“How are you feelin’ today?” she whispered, not expecting a verbal answer.
Grant opened his mouth, and his voice had the scratchy gruffness of someone who hadn’t spoken in quite awhile. “Honestly, Babe, I think I would have to get better just to die.”
With those words, Hailey kissed him again, and a tearful smile broke out across her face…tearful because it was ripping her heart out to watch him suffer, but a smile none the less because those words reminded her that despite his change in appearance, the constant medications and the toll the cancer was taking on him, her Grant was still there.
The back door slammed, and Jack knew it meant Hailey was back from an early morning run. “Hailey?” he called as he hurried down the hallway to meet her.
Hailey’s eyes flashed anger, and Jack knew she was still upset with him.
Jack had forced her to begin commuting back and forth between Memphis and Hope Hull and insisted that she not miss anymore days of school. Hailey was supposed to come home from Memphis at night and get a good night’s sleep before going to class the next morning. In reality, she would spend the night at the hospital, journey back to Hope Hull, go for a run and sleep through classes at school. That is…if she went. On more than one occasion, Hailey had taken a quick nap and driven back to Memphis instead. She had missed basketball practice and the two non-conference games that remained on the Hope Hull schedule before the playoffs.
Jack was concerned with Hailey’s sudden disinterest in basketball, not because he didn’t understand her lack of desire to play on a team that she and Grant together had made into a force in the league all season, but because his little girl had always been dedicated to the game she loved. It was a part of who she was. She had been devoted to basketball and her school work since he packed up her plastic, Tennessee orange lunchbox and matching backpack and dropped her off for her first day of kindergarten. She was an honor student and a star athlete, but, now, she didn’t care about any of the things she had cared about before Grant’s diagnosis. Part of Jack understood; he understood the lack of motivation and the desire to give-up on everything that had once mattered. He recalled the dark days after his wife was diagnosed, but he’d had no choice but to keep going. He had two babies who depended solely on him. After his wife died, he couldn’t bury himself in grief because he was a single father with two baby daughters who didn’t deserve to lose both their mother and their father.
Hailey wiped sweat from her face with the bottom of her hoodie. “I’m not going to school today, so don’t even ask,” she declared harshly.
“Hailey, you are going to school today,” Jack insisted. “You have missed too many days, and your grades are slipping. Your teachers are concerned about you, and so am I.”
“Who cares about my grades?” Hailey fired back.
“I do. Your teachers do,” Jack said sternly. “Sweetheart, I got a visit from Mrs. Jordan yesterday informing me that you still haven’t turned in a book report that was due last week.”
Hailey rolled her eyes, and they turned cold as she stared at Jack. “I didn’t have time to write anything, but here’s an oral book report that you can feel free to pass along to Mrs. Jordan for me. I found a book about a sick, young athlete to be a little hard to stomach at the moment. Does he die at the end? Is that what happens? Does his death serve some greater purpose that all those who love him will come to understand after he’s gone? I’m sure there is a great message, but I don’t know, and I don’t want to know! So you can tell my teacher that if she is really as concerned about me as she claims, then she should worry about the fact that doctors have been pumping poison into my boyfriend’s body and not when or if I decide to turn in my stupid book report! Would she like one from Grant too? Should he read the book? I can take it over to the hospital to him.”
“I understand,” Jack nodded concedingly. “I didn’t realize; I’ll ask Mrs. Jordan if it’s possible for you to do your report on a different book.”
“Do you understand, Dad?” Hailey shrugged, unconvinced. “Do you understand that school is not my priority right now?”
“Yes,” Jack swallowed. “I understand that your heart and your mind are in a different place right now…but, Hailey, your future depends…”
“My future depends on Grant getting well!” Hailey practically yelled at Jack.
Jack’s shoulders fell, and his brow furrowed. “I know, Sweetheart. I know, and I pray every second of every day that you never have to know the pain of losing the person you love.”
Hailey was quiet as she took in her daddy’s words. Dropping her defensive demeanor, she sighed. Then the tears came fast and hard. “I wish it was over already, Daddy,” she cried. “The chemo is making him too sick. He’s so weak…I’m afraid that awful stuff is gonna eat away at him until he can’t hold himself up anymore. I hate this, Daddy…he’s sicker now than he ever was before. I thought this was suppose to make him better…but it’s gonna kill him!”
“We talked about this,” Jack said, his voice full of compassion as he swept his daughter into his arms. “You know that they have to make him worse before they can make him better. It’s just how it works, Sweetheart…it’s the nature of the disease.”
Jack walked to the couch and patted his knee. Hailey gladly sat down in her father’s lap, longing for a return to the days when Daddy could fix everything. “I love him, Daddy,” she cried.
“I know,” Jack said, brushing a strand of Hailey’s dark curls away from her face as she folded into him. He held her there for several minutes, knowing words were unnecessary as he let her cry. Memories of a videotape, shot on the very couch where he was sitting now, played in his mind. He knew exactly where it was; it was in a box in the top of his closet, where it was to remain tucked away until he felt the time was right. That time, he knew, was now.
Jack left Hailey on the couch and, moments later, returned with a single videotape in his hand. As he extended the VHS tape to his daughter, his face contorted with raw emotion. “I’ve been holding on to this for a long time. I’ve always intended to give it to you and your sister, but there never seemed to be a right time…”
Hailey took the videotape and turned it over in her hands to read the label. “What is …” her voice caught as she saw the words TO: MY GIRLS written in blue Sharpie. Her eyes dropped to the line below, LOVE: MAMA.
Jack frowned. “She made it very near the end, so it’s not easy to watch. If you don’t want to watch it that’s understandable, but I didn’t feel like it was right for me to keep it from you any longer.”
Hailey looked at the videotape and then at her father. Jack knelt down and kissed the top of Hailey’s head. “I’ll tell your teachers that you weren’t up to coming today,” he said as he reached for his jacket that lay across the back of the chair.
Hailey walked out the back door; she was headed for her secret tree house, planning to hide out until Jessica and Emily left for school, but, with the tangible reminder of her mother gripped in her hand, she stopped near the barn at her mother’s grave. “Mama,” she cried, “I need you.” She rocked back and forth, her knees pulled to her chest as she sat on the cold ground, the tape in her hand burning her palm with anticipation. When Hailey finally heard the girls pull out of the driveway and head off to school, she wiped her tears from her eyes. She glanced once more at her mother’s tombstone and stood up with renewed bravery.
Hailey walked inside and went immediately to the shower. Once she had showered and changed into black yoga pants and a white hoodie, she walked barefoot into the living room. She dropped to her knees in front of the television and pushed the home movie into the VCR.
The video began to play. A sick, feeble, frail, but hauntingly beautiful, woman smiled back at her, and, the moment her mother spoke, Hailey felt her heart begin to race.
“Hi, girls, it’s Mama,” came a voice so loving and so real that Hailey reached one hand toward the television and let her fingers linger on the screen. “By the time you see this tape, I’ll be in Heaven with the angels, but that means I have to leave my two favorite little angels behind. I know that Daddy will do an amazing job raising you girls, and that you’ll grow up knowing just how much Mama loves you.”
There was an extended pause, and Hailey’s mind drifted in a hundred different directions before the sound of her mother calling her name beckoned her in a way her mother had never been able to in life. “Hailey Jane, my sweet, sweet girl…” Hailey listened as her mother talked about the way they used to snuggle in the bed on lazy Saturday mornings and the way Hailey loved to watch her feed all the animals in the barn. She talked about her dreams for Hailey and her sister…how she hoped Hailey and Jessica would always remain close, how she hoped they would strive to make their daddy proud, how she prayed that they would love Jesus and know that He loved them even more than she did. She urged them to read the Bible. She warned them of schoolyard bullies and the dangers of talking to strangers. She told them to never be afraid to ask questions and to always treat others the way they would want to be treated.
Just when Hailey started to question why her father, after all these years, had chosen to show her this tape today, Hailey heard her mother’s voice again. “It seems impossible to imagine right now because Daddy just put you both down for your naps! But next thing you know, the two of you will have grown up…and fallen in love with young men who I will never have the opportunity to meet. I want you both to know that my hope for you is that you find a man as wonderful as your daddy. I pray he is loving and kind and that your heart is so lost in God that he must first seek Him in order to find his way into it. I hope he will protect that heart at any cost. I hope he is never ashamed to cry in front of you because if you share everything, there will be a time for tears. There is a season for everything, and I hope you feel each as deeply as the next because it’s the highs and the lows that allow everything else to be possible. I hope the man you love prays with you and for you. I hope he makes you laugh loudly and frequently. I hope he tells you that you’re beautiful even when you don’t look your best and that his kisses make you see fireworks like in the movies. I hope you never go to sleep angry with each other and that you never take a moment spent together for granted. Your time together may be long, but, as Daddy and I have learned, it may also be shorter than either of you ever dreamed. Respect the love you share; honor the love you share; treasure it and remember it vividly and often, but never let loss allow you to stop living. That’s not love! That’s not what I want for your daddy or for you girls. I hope that Daddy keeps his eyes on his dreams. I hope he never loses his faith or stops laughing or striving to be everything that I loved about him. Because the day he stops doing all of those things, he won’t be the man I loved at all…and I couldn’t stand for you girls to lose that man. Be strong. Be brave, girls. Be bold yet humble. Be graceful and gracious. Be faithful, respectful, understanding and dependable. Love deeply. And always, always, my babies, know that Mama is in Heaven where we will all be together again one day.”
Hailey wiped her tears, having to concentrate on controlling her breathing as she hit the stop button on the VCR. She sniffed and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. She wanted to run to the school and tell her daddy that she understood. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and thank him, not only for the tape, but for having more than lived up to everything in it.
Hailey shut off the television and then the lights. She slid on her flip flops and reached for her keys on the table. She walked out to her truck in the driveway and got inside. Every part of her wanted to drive to the hospital. She thought about the test she had failed the day before and the math homework that she hadn’t done; she thought about the way she had moped around ignoring everyone, only offering polite enough smiles when someone in town tried to express their sympathy or concern. She would have to explain to Grant about what her mother had said, but she knew he would understand. She knew that Grant would want her to go to school, to finish out her senior year with the same dedication to her academics that she had always given them…that he would want her to be kind to others and thank them for their thoughts and their prayers in a way that made them know they were appreciated. That, after all, was the girl he had fallen in love with.
It would be a shame, Hailey decided as she pulled into the school parking lot, for Grant to win the battle he was fighting, only to find Hailey a depressed, unrecognizable version of her former self, totally and completely unprepared to follow him to Boston. She had prayed for his recovery, but nothing about her actions over the past few days indicated that she had faith that God would actually answer her prayers. She had asked for a full recovery, and now she was going to prepare for just that.
Grant was sitting on the couch in the living room, eating his second plate of macaroni and cheese when Hailey came to sit next to him. He was hungry all the time now, and he constantly craved pasta and bread. Though he had previously complained of the sores his medications left on the inside of his mouth and how nothing had any taste at all, it seemed now that he couldn’t get enough of his new high-carbohydrate diet.
Hailey sat next to him, offering him a handful of oral medications that Nora had sent her in with. “Thanks,” he said as he took them from her. He lifted his water bottle, took his medicine and sat his plate aside.
Hailey gently stroked the back of Grant’s head in a gesture of tender affection as she kissed his cheek; then she swallowed hard, not surprised, when she pulled back fingers laced with fine strands of beautiful, blond hair.
“Alopecia,” Grant mumbled, and Hailey wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself.
