How to Save a Life Page 13

  The tree vibrates almost imperceptibly, and I wonder if I’ve imagined it. Encouraged, I go on. “The thing is, Caroline, I think I’m in love with your dad. I know the timing is terrible, but I want to make sure he’s okay. And I think he’d be more okay if he felt better about you. I think maybe he’s still carrying around some guilt and some questions. I want to help him answer those questions, but only if it’s okay with you.”

  I wait, but nothing happens. I could swear that I feel the tree vibrate again, but it’s equally possible that I’m losing my mind—or at least that I’m imagining the vibrations.

  “He really loves you, Caroline,” I add after a moment. “It’s why he’s still here all the time, why the hospital is so important to him. He hasn’t let you go.”

  “Let go,” the tree whispers, clear as day.

  I look around, startled, wondering if the family passing by has heard the voice too, but they’re not paying me or the tree any attention. “Did you just say, ‘Let go’?” I ask in a low voice.

  “My dad should be happy,” the tree whispers. Then the leaves rustle a little, as if a breeze has blown through. “Happy.”

  “It is you, Caroline,” I say, warmth flooding through me.

  There’s silence for a moment, and then the tree says clearly, “Tell him.”

  “Tell him?” I ask, wondering how on earth I’ll manage to deliver the message without making him think I’m crazy.

  A moment later, I hear the answer to the question I haven’t asked aloud. “If you really love him, tell him the truth. It’s time.”

  And then the tree shudders and goes silent. “Caroline?” I venture, but the bark is growing cold, and I know her presence is gone for now.

  I sit there in silence for a while, digesting what the tree said and wondering if I just might be crazy after all if I think a long-dead girl is speaking to me through a tree. My thoughts are interrupted some time later by Jamie sitting down beside me. “Hey,” he says softly.

  “Hi.” He’s sitting so close that his thigh is touching mine, which sends a river of warmth flooding through me.

  “You know, my daughter asked me to plant this tree,” he says after a moment.

  “Oh?”

  “She wrote it in her will.”

  I stare at him. “Your daughter had a will?”

  “Sure did. Written in green marker on a very serious-looking piece of yellow construction paper. I still have it.” He smiles slightly, lost in the memory for a moment, before clearing his throat. “You know, there was a different tree here before this one.”

  “Wait, there was?” I rack my brain, but I can only remember a bare-bones lobby with an old-fashioned sign welcoming people to Atlanta Children’s Hospital.

  “Sort of. It was just a potted tree in the corner, maybe eight feet tall or so, but Carolyn loved it. She knew the hospital was planning to get rid of it in the expansion, and it was one of the last things she talked about before she died.”

  “Really?”

  He nods. “She was delirious at the end, but she kept telling me to tell the tree good-bye, and that the tree knew she was going. I didn’t understand, but it seemed so important to her.”

  “It was,” I murmur, and Jamie gives me a strange look.

  He pauses before continuing. “I can still remember the last thing she said to me, word for word, like it was yesterday. She was just lying there, so small and fragile, almost like she was disappearing into the sheets of her hospital bed. But she grasped my hand like someone much stronger. She looked right in my eyes, and she said, ‘Don’t cry for me. I’ve lived more than most people ten times my age.’ ” Jamie pauses and takes a deep breath. Without thinking, I put a hand on his leg to comfort him, and I’m surprised how intimate it suddenly feels. “Then, she was quiet for a few seconds and she said, ‘You have to plant another tree. For me. It’s the only way. I have to help the other kids.’ I asked her what she meant, but she was silent after that. She smiled, closed her eyes, and then she was gone.”

  I don’t say anything for a moment. I’m thinking about the whispers I heard, the recommendation that I tell Jamie the truth. But I don’t know where to begin. “Jamie—” I say after a moment.

  He holds up a hand. “I know it sounds crazy. But then I found the construction paper will in the drawer beside her bed. It wasn’t just delusional ramblings. She really meant it. I don’t know why it was so important to her, but it was. So I had to plant a tree here. It was her last wish.”

  “She lives on through the tree,” I blurt out, but instead of looking shocked by my words, Jamie simply nods.

  “I’ve always felt that way too,” he says, and I realize he thinks I’m speaking metaphorically.

  “No, I mean really,” I say. “She’s still here. Like she said, she’s helping other kids.”

  Jamie nods again. “Because the tree serves as an inspiration. I know. I’ve always thought that it’s a symbol of life and survival. Here it is, closed into the hospital like so many of these kids, and yet it keeps thriving and growing.”

  “Right, but it’s more than that.” I take a deep breath. “It has . . . powers.”

  Jamie cocks his head and studies me for a moment. “That’s what Caroline used to say too. About the old tree, I mean. I always thought it was sort of poetic. It was nice to believe that there was something magical out there, something that didn’t revolve around operations and blood pressure monitors.”

  “I’m not explaining it right,” I say. I look up at the tree and silently ask for guidance, but it stays quiet and motionless. “The thing is, when Caroline said she’d lived more than people ten times her age, I think she meant it.”

  “I’m sure she did, in a way. She was always looking on the bright side.”

  “No, but what I mean is that I think the tree that used to be here was able to grant her extra days. Or not extra days, exactly, but she got to keep repeating the same day over and over and over again, until she got to experience the things she wanted to in life. And when she knew that the hospital was going to take the tree away, she asked you to plant a new one so that the tradition could keep going.”

  Jamie stares at me. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” He shifts uneasily, moving farther away from me.

  It’s too late to turn back now, so I continue. “There’s magic in the tree. I know it doesn’t make any sense, and I can’t explain how it works.” I take a deep breath. “Caroline speaks through this tree, somehow, and she helps people who are terminally ill get a second chance at living.”

  I stop abruptly, and the silence is deafening. Jamie opens and closes his mouth a few times, and then a shadow crosses his face. “It’s really unkind to make jokes at my daughter’s expense.”

  “I’m not making jokes! I promise!”

  Jamie stands abruptly. “I tried my best with her, and nothing can take away the words she said to me at the end. They meant everything. And you’re making light of them? I don’t understand why you’d do that, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  “Jamie!” I exclaim, but he’s already walking away. In a moment, he’s through the front door.

  I stand to follow him, but something holds me back. “Time is short,” the tree murmurs. “Love is always rooted in truth. Listen to your own heart.”

  “I don’t know how,” I murmur. But as I stand there, staring at the tree, I’m hit with a realization. I’ve been spending my repeated todays trying to patch together the lives of Logan, Frankie, and Katelyn, and now I’m trying to help Jamie. But what about the holes in my own life? What about the love missing in my own world?

  I think of Jamie’s words: Nothing can take away the words she said to me at the end. They meant everything. And suddenly, I’m not thinking of Jamie anymore. I’m thinking of my own father and the things that need to be set right before I go.

  “WE’RE
JUST ON our way out,” my dad’s wife, Sharon, says when she answers their front door thirty minutes later. “I would have told you that if you’d bothered calling first.”

  She purses her lips at me, and instead of feeling riled up and annoyed, which is usually the reaction Sharon elicits from me, I just feel sad. We’ve never really gotten along, and now, I think we’ve run out of chances. Strange to think that this is a regret I’ll die with.

  “I’m very sorry to interrupt your plans,” I say. “I just need to see my dad for a few minutes.”

  Her expression grows even more sour. “Can’t you come back tomorrow, Jill? This is a huge inconvenience.”

  “I need to see him now. Please.” I don’t wait for an answer. Shooting her an apologetic look, I squeeze past her through the front doorway. “Dad?” I call from the base of the stairs.

  “Jill?” He appears a moment later on the landing wearing khakis and an undershirt, a speck of shaving cream still clinging to his neck. “Are you okay? What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk with you.”

  “Of course.” He’s already starting down the stairs, a concerned look on his face. “What happened?”

  “Bill, you really don’t have that much time,” Sharon says. She steps up beside me, and I notice that her face looks like she’s just eaten a particularly sour lemon. “We have that dinner, and Jill didn’t call first, so . . .”

  “She’s my daughter, Sharon,” my father says, surprising me. “If she needs me, the least I can do is be there for her. God knows I haven’t done that enough.”

  It’s enough to make me tear up, but Sharon just snorts. “Oh, and when is the last time she made an effort with you? Do you need to borrow money, Jill? Is that it?”

  I turn to her just as my father reaches the bottom of the stairs and puts a hand on my arm. “No, Sharon. I don’t need money. I’ve never asked my father for money.”

  She snorts. “I seem to remember paying out the nose for your college expenses.”

  “Jill, I’m his child. And as you know, he makes a lot of money. It wasn’t unreasonable for him to help me pay for my tuition. Besides, that was twenty years ago. How can you still be angry about that?”

  Sharon narrows her eyes at me. “Now listen to me—” she begins, but my father cuts her off.

  “Sharon!” he says in the sharpest tone I’ve ever heard him use with her. “This is between Jill and me. This conversation doesn’t involve you.”

  He turns back to me as I gape at him, stunned to hear him stand up for me. “Jill,” he says, “why don’t you join me in my office?”

  I nod and follow him, leaving Sharon sputtering behind us.

  He gestures to one of the two leather chairs in the bookshelf-lined room. He’s an attorney whose overtime hours and dedication to his job didn’t leave much time for a family when I was young. I wonder if he regrets that now. “I’m sorry about Sharon,” he says once we’ve settled into seats facing each other. “I don’t really understand the chip on her shoulder when it comes to you.”

  “She feels threatened,” I say softly before realizing how rude I sound. “Geez, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He sighs. “No, you’re right. I just don’t understand it. I’ve always chosen—” He cuts off the sentence abruptly and gives me a guilty look.

  I smile sadly. “I know. It’s okay. You were going to say you’ve always chosen her. And you’re right. You have.”

  “Jill—” my father begins.

  “No. I didn’t come to discuss that or to talk about blame. I came because I want to apologize.”

  He looks confused. “But, Jill, you have nothing to apologize for. It’s me who should be doing the apologizing.”

  “No, I do owe you an apology. I owe you an apology because it was easier to be angry at you, to keep a running tally of the ways you’d hurt me, than it was to simply let things go and realize that there was more to life than keeping score.”

  “But I never should have hurt you in the first place,” he protests. “I made so many bad decisions, and I know that I hurt you many times over. I never knew how to apologize, and the worse it got, the harder it was for me to own up to it.”

  “Until we got to a place where we only had surface-level conversations,” I say with a half smile, “filled with icy politeness.”

  “Icy politeness,” my dad repeats, shaking his head. “God, I hate that. I hate that that’s the way you and I have communicated for so long.”

  “Me too.”

  “But how do we fix it?”

  “I’m not sure we can at this point,” I say. “But we can forgive each other. I want to do that, Dad. I want you to know it’s okay. Everything that’s happened between us, it’s okay.”

  He blinks a few times, and I’m surprised to see that his eyes are damp. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father cry. “I don’t deserve that,” he says softly.

  “Do you love me?” I ask.

  This time, a tear escapes and rolls down his right cheek. He wipes it swiftly away. “Of course I do, Jill. I always have. Me being a crappy father doesn’t have anything to do with you. It has to do with me.”

  “Then you deserve forgiveness,” I tell him. “Your heart’s in the right place, even if you haven’t always done the right thing. And I hope you can forgive me too.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Jill. Truly. I know you’re an adult now, but you’ll always be my child. I’m the one who screwed up. I’ll always be ashamed of that.”

  “Don’t be,” I say softly. “You’re human. And I haven’t been perfect either, Dad. But let’s let it go, okay?” In the back of my mind, I can hear the tree whispering, Let go. The advice applies to more than I’d realized.

  “But can we just do that? Let it go and start over?”

  “I think we have to try.”

  He sighs and looks down at his hands for a minute. “Why now, Jill? What made you come here today?”

  “Because life is short,” I tell him after a pause. “And I don’t want to have any major regrets. Besides, I’ve been thinking a lot about parenthood lately, and I realize there’s a lot more to being a mom or a dad than I ever really grasped before. Sometimes, you just don’t know how to fix what’s broken.”

  He nods. “If I could do it all over again, I’d like to think I’d do things differently. I’d do better by you and your mom.”

  I nod. “But in real life, we don’t get do-overs, do we? We just have to do our very best to get it right.” I stand up. “I know you have that dinner, and I imagine Sharon is probably frantic out there.”

  “You don’t have to go.” My dad stands too. “Sharon will deal with it.”

  “No. Go to your dinner, Dad. It’ll be like I was never here.”

  “Honey, that’s impossible. This is the single best conversation I’ve had with anyone in years.”

  I smile sadly, knowing he won’t remember it in the morning and that we’ll have to repeat it once more before I go if I want it to stick. And I do. I want him to remember, after I’ve died, that in the end, we were okay again. “I love you, Dad,” I say.

  He gives me a fierce hug. “I love you too, kiddo. Come back soon, okay?”

  “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  13

  “YOU’RE ALMOST DONE, aren’t you?” Logan asks me through the bathroom door the next today, after I’ve filled him in on my conversations with Jamie and my dad.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, startled. I’m in his hospital room, waiting for him to get changed so that I can take him out once more. I have a big day planned for his mock thirteenth birthday, and I want to get moving so that we can get a few hours of fun in before his energy starts to flag.

  Logan comes out of the bathroom wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I’m always struck by how normal he appears out
of his hospital pajamas. He looks like a healthy kid instead of someone who’s about to die. “I mean that back when we started, you told me you wanted to fall in love and reconcile with your dad. And you’ve done those things, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say softly. Despite the fact that Jamie will never have time to develop feelings for me in return, there’s no doubt in my mind that I love him. Perhaps it should feel pathetic, but it only feels jarringly unfinished.

  “But you said something else too,” Logan reminds me. “You said you’d want to have a family of your own.”

  “Well, I hate to tell you, but no matter how many repeats the tree gives me, it’ll never be enough time to build a family.”

  “It already has been,” Logan says.

  “What?”

  “The way you are with Frankie, Katelyn, and me,” Logan says. “You’re like a big sister to the two of them, because that’s what they needed: someone to love them but to be their friend too. They already have parents, but you filled a gap they didn’t even know they had. But for me, Jill, you’ve been like a mom.”

  My eyes fill. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Of course I do. You’ve always been the closest thing to a mom I ever had. If things were different, well, I don’t know, I kind of have the feeling you and I would have a long future together.”

  I nod slowly. “If we had more time, I’d apply to adopt you, if it was okay with you.”

  He smiles. “I know. I’d want that too.”

  “But that’ll never happen.” It feels crushing to think about how many roads are already closed to us.

  “So what? So what if we don’t have a piece of paper that says you’re my mom? It’s not like we have a piece of paper that explains the tree, either, do we? Some things just are. Some things, you just have to believe in.”

  I wipe a tear from my eye. “I do believe.”

  “Me too,” Logan says. He gives me a hug and then he grabs my hand and leads me into the hall. “Let’s go.”

  A few minutes later, we’re approaching the tree to ask it for one day more when Logan stops in his tracks. “Jamie!” he calls.