Chapter
9 A Strange Leap of Faith
Chuck drops in on Cara once
more, a visit she at first finds uplifting but one that eventually turns out to
be somewhat upsetting. She is reminded
of her own vulnerable and suspicious nature and perhaps her very poverty of
soul. The encounter drives her to take
an emotional risk she is not accustomed to taking.
After
dozing off and on for a few hours, drifting in a kind of limbo, relishing the
chance to be indolent and pleasantly drug-soused and with total impunity, Cara
was treated once again to a visit from Chuck.
“Hi
there!” was his greeting.
“You’re
not going to move me again, are you?”
“Oh,
no! I just came to see how you are. You look a lot better than when I last saw
you.” She sensed that his visit was
unofficial. He was there just to see
her. As he had sought out Dagne the day
of Dagne’s arrival, now he was seeking her out.
She was somewhat gratified but a little overwhelmed.
He
did something she did not remember him doing for Dagne. He sat down, signaling that this time he was
not in a rush, with no duties immediately calling to him. For about thirty
seconds or more neither of them spoke a word, Cara not sure what to say
next. Those beady eyes were fixed on her
– eyes that she had previously found to be a little intimidating, but now that
they were for the first time on a level with her own, they looked quite amiable
and disarming.
She
wanted to sound off about the great thing she had done. I saved your friend Dagne’s life. I got through my valley of the shadow. I’m not haunted by her anymore. But she took it for granted that he knew
everything there was to know about her and Dagne. There was nothing newsy that she could
report. Finally, she directed the
conversation to the subject of what-next.
“What’s
going to happen to Dagne? Is there any
hope for her?”
“I’m
not an MD or a psychiatrist. I couldn’t
give you any prognosis. I know she cut
herself up pretty badly. It may take
weeks or months for her skin to heal.
And even then she’ll have lots of scars to carry around with her for the
rest of her life.”
“Were
you here when the- commotion occurred,
when I screamed for bloody murder?” Cara
was amazed at her own spontaneous and unintentional humor.
“No,
I’m on another floor, but I heard about it.
The room was quite a mess. That’s
why you were moved to another room. It
had to be cleaned up, and they knew that would take considerable time.”
Cara
then braced herself and took the conversation in a direction she never would
have dared before this point in time.
“You and Dagne seemed so close that day when you came to see her. Like long time friends!”
“Looks
can be deceiving. What I really came for
was to check on her mood. As I told you
earlier, she’s a woman of weird extremes.
I had been informed that on this visit she was high-spirited, but I
wanted to see for myself. I was the
nurse on her floor those first two times, and we had a rough go with her.”
“She
looked like she knew you quite well, like you had gotten real acquainted.”
“On
her second visit she was just as funny and relaxed as you saw her, just as
talkative – at first. That’s when we
started to build what seemed like a little rapport, when she was telling me all
about her money troubles. But when the
hour for the surgery arrived, she was quite a different person. Her high spirits had turned into volcanic
rage. I didn’t want anybody on duty to
go through that again.”
“I
thought I saw some worry in your face the day she was brought back from the
Recovery Room.”
“Yeah! I didn’t know what we’d be facing when she
woke up, her Jekyll or her Hyde.” Cara
saw a shade of grief enter the magnetic eyes.
The
conversation was suspended for a few beats, before Cara spoke the infamous word
with a bit of a shudder. “Suicide! I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”
“Her
family didn’t want to believe that she was mentally ill. They’ll have a hard time not believing it
now. That’s why she’s bankrupt. Can’t hold a job! But at least the threat of cancer has been
removed – for the time being anyway.
They did get her through the operation.”
Then
he fixed Cara with a look of what bordered on contrition. He held the contrite gaze for several seconds
before speaking again. “I guess I want
to apologize to you for all you had to go through on account of her. That was a horrible thing to happen to you,
when you were so intent on having your own scary operation. For some unaccountable reason I feel a little
responsible for it. Like maybe I
could’ve prevented it.”
How
absurd, Cara thought. Suddenly the
conversation ceased to be as pleasant for her.
So he did want something from her!
He was not just being thoughtful with his visit. This soured her a bit. The last thing she needed was somebody coming
to her for absolution and comfort. She
broke eye contact and said nothing for about a minute. By the end of that minute, he had apparently
figured out that he had upset her a trifle.
“I’m
sorry! I shouldn’t have burdened you
with my private thoughts.” He rose from
the chair and moved to the foot of her bed.
“I’m truly sorry! But thank you
for what you did. Let me know if I can
do anything more for you. You get your
rest.” He started for the door, but she
stopped him.
“You
have a tough job,” she said. Her words
brought him back a few steps. “All of you do.
I wouldn’t want any part of it.”
“It
has its rewards.” With that muted
declaration he turned and left.
You’ve
done it again,
Cara said to herself. You’ve chased
yet another person out of your life.
She could have tried to reassure Chuck, to assuage his sense of guilt,
but she had gotten upset at his candor, at his honest and sincere effort to put
things right. She knew that there was
nothing to put right. Chuck had not
harmed her in any way, but once again somebody’s baring of soul was repugnant
to her.
The
last time she listened to such a confession, those few days ago, she set
herself up for a terrible ordeal. But
Chuck wasn’t a devious mental case. Why
had she sent him away with more discomfort of mind, not less? Oh, what a scold you are, Cara, and
without even opening your mouth!
A
feeling of intense shame began to overtake her and vanquish her previous state
of drug-induced euphoria. She knew all
too well the other aspect of the Dagne interlude, the one nobody else except
maybe Vernon even suspected. She quailed
at the mental picture of herself sniffing after Dagne, getting hooked by the
woman’s phony humility, her phony but sincere-sounding disclosures about
alleged family indifference to her ordeal over the mastectomy. She recoiled at the recollection of building
up so much naïve hope and expectation about some present and future friendship
with her.
What
would anyone in that hospital think of Cara Hutchins, if they knew how
desperate she became, how possessive she was of Dagne’s confidence, her
jealousy over the possibility that Dagne could have friends just as trustworthy
as she? What would they think of the
needy and simpering and lonely and love-starved child that she had been proven
to be? Pushing herself out of bed,
risking her life and health and safety just to grab that little crumb of
acceptance from a stranger!
She,
the solitary sufferer who never let anyone know when she hurt! She, the self-sufficient woman of
self-sufficient means! The one who did not
need anyone! How stupid and ill-guided,
this recent foray into seeking closeness with somebody!
She
hated Dagne for exposing her to herself, for tearing through her insulation and
making her play this foolish and puerile game of merging and breaking
hearts. Damn Dagne for knocking down the
door to her haunted inner house of ghosts and savage spirits! Damn her for making Cara Hutchins feel
distress and hunger and fervor!
This
demented woman had turned her into a vulnerable child and almost destroyed both
of them in the process. How would she
ever find her feet again? How in this
universe, all at once emptied of demons and superstitions and black magic
riddles, would she ever find a zone of safety again? Left to chance and without friend or family
how would she ever find chart and compass?
Her
eyes watered. She started to whimper and
at once hated herself for doing it.
Little girl lost – that is how she saw herself at that moment, with
nothing but bed linens, a glass of water, a box of tissues, a telephone and a television set for company. She had survived, but she felt powerless at
every level of her being. Who could she
turn to? She knew of one remote possibility,
another long shot, but what other shots were there? What did she have to lose?
Cara
then did something she had not done since Dagne had fallen asleep in the chair
next to her bed that night after her operation.
She rang for the nurse.
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