Free The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman Page A

Bender for the procedure.
    Saphora sat beside him, offering ice chips, although he complained of hunger pangs. The wife seated next to the patient in the bed opposite them doted on her Latino husband, whose dark eyes softened each time she smiled and pushed more ice into his mouth.
    Bender stared stiffly at the golf tournament on the overhead television. He kept switching the channels back and forth between the tournament and a tennis match.
    “Ramsey is coming,” said Saphora. Their youngest son, hearing about his daddy’s diagnosis, had bought a ticket into Raleigh-Durham.
    “He doesn’t have to come,” he said, still not taking his eyes off the tournament.
    “Of course he’s coming,” she said. “You’ll dry out. Eat this.”
    “Saphora, just hand me the cup. I can feed myself ice.”
    The Latino’s wife glanced up at Saphora. She was a white lady who spoke in a quiet voice but laughed uninhibitedly. There was a faint mixture of sympathy and humility in her eyes, eyes that seemed to participate in everything she observed.
    Gwennie came huffing into the room. She had taken the stairs in lieu of the elevator. She had used the exercise ploy as her excuse for avoiding elevators most of her adult life. But Saphora knew her fear of them.
    “Eddie went to stay the afternoon with his new friend, Tobias,” said Gwennie. “I met his parents. The husband looks old enough to be Tobias’s granddad. The mom looks a lot younger than him, but what do I know?” She set a stack of freshly bought magazines on Bender’s tray and kissed her daddy.
    It was the first time he took his eyes off the television. “Hold on to this,” he said, handing her his phone. “If I get any calls, just plug them into the message center on my laptop.”
    Jim reappeared, flanked by two OR nurses. “No phone calls for a few days, Bender,” he said. “Gwennie, shut that thing off.”
    Gwennie froze between the power of two stiff-necked surgeons.
    Finally Saphora took the phone. “I’ll take care of it.”
    Bender was wheeled out of the room. He was about to disappear behind the two automatic doors into the OR center when Saphora was overwhelmed with emotion. He looked helpless lying there, drifting off against his will into the sedation and under the management of a surgery crew not his own. Saphora leaned over the bed rail and kissed him lightly on the forehead that would soon be minus the thick blond forelock that had distinguished Bender from so many of his friends with thinning hair.
    The last emotion to register on his face was indistinguishable to everyone looking at him except Saphora. He had seldom registered fear, but there it was in his eyes just before they closed.
    An hour later she sat outside the surgery center holding a pager until Gwennie coaxed her down the stairs for a late lunch.
    The cafeteria was dressed up like a Fourth of July parade. Red, white, and blue streamers festooned the common areas, linking the various buffet lines like veins. Helium balloons floated cell-like above the cash registers. Saphora had completely forgotten the Fourth and said so to Gwennie.
    “It’s two days away. We can watch the fireworks on the water in Oriental. Turner will be in town, and Eddie’s never been to the Croaker Festival,” said Gwennie. “We’ll take him, and it’ll help keep our minds off things.”
    “Ramsey is coming too. But Celeste is staying home with the kids. I told him to tell her not to worry.” Celeste tended to feel guilty about everything.
    Gwennie put an apple on her tray next to the pasta dish. “I don’t know that it’s a bad idea. Those three kids of hers are out of control. But then I know nothing about kids. I’m too impatient.” Gwennie wasn’t patient with Celeste either. She said, “Celeste does that countingthing with her kids. ‘Okay, Liam, I’m counting to five and then you’d better do what I say.’ The instant I would get Liam alone, I’d say to him, ‘Listen, kid, do it on one or