Page 107 of Fierce

On Wednesday, they moved Karen into a regular room, and Hope lost a little of her frozen rigidity once she could see her sister, could talk to her and touch her. I came to join them in the afternoon, sitting in the corner of the room while Hope sat next to Karen and held her hand.

Hour after hour of Karen lying with her eyes closed, half in and half out of consciousness. The nurses had told Hope that touch helped, and a bit of quiet talk did, too, so that was what she did. And I sat and watched them and thought how little I knew about love.

Just now, Karen’s eyes were open, then closing again, and Hope was talking.

“Remember Mrs. Lee?” she asked her sister, her voice quiet, so sweet. “Remember reading the magazines? You never liked the fashion ones. You said they were boring. You liked the women’s ones best, especially once you got to be eight or nine and could really read them. Your favorites were the advice columns. ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ That was a good one. When the new Ladies’ Home Journal came out, you used to sit and read it to me while I stocked shelves. And you’d say, ‘No. This marriage cannot be saved. People are jerks.’ I remember how that used to make me laugh.”

Karen smiled, just a twitch of the mouth, and Hope smiled back, then broke off, because Dr. Feingold had come into the room. And just like that, all the rigidity was back.

“Good,” he said when Karen opened her eyes. “You’re awake. How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty...good,” Karen managed to say, and I thought that Hope wasn’t the only woman in her family with courage to spare.

“We’re doing well here all the way around,” Dr. Feingold said. “You’re bouncing back just about as well as you could be. I’d like to say that’s me, but I’m afraid we’ve got to chalk at least a little bit of it up to you. Because you are one tough cookie, Miss Karen Sinclair.”

He got another little smile from Karen for that before her eyes drifted shut again.

“Yes,” Hope said. “She is. And thank you. The nurses all said that you were the best. I know we’re lucky. Thank you.”

“Always good to hear,” he said. “Remind me to pay them off later. And normally, I’d take you outside the room to talk about this next thing. But in this case, I think Karen gets to hear, too, because...” He did a little drumroll on the empty second bed. “We’ve got nothin’ but net here. The results are back, and we’ve got a big all-clear. ‘Benign’ all the way through. That bottle of champagne you’ve got under the bed? Time to haul that thing out and pop the cork.”

Hope still had hold of Karen’s hand, and she was trying to stand up, and failing. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Thank you. Thank you.” And then she was talking to Karen again, the tenderness on her face so devastating, it pierced the last fragile defenses around my heart.

It happened just like that. Just like that, I was laid bare.

“You hear that, baby?” Hope asked her sister. “You hear that? You’re going to...” She had to stop and breathe. “Keep your tumor in...in a jar if you want. Because you needed that thing like a...a hole in your head.”

Her voice was shaking, and she was looking around for me, but I was already there. Picking her up out of her chair and holding her. Holding on.

“Hemi,” she said, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my chest. “Hemi. She’s going to be all right.”

At last, the tears were coming. She was shaking again, but this time, it was with sobs. Hope was crying in my arms. Letting herself go, and letting me hold her while she did it.

“Yeh.” The hot tears were right there behind my own eyes, and my throat closed around the words, but I got them out anyway. “Yeh. I heard. She’s going to be all right. And you’re brilliant. You are the best sister in the world.”

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