PART 2 — THE APPOINTMENT CARD
Mr. Prescott rolled his sleeve up past the elbow and held his arm out for the whole room to see. There was a scar along it, the kind every dialysis patient carries. Then he set a worn appointment card on the table.
I never told you, he said to his wife, because I knew how you felt about that clinic. But I have been going three mornings a week for two years. My kidneys failed, Eleanor. I just could not bear to say it out loud.
Mrs. Prescott went pale under her hat.
In February, he went on, during the ice storm, the vans could not run. He had no way to get to his treatment, and a man who misses dialysis for too long does not survive it. He had made his peace with missing it.
Then someone knocked on his door. A technician from the clinic, who had driven her own car across frozen streets, one patient at a time, to carry them in herself.
The woman Mrs. Prescott called a babysitter for old folks on blood machines had driven through the ice to keep her own husband alive, and never once mentioned it at this table.
Mr. Prescott looked at Tamika. You did not know I was your mother-in-laws husband, did you, he said. She shook her head. I just knew you were my five oclock, she said softly.
The society ladies did not laugh anymore. Mrs. Prescott reached across the table and took Tamikas hand.
My daughter changes the tubes, as that woman put it. On a frozen morning, those tubes were the only thing standing between her husband and the grave.