The Moonlight Healers

17. Louise

17

LOUISE

The house shone with light as Peter and Louise walked up the creaky porch steps. Louise found it difficult to even put one foot in front of the other, to keep moving toward what she knew was ahead. She had barely spoken to Peter on the short ride back from the Henleys’. She didn’t know what to say, or how to say it, how to possibly explain to him that he was living on borrowed time.

But she had to tell him; he deserved to know, to have the chance to say goodbye to his family, to use his remaining time in the way he wanted. She tried to picture how it would happen. She would find somewhere peaceful, the guest cottage, maybe, or the bench in the garden, near the magnolia tree. She would hold his hand and put aside her own grief, be there for him.

Before they could get to the door Camille came out of the house, hair askew and face full of worry. “I found your car at the market. Both of your cars. I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

“Is Mom here yet?” Louise asked. Sarah was dying, and she couldn’t save Peter. It was all over. She needed her mother there, more than ever. She had always told herself she was her mother’s tether, that she kept her anchored to the world. But now she felt as though she would lose her grip if her mother wasn’t there beside her.

“She got held up with appointments. But I called her as soon as you left. She’s on her way.”

Louise stumbled past Camille into the house, Peter following close behind.

“Where were you?” Camille asked.

Louise collapsed onto the old, worn couch in the living room. “The Henleys’. Jake came to get me. He wanted me to heal her.”

Camille looked from Louise to Peter.

“He knows,” Louise said. Camille sat down heavily in the armchair across from her. “He knows I brought him back.”

Camille folded her hands on her lap. Louise could see her try to compose herself, gain some handle on what was happening.

As Peter joined Louise on the couch, Camille’s expression formed a question only Louise knew was there, whether Peter knew everything . Louise shook her head no.

“Good,” Camille finally said. She addressed Peter. “Can you give us all a little time, to discuss things as a family? You’re exhausted and it’s been a long day. I’ll pack you up some food and you can take it down to the guest cottage. It’s a little dusty but there are clean linens, and soap in the shower. It’ll be hot in there but the window unit still works fine.”

Peter nodded blankly.

Even through the haze of her own exhaustion, Louise knew how overwhelmed he must feel, after learning about her abilities, how she’d used them to save his life. She didn’t want to be away from him. Time was moving horrendously fast. She could feel it slipping through her grasp with each passing second.

“Grandma, I don’t…”

“Louise, we need to talk. Me, you, your mother. Just us. I promise you’ll be able to explain everything to Peter. But first…” Louise was surprised when her grandmother’s voice caught. “But first just us, just family, okay?”

Peter’s eyes met Louise’s, searching for confirmation that everything would be okay, that life would right itself. But she didn’t know how to give it to him. She didn’t have the words.

All she could do was lean her head on his shoulder, feel the solid presence of his body. He rested his head on top of hers and they relaxed into each other. They were in this together.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s fine. I think I need to lie down for a minute. I haven’t really slept in a few nights.”

Camille got up and strode to the kitchen, and when she returned she held out a key and a paper bag of food. “Louise will come get you, once we’ve settled everything here.” She set a hand on his shoulder. “It will all be fine. I promise.”

He rose from the couch, and with one last intense look at Louise, he left.

“You should rest too, for a little while,” Camille said as she stood at the front window watching the driveway. “We can talk about what’s next once your mom gets here.”

“What is there left to talk about?” Louise closed her eyes, defeat enveloping her. “It’s all over, isn’t it?”

“No, Louise,” Camille said softly. “It’s not over. Not just yet.”

* * *

Louise’s eyes snapped open at the slam of the door. In one quick motion, Bobbie dropped her purse, ran to the couch, and took Louise in her arms. She squeezed her eyes shut again as the full weight of the night, of the past few days, pressed into her.

“I’m so sorry,” Bobbie said, her voice muffled as she buried her face in Louise’s hair. “I didn’t know. I promise I would never have left you if I did.”

Louise let out a sob as she and her mother tightened their grips on each other.

When Bobbie finally released her, her makeup was smeared. She straightened and addressed Camille. “How could you have not told me sooner, not told her sooner? After everything that happened, and you still kept this from us.”

Camille stepped forward from where she stood near the staircase. “I didn’t tell you because he’s not going to die. You’re not going to lose him, Louise.” A tiny strand of hope threaded through the grief and fear inside of her. “Sit,” Camille said quietly to Bobbie. “Please sit.”

Camille herself sat in the armchair, but Bobbie didn’t move. “You told me on the phone that it was temporary, that we had to tell Louise together.”

“I wanted to tell her together how Peter could live . The way she can save him.

“You gave Peter time,” Camille said to Louise. “You saved his life, but only temporarily. But you can keep him here, living, if you replace his life with another, if you end a life.”

Louise’s hope frayed. “What do you mean replace his life with another? You can’t mean…”

Camille nodded as a terrible clarity settled into Louise’s mind.

“I can…we can…kill people?”

“Only if it’s their time,” Camille said quickly. “If they need help letting go. But yes, we have the ability to still a beating heart.” She paused, her eyes distant. “My mother tried once, she told me, to save a good man’s life. She tried to take the life of an evil man. But he wasn’t dying, and he resisted, violently. But it’s not like that, if a soul wants to leave. If someone is ready.”

If the only way to save Peter was by taking someone else’s life, then it wasn’t really a way at all, unless… “So then…someone sick, someone about to die. A hospice patient. Someone in pain. If they were suffering then it wouldn’t be…it would be compassionate, wouldn’t it?”

“It doesn’t work like that. I thought the same. But my mother told me it can’t be someone who is already dying.”

For a few moments, no one spoke.

“You see,” Camille said shakily. “I can save Peter. I’m old, but I’m healthy. There’s nothing wrong with me, not physically.”

Camille came and knelt in front of Louise, who felt a creeping sense of dread. She couldn’t fathom a world in which she could do what her grandmother was suggesting, not even for Peter.

Camille’s blue eyes, when they met Louise’s, were full of tenderness. “You think I just made this decision? I made it the minute you told me what happened, when you both were here, sitting on the porch. And I think you know why, Louise. I think you’ve seen it. That I haven’t been quite myself.”

“What are you talking about?” Bobbie joined Camille, sliding onto the floor next to Louise’s legs.

“Even before all of this, I was going to tell you both, soon,” Camille said as she leaned back against the couch. “Your father has known for a few months. My brother. And Jim. I had to tell them both, to plan ahead.”

“Plan ahead for what?” Bobbie asked, anxiety rippling in her voice.

Camille looked at Louise, who felt herself struggle against the truth, even as tiny connections began to fall into place: her grandmother’s unexpected retirement, Jim’s words about a sale. And there were other signs, trivial ones, things she had brushed off for months, slips in her grandmother’s phrasing, or mixed-up names, plans that were forgotten, food left on the stove, all moments she had chalked up to her simply getting older.

Louise didn’t want to put it together, didn’t want it to be true, but she could feel reality rush toward her.

“I went to your grandfather soon after I was given the probable diagnosis in December, the next day actually. To make him my power of attorney, to finalize my will and advanced directives. I had made all these decisions before the doctor told me what I already knew, of course. I made them all when I watched Mama go through it.” She placed her hands in her lap and took a long moment before continuing. “I was always very clear about what I wanted the end of my life to look like, should it come to this.”

A slow realization dawned on Bobbie’s face. “Dementia?”

Camille nodded. “Same as Mama, more than likely.”

“How long has this been going on?” Bobbie asked.

“It started more than a year ago,” Camille said. “For a long time, I tried to convince myself it was just getting older. It was only little lapses, now and again, some clumsiness, feeling off, emotionally. But then…” She paused and looked down at her hands. “I saw things in myself that reminded me of her.”

Bobbie’s face crumpled. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“What difference would it have made?”

“I could have been here helping you. Making sure you were okay.”

“You have your own life. I would never have let you be my caretaker.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, when I got here?” Louise struggled to formulate her thoughts. She knew there was some right question to ask, some way to sort it all out, prevent what was careening toward them.

“I knew you’d argue with me,” Camille replied. “You’re as stubborn as your mother. But guess what? I’m even more stubborn.”

“Mom, you can’t possibly mean this. You’re not acting rational.”

Camille let out a small laugh. “Barbara, what would a rational response be to this situation exactly?”

“I don’t know.” Bobbie stood and began to pace the room. “There must be something else that can be done. Something in one of Agnes’s old books or…or someone we can talk to. That midwife healer friend of yours who lives in the valley, Naomi or Natalie?”

“Naomi.” She sighed. “Naomi is the first person I called after you guys came here. She knows more about healing than I do, more than even Mama ever did. I told her what I was thinking. She told me it should work.”

Louise’s thoughts were muted as her mother and grandmother talked. When she was little, their combined voices were so soothing, conversations about politics or nursing techniques, gossip over people in town. But right now, the sound only brought her grief.

“There has to be some other way.”

“Barbara.”

“You’re sure that there isn’t a loophole, or someone else, or…”

“Barbara, that’s enough!” Camille’s voice rang out.

Louise looked up, shocked. She had never heard her grandmother raise her voice like that.

“I know what’s ahead of me,” she said. “I watched it with Mama. And I have known it every day since, that I would never want to live the way she lived at the end.” Her chin trembled. “She…she begged me, for months, to let her go. But I was so scared of losing her. It took me so long, too long.” She gazed out the window at the inky blue sky. “I’m not scared, not of death. I’m so much more scared of losing who I am. Of putting you in that position, to have to ask you…of making you shoulder that burden.”

“Mom, please, you wouldn’t be—”

“It’s not your decision, Barbara. It’s mine. And how beautiful it is, to be able to end my life on my terms and save the life of someone Louise loves.”

Louise tried to focus her thoughts as the full weight of her grandmother’s words landed on her. “Could I even do it…?” she asked, trying to voice the unbearable question. “How would I even…? I mean, killing someone, is it something I could…?”

Louise’s mother stopped pacing, as though she could no longer outrun what was coming. She stood very still as she turned to face Louise. “You could,” she said softly. “Because I did.”

Louise watched her mom, uncomprehending. She didn’t un derstand. How could she have done what her grandmother was asking: end a life?

Bobbie crossed the room and sat beside Louise again. She took her hands, glancing once at Camille before she spoke.

“I couldn’t tell you, Louise. Not this. Not when you…” She cleared her throat. “Not when you looked at me the way you used to look at me, when I was still a nurse, like I was your hero. You used to dress up in my scrubs, use my stethoscope to listen to everyone’s heart and lungs. You looked at me like I hung the moon.”

She glanced again at Camille, and Louise saw a decade’s worth of anger and regret in her mother’s eyes.

“I was working a night shift. Assigned to a patient in the ICU.” She hesitated, and Louise squeezed her mother’s hands, willing her to continue, to finally give her the answers she had wanted for so long. “Her name was Teresa. She was very old, almost ninety, with advanced dementia. Heart failure. COPD.” She closed her eyes as though forcing herself to remember despite the pain of it. “She was so sick, and she was with us for months. Her family wouldn’t talk about end of life, or agree to hospice. They wanted everything done, and I watched this poor woman get a feeding tube placed, and a tracheotomy in her neck. She had pressure ulcers everywhere, no matter how careful we were with her skin. It was awful, Louise. It broke my heart. More than anything I’d experienced as a nurse.”

Louise thought of Sarah, the focus of all her care on comfort instead of curative measures. She was at home, surrounded by her family, with a team of hospice doctors and nurses managing her pain. She couldn’t imagine someone she loved being kept alive to suffer the way her mother described.

“I was giving her a bath, cleaning up her bed, the little things I could offer her, that felt so insignificant, but at least were something.” Her grip tightened even more. “And I just felt this need to put my hands on her, to stay longer than I normally would, so she wouldn’t feel alone.”

Louise was only vaguely aware of her grandmother coming to sit on the other side of her on the couch. She couldn’t tear her eyes from her mother as she spoke.

“I can hardly describe it,” Bobbie continued hoarsely. “Only that I felt…surrender, like she had been waiting all that time for someone to simply let her go. And I saw her…flashes of her life, pieces of her. Felt this warmth, like nothing I had ever known.” Her features softened. “I thought I was delirious. Too many night shifts. But her heart stopped. Almost as soon as I let go of her.”

“Mom…” Louise began to speak, to tell her mother that it was okay, that she had given her peace, and no one would blame her.

“It happened a second time,” Bobbie said quickly, as though she needed to get all the words out at once. “A few weeks later with a similar patient. I didn’t understand it. It was a coincidence, right? But because they both died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest, with no identifiable cause, at night while I was alone with them, there was an investigation by the hospital.”

Louise’s heart plummeted. She couldn’t imagine the shame her mother must have felt, to be implicated in the deaths of her patients. She felt the pieces of her childhood fall into place, why her mother quit nursing, why she had been so shattered after they moved, the long stretches of depression.

“I was cleared,” Bobbie said tersely after a few moments. “They couldn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing. But of course, something like that stays with you. Follows you around. I never could work as a nurse after that, even in a new hospital, new city. I couldn’t let it go, the horror of what I’d done. Even if it helped them, even if it was the choice I would make for myself, I never would have…” Her eyes glistened. “Consent still matters. What a family wants matters. They weren’t on hospice. They were in an ICU.”

“You didn’t know,” Louise managed to ask, “about healing?”

Bobbie shook her head. “Not then. Not until it was too late.”

“I told her,” Camille said in a strained voice from beside Louise. “When she told me what happened after the second patient. I told her immediately. About all of it.”

Louise thought of the journal, the last entry, her grandmother’s plea for forgiveness.

“You had no choice then, did you?” Bobbie asked, the anguish clear in her tone.

“I’ve never forgiven myself, Bobbie. You have to know that. And I promise if I had known that there was any possibility something like that could happen… My mother always taught me intention mattered, and awareness… She never thought either… She would have insisted I tell you. She loved you so much, was so proud of you.”

Bobbie released Louise and placed her hands on her mother’s. It was the first time Louise had seen the two women touch in more than a decade.

“You’re not still angry?” Camille’s voice was almost pleading.

Bobbie wiped her eyes. “I know you were doing your best. And I failed too. In almost the exact same way, by thinking I was protecting Louise, withholding this all from her. I was so mad at you, Mama. But then I acted so much like you.” She tried to smile. “Which made me even more mad at you. But I love you. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t find a way to tell you that sooner. I thought we had so much more time.”

She looked at Louise. “I’m so sorry, honey. For not telling you. I just couldn’t separate it, how I found out, what had happened, with the healing itself. To me it was more like a curse, this horrible moment in my life that I couldn’t ever leave behind. I felt like I lost everything, my career, my friends from work, my relationship with my mother. And I was so consumed by guilt. I could barely remember how to breathe after I found out. You were the only…” Her voice was hoarse. “You were the only reason I was able to keep going. This bright, beautiful reprieve. And every time I thought of telling you, it just felt like…”

“It would make her life harder,” Camille whispered.

Bobbie nodded as she wiped her eyes again. “I hated keeping it from you. Taking you away from our life here. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy, and safe. I thought I could pretend for both of us, convince myself it never happened. Move on.”

Louise knew that her mother’s trauma didn’t erase the years of lies. But mostly she felt a deep, overwhelming sense of grief, that her mother had been so alone, that she hadn’t been able to share that pain with anyone. Even if she wished she had told her, she also understood why she hadn’t. She thought of Peter, how terrified she had been to be honest with him about her feelings, how she had chosen the stability of their friendship over the danger of an unknown future. She and her mother had both convinced themselves that the safety of a lie was preferable, that honesty was a dangerous, reckless proposition. But they were both wrong, to believe life could be so easily partitioned, that love could flourish without risk, that joy could exist without sorrow.

For a while the three of them were quiet.

“If Peter did live, it wouldn’t be much time then, would it?” she asked her grandmother when she was finally brave enough. “Because you’re…”

Camille smiled. “Because I’m old and decrepit. And he’s not.”

“I didn’t mean…”

Camille patted Louise’s knee. “Don’t worry, I’m not offended, honey. And it’s not an exact trade. You’re not giving Peter a specific, concrete number of years and days. You’re giving him the catalyst, a spark. After that, it’s his life, his time.”

“So, when then?” Bobbie asked. “When does this have to happen?”

Camille surveyed the living room, the threadbare cushions and flickering lamps. “Soon. The kind of healing you did, after death, won’t last long. I already told you the old healers kept track of time through moon cycles. The shortest time between someone being brought back and dying again was a single phase of the moon.”

“How long is that?” Louise asked as panic rose in her throat. “It’s been more than three days.”

“About a week, give or take,” Camille said. “So, it should be soon, a day or two at most, to be safe. I would like…” She recovered herself. “I’d like a day, to work in my garden and walk the orchard, paint a little, finish some letters I’ve started. To my brother, Daniel. And Sam. Some of my friends and the families of patients.” She looked at Bobbie. “I need some time with Jim. I told you he already knows about the dementia. I had to tell him to put plans in place for the orchard. But he’ll take this hard. And I’d like to explain it to him. Finalize some business things. And of course, I’d like to spend time with you both. Say whatever is left for us to say.”

Bobbie’s face was ashen, but she nodded.

Camille addressed Louise. “Tell Peter he needs to stay a few more days. Tell him it’s important. He’ll need to be here. After it’s done.”

“Okay,” Louise said, as though any of this were comprehensible.

“But Louise, you can’t tell him.”

“He knows, about the healing. About the accident. It’s okay.”

“He doesn’t know he’s on borrowed time, what’s about to happen, how it will happen. Would you want to think you were alive only because someone else traded their life?”

Her grandmother was right. She couldn’t put that burden on Peter, even if she herself would carry it the rest of her life. She would find a way to live with it, because she knew it was her grandmother’s choice.

Louise opened her mouth to argue but Camille cut her off. “He trusts you, Louise. And you won’t give him a reason to doubt it. Enough talking now.” She looked at Bobbie. “Everything will seem easier in the morning.”

Neither Bobbie nor Louise moved. They only watched as Camille rose, unwilling to propel the night forward, to make time continue onward.

“It’s going to be okay, girls,” Camille said. “This is no great tragedy.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Bobbie said as she stood too.

Camille took Bobbie’s face in her hands. “It will all be fine. There is still some time, for all of the things we need to say. And what a gift to be able to say goodbye now, when we still can.”

Gently, she kissed Bobbie’s forehead. It was easy to forget that before their falling out, before the years of anger and resentment, they were mother and daughter; that there had been an entire lifetime that existed before her, a world in which they were each other’s centers.

“Mama?” Bobbie asked her. “I’d like to take a walk with you, if that’s okay?”

Camille smiled. “I’d like that very much.”