Listen to an audio recording:
Eden continues the story of Greta and Bob whose love, first seeded in adultery, blooms in marriage and flourishes despite the challenges of age and dementia.
Excerpt:
THE MILLENIUM MARKS the coming of their twenty-first wedding anniversary and their twentieth year on Whitby Island. Bob’s been collecting his pension for eight years (Greta has five more to go), and they’ve built up the business to where they can accept summer reservations only. They’re both still healthy, though Bob has to watch his blood pressure, and Greta’s recent heart palpitations and dizzy spells are symptomatic of a heart condition stemming from when she had rheumatic fever as a child. But her arrhythmia is treatable with medication, and doesn’t interfere with their holidaying from mid-November to the end of February in a little fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico. While it rains and storms on Whitby, they soak up the sun. Cavort in the ocean waves. Read. Learn survival Spanish. Watch the sun set.
The day after their return from Mexico in early March, they take their customary first trip into Winston. It’s a blustery day—the month is coming in, notoriously, like a lion—and they cut their shopping short in order to make it to the ferry terminal before the storm builds and runs are cancelled for the day. On the ferry, Bob goes to the washroom, and as the island, its outline reminiscent of Greta’s mother’s Christmas Stollen, draws closer, she’s beginning to wonder what’s taking him so long.
When he taps, at last, on her window, she opens it a crack and he tells her to get out. His face is pale and drawn, as if he’s lost blood or had an electric shock.
“Bob, what’s wrong? Are you OK?” she asks, but he doesn’t hear her over the howling wind.
“You drive,” he says.
When they’re in their seats, Greta strokes Bob’s cold, damp face and smooths his rumpled hair. But he stares straight ahead. She doesn’t like this one bit.
“This isn’t the way home,” he says when they’re back on the island and she turns off the main road and heads east. “Greta, you’re on the wrong road.”
She’s reminded of the time a hornet stung him on the back of the neck while he and James were cutting down some alders. Good thing James had insisted on taking a break because when Bob, who often didn’t know when to stop, came into the house for more water and took off his sweat-soaked shirt, his chest was a livid red, as if he’d been boiled in oil, and covered with welts. If Greta had listened to him then, he would’ve lain down for a little rest until the dizziness went away and died of anaphylactic shock. Instead, she drove him to the clinic where, after three saline infusions and an injection of epinephrine, the alarmed doctor was able to stabilize Bob’s pulse and raise his blood pressure. This time, she’s not listening, either.
“I need you to come in for a minute,” she tells Bob and grumpily he accompanies her into the portable that houses the island clinic.
There is no resident physician on Whitby Island, only two young doctors who serve the clinic three days a week on alternate weeks and are equipped to provide only the most basic emergency service. On this day, Dr. Bauer is on duty and they have to wait no more than fifteen minutes to see him. Knowing how little Bob will say in order to leave as soon as possible, Greta goes along into the small examination room. The doctor finds no signs of paralysis, and Bob’s able to articulate though his answers come as if he must first translate a foreign language in his head. Greta fills in the blanks as best she can.
“You’ve probably had a transient ischemic attack. TIA for short. A mini-stroke in other words,” Dr. Bauer says, turning from Bob to Greta. “Luckily, it’s not as imminently life-threatening as the last time I saw him, but still nothing to be taken lightly.”
Bob is sitting on the edge of the examination table like a school kid waiting for the last bell to ring, but Greta’s heart is jumping and racing.
“Will he ... is he going to be OK?” she asks.
“Most likely,” Dr. Bauer says cautiously, “but I’d feel much better sending him to the hospital in Winston to get checked over. His blood pressure is very high.”
Bob stands up. He’s not taking a water taxi, and he’s not going to any bloody hospital.
Greta knows there’s nothing she can do. Nor can Dr. Bauer do more than prescribe blood thinners and vigilance.
That night she lies awake beside him. When he rolls away, she slides toward him and presses her face into his back. She tells herself, she prays, that there’s nothing wrong. That he will be all right. That he will not die and leave her.
Coming next: An excerpt from the short story, Old Fools
Read excerpts from You Never Know, Lost and Found, Fat Chance and Forbidden.
Reader reviews
Great Story Telling! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This book was very hard to put down once I started reading and the stories were well written and interesting. - Wayne Sundstrom, Saskatoon, Canada
Highly recommended! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This collection is an excellent read full of human stories that everyone can relate to. EGE, Victoria, Canada
You Never Know and other stories can be ordered from Amazon (paperback or e-book).
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My First Book of Short Fiction
I’ve writing on Substack for two years now, and here is it: my first collection of short fiction—You Never Know and other stories!