Fear Nothing

As always it was a fierce, sharp-boned, strong hug, though I sensed in her an uncharacteristic fatigue.
        She sat at the polished-pine table and invited me to take the chair opposite hers.
        I took off my cap and considered removing my jacket as well. The kitchen was too warm. The pistol was in my pocket, however, and I was afraid it might fall out on the floor or knock against the chair as I pulled my arms from the coat sleeves. I didn't want to alarm Angela, and she was sure to be frightened by the gun.
        In the center of the table were three votive candles in little ruby-red glass containers. Arteries of shimmering red light crawled across the polished pine.
        A bottle of apricot brandy also stood on the table. Angela had provided me with a cordial glass, and I half filled it.
         Her glass was full to the brim. This wasn't her first serving, either.
        She held the glass in both hands, as if taking warmth from it, and when she raised it with both hands to her lips, she looked more waiflike than ever. In spite of her gauntness, she could have passed for thirty-five, nearly fifteen years younger than her true age. At this moment, in fact, she seemed almost childlike.
        “From the time I was a little girl, all I ever really wanted to be was a nurse.”
        “And you're the best,” I said sincerely.
        She licked apricot brandy from her lips and stared into her glass. “My mother had rheumatoid arthritis. It progressed more quickly than usual. So fast. By the time I was six, she was in leg braces and using crutches. Shortly after my twelfth birthday, she was bedridden. She died when I was sixteen.”
        I could say nothing meaningful or helpful about that. No one could have. Any words, no matter how sincerely meant, would have tasted as false as vinegar is bitter.
        Sure enough, she had something important to tell me, but she needed time to marshal all the words into orderly ranks and march them across the table at me. Because whatever she had to tell me - it scared her. Her fear was visible: brittle in her bones and waxy in her skin.
        Slowly working her way to her true subject, she said, “I liked to bring my mother things when she couldn't get them easily herself. A glass of iced tea. A sandwich. Her medicine. A pillow for her chair. Anything. Later, it was a bedpan. And toward the end, fresh sheets when she was incontinent. I never minded that, either. She always smiled at me when I brought her things, smoothed my hair with her poor swollen hands. I couldn't heal her, or make it possible for her to run again or dance, couldn't relieve her pain or her fear, but I could attend her, make her comfortable, monitor her condition - and doing those things was more important to me than… than anything.”
        The apricot brandy was too sweet to be called brandy but not as sweet as I had expected. Indeed, it was potent. No amount of it could make me forget my parents, however, or Angela her mother.
        “All I ever wanted to be was a nurse,” she repeated. “And for a long time it was satisfying work. Scary and sad, too, when we lost a patient, but mostly rewarding.” When she looked up from the brandy, her eyes were pried wide open by a memory. “God, I was so scared when you had appendicitis. I thought I was going to lose my little Chris.”
        “I was nineteen. Not too little.”
        “Honey, I've been your visiting nurse since you were diagnosed when you were a toddler. You'll always be a little boy to me.”
        I smiled. “I love you, too, Angela.”
        Sometimes I forget that the directness with which I express my best emotions is unusual, that it can startle people and-as in this case-move them more deeply than I expect.
        Her eyes clouded with tears. To repress them, she bit her lip, but then she resorted to the apricot brandy.
        Nine years ago I'd had one of those cases of appendicitis in which the symptoms do not manifest until the condition is acute. After breakfast, I suffered mild indigestion. Before lunch, I was vomiting, red-faced, and gushing sweat. Stomach pain twisted me into the curled posture of a shrimp in the boiling oil of a deep fryer.
        My life was put at risk because of the delay caused by the need for extraordinary preparations at Mercy Hospital. The surgeon was not, of course, amenable to the idea of cutting open my abdomen and conducting the procedure in a dark - or even