“I’m scared,” he finally admitted.
“I know,” she said, pulling him close. “I’m scared, too.”
Epilogue
June 2007
The muted landscape of winter had given way to the lush colors of late spring, and as Travis sat on the back porch, he could hear birds. Dozens, maybe hundreds, were calling and chirping, and every so often a flock of starlings would break from the trees, flying in formations that nearly seemed choreographed.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and Christine and Lisa were still playing on the tire swing that Travis had hung the week before. Because he wanted a long, slow arc for the girls-something different from the regular swing set-he’d cut a few of the low branches before securing the rope as high in the tree as possible. He’d spent an hour that morning pushing the swing and listening to his daughters squeal in delight; by the time he’d finished, the back of his shirt was slick with perspiration. And still the girls wanted more.
“Let Daddy rest for a few minutes,” he’d wheezed. “Daddy’s tired. Why don’t you push each other for a while.”
Their disappointment, etched so clearly on their faces and in the droop of their shoulders, lasted only moments. Soon they were squealing again. Travis watched them swing, his mouth curling into a slight smile. He loved the musical sound of their laughter, and it warmed his heart to see them playing so well together. He hoped they would always remain as close as they were now. He liked to believe that if he and Stephanie were any indication, they would grow even closer in later years. At least that was the hope. Hope, he’d learned, was sometimes all a person had, and in the past four months, he’d learned to embrace it.
Since he’d made his choice, his life had gradually returned to a kind of normalcy. Or at least a semblance thereof. Along with Stephanie, he’d toured half a dozen nursing homes. Prior to those visits, his preconceptions of nursing homes were that they were all dimly lit, filthy places where confused, moaning patients wandered the halls in the middle of the night and were watched over by orderlies who bordered on the psychotic. None of which turned out to be true. At least, not in the places he and Stephanie visited.
Instead, most were bright and airy, run by thoughtful, reflective middle-aged men or women in suits who went to great pains to prove their facilities were more hygienic than most homes and that the staff was courteous, caring, and professional. While Travis spent the tours wondering whether Gabby would be happy in a place like this or whether she’d be the youngest patient in the nursing home, Stephanie asked the hard questions. She asked about background checks for the staff and emergency procedures, she wondered aloud how quickly complaints were resolved, and as she strolled the halls, she made it obvious that she was well aware of every code and regulation that had been mandated by law. She offered hypothetical situations that might come to pass and asked how they’d be handled by the staff and director; she asked how many times Gabby would be turned in the course of a day, so as to prevent bedsores. At times, she struck Travis as being like a prosecutor trying to convict someone of a crime, and though she ruffled the feathers of a few directors, Travis was grateful for her vigilance. In his state of mind, he was barely able to function, but he was dimly aware that she was asking all the right questions.
In the end, Gabby was transferred by ambulance to a nursing home run by a man named Elliot Harris, only a couple of blocks from the hospital. Harris had impressed not only Travis, but Stephanie as well, and Stephanie had filled out most of the paperwork in his office. She’d insinuated-true or not-that she knew people in the state legislature and ensured that Gabby was given a gracious private room that overlooked a courtyard. When Travis visited her, he rolled the bed toward the window and puffed up her pillows. He imagined that she enjoyed the sounds from the courtyard, where friends and families met, along with the sunlight. She’d said that to him once when he’d been flexing her legs. She’d also said that she understood his choice and that she was glad he’d made it. Or, more accurately, he’d imagined that she had.
After placing her in the home and spending most of another week with her while they both got acclimated to her new environment, he’d gone back to work. He took Stephanie’s suggestion and began working until early afternoon four days a week; his father filled in after that. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed interaction with other people, and when he had lunch with his father, he found he was able to finish nearly all of his meal. Of course, working regularly meant he had to juggle his schedule with Gabby. After seeing the girls off to school, he went to the nursing home and spent an hour there; after work, he spent another hour with Gabby before the girls got home. On Fridays, he was there most of the day, and on weekends, he usually made it in for a few hours. That depended on the girls’ schedules, which was something Gabby would have insisted on. Sometimes on the weekends they wanted to join him, but most times they didn’t want to or didn’t have the time because of soccer games or parties or roller-skating. Somehow, without the choice of whether Gabby would live or die hovering over him, their growing distance didn’t bother Travis as much as it once had. His daughters were doing what they needed to do to heal and move on, just as he was. He’d lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives. And then, one afternoon nine weeks after she’d been admitted to the nursing home, the pigeon appeared at Gabby’s window.
At first, Travis didn’t believe it. Truth be told, he wasn’t even positive it was the same bird. Who could tell? Gray and white and black with dark, beady eyes-and, okay, most of the time a pest-they all looked pretty much alike. And yet, staring at it… he knew it was the same bird. It had to be. It paced back and forth, showing no fear of Travis when he approached the glass, and it had a coo that sounded… familiar somehow. A million people could tell him he was crazy, and part of him would know they were right, but still…
It was the same pigeon, no matter how crazy it sounded.
He watched it in wonder, amazed, and the following day, he brought some Wonder Bread and scattered a few pieces on the sill. After that, he glanced at the window regularly, waiting for the pigeon to reappear, but it never did. In the days following its visit, he found himself depressed by its absence. Sometimes, in fanciful moments, he liked to think that it had simply come to check on them, to make sure Travis was still watching over Gabby. Either that, he told himself, or it came to tell him not to give up hope; that in the end, his choice had been correct.
On the back porch, remembering that moment, he marveled that he could stare out at his happy daughters and experience so much of their joy himself. He barely recognized this sense of well-being, the feeling that all was right in the world. Had the appearance of the pigeon heralded the changes that took hold of their lives? He supposed it was only human to wonder about such things, and Travis figured that he’d be telling the rest of the story as long as he lived.
What happened was this: It was midmorning, six days after the pigeon had reappeared, and Travis was working at the clinic. In one room was a sick cat; in another, a Doberman puppy needing shots. In the third room, Travis was suturing a mutt-half Labrador, half golden retriever-that had received a gash while crawling through barbed wire. He finished the final stitch, tied off the knot, and was about to tell the owner how to keep the gash from getting infected when an assistant entered the room without knocking. Travis turned in surprise at the interruption.