She shakes her head. “In a different life, maybe.” She rests against me. “But thank you for saying it.”
“Jo—”
She pulls back from me, pats my chest. “Now go do the scene for real. And nail it this time, okay? For me.”
I kiss her. “For you.”
We nail it the very next take.
I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone, though—we’re all moved and inspired by Jolene’s raw talent and pure, vulnerable connection to the music.
It’s the best scene we’ve done so far.
It’s been a long day, and it’s after midnight before we get home. Jo is half asleep, and I’m more than half carrying her through the door. Once we’re inside and I lock the door behind us, I pick her up and carry her to bed.
I help her out of her dress and strip off my own clothes, and we curl up against each other under the blankets, naked and needing and wanting nothing but to hold each other.
She’s mostly asleep. “Wes?”
“Mmm?” So am I.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
A long quiet. “Westley?”
My full name? Some part of me stirs to wakefulness. “Yeah, Jo?”
“Thank you.” A pause. “For putting so much magic into my life.”
There’s an odd, awful finality in her voice.
“Jo?”
“I feel…heavy.” A breath. “Tired.”
“Jo?” My voice cracks.
She nuzzles closer. “I’m okay. Just hold me.”
“I’m gonna make us coffee and omelets in the morning, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“You can make the bacon. I like it how you make it. Crispy, almost burnt.”
No answer.
She’s breathing slowly, deeply.
I’m half awake for a long time, just listening to her breathe.
Kneeling
Westley
When I wake up, she’s burning with fever.
She won’t wake up.
I call an ambulance first, and her parents second.
I find myself singing “One Day More” under my breath, in a cracked, breaking voice.
The chaos of EMS arriving, and her parents, her grandmother, Bethany and Macy—it washes over me.
I move sluggishly, dazed, as through a dense fog, as if my limbs are bound in thick gel.
Her parents take over. I find myself in the back of the ambulance, holding her hand. She’s got a mask over her nose. The medics are…I don’t know what they’re doing.
We’re in a room, in a hospital.
She’s suddenly so small, and there are so many wires, tubes, monitors, machines.
“Wes.” Her grandmother. “Westley?”
I blink, and sort of awaken. “Hmm.” It’s a noncommittal grunt—not even a word or word-sound.
“Come.” She takes my hand—hers is small and dry and wrinkly and cool. Steady.
She leads me to a waiting room. No, a chapel. Front row. Facing a wooden cross, empty, lit by stained glass in burnished hues of violet and crimson. Her grandmother—do I even know her name? Just Grandma. She slowly, laboriously moves to her knees, clasps her hands in front of her.
I haven’t been in a church in years.
But I’m kneeling with her.
She whispers under her breath. I can’t make out the words, but her tone is…urgent.
Desperate. Pleading. Intense.
I can’t think of what to pray.
Except…
Please.
More Everything, And Nothing At All
Westley
Days pass.
She clings to life.
They tell us to expect the end soon. Any hour, any day.
Time ceases to have meaning. Morning, night—hours, days. It’s all a blur.
There’s cafeteria coffee and puck-like burgers I don’t even taste. Hard chairs in the hall while others have time with her. Hours in the waiting room, or her room.
Things beep and hiss, whir and pump and drip.
I find myself alone with her. It feels like the middle of the night, but the blinds are shut and the fluorescent lights are always the same—dimmed.
I kneel beside her. Hold her hand.
She’s intubated. Not breathing on her own.
Shutting down.
“Jo?” I whisper. The first words I’ve said since I woke up with her sick beside me. “Can you hear me?”
She doesn’t move.
But I feel…it’s not her, physically; she doesn’t move, or stir, or twitch.
What I feel is…her.
Her spirit. Watching from somewhere. Feeling me. Hearing me.
I know it’s hokey, stupid—
But I feel her listening to me.
“I’m not ready to let you go,” I whisper. “I know it’s selfish of me, Jo. I know you’ve fought this your whole life, and you’re probably tired. And…if you’re ready to go, I understand. I do. But…I guess I…I don’t want you to. I want you to stay. Please. For me.” I choke. “I want more time with you. More magic. More everything, and nothing at all. Just you and me.”
My voice cracks, and I hear myself break. I don’t remember the last time I cried like this.
But it’s just her and me, I know she won’t judge me.
“Please,” I whisper.
Is that a prayer? Or a plea whispered to her?
I don’t know.
“Please,” I repeat. “Please.”
I rest my head on the edge of the bed, near her hand.
How long I’m there, I don’t know.
A Sacred Silence
Westley
Hands grasp my shoulders. “Westley, come on.” Grandma.
I blink awake—I’m in the chair in her room, slumped forward onto the bed, my arms across her legs.
Beep…beep…beep…
Whirrrrr-hisssss—whirrrrrr-hisssss…
Reassuring sounds, because they mean she’s still alive.
I look at her: she’s the same. Thin and pale and small.
Grandma pulls at me. “Westley, dear, come with me, please.”
I stare at her—shock-white hair in a rather chic cut, slacks with a cardigan. Reading glasses. “Where? Why?”
There are nurses behind her, waiting. Her parents behind them.
“They want to do some tests.”
I stand up. Frown. “Tests?”
There’s a doctor with the nurses, white lab coat, stethoscope, carrying an iPad. Older Indian male with thick-rimmed glasses. He looks at me, at Jo, at the monitors and then his iPad. Says nothing.
“Come.” I’m pulled, and I allow myself to be drawn out of the room.
Machines are turned off, tubes and leads disconnected but not removed from her, other things are transferred to stay with the bed. They wheel her out of the room and down the hall, pause at a set of doors, which open with a tap of a keycard, and then she’s gone.
Grandma, Sherri, Charlie, Beth, Macy…we’re the only ones in the waiting room. It’s silent. A TV plays an old CHEERS episode.
“Why are they running tests?” I ask.
Charlie clears his throat, opens his mouth but nothing comes out. His eyes are red, with dark bags under them. He tries again. “They, um. She—she should be…she should have passed on already.”
I’m not following. I look to Grandma. That’s how I think of her, feel about her; we’ve exchanged few actual words, but when we sit together at Jo’s side, something bonds us on a soul-deep level. My own grandparents have either passed or I’m not close to. So to me, she’s…Grandma.
“She’s holding on longer than they anticipated,” she says. “So they’re going to scan her. Just…to see, I suppose.”
I don’t think anyone wants to say out loud what we’re all thinking: what if she’s…pulling through it?
Is that even possible?
Hours pass.
More hours.
I don’t remember bringi
ng it here with me, but I somehow have my laptop and headphones in my bag; I don’t even remember bringing a bag with me, to be honest. But, on the laptop I have the raw recording file from our session in the studio. I spend the hours mixing it, refining it, tweaking the details. Process it into a final master file.
I sit in the waiting room, staring at my screen, contemplating. One click of the mouse, and our impromptu recording session will be released out into the world, on Apple Music, on YouTube with a series of still selfies of her and I taken at various times over the past month or so, on Spotify, Soundcloud, everywhere. It’s a remarkable recording. I left some of the conversation in, which makes it feel real and raw and personal, vulnerable.
I stare at the publish button.
Should I?
Without asking her? She knew I was recording, but she doesn’t know I’m doing this.
I’m proud of it, though. Of her, of her talent, her bravery, her passion for the music.
With a deep breath, I click the mousepad. Sigh a slow, ragged breath out, and watch as the screen tells me our EP is live. I titled it Captured Voices: Jolene Park & Westley Britton in the Studio. The album artwork is a selfie of us, snapped in my Range Rover in the parking lot of the diner outside Cheyenne—the sun washes us with brilliant golden light, bathing her skin and turning her red hair into fire. She’s leaning against me, nose in my throat, a huge grin on her face, lighting her features with joy and vivacious life. Her eyes are closed, and my head is thrown back, laughing as she said something funny at the exact moment I hit the shutter button on my phone. I’m blurry, in motion, and she’s in sharp focus.
It’s a reflection of us.
I hope she’d be proud of it. I know I am.
The doctor enters the waiting room, and we all stand up. He waves us back to our seats and takes one for himself. He moves as if his limbs weigh a thousand pounds each. I can tell nothing of his news from his face.
“So,” he begins, and then hems, clears his throat. “There’s an anomaly.”
Charlie stands up again, paces four slow steps away from the doctor and passes his hand over his head. Returns. “An anomaly? Meaning what?”
“We scanned her…several times, actually.”
Sherri grips her hands together and wrings them until her skin goes white. “Doctor, please.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. The machine is being recalibrated and we’re going to test again. But…there’s a chance—a possibility—that her leukemia is…retreating.”
“Retreating?” Charlie, now looking deflated and stunned. Like someone poked a hole in a balloon. “What does that mean? We’ve been told it—that it can’t. It won’t. It’s not responding to treatment. It’s advancing. Now it’s retreating? Will she…can she...?”
The doctor rubs his face. “To be perfectly candid, Mr. Park, I just don’t know. I’ve heard of cases like this…maybe two other times, in my career.” He sighs again. “She’s still barely hanging on. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic, necessarily—but if we recalibrate the machine and re-scan her and the results come back the same as the previous couple sets of scans? This could be an anomalous, unexpected remission. But we’re in uncharted territory here, okay? I don’t know what’s going to happen. She could continue to improve. Or…not. We just don’t know.”
He stands up, takes a deep breath, lets it out, and seems to rally. “For now, we wait.”
And then he exits.
That man is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, it appears.
The moment he’s gone, Grandma stands up and strides purposefully to the exit.
“Mom?” Sherri asks. “Where are you going?”
“To pray,” is the response. A pause. A look to me. “Westley? Are you coming?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
I follow her to the chapel. Hold her hand as she descends to her knees in the second row, this time, holding on to the back of the pew in front of her. I’m beside her. Kneeling.
Once again, I can’t form ideas or words or thoughts. Am I directing the plea in my heart to the cross? To a being somewhere beyond the sky that I’m not sure I believe in? I don’t know even that.
I just know my heart beats a single word:
Please.
My mind repeats it.
My soul sings it.
At some point, I feel others join me. Macy on my left, her incredible profusion of hair bowed. Bethany is on the other side of her. Sherri and Charlie on the other side of Grandma.
We kneel together in the second row of the chapel.
We wait. Some of us pray. Others weep.
Eventually Grandma moves from her knees to sit on the pew. Reaches into her voluminous purse and removes a small bible with a locking front cover. Old, worn red leather, gold clasp in the shape of a heart, with a tiny red jewel in the center.
She pops the clasp and uses the crimson ribbon to open it. Psalms.
Reads aloud, but in a low murmur. Not quite to herself, not quite aloud.
I listen.
It’s Old King James, with thee and thou and thy.
Somehow, in this place, it fits.
There’s a sacred silence here, profound and deep.
Please.
Please.
Time spent praying passes sludge-slow and in a fast-forward blur.
“Westley?” Grandma, again. Beside me, sitting now. Fidgeting with something in her palm.
I rub my eyes. Sit up straight and look at her. “Yeah.”
“Do you love her?”
I nod, without hesitation. “I do.”
Her eyes search mine. Though aged, they’re sharp with fierce personality, resonant with faith, and a green much like Jolene’s. “My husband passed, a few years before Jolene was even born. Much too young, much too soon.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”
She nods, has a faint smile on her face. “He was the love of my life, and when he passed, I knew I’d never get over him. I’d never be with anyone else. And I haven’t.”
She opens her hand, revealing a simple ring on her palm; it’s a thin gold band with a tiny diamond. The gold is tarnished with age. The diamond can’t be more than a quarter of a carat.
“This is the ring my Jonathan gave me, fifty years ago. This week, actually. It would be our fifty-year anniversary this Friday.” She smiles at me. “It would mean the world to me if she were to wear it.”
I choke on my emotions, lodged thick and hot in my throat. “I…” a sigh escapes me. “Are you sure you want to part with it?”
“I’m not parting with it. I’m passing it on. It was given to me with love, and now I’m giving with all the love I have to my granddaughter. You love her, she loves you. This whole thing began with a proposal, did it not?”
I nod. “It did.”
“And you said you’d marry her.”
“I did.”
“Will you?” Her eyes are sharp and rife with intense meaning.
I take the ring from her—it has great metaphysical weight. It’s a tiny, light little ring. But the importance and meaning of it…it sits heavily in my palm.
“It would be my greatest honor,” I tell her. “Thank you.”
She shakes her head. “I was skeptical at first. I honestly disapproved. I thought it was a gimmick. A publicity stunt.”
I nod. “Understandable. I won’t hold it against you,” I say, smiling at her.
She gives me a faint smile in return, but the humor fades quickly. “I’m thankful to you, now. You’ve given her life and happiness of a kind I wasn’t sure she’d ever get to experience.”
My turn to shake my head. “Honestly, I’m the one who’s been given life and happiness. She’s…she’s taught me so much.”
A nod. “She’s like that. But anyway. Thank you for being with her. For being brave enough to take this journey with her.”
“The journey isn’t over,” I say.
She takes my hand in hers. �
��No, it’s not. The Bible commands us to pray without ceasing, and that’s what I intend to do, until she’s either healed, or the sweet Lord Jesus takes her home.”
A Spar of Hope
Jolene
Music.
Motes of nothing whirl, flecks of stardust flow like a river.
Darkness breathes.
And there is music.
“Jolene, Jolene, Jolene…
Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green…”
It’s a voice, a familiar one. Sad. Lonely. Pleading.
Whispers echo, like moth wings fluttering in a silent room.
Darkness again. Thick and heavy, a million pounds dragging down into deeper, colder silence.
Not there. No, not down there. Emptiness lurks in that deepness.
Music, again.
“…One day more
Tomorrow you'll be worlds away
And yet with you my world has started
One more day all on my own
Will we ever meet again?”
The weighty, titanic vehemence of the dark cold nothing lightens, ever so slightly. The claws retract, just a little. The silence is yet still and fathomless, but there is, somehow, a sense of…
Something.
Music once more, and now there are tears in the voice.
“Wise men say
Only fools rush in
But I can't help falling in love with you
Shall I stay?
Would it be a sin
If I can't help falling in love with you?”
Only fools rush in.
There is meaning in those words.
It tugs.
Draws with it a sense of…self.