Chapter 38
Hero
WALKER
It's five hours before Sadie's mother is admitted and we get to go back to see her.
Five hours in which I watch the woman I love pace the linoleum floors, sit back down, get back up, check her phone, put it away, check it again. Tired and anxious and so beautiful it makes my chest hurt.
I love her.
I've known it for a while now.
Maybe from the beginning, if I'm being honest with myself.
Maybe from the first week of June, when she stood barefoot in her sundress in the evening light and I felt right there that was everything I was missing, everything I wanted forever.
Maybe from the moment she waded out of that lake like a fiery mermaid, coming to wreck the foolish mortal man who disturbed her peace.
I want to tell her I love her.
I've wanted to tell her a dozen times today alone.
In the truck on the way to her mother's trailer, when she stared out the window and didn't say anything and I could see her steeling herself.
In the waiting room when she fell asleep against my shoulder for forty minutes and woke up soft and sweet, blinking up at me with a smile.
Twenty minutes ago when she was arguing with me about the bridge on the last album track and she got that line between her brows and pointed her pen at me and I thought: there is no version of my life I want that doesn't have this woman in it.
But I keep my mouth shut.
Because I wouldn’t just be asking Sadie Sullivan to be my wife. I’d be asking her to be a mother to a five year old boy. I’d be asking her to add more weight to shoulders that have been carrying too much since she was a kid and her life fell apart all around her.
I’m not gonna put that pressure on her. She’s had too much already.
But I do my best to distract her. We go back and forth on the last song I’ve got for the album. My dad and Jonah drop by with burgers and fries and we share dinner at the hospital cafeteria, all of us together.
Might be the last Rhodes family dinner we ever share.
Jonah has been uncharacteristically subdued since he got here.
He's sitting pressed against Sadie's side with his head on her arm, and there's none of his usual running commentary.
No dinosaur facts, no knock-knock jokes that make perfect sense only to him.
He knows something is changing. Kids always do.
He looks up at her with big, serious eyes. “Is your momma gonna be okay?”
“She’ll be fine,” Sadie reassures him, ruffling his hair. “It’s very thoughtful of you to ask.”
“Hmm.” Jonah thinks. “Dad, can I have a pen?”
I hand him mine and he takes a clean napkin and starts drawing.
“Sadie,” my father starts, his voice careful. “I'll be happy to stop by and check on your mother, when you…”
When you leave.
He catches himself. His eyes move to Jonah, bent over his napkin, and then back to me.
I give him the smallest shake of my head.
We haven’t had the big reminder discussion that Sadie is leaving. Jonah knows in the back of his mind, but I don’t want to draw out the pain any more than necessary.
“Thank you, Daryl,” Sadie says. “But I’ll figure it out.”
Jonah slides the napkin over to Sadie.
There are hearts on it. A dinosaur. A truck with more hearts inside it. In the corner, in his careful five-year-old handwriting, the letters slightly uneven and pressed hard into the napkin:
FOR SADIES MOMMA
“It's a feel-better card,” he says. “It's kind of floppy. Sorry.”
Sadie stares at it.
“Jonah.” Her voice has gone soft in a way she's trying to manage. “You did it. You wrote all those words by yourself.”
He smiles, a little bashful and proud at the same time. “Just like you taught me.”
I watch her take in my son, this boy who at the start of summer was a guarded, watchful kid who didn't trust easy, sitting here with ink on his fingers and pure adoration in his eyes.
A kid who smiles and laughs easy now. Who reads and writes and learned to do it because all he wanted was for her to look at him the way she is now.
It hits me so fucking hard, this thing I know, this thing I can’t keep forgetting.
It's not just me she's leaving.
It's him.
Her own big blue eyes fill with tears and then she’s hugging him, not letting him see them tumble down her cheeks.
I want to kiss those tears away for her. Now and always.
“It’s the best card ever,” she says. She dashes her hand across her cheeks to wipe away the tears and puts a bright smile on her face. “Momma’s gonna adore it.”
“Thanks.” Jonah throws his arms around her, delighted by her approval. “I love you, Sadie.”
“I love you too,” she says softly, arms tightening around him, eyes squeezing shut. “So much, JoJo.”
My father’s gaze find mine over the table.
There's a question in his eyes. Probably: What the hell are you waiting for, son?
Or maybe: What the hell are you going to do when she's gone?
I don't have a simple answer for my father.
I don't have any answer at all.
I stand by Sadie’s side as the doctor says what he has to say. Decreasing kidney function, more intensive treatment needed.
I watch Sadie jot down rapid fire notes as he speaks. See the worry behind her eyes. She thanks the doctor politely when he leaves but I can tell her head is already a million miles away, running numbers. Running time.
Her mother, meanwhile, is happy as a clam in her hospital bed, with a spread of jello and saltines and cups of juice over ice. The TV is tuned to some god-awful reality TV show where women with frightening plastic surgery scream at each other in tacky mansions.
“Momma?” Sadie says. “Did you hear any of that? They’re going to start getting the discharge paperwork together. You can go home tonight.”
“I'm not going anywhere.” Her mother doesn't look away from the television. “It's the middle of the night.”
“It's eight o'clock.”
“They can't just put me out on the street. I have rights.”
“Nobody is putting you on the street. They're sending you home to your own bed.” Sadie's voice is level. It won't be level much longer. “We can't afford another night. This isn't a hotel.”
“Where's my soda?” Her mother jabs the call button. “I’ve pressed this button ten times.”
Sadie’s plush lips thin with frustration. She’s been in caregiver mode all day, and her mother is not an easy patient.
My girl has been so strong, but now she’s running on fumes, and I can see in the stiffness of her shoulders that she’s one more complaint away from the end of her rope.
She's done enough today. Just like when she stepped in with me and Jonah and took over when I was running low, I do the same for her now.
I reach into my wallet and press a bill into her hand.
“Baby,” I say. “Why don’t you go get your momma that soda. But take a walk first. Get some fresh air. It’s still nice out.”
She opens her mouth to object, and I drop my voice to a murmur and say, “I’ll talk to her. Let me take care of this.”
She's too tired to argue. She takes the bill and goes, and I watch her walk down the hallway until she turns the corner.
I turn to her mother. “Mrs. Sullivan, Sadie’s bringing you that soda in a moment. You can relax and settle in for the night.”
“That’s right, I can,” she grumbles.
“I’ll be back to check on you.”
“Quit fussing. You’re almost as bad as my daughter.”
I just smile. Then I pull Jonah’s little napkin-card out of my pocket and hand it to her. “My son made this for you, by the way. He’s always been a little artist. But your daughter is the one who taught him how to read and write this summer. She’s an extraordinary woman.”
She takes it. Stares at it for a long time. And then her eyes meet mine, sharp and assessing as she examines every inch of me.
“Tell him I said thank you for the card,” she says at last. Her voice is raspier than usual.
I nod.
And then I head to the nurse’s station.
The nurse at the desk has her head down over a clipboard. She looks up when I approach and then does a full stop, pen freezing mid-notation, eyes going wide, the clipboard lowering slowly to the desk like she's forgotten it's in her hand.
“Oh my God,” she says. “You’re Walker Rhodes.” She claps her free hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Sorry, I'm so sorry, that was completely unprofessional, I just…” She takes a breath. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say.
She stares at me for another second. Then, in a rush: “I know this is so inappropriate and you can absolutely say no and I won't be weird about it, but is there any chance I could get a selfie? And an autograph? Just really quick? I have a notepad right here.”
“Sure,” I say. “But I need you to call someone in billing for me first.”
She blinks. “Billing?”
“Billing.”
“But it's after hours. The billing office is closed.”
I look at her pleasantly. “I think this place will be just as happy to take my money no matter what time it comes in.”
She picks up the phone.
“Thank you,” I say. And then I take the selfie and sign the autograph. A small price to pay.
Very occasionally, fame is useful. Especially when I can use it on behalf of the people I love.
I give Sadie time to vent on the way home.
She needs it. She's been holding it together all day, in the trailer, in the waiting room, through the doctor's visit and her mother's complaints and all of it.
Now it's dark and we’re alone and she can finally let some of it out. So I drive and I listen and I don't try to fix anything yet.
She vents about her mother’s processed-foods-only diet that’s doing nothing good for her kidneys. The smoking she won’t quit. The medications she takes inconsistently. It’s the kind of venting you do when you love someone who makes loving them as difficult as possible.
I keep driving. Keep listening. Keep her hand in mine on the center console.
“And now,” she says, “I’m going to have a bill for tens of thousands of dollars that I have no clue how I’m gonna pay.”
“Ain’t gonna be a bill.”
“Of course there will! You think these hospitals take payment plans in the form of wishes and prayers?”
“I took care of it.”
Her eyes narrow. “What does that mean, you took care of it?”
“It means I paid it. It's done.”
“Walker.” Her voice has gone almost scared. “You can't do that.”
“Except I did.”
“You have to undo it.”
“Can't undo it. It's settled.” I keep my eyes on the road. “There's something else. I've arranged for a caregiver to come by your momma’s place every day. Starting Monday.”
The silence this time is longer.
“I can’t let you do that,” she says in a small voice.
“You can and you will.” I take her hand in mine. “Don't fight me on this. You're not going to let your momma go without what she needs out of sheer pride. You’re smarter than that.”
“It's too much.” Her voice is tight. “It will take me years to pay you back.”’
“I’ll be mad if you even try,” I say. “Let’s be real, darlin’. You know the difference between your financial situation and mine. What I just spent at that hospital? To me, that's the equivalent of buying you a soda from the vending machine.”
“That is not even close to accurate.”
“Financially speaking it is. It's like a few dollars tossed to a guitarist busking on the corner. Spare change in the sofa cushions. I’ve had accountants embezzle ten times that from me and I didn’t even notice.”
She chokes out a laugh despite herself. “That’s absurd. Stop it. You know it’s not the same.”
“You're right that it's different,” I say, squeezing her hand lightly. “It’s not casual. It’s not the same, because I care about you.
Because watching you carry all of this alone when you don't have to is something I'm not willing to do. And since you won't let me give you diamonds…” My thumb moves over her left ring finger, where I’d like to put the biggest diamond of all.
“Let me give you this instead. Let me take this one thing off your plate.”
Out the window, we’re rolling towards the familiar sights of Wild Rose. The ranch road, the fence line, the first gate coming up.
Home.
My home. The place I came back to when everything else fell apart, that became her home too over the course of one summer.
The place where she put the pieces of a family back together.
“I don't know what to say,” she says finally.
I've been waiting for an opening like this since I met her and I intend to use it.
“I've got some suggestions,” I tell her. “How about, ‘thank you, Walker. You’re so handsome and loving and strong, and did I mention what a big dick you have? I adore you. There’s never been and never will be another man who compares to you. You're my hero.’”
An eyebrow raise.
“Hard pass,” she says.
And then we're both cracking up, letting out the laughter that feels so fucking good after a hard day.
When it settles, she leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Her lips are warm and she stays close for a second, her forehead briefly against my jaw.
“Walker,” she says.
“Yeah, darlin’?”
A long beat.
“Thank you. For being there for me.”
“Always,” I say. “No matter what.”
Her hand tightens in mine as she opens her mouth to say something else.
But then she closes her lips. Doesn’t say it.
It’s okay.
I know what she was going to say the same way I know what I'm not saying, and we're both going to keep not saying it for one more week.
And then she's going to get on a plane and go to New York and take all her summer sunshine with her, and the not-saying will have done its job.