Chapter 2: Chapter 2
With a creak the door opened, and Lori Schmidbauer, his grandmother’s nurse, peered in. Even backlit, Hunter could see the kindness in the woman’s dark brown eyes and the concern and sadness on her face. She glanced down the hall and then back toward him, gave him a tentative smile.
“Hunter? Honey, I’m so sorry to wake you. Can I come in?”
Hunter pulled the sheet up farther, covering his chest. A new kind of alarm had begun inside, the dread beginning to churn like something alive in his guts. “Is everything okay?”
Lori didn’t respond. She simply tiptoed into the room and sat down gingerly on the edge of his bed. Hunter leaned over and switched on the nightstand lamp. Lori still wore her scrubs, and her curly brown hair was pulled loosely into a ponytail. She looked like the most tired woman in the world. Hunter repeated his question and added to it.
“Is everything okay? Is Nana all right?”
Lori clutched his hand, squeezed it, and let it go. “I don’t think so, dear.”
She stared off at a point over Hunter’s head, and he could see her eyes glistened with tears.
It felt like his stomach dropped a couple of feet. He bit his lip. “Is it time?”
Lori drew in a quivering breath before responding. “Yeah. I think it is. You better come now if you want to say good-bye.”
“Okay,” Hunter whispered, barely able to find breath to put behind the single word. For his whole twenty-two-year life, his grandmother had been his savior, protector, shield, comforter, mother, father, playmate, and teacher. And now it looked like there actually was a monster outside his door, and its name was cancer. Now it appeared that monster was about to rip all he held dear away from him.
Lori waited on the bed, watching him. He could tell she was trying to gauge his reaction, to see if perhaps he would need a hug. Lori was the kind of nurse who was free with her hugs. A good woman. But right now, Hunter needed a moment to himself, and he told her that.
“Sure, sweetheart. Just don’t be too long.” She got up and paused at the door. “I don’t know how much time we have.” Sorrowfully she nodded, her lips coming together in a line indicating sympathy. She took her time leaving his room. Then he heard her quickened pace as she hurried down the long hallway to his nana’s bedroom.
Hunter didn’t know if he could do this. Part of him thought if he just stayed there in bed he could delay or prevent the inevitable. If he could only freeze time at this moment, he would never have to face a world without Nana in it. He shook his head and chastised himself for being weak. To every season, he thought, there is an end
Feeling numb, Hunter roused himself from bed. He slid into the jeans and sweater he had left on the rocker by the window. He looked outside, where the inky darkness revealed nothing, a void. He knew Lake Michigan was out there, and in the morning it would reveal itself in aqua or gray, depending on the quality of light, but right now it seemed as though the huge body of water had vanished. The night’s darkness pressed against his windows like something palpable, aching to get inside.
Barefoot, he padded down the hall to his grandmother’s bedroom. Ever since he had lost his parents at the age of five, this had been his home, and suddenly the big old house seemed strange and unfamiliar to him, as if he were seeing it for the first time. There was the portrait of his father, painted when Daddy was sixteen, looking young and vibrant and not that much different from Hunter, the same smile and auburn hair. And there was the old Oriental rug, its pinks, blues, and grays faded, leading the way to the door to his grandmother’s bedroom, which yawned open. Hunter stood for a long while, staring at that doorway and breathing in the smell of sickness that emanated from the room. “Go,” he whispered.
He ducked into the room. Nana lay propped up on her old four-poster bed, the one she’d had since marrying Hunter’s grandfather about six decades ago. She looked small and shriveled, vulnerable and nearly lost among the pillows, blankets, and quilts that never could keep her quite warm, not once she took ill. Her hair looked like gray straw, and parts of her scalp peeked through. A few days ago, they had taken her off the IVs and the oxygen, knowing there was no hope. The medical detritus stood in a corner of the room, looking like defeated soldiers.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone