The Resurrection of Tess Blessing (17 page)

Wishing that this public-relations person could take a hint, she thanks me, and attempts to put some physical distance between us. She begins jogging past the identical office doors toward the end of the hall, but I keep right up, and the both of us arrive at Room #318 breathless.

As a reward for my perseverance, a quality that she greatly admires, she says to me, “I noticed that you have an accent. Where are you from?”

Oh, my.

“A small town in Alabama,” I tell her.

She pats her black purse where the book is nestled amongst her other good-luck charms. “My favorite story,
To Kill a
Mockingbird
, is set in a small town in Alabama.”

“You don’t say.”

She cocks her head, studies my deep-brown eyes, slim body, and natty hair. “I knew you looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it! Has anybody ever told you how much you look like Estelle Evans?”

“Who?” I say straight-faced.

“She’s the actress who played the housekeeper and mother figure to Jem and Scout in the movie version of
Mockingbird
. Calpurnia?”

Neither one of us is sure that she’s ready to figure out that other than dressing more modern that I don’t just look like Calpurnia, I’m an
exact
replica of her favorite character in her favorite movie of all time, so instead of answering the question, I distract her by tilting my head toward the office door and saying, “I like Rob Whaley, don’t you? Nice back bumper.”

Tess, who’s thought the same thing many times as he’d rise from one of the diner’s booths, goes all proper on me. She says like she’d never stoop so low as to notice a man’s behind, “Well, nice to see you again. Have a nice day,” and pushes open the doctor’s office door.

The curiosity and confusion she’s feeling about me fades the moment she lays eyes on the deserted office with minimal decor. Just a few wooden chairs, a magazine table, and a coat rack. The closed window to the receptionist area is begging for a spritz of Windex.

Is that a tumbleweed in the corner
? her mother says with a wicked snort.

Tess isn’t acquainted with many physicians, other than head shrinkers, but she’d been told by medical transcriptionist Birdie that surgeons are at the top of the heap. Searching her brain for any reason to flee, she tells herself only a sawbones who has been brought up on malpractice charges many times would have zero patients waiting to see him in such a bare-bones office. Why, it’d be irresponsible to allow Rob Whaley to cut her open! She’ll get the name of another more-successful surgeon from Mare Hanson. She mentioned once that her husband worked in the medical field, or maybe Jill could refer her to someone more qualified that she didn’t have a crush on.

Tess is about to take her leave when the smudged reception window slides open and a woman around her age, give or take, says nasally, “Theresa Finley?”

She’s unsure now how to proceed. The office is making her very uneasy, but as long as she’s here, maybe she should just listen to what Rob Whaley has to say? She doesn’t want to offend him. After all, he’s a pillar of the community. A regular at the diner to boot.

“Please call me Tess,” she says as she steps toward the window.

The woman with the permanent-waved chestnut hair has red half-moon reading glasses perched low on her nose and a name tag pinned to the chest of her smock identifies her as Patience. As a rule, the more scared my friend is, the quicker she is to resort to witty repartee, so she’s about to crack to the receptionist,
What if everybody had jobs based on their names? There’d be gas station owners named Ethyl and barbers named Harry and….

“Patience,” Tess says. “Great name! What if everybody—?”

“Save it. I’ve been working in this office for sixteen years. Heard ’em all. Insurance?” Patience inspects the card Tess hands her with a quizzical look. “It says here that your last name is Blessing. Didn’t you tell me it was Finley when you made the appointment?”

She can’t tell Patience that she’s incognito—that sounds too paranoid. Tess castigates herself for her slipup, and then says with a self-conscious laugh, “Finley is my maiden name. Sorry. Menopause. Having a hard time focusing lately.”

Patience points to a little desk fan. “I hear ya. Between the hot flashes, the mental fogginess, and the allergy meds, I feel like I’m stroking out most of the time.”

After the receptionist spends time pouring over her computer, she escorts Tess to an exam room. She is much taller than she looked sitting behind the desk, close to six feet. “Undress from the waist up,” she says, and then in a more intimate voice, adds on, “How are you feeling about all this?”

Like a minnow flailing at the base of a lighthouse. Wishing this woman would take her leave, Tess heels off her shoes and answers, “All what?”

Patience takes a step closer and sets a warm hand on Tess’s arm. “The
cancer
?”

She had been so careful! How did Patience find out? (If the cloud of anxiety hadn’t kept her from thinking clearly, she would have realized that the sister hospitals share medical files.) Tess shouts, “I…I have to keep it a secret!”

Patience isn’t thrown by her vehemence. She’s a professional and used to all sorts of wild reactions from patients. “Keeping your cancer a secret is not a good idea,” she says. “You’re gonna need support from your friends and family, and other women who have been diagnosed. We have a wonderful group called The Pink Ladies that meets at the hospital twice a week to share what they’re going through. I’ll arrange for you to join after your surgery.”

The idea of broadcasting her innermost feelings to complete strangers is repulsive to Tess. Even if she was prone to “sharing,” she couldn’t take the chance that one of The Pink Ladies hailed from Ruby Falls. Someone might recognize her and turn into the town crier, or organize a
Spirit Raiser
like the one that’d been held at St. Lucy’s for Richie Mattigan. Award-winning photographer, Haddie, would be recruited to provide heart-plucking Blessing family photos that’d be hung on the gym wall behind the cookie and punch table. Henry might be asked to organize a basketball tournament between fathers and sons.

“Don’t you
dare
tell anyone!” Tess says enraged. “I’ll sue you!”

Patience takes a step back, says huffy, “Well, exc
uuu
se me,” and slams the exam room door behind her.

Tess immediately regrets getting in her face. She’ll apologize profusely, or better yet, make her laugh on her way out the door. She looks over at the file that Patience had tossed on the nearby counter. Something had slipped out. A pamphlet:

Hope is for chumps.

After Tess changes, she sits on the edge of the exam table, and plucks the floppy copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
out of her lucky purse to help her calm down. She’s in the middle of Chapter 28, the climax. Although she has read it countless times, she’s always pulled in like it’s the first. Scout and Jem are returning home after the Maycomb Halloween pageant at the high school. A storm’s coming and it’s grown darker than the children expected it to be on the walk back home. Scout’s wearing her chicken-wire ham costume and “
Bam
…
bam
…
bam!
”

Tess jumps, half-expecting drunken Bob Ewell to come slobbering through the exam room door, but in struts the guy with the handsome face and nice back fender. He’s not her type, she doesn’t like a man to be prettier than she is, and with his tousled sandy hair, green eyes, and lofty cheekbones, Dr. Whaley most definitely is. “Nice to see you, as always,” he says warmly.

“Wish I could say the same, Rob.”

He peruses her chart with a confident grin and sets it aside. “What say we get a look at what we’re dealing with?”

There is a lying of hands upon her right breast, followed by a through kneading. It’s occurring to Tess that it might’ve been better to see a doctor she didn’t know.

“There it is.” He pulls away, makes a note, and comes back to explore further. “Haddie still enjoying school?”

“Yup.” Tess often wonders if people suspect that her girl has a problem, or whether they admire her commitment to fitness when they see her tearing around town at the crack of dawn. “Mandy?”

“Struggling with calculus.” His manipulation has caused her right nipple to turn into a Parcheesi piece. “Let’s talk about lumpectomy versus mastectomy.”

“I’ve decided to go with a lumpectomy. So could I get a local anesthetic instead of a general?” She’d feel too out of control if they put her under, and very, very afraid.

Rob pretends to consider her question. “A local is feasible, but I’d feel much more comfortable with a general.”

Well as long as HE’s comfortable
, Louise spits out.

“Talk to Patience. Have her schedule you in two weeks,” the surgeon says as he prepares to exit the room. “Oh, yeah, and could you tell Will the
rumaki
special last night was beyond perfect?”

She gives him the thumbs up, reassembles herself, and makes her way back to the waiting room. She can see the receptionist’s silhouette behind the finger-printed frosted glass, but she doesn’t respond to Tess’s knock. Recognizing a cold shoulder when she sees one, her mother was a master, she says, “Patience? Can I get a sticker?”

The receptionist forcefully slides the window back and says, “When does the doctor want your surgery scheduled? About two weeks?”

“Yeah. Hey. I’m really sorry for losing it before. It was kind of you to offer to set me up with The Pink Ladies.
Grease
is one of my favorite musicals, by the way, but I’m super-shy in a crowd.” Some phobias are more popular and therefore more socially acceptable than others. She says with a put-on quiver in her voice, “I’m…I’m terrified of public speaking.” (As a performer, that’s one of the few fears she doesn’t have, but she knows it tops the list of activities that scares the hell out of “normal” people.)

An explanation and apology were all Patience needed because she visibly thaws. “I get it,” she says with a resolute nod. “My husband gets a bad case of the trots when he has to speak in front of groups.” She passes the appointment card through the window. “If you change your mind about joining the group, the offer still stands.”

Tess thanks her again and slips out of the office door and straight into me. For the first time, my sudden appearance doesn’t further throw her, and that’s a good sign. She barely stiffens when I put my arm through hers. “Breast cancer, huh.”

First the receptionist, and now me. She says ticked-off, “What the…?” but then she remembers that I was present during the biopsy, and goes straight to wondering if nurses or ambassadors-at-large or whatever the heck I am, need to respect confidentiality the same way doctors and hopefully, receptionists do.

“Patience is right, ya know,” I say as we stroll down the hall. “Cancer is a hard row to hoe alone.” Thinking that this must be the hospital’s party line and that I’m out to pitch the support group too, she withdraws her arm and quickens her pace down the hall. “Do you have family nearby?”

Tess nods.

“They must be takin’ this real hard.”

“They don’t know. Well, my husband does, but my children….”

(Obviously, I’m already aware of this. I’m just trying to draw her out of her shell.)

“You got anyone else that you could lean on?” I ask. “A close friend?”

She shakes her head.

“Parents?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Siblings?”

“I have a sister, but I can’t reach her.”

“Oh, that’s a real shame. Sisters can be a great help under these circumstances.” I pause to let that sink in. “Speaking of which, perhaps you’ll have lunch with me and mine today.”

She says, “Oh, that’s really nice, but I can’t today,” as she rabbits past the elevator toward the STAIRS sign, but what she’s actually thinking is that lunching together is entirely too familiar and completely out of the question. A passion for patient care gone amok. She flings open the stairwell door and begins her rabid flight down the steps. “I’ve got some important things to do.”

As we fly past floor numbers two, then one, and exit into the lobby, I ask, “Like what?”

“Oh…you know,” she says as she explodes out of the hospital doors. “Stuff.”

I catch up to her at the side of the Volvo where she’s struggling to insert the key into the sticky old lock. “Allow me,” I say as I lift the chain out of her shaking fingers and open it easy peasy. “Maybe you could put your “stuff” off for an hour or so? We’re having corn and crab bisque and bread straight out of the oven, and…and I already called and asked my sisters to set another place at the table. They can’t wait to meet you.”

As she slides behind the steering wheel, she whispers, “I love homemade bread and corn and crab bisque is my favorite. And sisters…,” she’s become misty-eyed, “I adore mine.”

“I know that, Tessie,” I tell her as I settle into the passenger seat. “I know.”

We were careening through the streets of Ruby Falls, almost halfway to our destination, before it occurs to her that she hadn’t told me her nickname. Nobody but Birdie calls her Tessie.

There’d been heated discussions during numerous church coffee klatches about what to do with the abandoned convent that sat not far off from St. Lucy’s Church and School. They all knew that the point was moot because the ultimate decision on what would happen to the building would be made by those more powerful than the parishioners, but that didn’t keep them from arguing. Oddly, Will who loved the past, spearheaded a group that believed the two-story Gothic building should be razed. “It’s an eyesore.” But the aging students who’d attended school at St. Lucy’s in the previous decades were up in arms about leveling the home of the Dominican nuns. “It’s an historical site worthy of preserving same as the old mill and the covered bridge!” Tess agrees with that bunch because during Halloween time the parish uses the convent to stage a “Holy Haunted House!” to raise funds to buy books for the school library, new playground equipment, and field trips for the kids. The woods that surround the decrepit building are stocked with local teenagers dressed in ghoulish costumes, skeletons hanging from trees, big ol’ dangling spiders, and the like. Artistic Tess contributes Styrofoam gravestones for a pretend cemetery because Halloween is her second-favorite holiday next to Easter. (Since she spent so much time wandering around Holy Cross Cemetery as a child, she grew up feeling much more comfortable with the dead than the alive.)