Diane Chamberlain - The Courage Tree

The positive results were merely a temporary reduction in symptoms, Sophie’s regular doctor and his colleagues had argued. Beneath the surface, the disease still raged. They claimed Schaefer offered false hope to the hopeless, but stopped just short of calling the small, wiry, soft-spoken doctor a charlatan. Janine could easily see the situation from their perspective. After all, the medical profession had been grappling with Sophie’s form of kidney disease for decades, searching for a way to turn the tide of its destruction. Then along comes some alternative medicine doctor, with his combination of tree bark and herbs, and he thinks he can do what no one else has been able to do: cure the incurable. Sophie’s regular doctor said Schaefer’s treatment was nothing more than a Band-Aid, and it terrified Janine that he might be right. She was just getting her daughter back. She could not bear to lose her again.

“Where are the other parents?” Janine looked behind her toward the parking lot entrance. It was nearly three.

“Oh, I think it’s just you and me. I’m going to drive a couple of the girls home. Gloria and Alison will take the rest, but we figured you’d probably be anxious to be with Sophie, so we didn’t think to ask if you wanted one of us to give her a ride.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t wait to see how she made out.”

“She looked so excited when she got into the van Friday evening,” Suzanne said.

“She was.” Janine was glad she was wearing sunglasses, because her eyes suddenly burned with tears. Her baby girl. How rare it was to have seen such unfettered joy in Sophie’s face rather than the usual lines of pain and fear. The sort of fear no child should have to endure.

“She’s so cute,” Suzanne said. “Where’d she get that red hair?”

“It’s a combination of mine and her dad’s, I guess,” she said, touching her hand to her own strawberry-blond hair. Joe’s hair was dark, his eyes blue, like Sophie’s.

“It’s her kidneys that are the problem, right?” Suzanne probed.

“Yes.” Janine didn’t mind the questions. The only time she was bothered by them was when they were asked in front of her daughter, as though Sophie were deaf and blind as well as very, very ill.

“Would a transplant help?”

“She already has one of mine.” Janine smiled ruefully. “Her body rejected it.” Joe had offered one of his, as well, but he was not a good match. And now, Sophie was beyond being helped by a transplant.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Suzanne said kindly. “She seems to handle everything very well, though. I was so surprised when I met her, because she’s so tiny. I thought she was about six. But then this eight-year-old voice comes out of her, with a ten-year-old vocabulary. It’s such a surprise.”

Janine smiled. “Kids with kidney disease tend to be small.”

“What a lot you must have been through with her,” Suzanne said. “And to think of how much I worry when Emily has the sniffles. I really admire you.”

Janine didn’t feel admirable. She was coping the only way a desperate mother could—searching for solutions, doing all she could to make Sophie’s time on earth as happy and carefree as possible…and crying only when she was alone at night.

“Emily told me you’re a helicopter pilot,” Suzanne said.

“Oh.” Janine was surprised. “I was, a long time ago. Before Sophie got sick.” She had learned to fly a helicopter in the army and had flown for an aircraft leasing company after getting out of the reserves. Was Sophie telling people she still flew? Maybe it embarrassed her that Janine had turned from an adventurous pilot into a stay-at-home mom. But with a chronically ill child, she could imagine no other course of action.

“Emily has a secret hope that, when the girls in the troop get a little older, you might give them flying lessons.”

She had thought of that herself, in those rare, optimistic moments when she could picture Sophie reaching her teenage years. “Maybe one day,” she said. “That would be fun.” She turned to look at the parking lot entrance again.

“You must worry about Sophie when she’s away,” Suzanne said suddenly, and Janine knew that the worry was evident in her eyes, or maybe in the way she was knotting and unknotting her hands.

“Well,” she said, “this is new to me. Sophie’s never been away from home without me or her father by her side.” She’d also never been so far from emergency care, which was why Joe had said the trip was out of the question. But Sophie had begged to go. There was so little she ever asked for, and so little Janine could do for her. She said yes, after getting permission from Dr. Schaefer, who even called Joe to assure him that Sophie would be fine, as long as she watched her fluid intake and was home for dialysis on Sunday night and back at Schaefer’s office for Herbalina on Monday. Joe, who lost his temper too easily and too often, had hung up on him.

Like Sophie’s regular doctors, Joe thought Schaefer’s study was a sham, and he had argued with Janine about making Sophie into a guinea pig. Although Janine and Joe had been divorced since Sophie was five, they usually were in agreement on how to handle their daughter’s treatment. This study had driven a wedge between them and was unraveling the already frayed edges of Janine’s relationship with her parents, as well. They hadn’t wanted Sophie to take part in such an unconventional treatment, either. It wasn’t like Janine to stand up to any disapproval from Joe or her parents, at least not in recent years. But Sophie was terminally ill. Even dialysis was failing her, and she’d been given mere months to live. There was little to lose.

“I don’t think you need to worry,” Suzanne said. “Gloria seems like a very caring and responsible leader.”

“I wonder about Alison, though,” Janine said. Alison was the younger of the two troop leaders. Only twenty-five and single, Alison had no children of her own. She’d been a volunteer leader in Sophie’s troop for the past two years, and all the girls loved her. She was fun-loving, comical and had a spirit of adventure that the girls adored and the parents feared. Alison had made a few errors in judgment over the past couple of years. Very minor. Nothing life-threatening. But then, she hadn’t had a child as frail and needy as Sophie under her care before.

“Oh, I think Alison’s super,” Suzanne said. “How many young women do you know who are childless themselves but still volunteer to work with kids? And the girls love her. She’s a good role model for them.”

Janine felt mildly chastened and wished she had thought before she’d spoken.

She was about to apologize, when she spotted a white van pulling into the parking lot.

“Is that them?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” Suzanne said.

The van was heading toward them, and Janine waved.

Stepping away from Suzanne’s station wagon, she wished she could make out the faces behind the van’s tinted windows. Patience, she told herself. If she charged the van, or God forbid, started crying when she saw Sophie, she would only embarrass her.

The van came to a stop next to the station wagon, and Gloria stepped out of the driver’s side, giving them a quick wave as she walked around the front of the car to slide open the side door. Five grimy, tired little Brownies began tumbling out. Suzanne stepped forward to give her daughter, Emily, a hug, and Janine looked past them, watching for a sixth girl to emerge. She walked toward the van, trying to see through the dark windows, but there appeared to be no movement inside.

“Janine,” Gloria said. “How come you’re still here?”

“I’m waiting for Sophie,” Janine said, confused. “Isn’t she with you?”