Jennifer Greene - Man From Tennessee

Trisha hadn’t known Julia had had an angiogram. Julia switched doctors like dresses. If she didn’t like the diagnosis, she changed the doctor. It was difficult not to forgive Kern for making her the scapegoat, when his method of extracting information from his mother gleaned more than her coaxing or scolding.

“Well, I’ve never been overnight in a hospital…” Kern continued.

“But I have, Kern. The food is horrible, people poking and prodding all the time. And consultants-now that’s another dreadful racket. You can’t have just one doctor; an internist won’t even talk to you unless there’s a heart man there…”

Kern reached for his coffee cup with a casually interested expression toward his mother that didn’t fool Trisha at all. “Well, you don’t have to do a thing you don’t want to. It’s Tish’s problem if she wants to hightail it out of here this morning. So you can just stay here with me. I’ll be driving back north at the end of August anyway.”

Julia nearly choked on her coffee. “Stay, Kern? A few days perhaps, but I have a club meeting on Friday. Trisha, you can surely stay until-”

“Tish said she was leaving this morning, with you or without you…unless you saw a doctor this morning,” Kern continued sadly. “Actually, I thought I had her all talked into staying a few days, too, Mother, but…”

Lord, he was good at it. Trisha marveled, not just at his ability to maneuver his mother. He already had her jumpy around him, making his breakfast, taking care of his cuts, now somehow staying longer than she wanted to. He was the same overwhelming Kern. The old Trisha had been lost in that power of his, but it didn’t feel quite the same now. She could see what he was doing, for one thing, and more important, she understood why.

“Well, if you’ll agree to stay a few days, Patricia,” Julia said petulantly. “I must say it’s all a mountain for a molehill, but if you really must be so ridiculously obstinate about it…”

“I am,” she said frankly and turned with an impish smile to Kern. “Just what time is this appointment I insisted on making, Kern?”

“Nine, bright eyes.”

What a rogue he was, she thought fleetingly.

Ted Bassett’s office was in a corner of Gatlinburg’s hospital complex. Once Trisha had ushered Julia into a private room she was free at least to walk the white-walled corridors, which she did, with increasing anxiety, for more than two hours. She stopped only once to grab a machine cup of coffee that promptly churned in her stomach.

Thoroughly frightened by the long wait, Trisha gave up her pacing finally to lean back against the green-striped wallpaper in the doctor’s outer office. When Ted did come out, it was not through the door of the examining room as she expected, but from the main corridor that led to the hospital’s admitting wing. Ted took her arm and led her back to his private office.

Tall, lanky and sandy-haired, Kern’s friend had a lazy slow smile and a compassionate sense of humor. “As much as I’d love to send Mrs. Lowery home with you, Trisha, I’ve decided to tie her to a bed for a good forty-eight hours. Penance mostly. She told one of my nurses to take up sewing because it was certainly her only skill with a needle, and the other was scolded for making hypochondriacs out of perfectly healthy people.”

Trisha managed a smile, knowing Julia, knowing this gentle man was trying to put her at her ease. “I’d rather simply hear it, please,” she said quietly.

Just as quietly, Ted told her. Julia’s blood pressure was nearing stroke level. She didn’t even pretend to take the medicine prescribed previously for her. She had a heart murmur he was frankly not happy about. His recommendation was a full forty-eight hours of proper rest and medication under controlled conditions-and by controlled he meant that he would prefer no visitors during that time. “And if you know of anything that’s bothering her…”

“Not exactly,” Trisha said slowly, not wanting to think about the five-year status of her relationship with Julia’s son.

“I’ve only given you my professional opinion, Trisha, and though I’ve got your mother-in-law installed in a hospital room at the moment, she is certainly of age and not at all convinced she’s staying…”

“Oh, she’s staying.” Trisha stood up, mulling over in her mind everything she had heard. She pulled the strap of her purse to her shoulder as she edged toward the door. “I’ll see to Julia, doctor, but I would like to call Kern first if you wouldn’t mind my using your telephone.”

There was no answer at Kern’s. It didn’t really matter. There was no question what had to be done, and Trisha had no hesitations about doing it on her own. Getting Julia to the hospital wasn’t particularly enjoyable and convincing her to stay would be no fun at all.

It was past noon when Trisha opened the hospital doors and stepped out into the bright mountain sunshine. Gatlinburg was a crowded little tourist hamlet, packed with shops and restaurants and motels aimed to please the Smoky Mountain visitors. At that moment it seemed a completely foreign place as she traversed the asphalt to her car. The day was sweltering hot, but it was tension that dampened her palms. Julia was ill, really ill, or potentially so. What was Kern going to say? That it was her fault? Trisha was the one who had allowed Julia to make the trip, thinking she herself could ensure her mother-in-law’s every comfort, more than willing to cater to every whim. But if she hadn’t driven her, would Julia still have made the journey? she wondered.

The car seat was boiling and a throng of traffic lights prevented any speed that might have cooled the inside. Despite the difficult times, Julia had been good to her over the years, and the idea of something really happening to her felt like a leaden weight in her heart. She had promised Julia she would stay until Thursday afternoon, when she was to be released.

Her mood calmed finally as she escaped the city and Julia’s Mercedes began a meandering climb as the road came closer to Kern’s. Ted Bassett was his friend and Kern must trust him as a doctor. It seemed she simply had to trust him as well. She could not regret the decision made.

Sun shot through the fleeting bluish mists on the hillsides, piercing colors and scents into the day. The farthest slopes were a velvet green. It was almost a fairy-tale world of lush green peace, of rich scents and sounds. The countryside reached out to her as she drove, just as it had the night before, enfolding her in such a way that she felt herself relax. There was simply nothing else to do until she could talk to Kern.

When she arrived back at the house Kern wasn’t there. She parked the small car, leaving ample space for his truck when it returned, and went into the kitchen. It was past one, and she had had nothing but two bites of breakfast since six that morning. Absently she slashed off a wedge of cheese found in the refrigerator and snatched a handful of blueberries, leaning against the back door of the porch as she waited for him.

A rumble of thunder echoed in the west. It was nearly three and there was still no sign of Kern. The storm had been coming in for an hour. Trisha could sense the increasing uneasiness in the air. She watched it from the living room for a time, restless and uneasy herself after two hours of waiting. When the first splashes of rain pattered on the west side of the house she hurried to close the windows where the rain would come in, and put on a fresh pot of coffee. Lightning, stark and silver, suddenly silhouetted the entire west horizon. It was like a low, angry growl building in the skies, accenting the stillness in the house.