Page 49 of Of Literature and Lattes
“Time to prep you for an endoscopy. This is a procedure done under general anesthesia and, like all procedures, carries some risks outlined here. Please read, then sign here, here, here, and here.”
Dr. Laghari left and a nurse, followed by an orderly, came in with a sedative. She spoke to Janet rather than to Alyssa.
“This will make her sleepy, and Brad here will roll her into the operating room.”
Janet squeezed Alyssa’s hand, then let it go. She leaned over and kissed Alyssa’s forehead. “We’ll be right outside in the waiting area until you come back.”
“No...” Alyssa felt herself growing heavy. Her eyelids dropped. Her head filled with a woolly fuzz. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t let go.”
“I am right here.”
She felt her mom kiss her forehead again, and with those four words Alyssa fell asleep.
Chapter 22
One a.m. and the emergency department was still hopping.
Nurses and doctors came and went through the glass bays, sliding partitioning curtains and soothing soft cries. A few moans from out-of-sight patients sank deep into Janet, leaving her raw with all nerves firing.
“It’s my fault.” She and Seth sat in plastic chairs in an enlarged seating area off the main hub of activity.
Seth chuckled. “How do you figure that?”
“I was too hard, too unbending, not fun enough or understanding enough; I pushed. I always pushed, Seth, and I’ve caused so much pain. You, the kids... She absorbed all this, all my years of being...” She looked up at her ex-husband. “You know what I was.”
“You were and are the woman I love. None of us are perfect. When are you going to realize that?” Seth looped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “And we did have some fun. Try to remember that too.”
Janet laughed.
“It’s time you forgave yourself, J.”
Janet dropped her head onto his shoulder. Father Luke had been telling her for months that her problem was no longer asking others for forgiveness, but accepting it herself.
“It’s an odd form of pride, you know,” he had said over coffee one day. “You decide you know better than God and make your own ruling.”
Her dear friend Maddie Carter, Madeline’s late aunt, had once warned her of the same thing. So while she wanted to dismiss his assessment—because this anxious anguish felt nothing like pride—she couldn’t.Don’t assume God’s role or presume you understand his ways, Maddie told her once with such calm sincerity it stuck. But just because she remembered it didn’t mean she followed it—yet.
“But—” Janet glanced up and only caught sight of the edge of Seth’s chin. It was a good strong chin.
“No buts. Either you let it go or you live in it forever.Welive in it forever, J, and that sounds miserable to me. Doesn’t it to you?”
We live in it forever.That got her attention. Janet pushed upright. Seth always did have a way of cutting through the drama, and he never spoke carelessly. Forever? “Done.”
He raised a brow.
“I promise to try to work to pray to be done. How’s that?” Janet smiled. “But she can’t come home with me. You’re going to have to use that mattress you got all snippy about. She can’t heal if she’s constantly upset with me.”
Seth nodded, and Janet felt simultaneously pleased and dismayed. Pleased to be right, dismayed to be right, and a little hurt Seth agreed so readily. But Father Luke had warned her—that little hiccup of free will he kept trying to explain to her. She could ask for forgiveness, he constantly reminded her, but she couldn’t control another’s response. Forgiveness may never come and she needed to accept that.
But she couldn’t. She simply refused to accept that it was her reality with Alyssa—not yet. But she was ready for a cease-fire. She couldn’t avoid her own home all summer.
“No.” Seth’s nod turned to a slow side-to-side motion. “That ends now too.”
Janet felt her heart skip a beat.
He looked down the hall to the Emergency Room entrance. Alyssa wasn’t in there any longer, but it was where they’d started. “We don’t know what we’re facing, J. She’ll need you.”
“She won’t want me.”
