November was a kaleidoscope of pain and surgeries. By December I’d made it clear that only the two most basic of my desires remained: to live out whatever days I had left as Jack’s wife in the eyes of the church and our community, and to keep the boys in England.
While frigid rain lashed the hospital windows, Jack came to me in the worst of the December nausea.
“I’ve gone to the bishop and presented our case for marriage.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked. The nausea—I’d swallowed a pint of anesthesia when they removed my ovaries—was all consuming. I needed something, anything to assuage the suffering. Becoming Mrs. Lewis in God’s eyes was a hope that burned as brightly as any light. I didn’t want to be sick in front of Jack one more time. I wanted to be strong, to be the woman Warnie and he believed I was: courageous in the face of despair. But it was getting harder and harder.
“I told the bishop that your marriage to Bill never bloody counted because Bill had been married before you. But because they deem me a public figure, they are afraid they will be flooded with other requests, other exceptions. His answer was no.”
“That’s what you get for being a public figure.” I tried to smile.
Jack didn’t laugh.
In many ways, in such a short amount of time, our roles often reversed. Instead of it being Jack who held me, it was I who must quote from his favorite mystic—Julian of Norwich. All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
I held his hand. “My love, the pain is cleansing me. Soon I’ll be walking with a caliper splint and living with you.”
Together we pretended it to be true, but it was only as real as Perelandra or Narnia.
Weeks passed; the boys returned to school. Eventually I felt well enough that Warnie brought me my typewriter. I began to preoccupy myself while waiting for test results, healing, and treatments by catching up on correspondence and informing everyone of my plight: My parents. Chad and Eva. Belle, Marian, and Michal. And finally, my brother—we reconciled as best as two siblings can when across an ocean with one of them at death’s door. I knit and crocheted everything from scarves to mittens to tablecloths for the Kilns, as if I could move myself there with my hands alone.
It was the January doctor’s announcement that almost destroyed us.
“Months to live,” he told us. “Months at best.”
Together we took the news inside, let it churn our hearts to pulp. “If I could have made you love me all those years ago,” I said, “we’d have had more time.”
“Free will,” he said and kissed me. “It’s the only thing that might make love worth having.”
I nodded in fear. “We cannot look at what horror has happened to us, but at how we will turn to God in it. If I only identify with the three-dimensional world I once believed in, I will despair. But we know better, Jack. We know there is more.”
Jack’s face, the ruddiness now white and sallow as if I’d drained him of his life as well, drew close to mine. “I want more of life here with you.” His voice carried a tremor, and for one split second I thought I knew what he must have sounded like when he was a small boy and his mother was dying in the back bedroom of Little Lea. “I want more of you,” he said.
“As do I want more of you.”
During those months in the hospital Jack was at my bedside as much as possible. For three-day weekends he never left me but to sleep at the Kilns. During the times I believed I’d heal we relished our moments together; he sometimes sneaked sherry into the hospital. We recited poetry and read together. We talked of the future, whether it was a day or a month or more. We kissed and we held each other and felt great expectation of what might be. During the worst moments we prayed, feverishly we prayed.
“It’s hopeless,” I told him on a February afternoon when they removed the cast and found that the bones were not healing. “We must stop living in denial.”
Crochet needles wrapped in gray yarn sat on my lap, abandoned mittens for Davy.
“It is not hopeless,” he said with surety. “It is uncertain, and this is the cross God always gives us in life, uncertainty. But it is not hopeless.”
“Jack, all I’ve ever wanted was to bring you happiness. And here I am bringing you pain. It would have been best if you’d never met me at all.”
“Not met you at all?” He stood and paced the hospital room and then turned to me with fire on his face. “My life would have been but dry dust compared to having you in my world. With whom could I have ever been this close? Till We Have Faces would not exist. My biography would be but half what it is. My heart would still be hibernating, too troubled to feel.” He came to my side and kissed my face, first one cheek, then the other, and then my lips. “Whatever we face together is better than never knowing you at all.”