The non-question hung in the air.
If Lana had ever asked for Beth’s help before, she couldn’t remember it. Demanded her attention, sure. Assumed her acquiescence, constantly. But needed her help? Valued her expertise? If Beth weren’t so worried, she’d mark the day on the calendar with a gold star.
“Ma, of course I’ll come.”
Silence. Lana was never silent. For a moment, Beth pictured her mother in a hospital bed, alone, maybe even afraid. It was hard to imagine.
Beth spoke in her most confident voice. “Dr. K retired. But I know the charge nurse in neurology at Stanford. It’s one of the best neurosurgical facilities in the country. I’ll make a call.”
“Can’t we do it at UCLA?”
There was the prima donna she’d grown up with. Beth knew it would be useless to remind her mother that she too had a life, a job, and a child. Instead, she responded in language Lana could understand.
“Ma, this is brain surgery. Let’s get you the very best.”
“Stanford?”
“Stanford. I’ll take care of it.”
“Hold on. Someone’s coming in the room.”
Beth scanned her schedule for the rest of the day. Two more patients, nothing complicated: vitals check, an infusion, a bath, and a chat. She could get Amber to cover her. Jack had already texted to ask permission to go to a soccer game after school and sleep over at her friend Kayla’s house. Perfect. Beth could book it down to LA, scoop up her mother, and get her checked into Stanford the next morning.
Lana’s voice shot back through the phone. “Stanford. Fine. But I’m staying in a hotel.”
“Ma, you can’t be alone when you’re recovering from brain surgery.”
“I hardly think I’ll recover in a shack that’s about to fall into a mud pit.”
Beth closed her eyes and resisted the urge to throw the phone. “It’s not your condo. It’s not LA. But it’s nice. I promise.”
There was a long pause during which Beth presumed Lana was contemplating the many ways her daughter’s shabby house and backwater town fell short of her minimum requirements.
“Can you ask what time you’ll be released today?” Beth said.
“They want me to talk to an oncologist here, but then they said I’m free to leave.”
“All right. Sit tight. Get as much information as you can. I’ll be there in five hours.”
Beth sped down the highway in her dented Camry, stopping only for gas, a caffeinated energy bar, and a supersize iced coffee. As she drove, her mind raced, punctuated by the intermittent buzz of text messages from her mother.
Tumors in brain, lung, maybe colon? Stage 4 at least. Not good.
DR picking his nose. GET ME OUT OF HERE.
Pls swing by the condo for my laptop, good jeans, black top (slimming).
Also if I die give my car to Gloria.
After the first hour of texts, Beth decided she didn’t need a car crash to go with the heart attack. She stuck her phone in the glove compartment and focused on the road and her spiraling thoughts.
Beth was used to medical emergencies. As a nurse, she’d called in more than one. But her clients were old, infirm, and for the most part, kind. They were in that stage of desperate hopefulness, counting days as good ones if there wasn’t too much pain.
Lana was nothing like them. She didn’t “do” sick. Beth assumed her mother would approach this cancer the way she approached everything else—as a series of hurdles to bulldoze. That’s what she’d done when she had the breast cancer scare ten years before. That crisis had proved a kind of blessing in disguise, an external push that forced Lana and Beth back together after five years of not speaking. Since then, they’d built a tentative reconnection out of annual visits to LA for Passover and occasional, awkward phone calls, sticking to safe topics like Lana’s work or Jack’s grades.
But the news in these garbled texts sounded far from safe. And the fact that Lana had called her, had asked for help, had agreed to come to Elkhorn—that was downright terrifying.
Five overstuffed suitcases, one box of files and legal pads, and two triple-shot lattes later, the Rubicon women were heading north. As Beth drove, Lana made calls, dispatching her friend Gloria to water her plants, her neighbor Ervin to collect her mail, and her assistant, Janie, to do everything else.
“Think of it as a growth opportunity,” Lana said, after dictating a long list of directives.
When Janie pressed her on what she should tell Lana’s clients, the older woman looked down at her black satin peekaboo pumps for inspiration. Lana could see her chipped midnight-blue toenails peeking out.
“Tell them it’s foot surgery. Very complicated. I need a specialist. Out of town. I’ll be back in the office in six weeks.”
Beth shot her mother a look.
“What?” Lana said. “They said there might be more tumors. Maybe there’s one in my foot.”
“Six weeks, Ma?”
“Seems like more than enough time to have the surgeries, get on a treatment plan, head back home, and forget about all this unpleasantness. Besides, it’s not like we could survive living in the same house longer than that.”
After two hours crawling through city traffic, they left the sprawl of Los Angeles. They wound up a mountain pass lined with citrus trees, Beth’s Camry chugging uphill as the stars came out. Lana shut her eyes at the first vineyards, and Beth drove on in silence, watching the rolling hills give way to the inky Monterey Bay. Even in the dark, the ocean made itself known, waves roaring onto rocks, spraying salt and mist over the bridge that separated sea from strawberry fields.
Beth’s house was perched between ocean and farmland, on a tiny strip of gravel and sand above Elkhorn Slough. Beth loved the way the wetland shifted with the tides, rising and falling like a lover’s breath below her house. When she’d first moved in fifteen years ago, she’d seen Elkhorn as a temporary refuge. But she’d grown to relish its foggy mornings and wild treasures, soft where Los Angeles was hard, scruffy where the city was slick. As Beth walked her mother to the door, she resisted the urge to point out the driftwood planters she’d carved and filled with succulents, the wreath of bracken fern she’d braided herself. She steered Lana to Jack’s bedroom, bracing for her mother to pronounce her verdict on the secondhand furniture, the nicked floorboards, the peaty smell of the slough wafting up from outside.
That night, Lana didn’t say anything about home decor or river mud. Lana didn’t say anything at all. Her face was locked in grim determination, mouth shut tight. Beth opened the door to Jack’s bedroom, waved Lana onto the bed, and helped her take off her shoes. It scared Beth to see her mother so compliant. It was easier too.
Once Lana was asleep, Beth started calling in favors. Her friend in neurology at Stanford had already connected her to their top brain surgeon, and he’d agreed to slot them in for a pre-op consultation the next day. Her old shift mate in oncology would find someone to cross-check the scans. Even the guy she’d dated last year, a bearded search-and-rescue paramedic from Big Sur, offered to be on standby. Beth was glad she’d spent so many years pulling long hours, covering for others, doing an extra house call for a doctor who asked. You only get one mother. Even if she was a pain in the butt like Lana.
Chapter Three
February 4 (Seventeen Weeks Later)