Lovie thought he seemed very young to have so many degrees.
“Good morning, Mrs. Rutledge,” he boomed, his eyes still on the chart.
Lovie murmured a polite response and gathered her blouse closer around her neck.
Toy followed quietly, her eyes wide with anxiety. Bless her heart, Lovie thought. That child had been through the mill these past months, driving her to the therapy and endless doctor’s appointments, waiting for hours at a time, all without a whisper of complaint. Providing transportation was important, but it was the least of Toy’s caregiving efforts. She did most of the shopping, did all the housekeeping chores and even went to church with Lovie on Sundays. Most of all, Toy talked to her. When they came home from the therapy and Lovie felt more dead than alive, it was a simple pleasure to just sit back and listen to her upbeat prattle, so full of life, about whatever flitted through her young mind.
Lovie didn’t know what she would have done without the girl. Toy Sooner was more than a companion. She was a godsend.
Lovie reached out her hand to the girl and Toy hurried forward to grasp it, squeezing it with encouragement and relief. Her face, however, was pale with fatigue, revealing a smattering of freckles across her nose. She didn’t look old enough to be having a child.
“The Lord said to care for the sick,” she said, patting Toy’s slightly callused hand. “But you’ve taken it to the nth degree today.”
“Hey, no problem,” she replied, brushing away the concern with a flip of her hand.
“You’ll get your reward in Heaven,” she said, smiling. Then, more seriously, “I had no idea it would take so long.”
“I was just sitting out there watching TV and reading. By the way, Doctor, the hospital could sure use some new magazines. The latest one is four months old. It’s, like, really sad.”
The doctor absently nodded as he read Lovie’s chart.
“Are you tired?” Toy asked, looking closer at her face. “You look real tired. We might could stop for a milkshake or something on the way home?”
“Not for me. My stomach is still doing flip-flops. We can stop for you, though. It’d be good for the baby.”
“I’d like to see you eat more,” the doctor added to Lovie. “You’re still losing weight.”
“I’ll try,” Lovie replied in a lackluster tone, more to make the doctor happy. Privately, she couldn’t see much point in it. She was going to die anyway. But she didn’t express this so as not to alarm Toy. The girl seemed intent on keeping Lovie alive forever.
“Is there anything bothering you lately?” the doctor asked, looking up from the chart to skewer her with his dark eyes. “Any pain?”
Oh, yes, there was a great deal bothering her, Lovie thought. But the doctor knew he couldn’t cure her and seemed to have lost interest in her case, eager to finish the chart and file it.
“I’m handling the pain very nicely with the pills you gave me, thank you.”
“You’ll call me if at any time the pills don’t cover it anymore, okay?” He glanced at Toy for confirmation. She nodded dutifully. He closed the chart and rested his hand on it, shaking his thinning head of hair. “Well, that’s it then. I have to say I’m not happy that you’ve canceled the treatment, Mrs. Rutledge. I’d rather you continued on through the summer.”
Lovie closed her eyes and sighed.
“You stopped the treatment?” Toy asked, her eyes round with alarm.
“Yes, dear,” she replied, then faced the doctor. “If I continue throughout the summer, as you recommend, will I be cured?”
“No,” he replied cautiously. “Radiation was never the cure. But we discussed that, Mrs. Rutledge. Right?” He seemed unsettled that she should think otherwise.
“We did,” she replied firmly. “I understand that completely.