His First Wife Read online

  We were out there because a board had voted for a nonprofit to take over Grady’s operations. I thought it was a great idea and that the shift was just in time. The hospital had recently failed an inspection and was running out of money fast. The change would bring millions of dollars from public and private groups. At the very least it would be saved from shutting down, which was their initial goal and now it seemed the place would be better. But Aunt Luchie said the plan wasn’t enough. It would take dollars out of the community where they helped poor people and put them into a bunch of silk-lined, executive pockets. Unlike the old board, the new board wouldn’t have to answer to the public or help the uninsured and the poor. That’s the position Grady used to hold. Where would those people go now?

  With my new outlook, I got so fired up about this I sent Tyrian to my mother’s house for the day and set out to be heard. While I was freezing, I admit that the whole thing was pretty exciting. There were only about fifteen of us—a few church leaders, a man from a local radio show, and seniors from the civic organization Aunt Luchie belonged to—but we were being heard. Aunt Luchie had a bullhorn and was leading us in an off-key medley of chants from “No Justice, No Peace” to “The New Grady Is Shady.” A few doctors gave us a thumbs up as they walked by and even some of the people driving by in their cars honked to show support. One man came back with a few cups of coffee and a basket of doughnuts. To warm my frozen fingers, I volunteered to hand out the stuff. As I looked into the faces of each of the protestors, I felt more confident that what I was doing was right and that even if the hospital didn’t change its course, people needed to know that the poor were important to us. My heart warmed my entire body as I thought of the possibility of the women I would someday help, women who probably had been touched by Grady in some way and would surely need its services again. If I was going to assist them, I had to protect the hospital and its mission to provide services for them. Grady wasn’t perfect, but I had to make sure they had somewhere to go, somewhere to take their children.

  “If your father could see you now!” Aunt Luchie whispered in my ear as I walked by. “He’d be so proud.”

  I smiled and kissed her on the cheek. Since my first visit alone, I’d been spending most afternoons at my father’s side. I just felt like I needed to be there with him. No one knew if he’d ever be okay, but I decided for myself that I didn’t want him to be alone again. If he was going to die, he’d know somehow that his family was there for him. My mother’s refusal to come with me to the hospital let me know that she was incapable of being there and I didn’t have time to force her. I couldn’t ignore him anymore. I had to focus on my dad and getting him better.

  We didn’t speak much when I was there. He still hadn’t made eye contact with me and as far as I knew he didn’t even know I was in the room. But I still sat there and sometimes talked about Tyrian and my mother’s antics. And he’d get real quiet sometimes, almost like he was listening. The nurses couldn’t say if it was a sign or anything, but it was enough to suggest that maybe he was making a connection. And even though I kept telling myself I was there to help him, in the silence in that hospital room, I was also helping myself. I was thinking and planning and freeing my mind from all of the garbage and rules I’d let fill my head. If my father was all of the things my aunt said he was, I needed his strength, his vision to really figure out who I was. I wondered what my life might have been like if he’d always been there. If he’d kept my mother happy. I didn’t resent him for not being there. But I did know that I had to stop pretending that I was okay with it. That it hadn’t affected me.

  “You think they can hear your bullhorn in the hospital?” I asked Aunt Luchie. “That we’re really making noise?”

  “Oh, that’s not the point,” she said. “Protesting isn’t only about upsetting the perpetrators; it’s also about making the public more aware and getting the word out about what’s going on through the media. That’s what makes the change—awareness and national embarrassment.” She switched the bullhorn back on and turned to the group shouting, “The New Grady Is Shady.”

  And we replied with the same words. I kept circulating through the crowd, making sure everyone was warm.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said, tapping my shoulder.

  I turned to find a familiar face holding a microphone in front of me. It was a local black reporter who had a short, bright blond head of curls you couldn’t miss in any crowd.

  “Monica McPherson?” I said, noticing that there was a man holding a camera behind her. “From the news?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said, smiling and pulling me away from the crowd. “I was wondering if you had anything you wanted to share about the recent changes at Grady with our viewers.”

  “Me?” I asked, looking at the camera and wondering why in the world she’d selected me out of all the other people out there. I didn’t know anything but what Aunt Luchie had told me. Surely there was someone else out there who would be a better representative than me. “Well,” I said into the microphone, “I’m sure there are other people who can add a bit more information.”

  “We’re not on camera yet,” she said. “But we’re looking for someone like you—someone who’s involved but really representing the voice of an everyday Atlantan.”

  “Really?” I asked, trying to recall if I’d put on lipstick before I left the house.

  “Great,” she said quickly.

  “Great what?” I was reaching into my purse for my compact.

  “We’re on live in,” the camera man said, and I was wondering what he was talking about, “three, two, one.”

  “This is Monica McPherson reporting to you live from outside Grady Memorial Hospital,” I heard Monica say.

  I looked back up from my purse to see that she was speaking to the camera.

  “Community members are here protesting the recent decision for the century-old hospital to turn into a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit,” she went on. “I have here with me—” she put the microphone in front of me.

  “Me?” I asked, knowing I must look like a crazy person. Now I knew how they got so many people to look completely insane on the news. She nodded. “Oh, I’m Kerry Jackson.”

  “Tell us how you feel about the recent decision.”

  “I think it’s bad,” I said. “And that the new plan would make it so that more people without adequate health care will suffer. These people didn’t do anything wrong and we can’t accept any plan that might even allow them to be displaced and left without a safety net.”

  Monica nodded and a few protestors gathered behind me, clapping their hands in support. I was amazed at how good I sounded. Surprising both Monica and myself, I snatched the microphone and looked directly into the camera.

  “Rich or poor,” I said. “We must protect one another and that has to start with making sure each American has access to health care. We won’t stop until Grady hears that.”

  The crowd clapped and Aunt Luchie came over and gave me a hug right in front of the camera.

  “You heard it here first,” Monica said after taking the microphone back. “More news on this story later. Maybe we’ll get Kerry to share more.”

  “That was great,” Aunt Luchie said.

  “Thank you,” I replied. I felt my phone ringing in my pocket and I was sure it was my mother calling because she couldn’t stop Tyrian from crying. I took it out of my pocket, and of course, her name was on the screen.

  “Mother, guess what, I was just—” I said excitedly.

  “Kerry, get to the hospital right now,” she cried. “It’s your father.”

  PART FOUR

  Resurrection

  “I really need to confess a love I knew from a past life.... Love was so strong, I had to find this woman twice . . .”

  —Abyss in “God Sent”

  (Courtesy of Team Abyss, LLC)

  Daddy

  For so long, somehow in my head I’d managed to accept the fact that my father was dead. Well, at the tim
e, he wasn’t really dead, but my anger over his illness and fear of facing it left me and my mother with no choice, emotionally, but to bury the love we had for him deep down inside. So, while his body was alive, to my heart, he was dead. But after moving beyond that hurt and developing a new love for my father, even with his illness still controlling his mind, the thought of really losing him was unimaginable. Running into the hospital with Aunt Luchie at my side, all I kept thinking was that my father had died. My father had died and he’d never gotten to really see who I was, what I’d become and the life I’d made for myself. My son, his grandson, who was only a baby, but growing stronger each day, had never known my father to be the strong man he was when I was a child. The man who could hold me up with one hand when I was five years old and spin me around the room, calling me Super Girl. Tyrian would never know that man, and now he would never have a grandfather.

  When we got off the elevator at the floor where they’d been keeping him, I saw doctors encircling the doorway and heard my mother’s cries. Like me, she must have been feeling now, for the first time, the reality of losing him again.

  “Hurry,” Aunt Luchie said.

  We ran down the hall to see my father for the last time. The doctors turned toward me as I got closer and I saw a look of compassion in their eyes. Tears began to fall as my feet carried me closer to the place where my father had spent so many days alone, so many days thinking the world had forgotten about him. I wanted to scream that I had not forgotten and I was here now to comfort him, for whatever it was worth.

  When I stepped into the room, Jamison came toward me. There were tears in his eyes,.

  “You made it,” he said. “They don’t know how long he’s going to be like this.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Baby,” my mother cried again, looking away from my father lying on the bed. “Kerry, come here. He’s asking for you.”

  I can hardly describe the flooding of emotion that engulfed my body in those two seconds as I realized what my mother was saying. My heart went from sinking to flying as it thumped into action. What was my mother saying? Why was Jamison smiling, his tears now obviously happy? Was my father alive? Really alive?

  “Daddy?” I called, dashing around the bed to stand next to my mother. His head was turned toward her and she had his hand in hers.

  “Daddy?” I called again desperately. I didn’t expect anything. This was the same man who I’d left at the hospital the day before. His mind had left him. There was no response that he could give me then to even let me know that he knew who I was. I had no reason to believe in my mind that there’d be anything different today. But this desperate call wasn’t coming from my reasoning mind; rather, it came from my heart.

  Then he moved. He turned his head just one inch away from a focus on my mother and his eyes, just as glossed and tired as Tyrian’s the day he was born, as if he’d just come off a long journey, set on me as if I was the miracle in the room.

  “Kerry Ann?” He reached to me with his other hand.

  I hadn’t heard that voice in so long. It was scratchy and faint, but it was my father’s, no doubt. And the weight it carried inside of me, the mere sound of my father calling my name pushed me to my knees. I fell to the side of the bed and buried my face in his hand.

  “Yes, it’s me, Daddy,” I cried. “It’s me.”

  He looked confused; I guessed it was because I wasn’t the little girl he was expecting. But he smiled at me and moved his frail hand to the top of my hand.

  “Super Girl,” he said, running his hand through my hair. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too, Daddy.” I looked at Jamison, who was standing on the other side of the room holding Tyrian. He was still crying, but he had a smile on his face that I hadn’t seen in so long.

  He nodded at me and winked his eye.

  “A miracle,” he whispered.

  Husband

  That night, the night my father woke up from fifteen years of darkness, I felt like I was dreaming. It wasn’t just that he’d woken up. The miracle was nothing like the one Jamison had predicted. My father was weak and still fading in and out of consciousness. One minute he’d be awake and crying, asking for someone or something he’d been thinking about. The funniest request was for a root beer float. Apparently, he and my mother used to split floats when they’d first started dating. But then he’d fade out and sit there not speaking for minutes at a time. The doctor said it would take months, maybe years before his mind fully pulled itself together, and then, he still might not return to being the man he once was.

  So my father’s waking was certainly a wondrous miracle, but the dream I was having was truly a combination of many things that were taking shape in my life. My mother. My husband. My child. My father. Myself. Pieces that I never even knew had been shattered were becoming whole again and the cloud I’d found myself floating on because of it seemed nothing short of the stuff that dreams were made of.

  That night I rode home in the car with my husband in the driver’s seat and my son in the backseat. I felt so secure, so complete in that position I couldn’t stop crying.

  Jamison kept telling me that if I kept crying my father would think he’d done something wrong by waking up and go back to sleep. I laughed, but it was more than that. I was crying for all of us. For the love we had between us and the future ahead.

  Jamison and I said nothing to each other about the separation. And it wasn’t because we couldn’t face it. It was because, as Aunt Luchie said when she handed me the key to my house and said she would not be returning, it was “time to go home.” What we were doing was right, and after talking to Aunt Luchie, I knew that while I’d been hurt by Jamison’s affair, I was ready to move on . . . with my husband. And he was my husband. The man I loved. The man I missed. The man whose feelings I now knew I had to protect. Just as he’d done for me. We’d shared a covenant, an agreement that said that we’d grow together and forsake all others for one another. I believed that and I was ready to move on and do just that. And while I didn’t care to hear the name Coreen or read an e-mail ever again, I knew that I could trust my husband. With my new clear heart and open ear, I knew that I could trust my husband to talk to me, and more importantly, trust myself to listen.

  After Jamison put Tyrian to bed, he returned to a bedroom that was shining with the light of white pillar candles, and a bed that was covered in purple rose petals, and a wife who was sitting in the center of the bed wearing the same nightgown she’d worn on their wedding night.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, his eyes as wide as a child’s on Christmas morning.

  “It doesn’t look familiar?” I asked in return.

  He looked around the room and smiled.

  “Our engagement . . .”

  “Yes,” I replied. “You filled a pool with rose petals and floating candles and asked me to marry you.”

  “Yes, I did.” He came and sat on the side of the bed.

  “And on that day you handed me a scroll that said that you had decided that you didn’t want to live with the memory of me in your mind.... That you didn’t want to spend another minute having to be a magician and recall me in your mind,” I said. “Do you remember that?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know you did.”

  “I did and I want to let you know that I want you here by my side forever,” I said, repeating the last words he’d written. “I love you and I don’t want to go another day without being your wife. I don’t want this separation. I might be your first wife, but I’m also going to be your last.”

  “Baby, you don’t need to say this. ” Jamison took my hands into his. “What I did was wrong. What I did to my family was wrong. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So, I can’t let you apologize to me or ask me to stop the separation. Neither of us were completely innocent in this,” he said, “but as a man, I have to take responsibility for the fact that my actions caused this. It was unacceptable
and if I have to spend every day of my life apologizing to you and my son to make it better, I’ll do that, because that’s just how much you mean to me. And if you take me back, I promise that I’ll always come to you first with my feelings.”

  He stood up and pulled me to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “So,” he started, kneeling beside the bed. “Will you, Kerry Ann Jackson, have me as your husband, to love, protect, and cherish you all the days of your life? Will you be my wife again?”

  “Yes,” I cried, scooping him into my arms.

  That night I made passionate, new love to my husband. It was as if we were together for the first time but already knew what the other needed. It was a first wife’s wedding dance that I somehow knew would result in a second child. And the baby in the other room slept through the night . . . finally.

  Son

  Tyrian must have known he was going to be the baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, because he would not go to sleep. Jamison and I had finally gotten him on a regular sleep schedule, but his regular bedtime of 7 PM had come and gone and that little baby was wide awake when we were getting ready to head over to church.

  Just after my father woke up, my mother and Aunt Luchie had arrived to decorate the house for the holidays. Suddenly, my mother was in the holiday spirit again. She kept talking about wanting everything to be just right for her grandbaby’s first Christmas. And with the news that my father was going to be able to come home, with a nurse of course, she was beside herself. She came bearing boxes of trinkets and stockings that I hadn’t seen in years. By the time they finished unloading everything, my house was transformed into the Christmases I once knew growing up. Tyrian’s wide eyes bounced from one strange thing to the next as he waited in his carrier in the living room for his big day on stage.