Miss Charlotte reached into her handbag and took out the folded letter with the St. Dominic Hospital logo, straightened her pearls, and read it to the whole brunch table like she was giving testimony.
In February 2024, she said, when the freeze knocked out the pumps in Jackson again, a water treatment operator slept on a cot at the O.B. Curtis plant for nine days so the hospitals would not lose pressure. Without water pressure, she read, St. Dominic could not have run its operating rooms.
Then Charlotte looked at her husband. Harlan, she said. I was in one of those operating rooms that week. My heart surgery. The one you keep telling people went off without a hitch. It went off because the hospital had water, and the hospital had water because this young man you just called a sewage-watcher did not go home for nine days.
He asked if the ice was made from city water, and mocked the man who kept the taps running that kept his own wifes heart surgery from being canceled.
His golf buddies quit laughing. Harlan Beaumont looked at his wife like he was seeing that week for the first time.
I am Terrences mother. He poured my coffee and said happy Mothers Day, Mr. Beaumont, and let it go, because a man who sleeps nine nights on a cot for a city that will never thank him does not need thanks from a retired bank president. Miss Charlotte reached over and squeezed my sons hand, and Harlan, to his credit, stood up and did the same.