“I knew you’d come, Marcus. All we had to do was find where you were. Now you can hug me if you like.”
I embraced the emaciated frame, taking care not to upset his balance. My tears wet the front of his shirt, which smelled fresh from the dryer. “Whoa,” he said in his new adult voice, “go easy on my bones. I’ve lost forty pounds. Now step back and let me look at you, Marcus. Funny, I always assumed you’d be the tall one, but even in my sorry state you only come to my shoulders. Listen, before we go inside, I’ve made some house rules. You are my company. When I’m awake, we’ll catch up on important things. Any medical information will be left for the others to relate while I’m asleep. I have it all planned, and it will be perfect if everyone will do what I say.”
Supporting himself against me on his cane-free side, he led me through the shadowy formal living room, which had been off-bounds to children, and onto the screened porch, where his grandmother had escaped for her smokes. There, seated in chairs, were three people who clearly wanted to give the impression they had simply been relaxing together and not waiting on tenterhooks to see if he could accomplish his solo welcome of me.
The two white men with pleasant faces and balding heads came forward and greeted me, Andrew clasping my hand warmly in both of his and introducing “my partner, Bryson, and this is Tobias, Shelby’s resident nurse.” The muscular black man in green scrubs bounded forward to shake my hand and in a passing, fluid motion slid his arm effortlessly around his patient, relieving me of the weight.
“Not so fast, Tobias,” Wheezer said. “I’m not done yet. Marcus, how long can you stay?”
“I have ten days before I start my new job. No, nine. I used up one of them today. And it’s an eight-hour drive to get where I’m going. Then I’ll need a few days to unpack and get organized. I could stay here three days.”
“Is that counting today?”
“Counting today.”
“And you’d leave on the morning of the fourth day? Then here’s the plan. Tobias will carry me off for my injection after which I’ll snooze, and Drew and Bryson will get you settled into your room and feed you, and then you and I will meet up later in the evening, when I’m usually at my best.”
I was to sleep in Drew’s former upstairs bedroom, which I had never been inside. When we were boys he had kept it locked when he was away and when at home he shut himself inside and turned up his stereo, except for meals. The bed had been temptingly readied, the counterpane turned down, and a gentle breeze brought the scent of an unknown flower through the open windows.
“We used to hear your jazz and blues coming from this room,” I told Drew.
“You probably remember me as Gloomy Gus.”
“No, I figured we must annoy you, two loud little boys. You were so much older than us—”
“It’s hard to realize I was once that unhappy wretch. This room was always given to the oldest son, or just the son if there was only one in the family. It was Granddad Forster’s room, then it passed on to my father’s older brother, our ill-fated uncle who threw away his life—I expect Shelby told you about him.”
“The brilliant uncle who died of an overdose?”
“That’s the one. Shelby was born too late to meet Uncle Henry, who was the most lovable and fascinating human being in the world when he wasn’t drinking—or later when he was on the hard stuff. I remember when I was about six, Uncle Henry was reading a book, oblivious to everybody else in the room, and I wormed my way into his lap and asked him to read it to me. ‘But you wouldn’t understand it, Drewie,’ he said. ‘No, I will, I will!’ I insisted, so he wriggled me into a more comfortable position and started to read aloud in this beautiful, mysterious language. After a while, he said, ‘Do you want me to go on?’ and I said I did. ‘You understanding it okay?’ ‘Not every word,’ I told him, ‘but I love it.’ This made him laugh and he went on reading until I got interested in something else and climbed down from his lap. Turns out he was reading something in classical Greek, which he often did for pleasure, the way you and I might curl up and read a detective novel.”
Wheezer and I did not “meet up again” that first evening. “He overestimated himself,” Tobias told me. “When he heard you were coming, he got all excited and wanted so many things done. He would have done it all himself if he’d had the strength. He’s a perfectionist and he likes to be in charge.”
“He was like that when he was six.”
“This is one of those forms of lymphoma there hasn’t been a lot of research on.”
“It’s a relatively rare form, which usually strikes the young. I met several children with it during my oncology rotation.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“As of one week tomorrow. I just graduated from med school and I’m on my way to my residency in Nashville.”
“Way to go. Congratulations. I’ve made up my mind to go on for further training myself. After Shelby doesn’t need me anymore. I’m still deciding between physician’s assistant and nurse practitioner. What do you think?”
“The pay scale for PA is higher—well, depending what doctor you go to work for. But if you want to be your own boss and have more contact with patients, nurse practitioner would be the choice. I know ‘Physician’s assistant’ sounds more important because it has ‘physician’ in the title, but…”
“Isn’t it the truth. What something’s called can sway you before you rightly know what it is.”