Chapter Eight
When I opened my eyes again, I recognized Dr. Knox. Grandfather was standing off to the right side. The constant beep of the heart monitor helped me focus more. Of course, I had a different oxygen mask on, but I thought we had just arrived.
“Relax, Lisa,” Dr. Knox said when he saw me try to speak.
“You’ve just had a very serious operation.
It went well, but your recuperation is just as important, if not more.
You’re going to be in here a while and then in a private room.
You’ll have to restrict your activity even when you’re able to go home.
Cooperation and no resistance to it all is the best formula to return to health. Just nod if you understand me.”
I did.
“Mr. Baxter,” he said to Grandfather, who stepped up to the side of my bed.
“Where’s Daddy?” I asked Grandfather.
“He’s on a phone call in the doctor’s office. One of our trucking companies had an accident and spilled our products all over the side of the road in New Jersey. But he did wait first to hear about your operation and condition.”
“What is my condition?” I asked Dr. Knox. “What new restrictions are there?”
He smiled.
“What?”
“Once you’ve healed, you’ll have no restrictions, Lisa.”
I couldn’t believe I was not in a dream. Those were the words I had dreamed of hearing my whole life. How many times had Mommy promised me I would? Probably a thousand.
“How did this happen? The last thing I remember is sinking toward the floor.”
Dr. Knox said, “Well, it was a delicate procedure that we avoided as long as we could. It became unavoidable, and we performed it, and it went exceedingly well. Except for some follow-ups, I don’t expect I’ll need to see you—not that you’re not a nice person,” he added, laughing.
I could see how upbeat and excited everyone was. This was real; this was no dream.
“You’re okay, Lisa. Relax,” Dr. Knox said, patting my hand.
I was afraid to believe it, but the smiles were too real. I finally let it settle into me.
“Just think about all the things you wanted to do and now will.”
I didn’t wait to be alone. I started to make a list on a piece of paper of things I wanted to do but was always afraid to do. Just running up the hill to the Crest would be a wonder for me.
I couldn’t wait to share this news with Jamie and then remembered he could never run up that hill again; he might not even be able to walk it.
Dr. Knox stepped back, and he and Grandfather talked. I felt myself drifting again. I saw the images of other men, most looking like they worked in the hospital, but one stood out because he was dressed in a cable-knit white sweater and had a full, shaped head of coal-black hair.
One of the nurses told me to expect hallucinations and dreams that didn’t seem to make any sense to me.
“Our chief of psychiatry told me that all the images and memories we don’t even realize we have are always alive and moving in our minds.
Coming out of anesthesia or something similar lets them emerge for a moment or two.
They don’t disappear forever. Could easily be something you remember from childhood,” she said.
“This felt…”
“What?” she asked, smiling.
“Now,” I said. “Not from childhood.”
She widened her eyes. “Just don’t spend any time worrying about it.”
In the beginning of my recovery, I wasn’t worrying about spending much time doing anything.
I slept a lot. Daddy came and went, usually for a short visit before heading to a business meeting.
Toward the end of my stay in the ICU, Grandfather brought Anna to see me.
He left her with me while he met with someone on a business matter in Bar Harbor.
“You look so much better than your father described,” she began. “Not that he spent much time describing anything. He treats words like money.”
I laughed.
She held my hand and looked around. “So many flowers.”
Some of the flowers had been sent from the school, my teachers, and the class after there had obviously been a collection to buy them for me. There were roses from Jamie. Anticipating when the first dozen would fade, he had sent another with Anna.
“Thank you, Anna.”
“Your grandfather put…”
Anna looked back at the door and then leaned closer to me.
“Your grandfather put Jamie on the list for visitors when you are moved to the private room. Your father might have some spies in here.” She smiled and then stopped. “You don’t look happy about Jamie coming.”
“Jamie has his own burdens now, and returning to the hospital will only make them heavier.”
“Sometimes when you have troubles, it’s better for you to think about someone else’s troubles. Diminishes your own,” she said. “It’s no good for him to wallow in self-pity.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Anna. I was just tired of people worrying about me.”
“Well, soon that sounds like it’ll be over.”
“I know. I’ll start helping you clean the Crest. That oughta convince them.”
She laughed. “You’ll find more creative ways to exert your new energy. You have a lot of catching up to do.”
“I do, don’t I? And I will.”
“Good. Oh. Your teachers and Jamie will be getting your schoolwork together for you to do at your own pace.”
“Is my picture all right?” I asked.
“Your grandfather decided to keep it in his office. Safe and sound.”
“I’m not sure I want to continue it,” I said. “I feel like I’m doing it for someone else.”
“Really? Who?” Anna asked.
Grandfather returned before I could answer.
“Time to go?” Anna asked.
“Yes. Lisa, you’re going to be moved to your private room tomorrow,” he told me. “And we’ll put your aunt back to work.”
“Jamie didn’t like her,” I said.
“Liking her may be asking too much. Let’s see if she can do the job I paid her nursing tuition to do and earn back the investment,” Grandfather said.
“You sound like Daddy,” I told him.
He smiled. “Good business sense is all right; he just applies it to everything in his life. I think he was five when he asked your grandmother if something she was doing was worth it. Okay. See you soon,” he said, nodding at Anna.
She kissed me, and they left.
Aunt Frances was there when they started to move me to my private room the following morning.
Anyone who saw her and me would think we hadn’t met previously.
I never had seen her so arrogant in her role as a nurse.
She spoke to other people as if they were miles below her.
It was still hard to think of my father and her being brother and sister but from another set of parents.
Of course, they had no idea about this, and it was strange for me to have that knowledge without them having it.
When I was comfortably set up in my room with all the monitoring equipment, Aunt Frances went over everything as if she was reading from a textbook. At the end, I said emphatically, “Thank you, Aunt Frances.”
She paused and looked hard at me. “I don’t discriminate with my patients. Everyone is treated the same.”
“How reassuring,” I said.
She could have burned through me with her glare as she left.
“Sometimes it’s not good to get close to some of your own relatives,” Mommy once said. She surely was thinking of Aunt Frances.
Two days later, I had finished dinner and lay back just wanting to think about the world that was going to open for me the moment I walked out of the hospital.
I was so into imagining all the things I would do that I didn’t see him enter and sit beside the bed.
Maybe he was deliberately as quiet as a ghost.
Suddenly realizing someone was there, I gasped and pulled myself to the side. He was smiling widely.
“Good reflexes,” he said.
“How did you get in? It’s after visiting hours.”
“Maybe I look like a doctor and not an artist,” he replied.
“How long have you been here?”
“About forty-five seconds,” he said. His eyes were dazzling with laughter.
“No, I mean Bar Harbor.”
“Oh. I arrived this morning.”
“And you came here to see me? How did you find out about me so fast?”
“You sure you want to be an artist? You sound more like a district attorney,” he said, his smile holding.
“No, it’s just that…”
“I worry about my protégés. Your grandfather stopped by the gallery about an hour after I had arrived today to show a friend your painting, and I heard him talking to Mr. Doyle about you. He stepped aside and filled me in. I’m so happy for your successful operation and apparently full recuperation from your health challenge,” he said.
I stared at him a moment. He was wearing a fitted long-sleeved dark blue shirt and dark blue jeans.
His silvery-blue eyes looked bluer. I thought the silvery-gray streaks in his dark brown hair had either darkened or been removed.
Since he was the first older man who had shown interest in me other than my teachers, I was intrigued by everything about him.
I sensed he was amused at the way I was studying him.
“What sorts of things are you looking forward to doing when the doctor gives you the okay?” he asked.
I laughed. “That’s what had me in such deep thought.
Believe it or not, I’ve never driven our speedboat, swum in the ocean, water-skied, or even gone on long hikes.
There are great hiking trails on Birdlane.
When I was very young, I snuck off and climbed up a cliff known as the Birdlane Crow’s Nest.”
The moment I said it, I realized I had left Jamie’s name out.
“All things I like to do,” he said. “ ’Course, I’ve never been up to the Birdlane Crow’s Nest. I’ve never been to Birdlane. Why don’t you give a call at the gallery when your doctor gives you the green light?”
He leaned toward me as if he was sharing a secret.
“Until your next birthday, we’ll call it art research,” he said.
I was sure my cheeks had turned crimson. Until I’m eighteen? What happens then? I wondered.
He paused a moment, his face closer, and then sat back with his smile.
“Actually,” he said, mostly, I imagined, to break the silence, “I’m bribing you. I hope you’ll recommend my doing a painting of the Crest or support the idea if I bring it up with your grandfather.”
“Really?” I think I sounded disappointed. That was his main purpose?
“For an artist, the subject of the work is half, if not more, of the effort. The Crest has so much to offer the imagination.”
“Where are you from? Were you always artistic?”
“Born in Wyoming at my father’s summer residence.
I come from well-to-do people. My mother overruled my father and financed my work as an artist. When I succeeded, she practically rubbed it into his soul.
” He laughed. “How does your father feel about your work? I mean, I know your grandfather is very happy about it.”
“Your father and mine must be related,” I said, and he laughed again.
“All wrapped into one: beautiful, talented, and witty.”
“I’m not sure all that is wrapped,” I said.
His eyes widened. “Yeah, ‘wrapped’ isn’t the right way to put it. I guess I’ll have to come up with some original lines.”
We heard voices approaching.
He rose. “I’ll keep in touch and eagerly wait to hear from you. Continue your good recuperation.”
Aunt Frances walked in and stopped as if she had walked into a wall.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “And how did you get in here?”
“I am Miss Baxter’s personal art instructor,” Kyle said, exaggerating how insulted he was by the question.
It brought a smile to my face, especially because of the stern look on Aunt Frances’s. She could roll those eyes. It could make you dizzy watching them.
“Well, she’s not going to do any artwork in here, and you’re here after hours,” Aunt Frances said firmly.
“Ah, there’s where you’re wrong,” Kyle said, undaunted. “There are no after hours for great artwork.”
Aunt Frances looked at me. I was stifling my laughter. Her face looked twisted, numbed.
“If you don’t leave, I’ll call security,” she warned, and folded her arms.
“Oh, we’re done,” Kyle said. He started out and then turned back in the doorway. “A true sculptor frees the art from the stone; so an artist frees his subject from itself.”
He glanced at Aunt Frances, who looked at him as if he had spoken a foreign language, and then continued out of the hospital.
“Does your father know you are seeing this man?” Aunt Frances immediately asked.
“My father, no. I doubt he cares. My grandfather knows.”
“And he’s paying him to be your art instructor?”
“Not that I know of, no.”
She smiled and nodded. “A man like that isn’t interested in dollars and cents, Lisa.
You don’t have a mother to guide you now, so I’ll step in.
Men like that have only one reward to satisfy, and it’s between their legs.
You are like a ripe piece of fruit. Your virginity screams out, and that man and men like him hear it well.
“I’m sure he’s dumped compliment after compliment on you.
He’ll say anything and do anything to get into bed with you.
I’ve been through all that, and my mother was a naive woman.
Your grandfather was her only boyfriend.
What kind of advice could she give me? To cover up her failure with me, she blamed things on me.
Anything that happened to me was my fault. ”
“What happened to you?”
“I was raped at twelve years old,” she said. “And on your precious Birdlane Island, too.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. She slammed the cup of pills on the table.
“Take these and sleep. You’re going home tomorrow and must have full rest for five days. The doctor will see you at the Crest. Your grandfather will send the boat for him.”
On the way out, she paused in the doorway and turned back to me.
“It was a friend of your father’s, too,” she said. “He knew about it but refused to confirm it when I told your grandfather and grandmother. Of course, they didn’t believe me,” she added, and left.
I had to remember to close my mouth, it was so wide open with shock.