Queen Bee (Lowcountry Tales #12)(11)

I handed him some honey over pecans, which was just that. Pecans I shelled and covered in honey.

“Here you go! It’s good on everything,” I said. “Yogurt, ice cream, or a spoon.”

“Well, thank you so much! That’s so nice of you!” Smiling, he turned to go.

He had a very nice smile.

“Happy to share!” I said and went to the porch to put the packages inside and to get my purse.

I picked up two small boxes from the porch rocker. What had Momma bought now? More tunics? She had so many, she’d never live long enough to get her money’s worth out of them. That was for sure. Well, never mind economy. How she spent her money was none of my beeswax, either.

I locked the house, drove over to the hospital, parked in visitor parking, and made my way to Momma’s room. I was feeling pretty relaxed and happy until I got there. There stood several doctors with seriously chiseled expressions, like totem poles. I had obviously walked in on something critical.

“Oh, don’t pay her no never mind,” Momma said. “That’s just Holly, my daughter.”

“Hello,” each one said, and of course I said hello back.

“How are you, Momma?”

“Not so hot. It seems I have a tiny little thing on my liver and something else in my pancreas the size of an M&M. Neither one of these things is good news.”

She said it as though she was merely reporting the weather and without a trifling thought about how it might impact me, but then, sensitivity wasn’t her thing. But I was so startled that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

“What?” I said. “Tell me this again?” Suddenly, I was dizzy, and I had to sit down.

“Relax yourself. I’m not dying tomorrow,” she said. “These nice doctors want to watch my tumors for a while to see if they change size or if anything pops up somewhere else.”

One of the doctors turned to me and explained that the location of the tumors made them inoperable, but they also appeared to be benign. For now.

“What if they’re not?” I asked.

“Then we will see changes in their composition pretty quickly. If that’s the case, we can radiate them. There’s a new protocol for targeted chemo, too. Much less invasive, less downtime.”

“My God,” I said.

The world changed in that moment. I looked at my mother, lying in her hospital bed, and realized she might be facing something nasty that was going to eventually take her life even if she treated it. It was like a conditional death sentence. She glanced over to me and bit her bottom lip, something she did when she tried to hold back tears. I felt terribly sorry for her then. She seemed as vulnerable as the day Daddy ran off with his physical therapist eleven years ago. Leslie and I didn’t blame him. After all, life with the QB was difficult. He had all but vanished from our lives.

I didn’t remember the doctors leaving, but I found myself alone with her. I should’ve asked them for their names and telephone numbers and for a copy of the reports, but I had been so shocked by the news, I had not. She was very quiet, which was completely unnerving. Finally, after a long while, she spoke. She had meditated herself into a ninety-miles-an-hour tither.

“I feel fine,” she said in a manic voice. “In fact, I don’t feel sick at all. Let’s get out of here.”

She started to get out of bed.

“Hold on there, Momma,” I said quickly trying to maneuver her back under the covers. “I don’t think that’s how this works.”

“What do you mean? They can’t force me to stay here! I’m not a prisoner!”

“Well, for one thing, you’ve got an IV in your arm.” I touched her shoulder, encouraging her to lean back against her pillows.

She started to pull it out.

“You watch. In five minutes, they’ll march back in here and say they want to do even more tests on me like I’m their personal guinea pig. I’m not going to have it. Plain and simple. Now, Holly, either you take me home or I’ll call a taxi.”

“Momma, I . . .”

“Don’t ‘Momma’ me. Pull this tape off and be quick about it.”

There was no use in fighting her, but I sure hated it when her manic side got the better of her. On the other hand, she wasn’t wrong, really. She didn’t have a temperature. There was no visible sign of any real illness. And she was mighty determined. Besides, it did no good to argue with Katherine Jensen when she, pardon the expression, got a bee in her bonnet. I pulled the tape off; she pulled the needle out and put pressure on the puncture point.

“Get me a tissue,” she said.

I handed her one and she held it over the wound.

“Now see if you can salvage a piece of that tape to hold this in place.”

“Oh, Momma,” I said.

Lord, she was difficult. There was no please or thank you to be had. I gave her a piece of tape; she secured it.

“Now, I’m getting dressed,” she said. “Do you think I might have some privacy?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

I stood in the hall outside her door and thought, Good Lord, her doctors are not going to like this. A moment later I heard a thud. I knew that thud. Momma was on the floor. Just to make the situation a little more interesting, when I tried to push her door open, her body was blocking it. I managed to push my head through.