(Chapter 18. November 22. Malibu.)

The bell rang and Mark excused himself from the table to answer it. As Steve finished the remains of his breakfast, he heard Olivia's laughter echo through the house.

"He's so cute, Mark, I couldn't resist."

Steve called out, "Why, thank you, Liv. I'm flattered."



Olivia sat an enormous stuffed turkey in Mark's empty chair and gave Steve a skeptical look. After a moment, she looked at Mark and said, "I guess that was supposed to be amusing."

Steve pretended to be hurt while Mark and Olivia laughed. Then she threw her arms around Steve's neck, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and asked, "So what do you have planned for today, babe?"

"Frankly, I haven't thought about it yet. I do want to go for a walk, though."

"Sounds good to me. Before we go, I have something for you." She grinned and added, "Some assembly required."

Steve rolled his eyes and laughed.

She looked up at Mark and said, "There are some things I need to get out of the jeep. After you clear the table, would you mind if I used it for a little project? It'll only take a few minutes."

"That'll be fine, Olivia."

"Ok. Thanks." She jumped up and started to trot out to her car. Half way out of the dining room, she stopped and added, "Oh, I'll need some old newspapers, too, to cover my work area."

"I'll find some as soon as I clean up from breakfast," Mark said.

"Super! Be right back!" She raced out of the room.

Mark and Steve looked at each other and laughed.

As he stacked the dirty dishes on the table in front of him, Steve asked, "Dad, is she always like that?"

"Like what, son?"

"Well, she's so cheerful and enthusiastic about everything. She seems so happy almost all the time, but most of the time I've known her, I've been a patient. Is she acting like that for my benefit, or is she always this happy?"

Mark thought a minute. "Well, son, you found out yesterday that she's not always so happy, but when she gets down, she recovers quickly. She's not so bubbly when she's concerned about a patient; but when I see her in the hall or the lounge at the hospital, she always has a smile and a kind word for everyone. She can brighten a room just by being in it. I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't heard her make someone laugh, and she's always doing nice things for people."

"Like what?"

"Well, think of all the things she has done to make you more comfortable, Steve." Mark carried the dirty dishes to the kitchen and began loading them in the dishwasher.

Steve nodded his agreement, "She has been very thoughtful toward me, but I was her patient, and she has an inventive mind. I'm sure it was mostly a professional thing, and that she will be recycling those ideas for other patients in the future. What does she do for other people?"

"Ok, true story," Mark began as he came back with cloth to wipe the table. "Apparently she and one of my students frequent the same drive-thru on the way to work in the morning. One day, she noticed him in the line right behind her, and she paid for his meal. He got to the window and was told someone had already covered his bill."

"No kidding. I'll bet that made his day," Steve said.

"Oh, it did, but there's more," Mark said as he brought out some newspapers. He and Steve started covering the table.

"He came to me that morning and asked how I thought he should respond. I'm sure he recognized Olivia's influence at Community General and didn't want to offend her. I told him she knew he was a student and wouldn't expect anything more than a word of thanks, but I was curious about what she did. When I asked her about it, do you know what she told me?"

Steve gave it some thought and answered, "Knowing her, it was probably something off-beat."

"Oh, yeah," Mark agreed, "I expected her to say something about money being tight for medical students, but that wasn't it at all. She looked at me, completely serious, and said, 'If that had been my last act on earth, it would have made someone happy. I live as if every moment were my last, and I want to spend my last moment doing something good for someone else.'"

Steve drew his eyebrows together in confusion. "That's sweet, but very odd."

"What's odd?" Olivia asked as she came back into the room.

Steve looked at her and grinned, "Oh, we were just talking about you."

Olivia rolled her eyes and said with good-natured sarcasm, "Like that really narrows it down."

Mark and Steve watched with mounting curiosity as she place a steel toolbox and four thick circles of Plexiglas on the newspapers on the table. She opened the combination lock on the toolbox and took out a cordless electric drill and a set of drill bits and fit one of the bits into the drill.

"What are you planning to do with that?" Mark asked.

"You'll see."

She took a smaller box out of the toolbox and opened it to reveal sixteen brass screw-in eyes and eight lengths of brass chain with brass clips at both ends.

Mark raised an eyebrow and said, "Very snazzy. What's it all for?"

"Get me the walker and I'll show you."

Mark brought the walker over and sat it beside her.

"Uh, Liv," Steve said with some concern, "are you sure you know what you're doing?"

She shot him a reproving look and said, "Babe, I built my own car, I know what I'm doing."

She took out a tape measure and a pencil, put the pencil behind her ear, turned the walker upside down, measured across the bottom of the rubber feet that covered the ends of the walker legs, and wrote some figures on the newspaper.

"It's just that it's my only way to get around. I don't want to be stuck without it if this idea of yours doesn't work."

She gave him another look and said, "It'll work if you quit distracting me, but if I confuse my figures, we could have a mess."

"In other words, 'shut up,' huh?"

She smiled sweetly and said, "I never use those words. I can't stand to be so hurtful and to treat other's so badly. It offends me to hear them. I think they're terribly rude and diminish both the person who says them and the person they're said to."

Confusion crossed Steve's face again. Olivia certainly was a puzzle. Then he said, "Oh. I'll be quiet now, anyway." She'd made him feel like he did when his fourth grade teacher would reprimand him. As a child, he had thought Mrs. McCray was the sweetest and the scariest woman in the world. She never snapped or raised her voice, but that look always let him know when he had gone too far. He always knew her next step was to call his dad.

Olivia measured the brass chains and clips and the width of the eyes and wrote the figures down. She added the figures together and subtracted another figure from them. Taking a straight edge and a metal scriber out of the toolbox, she drew an x on each of the circles of Plexiglas, and measured the diameter of the circles. She wrote down the figures and did some math, then put the scriber into a pencil compass she'd taken from the toolbox. She drew a circle centered on the x on each of the pieces of Plexiglas that was just the size of the feet of the walker.

She moved the walker over beside Steve and handed him her tape measure and the scriber. Then she wrote a figure on the newspaper near him and said, "Measure that far from the bottom of the walker feet up each leg of the walker and put two marks on it, one centered on the front of the leg, the other on the back. Be precise, or it won't work quite right."

Steve nodded and did as he was told as Olivia put away the pencil and straight edge. While he was making his measurements, she took out a wooden box with no lid and sides about an inch high, a small hammer, and a chisel. She turned back a corner of the newspaper, placed a rubber pad on the table, set the box on the pad, put a Plexiglas circle in the box and started chiseling away the material inside the small circle she had drawn.

When Steve finished his measuring, she put the tape measure and scriber away, handed him the drill, and said, "Make a hole on each of your marks, and screw one of the eyes into it."

As he continued working, Steve asked, "Are you going to tell me what we're doing?"

"Nope. Figure it out. What did you say you wanted to do today?"

"Go for a walk on the beach?"

"Uh-huh."

"And...?"

"Think about it, babe," she said as she continued chiseling away a thin layer of Plexiglas inside the circle. "Why would walking on the beach be such good exercise? Why is it better than walking on a sidewalk?"

"Because it's harder work. The sand is soft and it shifts underfoot."

She smiled at him and asked, "So, why do you think we're doing this?"

Steve wrinkled his brow in a thoughtful frown, then suddenly a smile spread across his face, "It's like snowshoes! You want to keep the legs of the walker from sinking into the sand so I can keep my balance when we go for a walk."

Olivia grinned and said, "That's why the man's a detective!" She finished chiseling out her circles, and fitted them on the feet of the walker. Then she lifted it up, stood it on the table, and clipped the chains to the eyes that Steve had screwed into the legs of the walker. Finally she got the scriber out again, marked where the chains hung down, took the Plexiglas circles off the walker feet, drilled holes, had Steve and Mark help screw in the eyes, put everything back together and clipped the chains to the circles. The chains had to pull tight to reach from the eyes on the walker legs to the eyes on the Plexiglas, and they held everything together snugly.

"You know, they make equipment especially for the beach, Liv," Mark suggested.

"I know that," Olivia acknowledged. Looking at Steve she continued, "But it costs a fortune, takes up a lot of room, is only good for the beach, and takes several weeks to deliver. The 'sand shoes' are cheap, easy to attach, and they're small enough to store in the backpack the boys got you." Putting the walker on the floor, she put her tools away, folded up the newspapers around the Plexiglas shavings, looked at Steve, and said, "Want to try it out?"

Steve looked at her creation and said, "No Velcro?"

She laughed and said, "Not this time, babe."

Slowly and deliberately, Steve moved back from the table, gripped the walker, pushed himself up, and said, "Let's go."

Olivia asked, "Mark, where is that backpack, anyway? Maybe we'll decide to sit on the beach a while."

Mark handed Olivia the backpack as she picked up her giant turkey. Then he opened the sliding glass door, and Steve and Olivia stepped out on to the deck. Steve walked to the edge of the steps and asked, "Uh, how am I going to get down?"

Quite matter-of-factly, Olivia said, "Walk."

"Liv, I don't know if I can."

Mark was there at his side in a moment. "Son, you have to try. It'll be all right."

Olivia offered her arm for support and said, "I'll help you down, and your dad will bring the walker behind us."

"What if I fall, Liv?"

"Then you get up again, but that won't happen. I won't let it. I promise."

Steve looked at her and said, "You aren't strong enough to hold me up."

Mark reassured him, "Son, you can't start backing off now because you're afraid. You can do this."

Turning to his dad, Steve asked, "Do you really believe that, Dad?"

Steve saw Olivia and Mark exchange a look; Mark nodded, and said firmly, "Yes, son, I do."

Taking a deep breath, Steve gripped Olivia's arm, closed his eyes, and stepped off the edge.